Finally success and first half worthy astro pics

[Las vega]

Hi all,

I have spent the last few weeks trying to get my less than perfect set up ready for astrophotography.

I have a celestron nexstar 102slt, with a new dovetail and rings to achieve balance with the dslr.

Obviously the weather has been awful for viewing, but tonight I caught a break.  I managed 8min on albireo and 6 min on m57 (uncropped so lurking down towards the bottom right of frame)

I've tried to process with GIMP, but i think i'm missing a trick, despite reading threads.  However I'm dead chuffed with the results and know I have caught the bug and need to save for an EQ mount.

[Demonperformer]

Hi, Las Vega, and welcome to SGL.

I did most of my early imaging using a 102slt (on the altaz mount!) and a DSLR.

I like the M57 shot. As for Albireo, I suspect you might get a better result if you dial back the exposure time - the colours have got lost. Experiment a bit, but I suspect you will get good colour results (which is at least half the joy of Albireo shots) in the "couple of second" region. Of course, you won't get as many background stars ...

Enjoy the journey.

[SIDO]

Very nice, seeing objects appear onscreen can be quite entertaining doing visual mostly I never quite caught that until starting in eeva and now like you I have been bitten and the only cure is clear skies and more kit, alot of fumbling about and there is the learning curve too but very well worth what is revealed.

Best of Luck with it all...

                        Freddie.

 

[Nigella Bryant]

Cool, well done. The ring nebula is one of my favourite object's. Hoping to image that when darker night's come back hopefully in August.