[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Originally Posted by IanP

Fantastic shots, Andrew.
810a behaves much, much better than 60Da ..

It's all that full frame goodness! Although the very low ambient temperature certainly helped.

Originally Posted by multiweb

Antares is my fav. Very nice widefields.

Thanks - it's an amazing patch of sky.

Originally Posted by bobbyf

They're really good Andrew
I'd be interested in knowing how you make the dark lanes pop out as you have done.
I always seem to struggle with that.
Cheers
Bob

Hi Bob - there's no real trick, but having a lot of integration time pays off because you get a lot more signal to play with in the dark tones. I use pixinsight, but you can do the same thing in any photo editing software, just use the levels and curves iteratively to stretch out the signal down the bottom end, and then carefully bring the black point up until they pop.

Originally Posted by batema

Andrew if you wouldn't mind telling me how you polar ilign the polarie as I have one without the alignment scope but just attach a laser to the side with bluetac and align the laser with a star in the centre of the small window but if 6ou have a better method I would appreciate any advice.

Mark

Ah - it's a bit of a faff, but I use a doohicky I had made that replaces the standard polarie camera mount with what looks like a mini german eq. That lets me use the polar scope with the camera on it, other wise if you're trying to align with the scope and then put the camera back on, it will be very inaccurate.
I used to get good results by putting a 2" eyepiece extension tube over the polarie ring and hanging the camera off that by its strap, then reassembling the whole thing as if it were made of nitroglycerine...