Beginner with minimums... What can I do?

[Ccolvin968]

I'm very interested in astrophotography and am looking at taking my next step into the hobby.

I've already successfully taken a time lapse video of the Big Dipper and that got me hooked on time lapse.

If I'm wanting to try my hand at bigger DSO's such as M31 and M45, do I really need a fancy tracking mount or can I work around that?

My equipment listing is in my signature, and I have a very basic GEM. No autotrack.

My largest lens goes up to around 250mm. Is there anything that I can do with that?

I managed to get a faint smudge from Andromeda last night with my wide angle telephoto (28mm-155mm.)

I could get her to appear with around 12 seconds exposure @ ISO 1600. I went to a max of 25 seconds before trailing started to occur.

Post processing, M31 is super tiny in the frame and it is very noisy, not even photoshop can correct for it! :-O

Other than constellations and time lapses what can I do? If anything at all...

[Kropster]

Have a look at this to see just what can be achieved without a tracker mount....

Or search 'forest tannaka andromeda' on youtube.

It might inspire you!

[D4N]

Andromeda should be a good size in a 250mm lens, depending on your chip size somewhat. The longer focal length will cause you to see trails sooner though.

Lots of short exposures stacked in a program like deep sky stacker will bring out detail you would never have thought was there.

Calibration frames will to help reduce the noise.

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[ronin]

You can get images but they will be limited without any means to track.

The longer the lens then the shorter the exposure time before trailing occurs but also the longer an exposure is required to be.

Your signature says: Telescope: Celestron 127 EQ.

May really be that the simplest and easiest answer is to get an RA motor for the mount, assuming one is available for it. Take off the scope and attach the camera via a suitable dovetail. Almost all options will require buying something, so it sort of makes sense just to spend the something on a motor, or two.

There is a "Barn Door Mount" that can be made, which if you select the correct screw thread and position you rotate a handle to wind the bolt up/down matching the second hand on a watch to track the sky correctly. It is basically 2 bits of wood, a hinge and the previously mentioned bolt/screw. So inexpensive but I do not have construction details. A search for "barn door mount" or "barn door tracker" should turn up something.

For stationary imaging you are limited to wide shots (short focal lengths and faster apertures) and probably the Milky Way etc.is the best example of this. Also the old adage of the darker the better.

Concerning noise is the Canon noise reduction feature enabled ?

Will double the exposure time and you will need to let the whole thing cool down afterwards.

[Ccolvin968]

I'll give it a shot with my 250mm and a bunch of shorts stacked up.

I didn't even think about the fact that I had the noise reduction on.
I'll play around with it more tonight.

Believe it or not, the scope comes with a mount that lets my camera ride piggyback on the scope in place of a finder scope.

I believe there may be a motor mount available for it. I'll look again for sure.

I'll try my had also at what the guy in the video did. I just gotta sit, watch, and take some notes.

I'll post my "experimental" shots when I get the chance.

Thanks for the tips!

[Ccolvin968]

D4N, as in short, are you talking short as in 5-10 seconds or as long as possible without trailing?

[D4N]

I meant as long as you can without trailing, this will probably be around 10 seconds anyway when you use the 250mm lens.

Be sure to zoom in and check the stars are round in the middle of field before you waste time capturing poor subs.

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[Ccolvin968]

I'll post my raw results without any post processing in a little bit.

I got screwed over last night. Everything was perfect, then the temperature hit the dew point, everything got soaked.

I'm gonna try to build it up with what I got though.

-150(ish) Lights

-10 Darks

-10 Bias

[Ccolvin968]

Do you guys have any suggestions for an image stacker for Mac?

I tried doing a stack in photoshop, but it just makes a ton of different layers.

I'll take anything at this point. I have decent images.
It turns out after I deleted all of the crappy images I only had maybe 10 really good shots and the other 47 were acceptable.

Like I said, I'm just playing around right now seeing what I can and cant do.

I might get up early tomorrow morning to see if I have better luck with the Orion Nebula.

[Ccolvin968]

These were my settings for last night:

Canon T3

250mm lens

F/4.8

ISO: 6400

Exposure: 2.5 sec

The guy in the video above was taking 1.6 sec exposures and took 400 of those.

It turned out pretty great! I'd be more than happy with that final image.

I would try it with my 5D MKII, but my 250mm lens doesn't fit on it.

My max for that camera (for now) is 155mm and it's a wide angle.

[D4N]

Pixinsight and Nebulosity both run natively on Mac and do a good job of stacking images.

Both have free trials.

TSED70Q, iOptron Smart EQ pro, ASI-120MM, Finepix S5 pro.