First astrophoto, and star trailing.

[bs338]

I finally got a break in the clouds last night, and so took my first astrophoto.  I used a fixed tripod, Pentax K10D DSLR, with a f=50mm f/1.7 lens at 1.7 aperture.  Without any stacking or dark frames (just tweaked the black and grey points with levels) I'm quite pleased with the result for my first time!

However, there seems to be noticable star trailing in this 12s exposure.  So I'm wondering what I should do for my next photo.  I have a 28mm lens, so I could switch to that, or I could jury-rig my camera onto my telescope's mount (a Meade 4504) to see if that gives a small improvement.  Any suggestions?

(Just pointed the camera up at Alcor & Mizar.)

[VigdisVZ]

Hi and welcome to SGL.

You will get star trails on a kit like that with that exposure time.

There are two ways to go: Either compose wide angle photos with a tripod, or fix the camera on a motorized EQ-mount/astrotrac.

The easy way is to try switching to the 28mm and keep the exposures below 15sec to keep them under control, play around with ISO settings and frame the picture with some horizon for context.

Here are a few of my first ones:

and a more recent selfie:

All these taken with a 18-55 lens and a tripod.

Get out there and be creative!