Newbie to Astrophotography

[sthow]

Hi everyone, I have recently started to attempt some Astrophotography. My first attempt seemed to go pretty well capturing the Orion Nebula using my budget setup (Sky Watcher - Star Travel 102 on a AZ GTI Mount for basic GoTo guiding and a Canon 1100d un modified). I took about 300 x 4sec at 1600 about 30 darks and flats. , I know the centre is over exposed but I was pretty pleased with my first photo.

But ... since then I have really struggled , after I took that pic I bought a light pollution filter from FLO as I'm in a Class 6 Bortle area and I attempted the Rosetta nebula but couldn't see anything , then tried the Horsehead nebula but only got a red band across the photo. Thought it may be the filter so removed and tried again but it was exactly the same. I know longer exposures would help but I only have a budget setup at the moment. I do plan to modify the AZ GTI so that it can do EQ and maybe adding guiding cam in the future.

So my big question is what would you recommend I look at upgrading or purchasing first to help capture more targets and can you recommend some other nebula / galaxies that I could see with my current setup? I think I was too ambitious attempting the Horsehead nebula.

Thank you for any help

Stu

 

 

[PeterCPC]

Being limited to short exposures you could have a go at some clusters. A modified camera will capture more Ha. For DSO astrophotography you really need to be taking long exposures and guiding.

[michael8554]

For the Horsehead I needed 4 minute exposures to get usable data with a modded DSLR.

Michael

[dark knight]

How about having a go at m31, a nice large bright galaxy, however as others have said longer exposures are beneficial for bringing out faint details. Astrophotography is a slippery slope and get expensive very quickly, depends how far you want to take it really. Id recommend a good solid mount first and foremost (i dont know anything about your mount) say a heq5 minimum, something that will future proof you as you may want to add weight from cameras guide scope and perhaps a bigger telescope,then you could look into guiding which will allow you to take much longer exposures. 

Edited February 20, 2021 by dark knight