That’s a beaut raymo. Really shows the miles and miles I have to go before I’m gonna get something that good!
ues I realise it’s under exposed to the max, it’s just getting the time to figure out what the f I’m doing. there are some things I’m still trying to wrap my poor feeble brain around. Gotta get using sharp cap down first then try guiding and longer exposures when I’m a bit more knowing. If I can’t make it second nature to do the first steps, there is no point moving onto the next step.
The last sentence is the most important in your post. Get a foolproof basic
imaging routine up and running before moving on. For various reasons most imagers start off with a DSLR, and some, who are not after perfection, stay
with one.
In your case, get your polar alignment routine second nature, same goes for whatever method you are using for focusing. With your ED100 you should
be able to routinely get round stars using subs of around 40-60 secs, and
sometimes longer. Forget guiding until you master the basics, especially,
and most importantly, basic processing, which is as important as gathering good data in the first place.
Incidentally, my image is a JPEG taken with an 8" Newt, 10 X 30secs
unguided using a DSLR; close to as basic as it gets.
raymo
I'm just about to splurge out on a scope and mount myself, and am also keen to have a crack at astrophotography. I'm blown away by the shots you're getting as a beginner. Inspiration to dive in and give it a crack!
Thanks Sean. I’m pleased my meagre offerings provide some inspiration.
I’d like to have updated this thread but I’ve been so busy with moving house and 12hr days lately.
And now I got a couple of days spare it looks like we may finally be getting some rain out here.
Fingers crossed it will be a clear night for the worm moon.
The best thing I ever did was to put one full setup together, zip tie a powerboard and all the adapters etc to the mount legs, and get some caster wheels so I could wheel it in and out while all set up. I have a set position marked on my deck for each tripod leg so I can get it close to a polar alignment (which is then quickly nailed down in sharpcap). This reduced my setup time from, say, 45 mins to 5 mins. It let me just wheel it out when things looked OK, and in doing so I then used my rig consistently every other night for a few weeks. In those few weeks I learnt more than I had since I started a few years ago. Now I know it all works, so just have to wait for the moon to go away again.
It isn't that inspiring to think "I'm going to spend 1.5 hours in set up and pack up time, just to get my autofocus working", but if you're straight to working on your next issue within 10 minutes it gets a lot more tolerable (ie no three month breaks from the hobby because you spent night after night trying to get the one issue resolved).
I'll see if I can take some pictures so you can see what I mean.
Wow. Haven’t posted in here since March.
Life has been busy lately with moving house. Good news is I’m out of town now where things are much darker at night.
Plans to start an obs now I have the room.
Went to the local auctions last weekend and picked up a 6inch skywatcher dob for 60 bucks. Eyepiece is munted, and mirrors are a bit dirty but still works quite well. Pleased with that.
Also managed my first pics of Jupiter over the last couple of nights, pretty happy with how they came out. I’ll try to post a pic of it when I can.
Anyways, I’ll try to keep the thread updated a bit more now we are settled out here.
Last edited by Pepper; 30-08-2019 at 01:42 PM.
Reason: add pic
That photo of Jupiter is a heck of a lot better than I can manage, Steve.
All I can do to try to take photos, is hold my cellphone near the eyepiece, and hope I can see something on the screen, to take a photo of. So far I've had a marked lack of success at that.
Because of the design of my scope, the max weight the focusser will support is 250g. Any more, and the plastic plate the focusser is on, will start to sag. Most cellphones are well over that by themselves, without counting the weight of an eyepiece, and a cellphone holder. So all I can do is hand hold the cellphone above the eyepiece, with the camera looking at the eyepiece.
pic of Saturn from the other night
I reckon it came out ok. was experimenting with a heap of captures with different settings so I could see how things were affected. this is prob the best from the night
Hey Steve, nice shots of the planets there. the 2nd Saturn is more detailed but I like the colour balance of the 1st. The nebula is the Keyhole Nebula if I'm not mistaken, and the pic nicely approximates what can be seen visually (stars are sharper usually though). Catching the Homunculus is not easy with a 100mm but might be possible - just. You need good seeing and some idea of what you are looking for. It's a tiny object with a huge dynamic range, and it's actually in your image, along with Eta Carinae (the bright orange star).
thought id better update my goings on since I have a spare day with sick kids.
ive sorted my guiding issues I was having dramas with.
although having done a few things at once I cant really put my finger on what the fix was.
basically, I totally stripped my mount down. degreased the whole shebang and washed with distilled water.
that factory grease is as thick as axle grease and im sure the mount breathed a sigh of relief when I got rid of it.
all the metal on metal contact areas I sanded with some wet and dry paper, I did notice a couple of burrs here and there.
the big main bearing in the ra axis was replaced as it was showing a fair bit of slop. the end caged bearing was all good so it was left.
got some good quality lithium grease, greased it all up and reassembled.
the end ring nuts were carefully tightened so as not to make them too stiff.
all reassembled the mount is now super smooth to turn in every direction.
adjusted all the worm meshing and motor gear meshing.
another step I took was to not have both guide cam and capture cam on the usb3. chucked the guide cam on the usb2 side.
doing all this seems to have removed the funky dec jumps I was getting while guiding.
next step is to build a belt drive for the eq5 to get rid of the backlash generated by the spur gear setup.
got a 3d printer last week and have just finished printing the first of my gears.
bojan, if you read this id like to ask a few dumb questions about gear ratios if you don't mind.