Results From First Clear Nights, And First "proper" Astrophotography

[cathalferris]

I consider these to be my first "proper" astrophotos as these are the first guided pics I've tried for. About 3 years ago I had tried 30 sec unguided subs with an LXD-75 with middling success. Now I've got an AVX and a standalone autoguider, I can try for guided exposures.

I've to set up on the rather saturated and muddy lawn at the back of where I currently live, carting everything out from indoors. At least it's not that much of a trek compared to what others have to put up with and I can certainly now see the advantage of an observatory! I've also got to deal with an idiot neighbour's PIR LED insecurity light two doors down going off anytime I move around my lawn. I know how to remotely defeat it, but that's not a topic for pointing out here..

My equipment for astrophotos:

Celestron AVX mount, with SkyFi wifi connection. Celestron Onyx 80ED scope with Kunming unbranded 1.0x field flattener, Astronomic CLS clip-in filter and Canon 600D. Guiding with an Kunming/IKI 70ED and Skywatcher synguider. Using a Skywatcher StarAdventurer L-Bracket dovetail to get the two scopes on the AVX mount, full of flexure yet an interesting proof of concept, and a stepping stone to possibly getting an ADM dual saddle at some point in the future. Yes, I've to a much better job with my cable management and removing the strap from the Canon, all on the to-do list.

So here are my quickly-processed pics from the past few nights of testing myself and the equipment from my back yard..

Pleiades, unguided subs of 60 sec from Tuesday night:

18x60 sec unguided exposures of ngc891:

Single 300sec guided and trailed sub of M42

23x300 sec of M51, guided, and it dewed up and froze over after about the 5th exposure..

110 min of the Horsehead, guided, through LP and low altitude:

35x120 sec frames of Catalina, guided:

I have a 6" f/5 newt that I am using for video astronomy, and I can see down to 16th mag galaxies in 10 second integrations with the Samsung scb-4000. Very nifty indeed, though the image quality is not exactly pretty, I can definitely see things that I would not otherwise have seen. I'll not try using that scope for pictures until I get my workflows working well with the 80mm first..