Pleiades From Last Night

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Hi,

Still a new newbie, my 1st attempt at M45 last night. I'm really glad that I got the nebulosity. The only problem is that it seems almost blurred. Instead of there being delicate wisps of dust, there is just a cloud of it, except one or two darker lanes near Merope. I'm wondering whether my focus could have moved a bit. I might, after I've focused, and got the timer release going, set the lens to AF, as that would lock the focus in position. I don't think that the cam would try to focus, though, knowing astronomy-related equipment, it might, and throw my focus off even worse  !. (my release is a programmable one, so I don't have to press the release's shutter button.)

I've had to post as a JPEG, as the TIFF was too large.

52X45sec Subs@ISO 800

Canon EOS 1000d

200mm lens

EQ2

Stacked with DSS, processed with GIMP

[laudropb]

Nice capture.

[MAN or ASTROMAN]

Good capture of what I suppose is an ideal object to start with in AP.

 It's of particular interest to me as I have a 130p on an EQ2 mount (undriven,at present).

[salas]

Nice 1st attempt! And the nebulosity is clearly present which is an achievement. Once you've achieved focus manually don't switch to AF leave it in manual and will stay where you set it. If you are using a intervalometer for timing the camera make sure it's not hanging down on its cable from the camera as even a slight breeze will move it and can jiggle the camera around effecting the images. Also check if there is a shutter lock up setting for the camera which can help reduce vibration.

ISO 800 sounds right but experiment with the exposure lengths, your polar alignment accuracy will effect this - I'm not familiar with what you can expect with the EQ2 (probably discussed on here somewhere). Your stars look round except the edges of the image where there is slight stretching which will be due to field curvature caused by the lens - perfectly normal!

Cheers,

Steve

[happy-kat]

That come out nice and you got some nebulous.

[MarsG76]

very nice... focus drift might have been a small bit of a problem, but perhaps the stars are clipped during processing... that could also cause a bloated look in the stars.

[eyepod]

Great image, a nice result using the EQ2

Jason

[wxsatuser]

Your going to need much longer exposures to bring out the faint wisps.

Eventually you need to be getting into several minutes for each light.

That said, not bad for short exposures.

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Thanks for the compliments, everybody!

I caught a binary star system en route to heathrow! Check out the photographic evidence below!

Surprise! This Sub didn't go into the final image...!   

John

[Pompey Monkey]

If you stack the images using some kind of statistical outlying pixel rejection (e.g. kappa-sigma), you will be surprised at how well the software rejects aircraft and satellite trails whilst using the star data.

And don't worry - these pixel rejection algorithms are included as standard in the vast majority of stacking software, including DSS.