Primary mirror image reflection

[gcooksley]

Hi,

long story short, I am in the process of finding a telescope dedicated to astrophotography, but money is tight, so it has to wait a few months. In the meantime I have a heavily modified heritage 150p that has been a beast. I have made many modifications to it, and honestly works very well. I decided to move into taking astrophotography now. I got a second hand ZWO533 (color) from a close friend, and I just wanted to see if it worked, so I threw my telescope on my mount (EQM35PRO) and attached the camera. I took 15, and 30 second exposure pictures to see what it would like it and here is what the image looked like (will attach below).

Why does it look like this? It should be properly collimated, and I let the scope sit outside and get acclimated to the weather. I let the camera cool itself. Am I out of focus or something? It would be nice if I could get this telescope to work for photography tbh, I’m honesty lost, any feedback would be greatly appreciated. I’m sure someone has experienced this before or maybe I’m dumb, honestly prob the latter. 
 

thanks in advance 

[alacant]

30 minutes ago, gcooksley said:

Am I out of focus

Yes.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Indeed, the  image is way out of focus. Stars will then appear as (faint) images of the shape of the aperture, complete with secondary mirror and spider vanes

[doublevodka]

From memory of reading about the Heritage 150p, there are two notches when sliding out the upper assembly, I believe to get it in focus with a camera it should be on the first notch not fully extended, it's definitely way out of focus as the posts above. 

[gcooksley]

Thank you all for the feedback, I will try it out tonight 

[Clarkey]

7 hours ago, gcooksley said:

tonight

In my experience it is always worth getting the focus point with new kit during the day.

[LandyJon]

On 15/09/2023 at 02:35, gcooksley said:

and attached the camera. I took 15, and 30 second exposure pictures to see

No mention of a focus step as others have said, its out.

Put camera on, set high gain on a short 1-2 second exposure,  adjust focus till those doughnuts become stars, find a bright star, apply a bahitnov mask to achieve precision focus, slew to target and start finding suitable longer exposures and gain settings ... look up 'unity gain' for your camera, its a good place to start.

Then watch the magic happen 🙂