First images, advice needed.

[Thor92]

Hello all,

So this is a bit of a long one but hopefully everyone can help, I'll try keep it short.

So last night was the first clear night in quite a while, as a result I was finally able to get my 105PDS setup and actually have a go.
Bear in mind that this is my first proper telescope and other than a small session with @nightfisher I was making it up as I went along.

I first looked for a planet to look at as I only have my 6mm eyepiece (yes i know..... 32mm inbound) all were either below the horizon or hidden by local obstructions. So i turned my attention to the moon, also hidden but just coming out from behind the small woodland near my house, this I could wait out. 
Whilst waiting I decided to try and look at/capture "a" star, No specifics here lol I think it was Vega. I was having major problems trying to get anything other than what looked like a picture of a bright disc with a small black bit in the middle, I assumed this to be the secondary mirror. After a while I noticed that the focuser had disconnected from the rack and pinion. So funny old thing once I connected this, things became much clearer. However I was still struggling to get a picture with my 450d and obviously the 6mm eyepiece was practically useless for this application. I started getting a tad frustrated at this point, best photo until this point is below, when finally the moon came into full view.

So I got to having a look at that, this is when I started having some success, the eyepiece whilst designed for the more distant planets gave some absolutely amazing views of a close up moon, I attached my 450d and began taking several shots, playing with the ISO and exposure settings, as it was a full harvest moon I had to have a fast shutter speed and lowest ISO settings. With those I began to get what looked like passable photos, the best of which I have attached below.
 

This leads me onto the questions;
How can I get closer up pictures of the moon with my camera? I would love to have about double the magnification I had and make a mosaic of the moon.

Stars and deeper sky objects - How can I get an even passable image here?
I have read through all the how to's but am struggling a little there, I have no doubt that its practice makes perfect etc.
If I try a long exposure shot (5secs+) the image becomes totally blurred, is this due to our rotation or something I am doing locally (Using a EQ5 mount). I believe this is my main problem as I was getting some incredible star shots with a 10s exposure but they were so blurred it looked like I'd taken it while trying to dance!
Also as above, is there a way to increase the magnification levels when taking deep sky objects with a DSLR, perhaps using a Barlow lens or is that a no no, totally not sure here.

So thanks for reading if you made it this far, as you can probably tell from what I've written and asked above I am a total and utter newbie to this. Hopefully with everyone guidance and wealth of knowledge on here I can become at least proficient at taking some great photos like I have seen on here
The pictures attached are all single shots as I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing with stacks yet, I'm playing around as we speak.

Many thanks all
J

 

Moonshot1.tif

Starshoot1.tif

Edited September 14, 2019 by Thor92

[Thor92]

Trying to insert the pics into to post. Not having much luck! Ahh had to be a .png not a .TIFF

 

Edited September 14, 2019 by Thor92
Photos

[cjdawson]

That's a lovely moon shot.

 

To answer your question, simply put to get a larger moon image, you need to change the focal length of your scope.   The longer the focal length the larger the image of the moon will appear.   The other choice is to change the field of view of the camera.  Essentially have the light from the scope focus on a much smaller sensor.  Right now, I'm sure that you are thinking that nethier option is possible, as it means switching out the scope, or the camera.    The answer to that is that you can insert an extra lens known as a focal reducer, this will shorten the focal length and make the moon appear smaller.   A barlow lens, will have the opposite effect of making the moon appear bigger.

 

Typically, you'll want a focal reducer to be able to take images of most nebula and galaxies.  Andromeda is twice the size of the moon for a start!

And a barlow is helpful for planets and the moon.  I've got 2x, 3x and 4x barlow lenses in my collection, the 4x I find most useful for use with my planetary camera

[Thor92]

6 hours ago, cjdawson said:

That's a lovely moon shot.

 

To answer your question, simply put to get a larger moon image, you need to change the focal length of your scope.   The longer the focal length the larger the image of the moon will appear.   The other choice is to change the field of view of the camera.  Essentially have the light from the scope focus on a much smaller sensor.  Right now, I'm sure that you are thinking that nethier option is possible, as it means switching out the scope, or the camera.    The answer to that is that you can insert an extra lens known as a focal reducer, this will shorten the focal length and make the moon appear smaller.   A barlow lens, will have the opposite effect of making the moon appear bigger.

