60Da & Astrotrac First Light

[MrB (Simon)]

Hi everyone.

A few months ago, Rebecca(my girlfriend) and I planned a trip to her family's farm just a tad south of Nannup WA and this gave me the chance to try out my new gear.
Over the three nights I had some small success but due to cloud, fog, rain, dew and equipment failure, I never really got to image as much as I would have liked, but I did get a few shot's that I thought I would share.

All images are single un-guided exposures and no flats, darks or bias frames, so are noisy and not as deep as I would have liked.
Also my processing skills are... well.... non-existent, so the images have only had levels, brightness and saturation adjustments in PS.
All images are full-frame.
I plan to try the trial version of PixInsight on these.

Image details:
Canon 60Da @ 1600 ISO with prime manual focus lenses.
#1 Rho Oph 3min 105mm @ f5.6
#2 Scorpius 10min 35mm @ f8
#3 LMC, SMC & Aurora 7.5mins 50mm @ f4
#4 Eta Car Neb 5min 105mm @ f5.6
#5 Crux + Eta Car Neb 5min 50mm @ f4
#6 Galactic centre 7.5min 35mm @ f?

Hope you enjoy, comments and critique welcome

[JB80 (Jarrod)]

Wow, very, very nice.
For no existing PS skills it leaves me for dead.

Great colour in those shots too.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

I whole heartedly agree Jarrod, Wow! For single frame, levels, brightness and saturation they look fantastic Simon. I say bring on some cold clear nights so you can really get down to business.

[iceman (Mike)]

Amazing! You must be thrilled.

[CoolhandJo (Paul)]

A very nice colelction! Great imaging!

[danielsun]

Impressive results!
Nice one Simon.

[naskies (Dave)]

Great job, Simon! Glad to see that you're putting the Astrotrac to good use It looks like the AT + 60Da will be a killer combo once you have all the issues sorted out.

[gregbradley]

Very good for the amount of exposure time.

No camera, no matter how high end, is going to do any better in 7.5 minutes of exposure time.

Greg.

[MrB (Simon)]

Originally Posted by JB80

Wow, very, very nice.
For no existing PS skills it leaves me for dead.

Great colour in those shots too.

Thanks Jarrod. I put it down to the dark sky, no skill required! haha

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

I whole heartedly agree Jarrod, Wow! For single frame, levels, brightness and saturation they look fantastic Simon. I say bring on some cold clear nights so you can really get down to business.

Cheers Paul,
That was the plan from the get go, once I get the gear sorted it's time to get serious

Originally Posted by iceman

Amazing! You must be thrilled.

Thanks Mike
Yes for a first effort I'm pretty happy. The first shot looked great on the Da's little 3" screen, which boosted my confidence to continue thru the cold nights.

Originally Posted by CoolhandJo

A very nice colelction! Great imaging!

Cheers Paul!

Originally Posted by danielsun

Impressive results!
Nice one Simon.

Thanks Daniel.

Originally Posted by naskies

Great job, Simon! Glad to see that you're putting the Astrotrac to good use It looks like the AT + 60Da will be a killer combo once you have all the issues sorted out.

Cheers Dave.
There are a couple of things about the AT that are really just poor design, the Dec. adjust screw on the wedge for one. It fell apart on the second night while I was trying to polar align, I thought the weekend was over but I thought about it and came up with a work-around and got back to imaging just in time for the clouds to roll in
But overall I am very very happy with the AT. Tho I will be making some improvements to it.

Originally Posted by gregbradley

Very good for the amount of exposure time.

No camera, no matter how high end, is going to do any better in 7.5 minutes of exposure time.

Greg.

Thanks Greg
I wish I could have got more than single exposures but the fog and cloud on the first night I had to keep changing targets. Then on the second night it was perfectly clear so I tried for multiples but my 12v rig decided it wasn't happy and my dew straps weren't powered. BAH!
I WILL be good to go for the next new moon

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Great results Simon the last two a really good. That camera looks to make basic astroimaging very easy with high quality results from low level effort - great or are you actually a gun imager and you are just hussling

Mike

[MrB (Simon)]

Cheers Mike, I'm pretty happy with the 60Da as an entry level imaging cam. Liveview and the flip-screen certainly make life easier compared to when I was fooling with the modded 300D!
A gun imager? I wish! haha

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

What a great set of shots.

[atalas]

Beautiful shots! congrats.

[MrB (Simon)]

Originally Posted by jjjnettie

What a great set of shots.

Thanks JJJ
Keep an eye out for the repro's, coming soon.
(I have a few PixInsight tutorials to read/watch first )

Originally Posted by atalas

Beautiful shots! congrats.

Cheers Louie

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Originally Posted by MrB

Cheers Mike, I'm pretty happy with the 60Da as an entry level imaging cam. Liveview and the flip-screen certainly make life easier compared to when I was fooling with the modded 300D!
A gun imager? I wish! haha

You've got that right big time Simon. If for no other reasong the flip out screen is worth half the price of the camera just in how easy it makes centering and focusing your target without grovelling on the ground.

[naskies (Dave)]

Originally Posted by MrB

Cheers Dave.
There are a couple of things about the AT that are really just poor design, the Dec. adjust screw on the wedge for one. It fell apart on the second night while I was trying to polar align, I thought the weekend was over but I thought about it and came up with a work-around and got back to imaging just in time for the clouds to roll in
But overall I am very very happy with the AT. Tho I will be making some improvements to it.

I agree! I think the core AT tracker is superbly designed, but many of the accessories (including wedge) were later additions that aren't quite as good.

I'm sure you've figured it out by now, but the altitude fine adjustment screw on the wedge can be detached from the bolt if you have a huge weight on the AT, or if the coarse altitude alignment allen bolt is too tight.

I never got around to it, but with a few adjustments it'd be a killer portable set up. I particularly like Roger's laser-based polar alignment mod