M35 afocal

[dph1nm]

M35 + NGC2158, Nexstar SLT + 32mm eyepiece +Olympus2020z P&S camera. About 7mins worth of 16sec exposures stacked in DSS.

NigelM

[jgs001]

Nicely done Nigel, got some good colours in there. Which scope do you have on the NexStar ?

[gary1968]

Oh that is nice mate, thanks for sharing.

Gary

[psychobabbler]

Amazing stuff for an afocal - well done

PB

[Doc]

For afocal thats pretty astounding.

[Psychobilly]

Amazing for an "afocal" image

Billy...

[dph1nm]

Which scope do you have on the NexStar ?

Oops, sorry, missed that off. Its the 102SLT refractor, unmodified apart from having a set of tube rings on so you can balance better with a camera (or 2" eyepiece). A nice scope in my opinion. The mount quite happily does 16sec exposures (at 6" per pixel) without any trailing (unless it is windy!).

The ageing Olympus camera has a very handy IR remote, a threaded lens and a maximum aperture of f2, all of which are great for afocal. It does suffer from quite a bit of thermal noise, but it seems nearly impossible to get a modern P&S camera with these desireable features.

NigelM

[lunator]

Nigel

Good pic

I know what you mean about finding a useful P&S camera. They do tend to be quite noisy and I have found the obsession with mega pixels makes them less useful for afocal imaging.

Cheers

Ian