Well finally we've had a decent break in the weather which has lined up with a long weekend (thanks Chogm) and no moon.
In my rush to get out and take advantage b4 any clouds moved in, I pointed to the LMC and did some test shots with my new USB -> ethernet device. Raw was slow so I put my 40D into small jpeg to speed things up
. Now off to LMC and traking was good etc etc, waited 1hr to move to Orion. Then I realised, I left the #
%
&
! thing in small jpg. Grrrr. Learnt from that and then put the 40D into Raw.
Finally I solved 1 big headache which has continuously plagued me with trailing in my photos despite the autoguider staying spot on. It turned out it was the EOS T ring was ever slightly moving in the bayonet. 4 layers of teflon tape fixed that by last night.
Anyway, here is the line up
1. LMC. 15 x 4 minutes (small jpg). Modified 40D ISO 800. FLT110. No darks or flats (why bother after that circus)
2. Witches Head (IC2118). Unmodified 40D + 200mmF2.8L @ F4. ISO 800. 15 x 4 minutes. Darks and flats taken too. I really need to have this at a much longer exposure. Would this help as it is very dim and hard to extract? I'm really fascinated by this and want to revist a few times. Any help here would be marvellous!
3. M42. Modified 40D ISO 800. FLT110. 10 x 60 seconds + darks + flats. I also had my first go at trying to layer 10x15sec on top to avoid the over exposed centre. It's a bit dodgey but I'll keep plugging away.
4. M42. Modified 40D ISO800. FLT110. 14 x 5 minutes. No darks (I accidentally left the cap off the scope
. And again I tried to incorporate the 15 sec shot. There's some horrible lines going left to right through this image.
I hope you enjoy but the results are still ordinary but I'm pretty happy as I haven't got this far yet. Please feel free to offer advice on what may be wrong, improvements etc.
Thanks,
Darrin...