Hi all, I brought my son a Skywatcher 200p during lockdown last year along with a dslr camera and and ring adapter. We have taken some shots through the telescope but we aren’t sure of the best settings required on the camera?

[Timoskar]

The camera is a canon EOS 400 D

[Timoskar]

Just as a post script the telescope is the dobsonian mounted one

[fifeskies]

well done on the images you have already captured.

The moon is bright so a single shot is often good enough.

With Jupiter and Saturn , it is common to actually record video then use a program to extract the best (sharpest) frames from the video then combine them together to produce a far clearer image than any single shot could produce.

This combining is called image stacking.

There are several programmes , many free good ones, who can do this for you.

uTube has a good selection of how to guides and recommendations to help you to get familiar with this.

 

 

For the faint Deep Space Objects (DSO) you will need to capture a number of long single frames (typically from 30 sec to 240 sec at ISO 800 for DSLR) but this requires a tracking mount , but I note you have a Dobsonian (non tracking).

 

some of he brighter DSO , Orion Nebula , M31 Andromeda , Pleiades etc , can be recorded with shorter exposures  (eg 10 sec at ISO 1600) and once again all these short frames (which will not show much on their own) once stacked and "stretched" will reveal some nice results. Not tracking will usually be fine for such short exposures

DeepSkyStacker (DSS) free and easy to use , will do all the combining for you , then use a free manipulation programme like GIMP (a free programme like photoshop) to get the best from the result.

Again uTube has guides

this one is good.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by fifeskies

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Are those shots of the planets just single exposures ?

If so they really are very good for single shots with a dobsonian. 
To quote from the tutorial below "A single exposure of a planet will, unless you’re lucky, record slightly blurred detail, smeared out by the atmosphere. One way around this is to record a video of the planet.
This way you’ll capture lots of poor-quality images, but there should be a few good frames among them. Using specialist software, you can extract these frames and combine them to make a sharp image.
Devices that can do this range from webcams, the latest DSLRs, which can now take video, through to purpose-built planetary cameras with high frame rates, specifically designed for this task."

I have not really done any planetary stuff and concentrate on DSO's so can;t really give much in the way of advice. From my understanding most planetary stuff is done with videos rather than single frames.
THIS TUTORIAL may explain better than I can.

Steve

Edited July 22, 2021 by teoria_del_big_bang

[Timoskar]

14 minutes ago, fifeskies said:

well done on the images you have already captured.

The moon is bright so a single shot is often good enough.

With Jupiter and Saturn , it is common to actually record video then use a program to extract the best (sharpest) frames from the video then combine them together to produce a far clearer image than any single shot could produce.

This combining is called image stacking.

There are several programmes , many free good ones, who can do this for you.

uTube has a good selection of how to guides and recommendations to help you to get familiar with this.

 

 

For the faint Deep Space Objects (DSO) you will need to capture a number of long single frames (typically from 30 sec to 240 sec at ISO 800 for DSLR) but this requires a tracking mount , but I note you have a Dobsonian (non tracking).

 

some of he brighter DSO , Orion Nebula , M31 Andromeda , Pleiades etc , can be recorded with shorter exposures  (eg 10 sec at ISO 1600) and once again all these short frames (which will not show much on their own) once stacked and "stretched" will reveal some nice results. Not tracking will usually be fine for such short exposures

DeepSkyStacker (DSS) free and easy to use , will do all the combining for you , then use a free manipulation programme like GIMP (a free programme like photoshop) to get the best from the result.

Again uTube has guides

this one is good.

 

 

Thank you so much for that advice 🙏

[Timoskar]

11 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Are those shots of the planets just single exposures ?

If so they really are very good for single shots with a dobsonian. 
To quote from the tutorial below "A single exposure of a planet will, unless you’re lucky, record slightly blurred detail, smeared out by the atmosphere. One way around this is to record a video of the planet.
This way you’ll capture lots of poor-quality images, but there should be a few good frames among them. Using specialist software, you can extract these frames and combine them to make a sharp image.
Devices that can do this range from webcams, the latest DSLRs, which can now take video, through to purpose-built planetary cameras with high frame rates, specifically designed for this task."

I have not really done any planetary stuff and concentrate on DSO's so can;t really give much in the way of advice. From my understanding most planetary stuff is done with videos rather than single frames.
THIS TUTORIAL may explain better than I can.

Steve

Thanks for the reply and yes he just took single shots, he was experimenting with different settings and he actually has a few more which he’s enhanced on his computer, I’ll share those very soon, thanks again

[Kon]

Nice pics for single shot. I have the same telescope as your son 200P Dob and I am playing a bit with photos for fun. Since you cannot track it will be difficult to get the faint DSOs. For planets you can take a movie and stack them; software break the movies to frames that you can stack together. I use siril since i got a mac but there are many choices for PC. For DSOs you will be limited to 0.5s exposures before you see star trailing. I have managed orion and ring nebula by stacking frames. 

If you go to imaging session, others and I have posted some photos through Dob and we tend to give some of the capture details.

Looking forward to more of his pics.

[malc-c]

This has to go down as being one of the longest thread title for some time

Nice images for a first attempt.  If you are using the camera body attached to the focuser then there isn't much you can set on the 400d  other than shutter speed and white balance.  Set the white balance to daylight, and then it's just a case of stepping through the exposure until you get an image that suits you.