First attempt at imaging (sort of)

[Damienandwendy]

I have read a fair bit on several forums about astrophotography over the last few weeks, so I thought I would just jump in and try something simple. So I piggybacked my Finepix S5500 on my newt on an EQ3 and took some shots with just tracking in RA. I can only get a maximum exposure time of 15 sec out this old camera, so I took 10 photos, f/3.1 and ISO100, and I also added in a dark with the same numbers. Plugged that into DSS with default settings and just used the post processing adjustments in DSS to play with the final image.

The problem is that I can't really see a difference between any of the individual images and the final stacked image as far as stellar objects goes.

I know what I have isn't much, but I thought there should have been something there to give me some incentive to play further. Any advice or links would be appreciated.

cheers

Damien

[leon]

Damien, firstly you only have about 2 minutes of data, and at 100 ISO you wont see a lot of difference in the final product due to these settings.

Bump up you ISO to 400, and you really need to lengthen your exposures if possible and see if this makes any difference, if it dose then you are heading in the right direction

Leon

[Damienandwendy]

Hi Leon,

If the clouds go to a happier place than North Qld tonight, I will go and have another play. I think ISO400 is the most I can get out this camera, and truth be told I thought I had it set on 400 till I had a look at the image meta data when I downloaded them to the PC. So will take more pictures and see how I go.

Thanks

Damien