First Dark Sky Session with DSLR

[employee2-4601]

Feeling a little glum that heavy cloud had rolled in towards sunset, I was ecstatic to have a brief respite about an hour ago. I rushed out with my scope and my new DSLR (Canon EOS 1300D with 18-55mm zoom lens) and despite the rapidly falling temperatures and the rising full moon, I set about trying to photograph the night sky.

I haven't got the necessary adapters to connect the camera to the scope's viewfinder, but bolted it onto mounting rings. The Pleiades were just rising above the barn next door and Cassiopeia was almost directly overhead.

You'll notice that the focus is off in two of the images; I've since read online that the best way to solve that problem is to focus on a distant object during the day and then leave the camera set like that during the night time session. Oh well, at least I know for next time.

 

Anyway, photos below. Hopefully next time will see some improvement in image quality and composition (these are the unadulterated versions because I don't yet have a handle on the stacking software, yet).

 

N.B: These were shot in RAW, but converted to JPEG for uploading to the internet (I've yet to encounter a website that recognises RAW files).

[ronin]

When I first tried this I did the "obvious" thing, manually focus on the moon, then aim at the target. May as well use the moon if necessary. Fortunately I had a little bit of moon but as I had not prefocused it was all I had, either that or drive home again. Found a bit of an odd focus feature on my DSLR that night. Autofocus was switched off but when I got the moon manually focused right there was a visual/electronic indication that the focus was correct. Nice to find out about.

Actually the stacking is easy, you just need say 8 to 10 exposures and jpegs are OK in DSS for simple stacking. Although I would guess better if it is just sky and not building. I might be wrong just have the idea that a building could be a problem. For multiple exposures you will need an intervalometer, and if not done either switch off the DSLR Noise Reduction feature or if left on and when you get the intervalometer allow sufficent wait time for the NR aspect to complete and then extra for thermal build up of the sensor. The stacking in DSS is fairly straightforward. Get say 12 or 15 exposures of maybe 20 seconds and play with DSS to get some practise.

[happy-kat]

The building is fine, DSS will stack so the stars align and the building will get blurry movement. Even if you re not hapoy with focus DSS will often stack but not if it is too far off. An intervalometer can be picked up quite cheaply I paid about £12 for mine and it is two yers old and still going fine. Well worth getting.

If you get DSS as posted on other thread you will need the lastest copy 3.3.4 otherwise it will not stack your new model Canon raw files correctly.