Orion deep field 135mm

[Limerick John]

I have been having some fun with my Rokinon 135mm F2 lens which I have automated with an EAF using the Astrodynium ring set. It worked first time without any adjustments. This image was captured last month under exceptional seeing/ transparency conditions. It is only 2.5 hours of data in 3 minute frames. I was amazed how much detail I captured in that time. Its worth zooming in on the Astrobin image to see the fine detail. The weather prevented me collecting more data. Captured from Leyburn, Queensland , under Bortle 2 skies (no filters- ZWO 2600 MC Pro camera)

https://www.astrobin.com/adxhb9/E/

Edited April 14 by Limerick John
typo

[ollypenrice]

A mighty fine piece of work. We use the same lens-camera combo and, like you, find that it works!

Olly

[bottletopburly]

A fine image John , well taken 👍

[Phillyo]

Lovely wide image. Was this taken wide open at F2 or stopped down a bit? It looks like there's diffraction spikes on some of the brighter stars.

[Limerick John]

2 minutes ago, Phillyo said:

Lovely wide image. Was this taken wide open at F2 or stopped down a bit? It looks like there's diffraction spikes on some of the brighter stars.

It was closed down to F2.8. The spikes are coming from the aperture blades.

[Phillyo]

3 hours ago, Limerick John said:

It was closed down to F2.8. The spikes are coming from the aperture blades.

Ah I thought so. I ended up buying step down rings that screw into the front of the lens to reduce the spikes, but that's personal preference I guess.

[Limerick John]

5 hours ago, Phillyo said:

Ah I thought so. I ended up buying step down rings that screw into the front of the lens to reduce the spikes, but that's personal preference I guess.

That's an interesting idea. I don't mind the spikes though but I will look into it. If you have a link to the site you got the rings from that would be great.

[Phillyo]

I got mine from Amazon, these are the ones I got. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JL4HGAI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I ended up stepping mine down to around F3.5 as I found that was a nice compromise between speed and sharpness of the stars. YMMV though.

[Limerick John]

On 16/04/2024 at 04:55, Phillyo said:

I got mine from Amazon, these are the ones I got. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JL4HGAI/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I ended up stepping mine down to around F3.5 as I found that was a nice compromise between speed and sharpness of the stars. YMMV though.

Many thanks. I'll give this a try.