Latest attempts at imaging

[W1ngnut]

Went for a trip to my mates place (forum member 'Erg') 4 hours from Canberra down in Orbost, Victoria.

Managed to get 5 'reasonable' photos for a newbie at the astrophotography game. The 2 nights viewing was quite poor in terms of seeing conditions, it was cloud free, but there was SOOOO much atmospheric turbulence and extremely windy.

Saturn was taken with a 25mm eyepiece and eyepiece projection
Moon was taken in prime focus (one was at night, one was a day shot)
Tarantula nebula and Lagoon nebula were both taken at prime focus using a Meade f6.3x focal reducer

The quality is quite low and the images are unprocessed. No darks or flat frames used and both photos were one single exposure of 5 minutes only. This tells me that I have the ability to improve on these a lot, but I am still very happy with my first results.

Cheers
Sam

http://www.flickr.com/photos/w1ngnut32/5924232142/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w1ngnut32/5923670113/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w1ngnut32/5924234742/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w1ngnut32/5923673369/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w1ngnut32/5923674321/

[renormalised]

Nice shots for first attempts at some targets. I like your Moon shots, especially the nighttime prime focus shot:)

However, what scope did you use and at what FL??.

You need more subs (if you're guiding, more of those 5 min subs) and have a go at processing:) Watch your focus too...do you have a bahtinov mask??

And pray for better seeing!!!!:):P

[W1ngnut]

Thanks renormalised,

It was a Celestron 8SE scope f/l 2000mm

I was guiding, but only used the one photo as the wind was just way too much.

I do have bahtinov masks for both the guidescope and the main OTA, but i'm still looking at how I can attach them to the scopes.

[renormalised]

Easy....they have 3 tabs along the circumference of the mask. Grab a sheet of stiffish cardboard and cut a length of it to form a ring with a circumference just slightly larger than the scope's. Fit the mask to the ring of cardboard by gluing the tabs to the ring. Make sure your ring of cardboard is about 5cm or so wide so you've got something to hold onto the scope:) Do the same for the guidescope as well. That should solve your little dilemma:)

[W1ngnut]

Ahh okay, thanks for that renormalised. I will have to find some decent stiff cardboard and give it a go.

I wasn't sure what to do with those 3 tabs.

[renormalised]

You don't want it too stiff....you want something more like thick paper or thin cardboard to make the ring out of. You need it to keep its shape without sagging all over the place. So that's why it needs that stiffness. But you don't want it too stiff you have problems making the ring. The sheets of cardboard they make manilla folders out of would be good, but they're not large enough to make the ring out of. Unless you glue the ring together in sections. Ideally you just want one continuous strip.

[W1ngnut]

No worries, I will head to the newsagency and see what they have available :-)

[midnight]

Nice images Sam. Keep imaging and you'll only improve.

Cheers,
Darrin...

[W1ngnut]

Thanks Darrin :-)