My first attempts at piggyback widefield in dark skies

[midnight (Darrin)]

Greetings All,

Now that I have spent enough time on the moon for now , I tried some piggyback photos after reading up about proper alignment etc. Also now I am out of the backyard and off down the road to get away from immediate town lights.

I haven't started on darks and flats and all those things cause I'm too impatient to start clicking to see what comes out but it's the next skill I'm going to try soon. The first 10 minutes were a joke because I forgot to take the cap off as I kept the lense hood on and then in my rush to get out there and numerous pot holes, I opened a can of coke and it sprayed all over my 35mm lense and then my hands were sticky for next hour as I didn't bring water

So anyway enough from yet another novice just too keen to get out without thinking so, here are 2 photos with the third just a crop of the 2nd. It took over an hour of taking photos before I was starting to get happy with my selection of exposure etc and tracking with the mount.

1. Wide field with a 40D at 16mm & F4.0, 240sec ISO800. Single shot only so a bit noisy and I had to crop it because the original you can see the tip of my newt sticking out at the bottom like you know what...
2. 40D and 200mm at F4.0 and 240sec ISO800. Again single shot only.
3. Is just the crop of 2.

Camera was piggy back onto the Meade lx55.

Would I benefit greatly from stacking for wide field and things like dark and flat fields . I think the ISO800 probably doesn't help. I'm lucky the ambient temp down here is always around 0 deg.

Thanks for looking and any tips/improvements would be much appreciated

Cheers,
Darrin...

[multiweb (Marc)]

Wow that's cool. Gotta love dark skies. Not sure about needing darks or flats for widefield in dark sites. Looks good to me.

[Liz]

Wow, they look great as they are Darrin!!
LOL re lens cap and coke

[Alchemy (Clive)]

Single shot astros, fantastic shots, you will be hooked now.

[cybereye (Mario)]

Darrin,

Fantastic shots and I am extremely jealous of your dark skies!!! One day I'll take the road out of the city and head to the bush......

Keep up the great work - your great shots are pushing me to do better!!!

Cheers,
Mario

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Fantastic shot, does not belong in beginner AP, that is right up with the best of them.

[Jen]

wow very nice Darrin
Im hanging out for a clear night to try a bit of piggy-backing myself they look great i hope mine come out that good
cheers

[byronpaul (Paul)]

If these are newbie shots, can't wait to see what you come up with when you gain some experience

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Go the multiple shots Darrin. While your shots look good now, they will be fantastic stacked. And darks too will improve them more.
All you need do for darks is put the lens cap on and take the same number of shots, don't change a thing.
Down load yourself a copy of Deep Sky Stacker.
Open the program then do this......
Open Picture Files
Open Dark Files
Check All
Stack Checked Pictures
Once Deep Sky Stacker has done it's thing, there will be an autosave file in the folder where your pictures are. Drag and drop the autosave file into Photo Shop and go from there. You will have to change the autosave file to 16 bit first.
Hope this helps.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Excellent pix Darrin, you're going to be scary when you get good !

And jjjnettie: best explanation of the stacker principles for a newbie like me to try. Thanks

[midnight (Darrin)]

Greeting All Again,

Thanks very much - I certainly wasn't expecting this response from pics being a single exposure. Your words have encouraged me to continue on my quest!

Yes, I am blessed with the dark skies down here and I did put a lot of effort into trying to get the mount to track and I think the 40D with good lense just shows what this camera is capable of in the cold even though it's starting to get a little dated.

I have only tried stacking on the moon at this stage as flats, darks, etc seem daunting but I'll stick with the mount first to try and get the most out of it as it is only a LXD55 which is a very cheap mount (even Meade seem to have dis-owned it) but watching the guys and girls in the main deep sky section, I have a fair way to go yet.

I'll stick to wide field initially and hopefully later this month, I'll attempt sticking the 40D into the main OTA for a go at deep sky which my OTA seems to pull out a reasonable picture. Thanx jjj for your stacker tips - it's got me even more excited

I've been reading some of the stories by others on stacking and it's got me nervous but we'll give it a go. Also Photoshop is another one of those hurdles but I've been experimenting (with disastrous results ) but there's some great online stuff (Just found the Ken Crawford site yesterday and by jeepers, what you can do...... )

As Mario alludes to in one if his posts to me, "Mario goes out and buys a .. then Mario needs a ... and then ..." which I love that story , I can see myself heading down Mario's path provided the $$$ are there!

Cheers,
Darrin...

[midnight (Darrin)]

I thought I would post this photo just to show how you can stuff up a good photo session and not even realise it!

When I finally got the exposures right for my 200mm photo, I thought - "Hey - I'll photo my setup" and so I took a photo - right in the middle of 5 minute exposure and didn't even have the brain working to think it may have affected the end result until I reviewed it and went - Dooh!

Anyway, here is my "mobile bongo bus" setup which is great as I can clear up in about 5 minutes and be back on the road home.

Mind you, those noises at 10pm at night out in the paddock can play a little with your nerves.

Cheers,
Darrin...

[Jen]

Originally Posted by midnight

Mind you, those noises at 10pm at night out in the paddock can play a little with your nerves.

Cheers,
Darrin...

[p1taylor]

Very good for single shots, wish I had as dark sky.

peter