i know this is a horrible picture but i like it. i took my short tube SW80 Achro f5 refractor on an alt az mount without any tracking and shot 38 1 second exposures of the Orion Nebula and stacked them. I have a EQ6 but am waiting on a newt to make use of it. For the time being i will have fun shooting what i can through my small rig.
What are you waiting for? Stick your 80mm on the EQ6 in the meantime.
You'll get some great shots and enjoy the rock solid stability of the
little scope on that mount.
raymo
WE all have a first attempt, and yours is up there with what we would have first captured, well done for your efforts, it will only get better from now on.
You did however pick a hard one to try first up, M42 can be and is difficult to master, even from the best of us.
I don't have the right connection, the sw80 doesn't have a dovetail base so i cant lock it in, otherwise i would. i should invest in some ...
If you already have the supplied rings, just grab one of the Vixen style dovetail bars, and off you go http://www.bintel.com.au/Accessories...oductview.aspx
You can always get a longer bar and attach the 80mm on top of the newt and use it as a widefield/guidescope later.
Well done on the first go, I am still on a steep learning curve with M42. But bewarned, AP can be a money drain.
Bo
this will become my guidescope/ widefield imager later on, at the moment it is all i have. the rings connect to a plate that screws into the tripod, similarly to a camera tripod.
The OTA is the same as the ST80 guidescope, so I am pretty sure it would be ok http://www.bintel.com.au/Astrophotog...oductview.aspx
Check with Bintel to be sure, and mention your newt setup you planned. Some of the bars have drill hole in only certain spots, which can limit your choices (a good drill can also sort that out).
You will need an extension tube to the ST80 to allow for sufficient backfocus of the guidecam.
Cheers,
Bo
So this is my second attempt. i am starting to realise some serious limitations in my telescope. there is a lot of blurring of the brighter stars in this picture, probably because i am only using a 2 lens, cheap, scope. i think this is the cause of a weird effect, whenever i try to use DSS with RAW images i end up with a unrecognisable set of stars (no nebula) and a thin final image, even though i am setting it to mosaic. Anyway, this was taken last night in Sydney, a lot of cloud cover and light pollution.
I think that it is unlikely that your problem is a poor scope. The several SW 80s [including mine] that I have used, all have excellent optics for a cheap achromat, and have amazingly little chromatic aberration for such
a cheap scope. The focusers are pretty crappy though. If you look at the
recent post of mine with two images of Eta Carina, the smaller scale one was taken with my SW 80. The strange triple stars in your image are not
likely to be a problem with your objective lens.
raymo
