First attempt at imaging

[jaquesnoir]

Well, I finally managed to scrape some time last week to try and get some shots of Saturn with a NexImage on my Nexstar 8SE. My first test shot (lower pic) was at dusk and seemed dim on the screen but when the 2000-odd frames stacked up it was too bright and burnt out badly.

The second attempt with a 2x barlow was during a very wobbly sky. Not very good - 120 usable frames with lots of noise retrieved from a corrupted AVI file two days later - I still haven't got the hang of adjusting gain, brightness, resolution, frame rate etc. etc. I also need a long lesson on using and understanding Registax

Lots of fun though and plenty of room for improvement. I shall look forward to the practice.

[Demonperformer]

Good start - clearly Saturn.

No expert myself, but I would suggest you might try reducing the brightness level on the capture program, or reducing the exposure time. I always find if you use an image that looks right on the preview, it tends to be overexposed on the final result. My rule of thumb is to set it up so it looks about right, run off my first avi, then reduce the shutter speed by 1 (e.g. 1/25s to 1/50s) and running off another avi. I usually find the second produces better results.

But, as I say, I'm no expert. Enjoy the learning process.