First night experimental subs (M45)

[lankywolf]

Hi All...  Having been a basic level visual astronomer for a number of years, I've gradually been building up some kit over the last few months to finally take the first steps into imaging.  I bought a Star Adventurer GTI a few months back and managed to get the Dear Wife to furnish me with an Evostar 72ED for Crimbo and I swiftly got the Stella Mira flattener to go with it.  So tonight was the first chance I had to take it all out as one rig.  It was mainly experimental to see if I could achieve focus, then get the thing to point at my target and track properly.

Well, this is the result of the experiment.  It's only 10 x 60 sec exposures using an un-modded Canon EOS 70d and no calibration frames.  Some whispy clouds rolled in to bring it all to a premature end unfortunately, but I'm still fairly happy with the result as a starter for ten.  Stacking and a small amount of processing was done in Siril and that's it.  There's obviously so much more I can do to improve, but thought I'd share the fruits of what I'm putting down as a fairly successful first night.  I didn't think I'd get any nebulosity at all from such a short amount of exposure, so was genuinely chuffed to see some come out.

I'm very new to all this, so if there's any schoolboy errors jumping out, I'd be very grateful to be enlightened.

[blinky]

Nowt wrong with that!  Always good when the kit behaves as it should, especially on its 1st night out

[gregbwfc]

Just bought that kit myself.

If I can get anything like that I'll be well pleased.

Think it's fantastic for a first attempt 👍

[Ouroboros]

Looks like you’ve made an excellent start mastering the necessary skills for the AP game.  Was that with guiding? I suspect not. Your polar alignment must have been pretty good. I think I can just about see some ellipticity in the stars  suggestive of drift.  Only just mind.  Guiding will fix that and, as you’re no doubt aware,  you’ll be able to push your subs out to several minutes. 

[Nigella Bryant]

Tweaked your image a little in PS. Hope you don't mind, well done. The data is there to bring out.

[lankywolf]

5 hours ago, gregbwfc said:

Just bought that kit myself.

If I can get anything like that I'll be well pleased.

Think it's fantastic for a first attempt 👍

I'm amazed what I was able to get on a first attempt with a fairly modest set up and such a short session.  I also got the below (incredibly noisy) shot of M31. I was just trying to get to grips with the kit to be honest so purposely didn't bother with any calibration frames this time. It's certainly given me plenty of encouragement to carry on... Good luck with your new kit, I'm sure you will get plenty out of it. 

Edited January 1 by lankywolf

[lankywolf]

4 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

Looks like you’ve made an excellent start mastering the necessary skills for the AP game.  Was that with guiding? I suspect not. Your polar alignment must have been pretty good. I think I can just about see some ellipticity in the stars  suggestive of drift.  Only just mind.  Guiding will fix that and, as you’re no doubt aware,  you’ll be able to push your subs out to several minutes. 

Thanks for the feedback... No guiding kit yet, but when funds allow I'll look at adding to the set up.  

[lankywolf]

3 hours ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Tweaked your image a little in PS. Hope you don't mind, well done. The data is there to bring out.

Not at all... Processing is not my strong point, I only have gimp at the moment which I tried but wasn't happy with it.  I might jump straight into pixinsight when funds allow and fry my brain trying to master that. 

I like what you've done to it though. 

[Nigella Bryant]

19 minutes ago, lankywolf said:

I might jump straight into pixinsight when funds allow and fry my brain trying to master that. 

AP is certainly a black hole for your bank account, there's no escape once you've been trapped, lol 😆 

[gregbwfc]

4 hours ago, lankywolf said:

I'm amazed what I was able to get on a first attempt with a fairly modest set up and such a short session.  I also got the below (incredibly noisy) shot of M31. I was just trying to get to grips with the kit to be honest so purposely didn't bother with any calibration frames this time. It's certainly given me plenty of encouragement to carry on... Good luck with your new kit, I'm sure you will get plenty out of it. 

That's another fantastic shot.

I know I've bought the scope but I'm just going to start off by using the dslr at first, see what I can get with that.

When it stops raining 🙄

I'll need to get the extras to be able to use the scope.

You must be really encouraged to see what you can achieve 👍