First wide field image ...

[vlaiv]

I haven't done these so far and I haven't used DSLR in astro imaging so far, thus this image is a lot of firsts for me

It did not turn out particularly good, but I'm pleased with it given the circumstances:

Color is lacking in Ha regions - SNR was simply too poor to try to get the color out. Star colors should be realistic in this rendition although I did not do any sort of color balance other than basic white balance from camera settings (done manually on the data).

This was taken from a red zone - almost whole hour of exposure.

Canon 750d unmodded with 55-250 IS STM lens at 55mm F/4 30s ISO1600.

119 stacked subs. FitsWorks for raw to fits conversion and ImageJ for stacking and calibration. Darks, bias, flats ...

I'm pretty pleased with star shapes. I'm also rather pleased with AzGTI mount used as star tracker in EQ mode. Over one hour - difference between first and last sub is something like 10px in both RA and DEC.

Everything was managed via phone - camera, phone and mount were all connected via wifi and I used canon app to take shots remotely via phone and synscan app to manage the mount (just some basic slewing while framing). I'm planing to add SNAP cable so I can use intervalorimeter on the AzGti mount (or rather app) for longer than 30s exposures.

Here are couple of pictures of setup used:

I did polar align with use of regular 50x8 finder. This is TS finder shoe that fits nicely in vixen clamp.

Btw, I tried processing data with DSS and it made such a mess out of it - almost nothing could be pulled out of that stack.

[Alien 13]

I would say thats a very good result given the conditions. I do like self contained set ups, proper grab and go and having wifi control of a DSLR is a joy for me.

Alan

[vlaiv]

There are couple of things that I'll need to change here.

First is of course - proper wedge. It was by no means easy to get good polar alignment on ball head. Weight is not distributed properly and every time I loosen ball head - it moves a lot under weight.

Next thing would be wifi setup. I used AzGti as access point - and wifi is slow that way. I guess it is electronics for wifi in mount is rather rudimentary (simple controller). Next time I'll try with phone being the AP and having everything connect to it instead.

Longer exposures are needed - both to try to move signal above noise floor. Calibration is not really proper with DSLR and it is better if signal is stronger and away from noise floor. This will be solved by shutter release cable and intervalometer in synscan app.

Of course, best side of this is that it is really portable. Everything is battery powered and can run up to two hours as is - camera is bottle neck at the moment as its battery has smallest capacity. Hopefully I'll be able to move outside of the worst light pollution to do some decent shots next time.

[Alien 13]

I would think a battery grip for your DSLR might be useful, not only can it carry two batteries at once but more importantly allows access to the batteries from the side of the camera so as not to disturb your setup if you wanted to swap them out. Another benefit is that a grip removes a potential heat source from the camera internals by putting the battery outside the camera body.

I kept the remote option with my setup by having a wireless intervalometer which allows me to do the initial set up using the Canon camera connect app over wifi before switching to to the intervalometer.

Alan

Edited August 24, 2020 by Alien 13