 

Typically, you'll want a focal reducer to be able to take images of most nebula and galaxies.  Andromeda is twice the size of the moon for a start!

And a barlow is helpful for planets and the moon.  I've got 2x, 3x and 4x barlow lenses in my collection, the 4x I find most useful for use with my planetary camera

Thanks, you should have seen the first few photos of the moon. Looked like I'd taken it with a pin hole camera whilst riding on a roller-coaster haha. Still its nice to see an improvement especially over one night.  makes it a tad more rewarding.

Good to know about the barlow lenses , wasn't sure if they were compatible with the camera side of things or just strictly visual, I think I'll order a couple up perhaps a 1.5x and a 3x.
So you think I require a focal reducer get a decent deep sky image? I would love to capture the Orion nebula or Andromeda. Heck to be honest any deep sky object that I can even get the slightest bit of detail in that wasn't a dot would be absolutely fascinating to me.
My attempt at vega is absolutely shocking really, I mean look at this absolutely beautiful photo. taken with a similar scope & camera. All I get is blur, and this appears to be even more "zoomed in" *THIS IS NOT MY IMAGE*

Edited September 14, 2019 by Thor92

[Thor92]

Struggling to find 2" barlow lense for use with my coma corrector. and 2" camera nose piece. Should I use a 1.25" one above the coma corrector and then get another nose piece for my T ring?

[cjdawson]

I don't know about 2" stuff, for my planetary camera, I use a 1.25" barlow normally my 4x barlow at that.  And not much else.

For my Deep Sky work, I'm using T-Thread all the way down to the SCT Thread on the scope.  The Focal reducer uses SCT Threads, but after that, it goes to T-thread.  It keeps things simple for me.

 

As for whether you need to get a focal reducer.   You don't "need" one, looking at your moon shot, you should have no problems imaging M42 if you want to stay up very late, (it's just about to become a northern hemisphere object.  YAY)   You should to able to get a great amount of detail from that.

 

To figure out what barlow's/reducers are worth getting I use the Astronomy Tool FoV calculator  https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/ 

For fun, I setup all the field of views for my gear https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/?fov[]=312||258||1|1|0&fov[]=312||258||0.63|1|0&fov[]=312||258||2|1|0&fov[]=312||258||3|1|0&fov[]=312||258||4|1|0&fov[]=312||242||4|1|0&fov[]=312||242||3|1|0&fov[]=312||242||2|1|0&fov[]=312||242||0.63|1|0&fov[]=312||242||1|1|0&messier=42

This will give you some idea.    If you want to take images of something that's larger than your largest field of view, there's nothing stopping you making a mosaic, just means taking more frames to process.

[Erling G-P]

4 hours ago, Thor92 said:

Struggling to find 2" barlow lense for use with my coma corrector. and 2" camera nose piece. Should I use a 1.25" one above the coma corrector and then get another nose piece for my T ring?

I'm relatively new at this so may be wrong, but wouldn't you use either a barlow or a coma corrector ?

I have both for my 200PDS and Nikon D7000, and it's either or - I can't combine the barlow and the coma corrector.  As I understand it, the coma corrector wouldn't be needed, as it's correcting towards the edge of the field of view, which you don't use with the barlow anyway.

Regards,

Erling

[Jokehoba]

A good starting point would be to get hold of Steve Richards book https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html. 

With regard to the moon (great pic by the way), you could get greater magnification using the eyepiece projection technique (https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/tele-camera-adaptor-for-eyepiece-projection-astrophotography.html), say with a 25mm eyepiece. You might struggle using that 6mm eyepiece with EPP.

Your issue with blurred stars could be your polar alignment. 

John

[Thor92]

On 16/09/2019 at 15:44, Jokehoba said:

A good starting point would be to get hold of Steve Richards book https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html. 

With regard to the moon (great pic by the way), you could get greater magnification using the eyepiece projection technique (https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/tele-camera-adaptor-for-eyepiece-projection-astrophotography.html), say with a 25mm eyepiece. You might struggle using that 6mm eyepiece with EPP.

Your issue with blurred stars could be your polar alignment. 

John

Thanks for your response. I don't have auto tracking nor a motorised mount....yet I assume that polar alignment would only affect this if motorised?
I have come on a fair way since I made this post. I shall create another thread with another few problems im having

Regards

J