First steps into widefield / meteor imaging

[David Smith]

I received a "Meteor Lens" for my QHY5 camera for my birthday a couple of weeks back. I had hoped to put it to use imaging the Geminids but I did get an hour under clear skies on Wednesday to try it out. The lens just screws into the business end of the QHY camera and provides a wide angle view, by pure accident the field of view is pretty much perfect for my garden as you can see from the snapshot posted below. My first challenge was how to mount the camera as it usually just sits in place of the eyepiece in whatever scope I am using. I ended up with a very "Blue Peter" arrangement with the camera Blu-tak'd and tied to the puck of my SL80 mount. Not pretty but it worked and I will work on a better solution. I didn't get very long before the clouds came back in but at least managed to have a play with focus and exposure. In SharpCap I ended up with a 1 second exposure at about 80% gain. I also downloaded HandyAVI for it's meteor imaging abilities and had a play with this. So when I do get a clear sky and a meteor shower on the same day I will be able to use both the DSLR and QHY to try and capture the action.

[laudropb]

Hope you get a clear sky to try it out. Poring with rain here.

[David Smith]

Thanks. Yes, pretty grim here too and looking at the forecast I am not holding my breath for the next opportunity either!

[xtreemchaos]

great shot Dave, it shows a lot of the sky with good detail,you deff catch some nice metors with that. good to see all of orion. hope you get some clear skys soon.charl.

[happy-kat]

Can it do longer than a 1 second exposure?

[David Smith]

great shot Dave, it shows a lot of the sky with good detail,you deff catch some nice metors with that. good to see all of orion. hope you get some clear skys soon.charl.

Thanks Charl, yes should be able to bag some if the clouds will give me a chance!

Can it do longer than a 1 second exposure?

Yes it can, I still need to experiment to find the best settings. Those described above just gave me an image that I could work with (visible on screen and updated at a reasonable pace so I could try to get focus (still needs some work looking back at this still).