AltAzEQ Frankenmount

[CalvinKlein]

Here's a panorama I made last night as a first test run of a panoramic tracker I've been wanting to build for a long time. Whilst this image if a bit of a mess due to heavy light pollution from Murwillumbah and also smoke from the bushfires, it has proven that the concept will work well - the idea being that I can do very high resolution, low noise Milky Way nightscapes.

The rig consists of a SkyWatcher EQ6-R Equatorial mount, the wedge from a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer, and a SkyWatcher AllView Alt-Az mount running in automated wide panoramic mode.

The camera is a CentralDS Canon 6D which was cooled 20 degrees down to to 4 degrees Celsius and has a drop-in Baader IR-UV cut filter in place of the normal restrictive filters. The lens is a Samyang 135mm F2

The final image is made up of 32 photos (4 rows of 8) taken automatically at F4, ISO 1600, 15 sec exposures and the panorama stitched together in PTGui. Untracked, the 6D / 135mm combination is only good for maybe 3 second exposures before stars start to trail.

The full sized image is 27130 x 8724 pixels and zoomed in you can see Jupiters moons and the various bright nebulae in quite a bit of detail.

Unfortunately it looks like I'll have to wait until next year to try it out again when the Milky Way core starts rising in the east.

[Wavytone]

Um.. er... that's a quad-axial equatorial-altaz mount - and why not !

Well done :)

But I am puzzled by the short exposures. My little LX5 compact - uncooled and unguided perched on a rock - gave optimal results using ISO 400 exposed for 60 seconds with the lens at f/2 - and was able to record mag 9 stars and the gegenshein at Mt Cook (NewZealand).

I would have expected a big current generation DSLR - guided and cooled would run to somewhat longer exposures than 15s.

[CalvinKlein]

There was too much way light pollution and smoke haze to go more than 15 seconds. (and the Canon 6D has a MUCH bigger and more sensitive sensor than the LX5, requiring less exposure time)

I did initially try ISO 6400 F2.4 20 sec (which was previously ideal under a dark sky) but the images turned out white here !.

Anyway this was just a test to see if the whole concept was going to work. I'll fine tune exposure settings when i get this system working under some dark, clear skies.

[Merckx]

That's really impressive Kelvin. I'm looking forward to seeing the MW core panos!

[CalvinKlein]

Thanks James - with any luck I'll get out to some dark skies this week but it would be a waste of time if the bush fires in the area are still active. I might be waiting quite a while. In the meantime I'll use it for some hi-res panoramas / mosaics of some other regions.

This EQ / Alt-Az hybrid system makes it so much easier than trying to do very wide panoramas just with the EQ mount and using software to do it.