Hello from Birmingham

[Crater]

Hello,

I have been 'lurking' for a week or two and have decided to sign up and say hello. I have ben looking at the sky for years, but a couple of years ago I bought a cheap Bresser refractor. It was not brilliant, but the moon looked great through it and I occasionally found Saturn, which blew me away every time despite its tiny size in the eyepiece.

I recently decided to buy a 'good' telescope and went for Sywatcher's Skymax 127 AZ Goto. A nice little scope for taking in the car. I've only just had it a week and skies have been mostly cloudy. I have a telescope adaptor for my DSLR and would like to try a bit of imaging as well as observing. Below is an image created in Registax which is built from pictures taken through my old refractor which my sister now has.

Rachael.

StackedMoon-26-10-2015.png

Hello and Welcome

Like you, I am new to this forum and also possess the SW Skymax AZ Goto and interested in astrophotography using a DSLR.

Some people say that an AZ mount is not suitable for astrophotography but I have found that, with care, good results are possible if you select suitable objects.

Good results are obtainable with close-ups of the Moon and also Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.

This also applies to some of the brighter DSOs such as Andromeda, Orion and Star Clusters.

I am guessing that you used the video facility in your camera for your Moon image.

You should use a similar approach for the planets.

However, for the less bright DSOs mentioned above you should take a series of images and 'stack' them using the free software 'Deep Sky Stacker'

I find that for these images you can take exposures up to about 30 sec using the AZ mount, before the stars appear to distort.

Do have a go, and don't be put off by being told that you need a more expensive mount.

Best of luck.

[We_Can_Breathe_In_Space]

Hello Rachael,

Welcome to SGL from another Midlander!!!

Sam