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Newbie from DownUnder Australia

Xanthomaniac

By Xanthomaniac
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Xanthomaniac

Xanthomaniac

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G'day y'all !


Pete here... from the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, Australia. I'm realising one of my childhood dreams... to gaze at the stars with a telescope... which may or may not be a wise thing to have done due to my low night vision. Nevertheless, I've taken the plunge and bought some equipment I hope will allow me to see and photograph the more well known objects in the night sky (and maybe, down the track, some more elusive ones too). I've bought a 200mm reflector (Skywatcher) with an NEQ6 Pro mount and a few eyepieces. I also got a small CCD camera with an autoguider which I hope to use to capture images with my camera. My cameras are a Canon 1D-X or 5D3 and I have the 600mm fast glass as well (my paparazzi/sports rig, lol). I have a dual saddle so it can be mounted next to the autoguider scope. I also have a Canon bayonet T-ring to enable it to be mounted to the main scope when I work that side of it out. I'm using Sky Safari 5 Pro for finding things and PHD2 for holding them there. I'm in the throes of connecting EQmac so I can run the Macbook pro direct to the mount. I plan to use Sky Safari on the same machine until I work out how to make it work through a networked iPad.

So that's me and my rig... just starting out and enjoying the crisp clear cold nights. I'll doubtless have many questions as I learn and plenty of time to share as I get better at it.

Cheers from DownUnder,

Pete

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Xanthomaniac

Xanthomaniac

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To all of you: Thanks for the warm welcome!

Scott P: I'm just down the road from you in the heart of the Hunter wine country (LOVE your images!)

I'm already 'deep in it' as I wrestle with setting up direct cable connections and planetarium software that doesn't quite 'talk' to the mount. Ahhh!... Troubleshooting from square one! Lots of fun!

I've been trying to find a simple and effective method to align to the SCP with little success... I have yet to try drift alignment which, I expect, will be the end of that problem.

I've taken a few shots of the moon (easy to find), the Orion nebula (which is fast disappearing from our winter skies), and the Eta Carinae nebula - NGC3372 (which I could not find by sight). Blew me away!... I've never seen the detail before. The cameras capture the detail so wonderfully! NGC3372 was imaged after I got the Starshoot autoguider working and I will now learn about dark frames, bias frames and flat frames so I can begin stacking images. 

All the best to y'all!

OooRoo!

Pete.

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