Had enough room in my existing obs to stand up another pier, Paramount MX and a Canon lens attached to an SBIG STXL11002. This piece of sky very low right now, but of course at this image scale, it doesn't really matter.
A mere 25 minutes per colour, plus a few spoiled frames due to cloud to blend in and make the brighter stars in the field more prominent and aesthetically pleasing (?).
As a professional lens, this particular model is absolutely terrible wide open. For perfect stars edge to edge, it needs to operate at f8! I used f6.3 in this image.
A fantastic image Martin. I love these lens images. I am in the middle of doing a mosaic with one.
Generally speaking I have found fast lenses to have bad coma and chromatic aberration wide open as they are designed more as portrait lenses where the background is typically blurred so its not an issue.
Once, I bought a lens that was supposed to have been the bees knees for astro, pinpoint stars wideopen and all that, and it was dire.
I really want to try out the Sigma Art lens at some point.
Rick - well, I like to be 'multi-disciplined' in astro hence why I have bought gear to cover all bases and I certainly had to put that Canon 5D MKIII/20-70mm pro lens (competition prize) to goid use. I did just sell my Solarmax though.
That's a gorgeous image, Martin. We particularly like the way the bright stars like gamma crucis show beautiful colour but the background is more subtle. Perfect contrast in the dust lanes.
Greg - using this combo from an obs really works, but of course not very useful out in the field given the weight. Indeed, a Vixen Polarie would not be able to support an STXL and FW.
Greg - using this combo from an obs really works, but of course not very useful out in the field given the weight. Indeed, a Vixen Polarie would not be able to support an STXL and FW.
Clear Skies
Martin
Yes and that factor made me decide against one of these QHY Sony CMOS cameras. They really require a computer and power.
In my comment though I was referring to my $125 ( I think it was even less) 75mm Pentax lens in this case not the Polarie. I use it with my Proline 16803 piggybacked on my CDK17 and AP1600. The AP1600 is so strong that even badly unbalanced it chugs along without noticing!
A Polarie though is great fun for Milky Way mirrorless or DSLR images. A bit colder out there in the field though at the moment!
