My first Hydrogen Alpha shot.

[batema]

Hi,

The cloud on the Sunshine Coast comes and goes and then comes and goes and so on tonight. I managed to get 10 x 3 minute lights with darks at -20c.

I found it really hard to focus and I had to basically take a 60sec shot and then adjust as required. No 10 second shots. Taken with W/O Flt110 and guided with PHD and processed in photoshop cs3.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Mark

[TrevorW]

Did you focus on a bright nearby star first using a mask or did you focus on Eta

A lot of potential there apart from the focus appearing soft IMO maybe try Focus Magic if you have it

[RobF]

Do you have a Bhatinov mask to help with focusing Adam?
(not that focusing looks bad too me - great effort for the challenges you describe).

[gregbradley]

Nice first light.
What camera were you using? You say -20C so it sounds like an astro CCD camera.

Not sure why you needed 60 seconds. I use CCDsoft and when focusing Ha I am using maybe 10 seconds and I watch the graph and adjust the focus whilst the graph is still rising (set to sharpness) and then there is a point you see it go very sharp and that is usually it. I test it one more past that (using a Robofocus - a worthwhile purchase) and then bring it back. It usually is quite easy to do. In my case I use Baader LRGB and Astrodon narrowband. They both focus very close to the same spot
(focus spot is determined by the glass thickness of the filter and they can vary slightly). So I focus first with luminance filter and Ha is only a few clicks away from that.

Greg.

[batema]

Thanks all and sorry but I was am using a QHY-9 mono. I have to work out how to use the focus package within EZCAP that is the program that came with the camera. At the moment I take a photo and then use a magnifyer program to enlarge a star 12x and then reduce it until its almost one pixel in size. Will have a look at getting one of those masks Rob but at the moment dont see the need for it due to the beautiful weather we are having on the sunshine coast.

Mark

[Paul Haese]

Bahtinov mask, using FWHM are all good for getting focus. Your focus looks ok and guiding is very nice.

[multiweb]

Nice pic. Very smooth. :thumbsup: