Had my mount setup from last night and as I knew clouds were going to be rolling in I decided I would do some visual, atmosphere was boiling. Packed the FC100 away and put the camera on there for some testing, had a mount adapter arrive last week.
This is 30x60s with my Nikon D700 unmodded as ISO800. Was taken with a 24-120mm F/4 at F/4 so the coma is quite horrendous!
Given that this was taken with a 60% moon and from the light polluted burbs of Melbourne, I am quite happy with the end result. Wasn't until I loaded them onto the computer that I realised that the focus was off (redid it a couple of times throughout the shoot). Possibly should have used a brighter star than some random one in the field at the time. May even see if a Bahtinov Mask I have for my guide scope will be usable on the lens, I have my doubts but it could be worth a shot.
I love how the thumbnail version virtually no discernible aberrations at all
For a
high res, go to Astrobin!
Just as a little FYI for those interested in sensor comparisons. Having looked up the performance of the sensor in the Nikon D700, its closest cousin performance wise would be a OSC KAF-11002. 8.445 vs 9 micron pixels, the D700 has a bit lower read noise but the KAF has marginally larger well depths (about the same dynamic range). As this still has the IR block, not great with Ha though.