First photos!

[platt.michae18]

My first astro photo of the Lagoon Nebula!
Was taken at 5*1min exposures.
With Bintel 8" f/5 with CGEM mount and a Nikon 3200 @ ISO 1600
Unguided and not the best polar alignment ever as seen in the outer image.
Was photoshopped. obviously and very badly, still getting used to photoshop and getting equipment.

Any tip that may help me in the future?

Cheers
Michael :)

[Somnium]

welcome to the boards Michael and a nice start! a couple of pointers to help you out. the tracking is not too bad, the reason why you have some elongated stars at the edge is mainly a coma issue and perhaps the collimation is a little out. you can get a coma corrector to solve this, new ones can be expensive, second hand ones come up from time to time. also you will find that if you take some flat field images and use Deep sky stacker to combine them then you will get rid of a lot of the vignetting you can see in the image. last thing to try out is the colour balance. in photoshop you can click on the grey eye dropper and select a part of the sky that should be star and nebula free, this will adjust the colours so they are more balanced. this game is one of learning and improving, keep at it!

[chuckywiz]

because your using the Nikon D3200 you will find just about any program to control the camera useless and there is no SDK available.

there is however http://digicamcontrol.com/

down load this for liveview and basic controls via your laptop. If you want to go BULB mode for longer than 30 seconds you have to turn live view off and and use an intervalometer but the shots do download direct to your laptop for viewing. Ive been using it for years now.

Only just upgraded to a Canon in fact it worked so well.

Ben

[mikeyjames]

Well done Michael. I'm really new to this stuff and my limit for unguided seems to be about 30 seconds before things go pair shaped. You must be doing a better polar alignment than me.

Cheers
Mick

[platt.michae18]

Thanks for all the tips!
Will be getting guiding soon, just need to find a guidescope.
Mick, Make sure your facing true north or south and not magnetic, there are apps you can get to find true north/south from your location. (its different for everyone.)
If anyone has a guidescope laying around I'll buy it :P

Thanks all!
Michael platt

[platt.michae18]

I use a hand control for my DSLR and I do use bulb.
But I'll give that program a go, only if it works on mac.
But thanks!

Michael.

[Somnium]

i have an orion guide scope and a ZWO autoguider if you are interested. i also have a Baader MPCC mk ii (coma corrector) if you are interested PM me

[jenchris]

I notice that some stars have a peardrop.
This often caused by vibration or balance being to fine.
Try to have your system balanced with east a little heavy. This keeps the gears in mesh on one side.
Nice shot.

[mikeyjames]

Hi Michael,
I can't see the South Celestial Pole from my yard, so I do my best with a wooden contraption I made, a inclinometer, and proper compass with magnetic declination set.

Sometimes I set up and all seems pretty good and the next day it's not. What I have realised is how tiny errors mess you up. The other day I set up and asked the goto to go to the sun, it did, I then asked it to go to the moon it missed. So I made several small adjustments until it would nearly centre both.

Then I parked the scope to see how far off I was - one mark on the Dec scale and a margin so small on the RA scale you'd need micro tools to measure it.

I have also discovered I have cone error that I need to fix. When my mounting plate on the mount is at 33.94, which is what I want, the scope itself is at 34.2 - 34.3

Cheers
Mick

[platt.michae18]

I try to do my best when it comes to Balence my scope and weights but the CGEM mount isn't very good at balancing I do my best and it's not always very good but eventually I'll replace the heavy rewtonian with refractors