Cassiopeia

[BlueStinger]

Such a lovely constellation and one that is easily visable all night from my location, helped me find Andromeda for the first time, and is interesting to PC gamers in that AMD's current GPU architecture is codenamed 'Navi' (although I currently own a previous 'Vega' gpu). So I got myself a 50mm F1.8 lens yesterday and wanted to try it out. Not great conditions with the moon up and lots of clouds rolling by, but that wasn't going to stop me.  I had to crop somewhat as my framing was awful and clouds didn't help, but hey, they can only get better! I'm really looking forward to getting a star tracker at the end of the month, I'm sure this will help a ton!

20x4s, iso1600, f2.8. 50mm f1.8 stm on a stock canon 700D.

Edited May 2, 2020 by BlueStinger

[Adreneline]

Nice image - looks like you nailed the focus pretty well too.

Hope you don't mind but I thought I'd plate solve your image in PixInsight.

 

 

 

[BlueStinger]

That's pretty cool, nice one

EDIT, Thanks for mentioning the focus, it's about the only thing I mange to get right at the moment hehe. I use a very old magnifying lens my grandad gave me many years ago to get that extra close up in liveview when focusing on a star. Works a treat.

Edited May 2, 2020 by BlueStinger

[Adreneline]

2 hours ago, BlueStinger said:

I use a very old magnifying lens my grandad gave me many years ago to get that extra close up in liveview when focusing on a star. Works a treat.

It certainly does work a treat! Obtaining a half decent focus used to be the bane of my life when I first started out. I could get a pretty good result using my dslr with the FWHM feature in BackYardEoS but as soon as I started using a cooled CCD with SGPro it used to drive me mad and I wasted so much time trying to minimise the HFR reading for the image. I now use my iPad with a Bahtinov Mask and the pinch-zoom feature on the iPad works pretty much just like a magnifying glass.

Onward and upward!

Adrian

P.S. Also meant to say you've got some nice star colours coming through as well.

Edited May 2, 2020 by Adreneline

[BlueStinger]

Thanks a lot. I like the variety of star colours, which I'll come back to in a bit....Yes, focus wise being able to go in that bit more is the key I think, even with the 10x mag of liveview. Vega is in the right place for me and nice and bright, so have been using it for focus. I may invest in a Bahtinov Mask once I get the tracker, to get the best focus I can. I wasn't going to go that far, as in get a tracker, but I feel that since I got the dslr last month, and only use it to shoot the sky at night, I may aswell get the best from it. So that means a tracker, which I'm kinda excited about. Also maybe getting the camera modded, but that one I'm not too sure about yet because I've read about star colours changing too much, even though I would LOVE to see some more colour overall. Maybe a clip in filter... So many things to think about for a complete noobie like myself.

Anyway sorry to whittle on. I also took a couple other shots last night if you're interested. Well I'll post them anyway. All just stacked and just a light edit. Same camera settings I think. You can see some chromatic abberation but today I downloaded the lens tool and updated so my camera now can sort it. If not I'll learn how to do properly with lightroom.

I was trying to find Comet Atlas here but then realised I don't have a hope in hell of seeing it with what I have lol. Still, I'm always amazed at just how many stars are actually out there. Capella to the lower left. I think I can see The Jolly Roger cluster over to the right?

Here I was trying to get The Great Hercules cluster but was way off, I should have just checked. Vega to the bottom left. It seems like there is a word spelled out in stars to the bottom right

Edited May 2, 2020 by BlueStinger

[Adreneline]

54 minutes ago, BlueStinger said:

Capella to the lower left.

 

55 minutes ago, BlueStinger said:

Vega to the bottom left.

Shame you missed M13 but there's always another night.

Good luck.

Adrian

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Hope you enjoy the lens, you can do a great deal at 50mm focal length. A tracking mount will make a big difference. Interesting that you're shooting at f2.8 and using lens correction to reduce the coma, might give that a go with my 50mm lens. Most people stop 50mm lenses down to about f4 but it gathers twice the light at f2.8.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Knight of Clear Skies

[happy-kat]

If your are into making things you could build a barn door tracker.

[BlueStinger]

2 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Hope you enjoy the lens, you can do a great deal at 50mm focal length. A tracking mount will make a big difference. Interesting that you're shooting at f2.8 and using lens correction to reduce the coma, might give that a go with my 50mm lens. Most people stop 50mm lenses down to about f4 but it gathers twice the light at f2.8.

Thanks. I just wanted to get as much light in without too much compromise untill I find it's sweet spot, which will be when tracking I guess, but it does seem very capable at f2.8 especially considering the price! I'm still learning so things can only improve, I hope.

 

2 hours ago, happy-kat said:

If your are into making things you could build a barn door tracker.

I've looked into these but they all seem a little big for me. I'd like something I can throw in a bag and carry with me without too much hassle.

[happy-kat]

There's the wind up tracker you fit on a tripod that's small

[BlueStinger]

On 06/05/2020 at 11:57, happy-kat said:

There's the wind up tracker you fit on a tripod that's small

I've just found out about the Omegon Mini Track LX3. I had no idea there was a modern wind up mount available. It looks perfect for my needs I reckon, so I'm going to get one later this month for sure.

[tingting44]

On 06/05/2020 at 10:41, BlueStinger said:

Thanks. I just wanted to get as much light in without too much compromise untill I find it's sweet spot, which will be when tracking I guess, but it does seem very capable at f2.8 especially considering the price! I'm still learning so things can only improve, I hope.

 

I've looked into these but they all seem a little big for me. I'd like something I can throw in a bag and carry with me without too much hassle.

i use one of these and they are excellent, just throw in a bag and away i go with my tripod and dslr, the laser is powerful tho so best swapping it out to be safe

 

https://nyxtech.us/

[BlueStinger]

7 hours ago, tingting44 said:

i use one of these and they are excellent, just throw in a bag and away i go with my tripod and dslr, the laser is powerful tho so best swapping it out to be safe

 

https://nyxtech.us/

First I've even heard of that. I keep finding other options for tracking like this the more I look into it