Eta Carina with 135mm lens

[cometcatcher]

I'm a newbie all over again with my new Pentax DSLR, even though my very first astro photo of the Moon was back in about 1976.

The light pollution here has gone mental with the planting of street lights all around my house. Shooting nebula is difficult, so tonight I tried a Lumicon deep sky filter over the end of a 135mm f2.5 lens at full aperture.

It needs more frames but I'm surprised how much detail was picked up with so little effort.

4 x 2min exposures @ ISO 1600. Full frame warts and all. :P

[brian nordstrom]

:D Nice , keep up the good work .I would be proud to produce a shot like that .
Brian.

[trek1701]

Nice and sharp at wide open.
What brand of lens, Pentax?

Cheers Mark

[cometcatcher]

Hi, yes it's a Pentax lens.

I've reworked the pic a bit. Think I like this one a little better. I also got a 135mm shot of IC2944.

Tried my old 4 inch F5.5 refractor but there's a lot of fringe around the stars.

[NCC-2893]

Man , I can't wait to get a dslr . My astro photography is limited to the moon at the moment with my superzoom point and shoot. Thats pretty awesome. Tell me, do you piggyback the camera ? Or straight on mount. Very nice.

[cometcatcher]

Hi John. One would think my instruments would be more sophisticated having been doing astronomy for some 40 years now. However my imaging gear like the rest of my scopes are very basic... and held together with bits of wood and glue.

This is my humble setup for wide shots. It's an old EQ mount from a 1970's 80mm refractor that's been retrofitted to take a guide scope and camera. The motor drive is actually an old tape recorder motor with speed adjustment via variable resistor and battery. Even the guide scope uses a home made guiding eyepiece made from binoculars, some photographic transparency film with a reticle marked on it and an LED down the barrel to illuminate it. The DSLR seems out of place on it, being the only modern bit of technology.

One day down the track I'll get a real mount. ;)