Pleiades (with beginners kit only!)

[_Rachael_]

Here's my first attempt at Pleiades with pretty much beginners kit that isn't best suited to astrophotography : )

It's nowhere near as good as other images on here but I'm happy with it!

Shot on my EQ3/2 Pro mount. I did polar align properly but there is no second camera for tracking - just using the motors.

It was tricky balancing my camera and lens on the mount but managed it with a 1/2 Kg weight on the counterweight shaft and mounting my DSLR on top of the front empty tube ring and then pulling the dovetail bar as far back as it would go so the empty tube ring overhung behind it and length of bar acted as a counterweight to the camera and lens on the front tube ring... Anyway it all worked and I was getting three minutes untracked no problems.

This was only a test run to see if it worked so it is REALLY noisy as I only took 19 x 90 second light frames of Pleiades and five dark (so just under 30 minutes of data).

Shot on my Canon EFS 55-250mm at 250mm at ISO 1600, used the Camera Connect and Control app on my smartphone to remotely get the focus as fine as possible. 

Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and RGB Levels stretched in Photoshop and a noise reduction filter put on in Lightroom.

Anyway this is a REALLY REALLY NOISY image but I'm happy with it given the kit and limited data. Just trying to see what I can get from the kit I have before forking out on an astro focussed lens and better mount.

Will try and do a longer run next time, with longer exposures and more darks and biases to see if I can get any more detail and keep the noise down.

[theropod]

Blue dust for everyone!

Very Nice image. I showed these jewels to my wife and neighbor a few nights back, and they were wowed by my little C-90 Mak’s view of the cluster. Of course the dust lanes weren’t shining like in your picture, but I enjoy looking each and every time. It was also nice to have my new mount slew right to targets. I’m hoping to get s few decent shots by this time next year, and this is a target I can fit in the narrow FOV my scope returns, as opposed to Andromeda that doesn’t at all. I have a diy refractor built using a 60mm objective from a trashed binocular set, and after eliminating the prism stack it does better than one would expect. It outdoes the C-90 on some targets, like the great nebula in Orion. At less than a pound that diy scope is fun. No finder needed. Just look over the top of the tube and expect to be pretty close. Thinking of an”peep” type sight  for it.

[tooth_dr]

Very nice Rachel, that's a brilliant start, and well worth persisting with your current kit. I wouldnt necessarily aim for longer exposures, just get more of them.  90s is pretty good and should be getting the histogram far enough right to mean that you wont necessarily gain more from longer subs, and just likely find there is more to go wrong ie trailing and lost subs.

[_Rachael_]

Thanks, good advice on the exposures!

[smashing]

On 22/11/2020 at 17:02, _Rachael_ said:

Here's my first attempt at Pleiades with pretty much beginners kit that isn't best suited to astrophotography : )

It's nowhere near as good as other images on here but I'm happy with it!

Shot on my EQ3/2 Pro mount. I did polar align properly but there is no second camera for tracking - just using the motors.

It was tricky balancing my camera and lens on the mount but managed it with a 1/2 Kg weight on the counterweight shaft and mounting my DSLR on top of the front empty tube ring and then pulling the dovetail bar as far back as it would go so the empty tube ring overhung behind it and length of bar acted as a counterweight to the camera and lens on the front tube ring... Anyway it all worked and I was getting three minutes untracked no problems.

This was only a test run to see if it worked so it is REALLY noisy as I only took 19 x 90 second light frames of Pleiades and five dark (so just under 30 minutes of data).

Shot on my Canon EFS 55-250mm at 250mm at ISO 1600, used the Camera Connect and Control app on my smartphone to remotely get the focus as fine as possible. 

Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and RGB Levels stretched in Photoshop and a noise reduction filter put on in Lightroom.

Anyway this is a REALLY REALLY NOISY image but I'm happy with it given the kit and limited data. Just trying to see what I can get from the kit I have before forking out on an astro focussed lens and better mount.

Will try and do a longer run next time, with longer exposures and more darks and biases to see if I can get any more detail and keep the noise down.

I'm imaging this right now and if I can see dust like that I'll be happy well done!!

[_Rachael_]

Hope your session goes/went well!