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Old 24-03-2013, 12:29 AM
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Octane (Humayun)
IIS Member #671

Octane is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Canberra
Posts: 11,159
Baby's first Polarie exposure

After finishing with a wedding tonight, I managed to get home and quickly set up the Polarie for the first time.

I have never used a polar scope before. But, I used the polar meter to point about south with magnetic declination in mind, and, accurately set the inclinometer to 35(.2) degrees.

I slid the polar scope in and by just moving the tripod head a little bit, I thought I saw the trapezium in Octans. Never seen it before! I rotated the polar scope and the stars were pretty much in the spots on the reticle where they should be. Great success!

I couldn't point at Crux as the body of the camera was hitting the Polarie unit. How have people got around this? I think I'll have to buy an extension arm.

Anyway, I saw Scorpius rising above the house, so, pointed at it and took an 8 minute exposure (with in camera noise reduction). Despite the light pollution and the 84.2% Moon.

This is the result. Very, very happy! Apologies for the JPG artifacts. I saved it as a 200 KB image for forum.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
480 secs f/4.0 @ 40mm iso100

I simply can't wait for dark skies to play with this thing.

H
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