Its Tuesday evening...a SW 150p and a new Canon 100d...what to go for?

[bradfrankshaw]

Hi everyone - I've got a Skywatcher 150p eq3 and a brand new Canon 100d - tonight is one good night of weather for the rest of the week! So what shall I go for? I was thinking M13? Anything else? I have APT on my laptop and I was thinking of getting that to do all of the shots as I'm not sure of all the flats, lights, darks, plains, shines, not-so-shines etc etc etc to shoot (I'm reading up quickly as the sun is setting!!).

cheers for any thoughts

frank

[Hawkeye]

Well if you do have clear skies then M13 would be a good starting point. If nothing else it will allow you to get things focused correctly.

As for everything else take it one step at a time... The stars will still be there tomorrow

[oldpink]

shoot your darks directly after your lights at the same settings (Shutter & Iso speed) but with lens cap on
Bias shoot after blacks same ISO but quickest shutter speed you have again cap on

I've not used Flats yet

[bradfrankshaw]

Thanks all, I'll use that system. I took some random shots from my Synscan dso tour...m13, bodes nebula, m3 etc. A lot of high speed random cloud. Got a snap of Mars too. All just to test out the camera. Found the live view essential especially for the bah focussing mask - tap zoom until Arcturus was large and in centre and spikes easily seen.

Moved to M13 and took a 40 sec raw. In preview mode it looked amazing. Zooming it, there was bad trailing 30 seconds again looked great but still some trailing. I was hoping I hadnt knocked the mount from its polar alignment.

I got one of the two galaxies in Bodes Nebula - no trailing (as almost overhead) but no supernova bah...missed it by a few months.

M3 was nice and Mars came out suitably round and orche.

I will post pictures tonight. Any thoughts from description of m13?

Thanks!