Hi,
Just thought it was about time I introduced myself. This seems like the best place.
My name is Steve Roberts and I've been interested in Astrophotography the day I first saw Orion through a borrowed old Tasco telescope, complete with wobbly tripod.
I finally took a step closer to being able to learn and start experimenting with Astrophotography last year when I purchased a Meade 10" SN. It's been a great scope for observing on the relatively few nights that I've been able to view but I've recently come to the realisation that the scope is overly heavy for the tripod. I originally had ordered a 8" SN but stupidly accepted the larger based on availablilty not price. I imagine that once I've mastered the Astrophoto skills I'll need to upgrade but I suppose that's all part of the game.
A couple of weeks ago I started trying to do a Southern Polar Alignment using the drift method and have had minimal success. It turns out that I really didn't know what the sky was doing as compared to the scopes movement. The site I was using last week only had a small window between trees looking directly up, towards the east and also some view towards the north west. I'm starting off using a 35mm camera and Fulji 200 slide filem as I only have a compact digital that can't do more than 15 secs plus it's frames are really noisey due to heat sources in the camera.
During this time I took a few wide angle shots of the night sky. During the shots I had to adjust every 3 minutes or so. I've added a few LED's to the end of my finder scope to aid in the guiding. I'll hope fully modify it a little more to make it solid. Interesting to see what they look like. The site is reasonably dark and there was no moon. I'll have to wait until the film is used up though. Damn.
All said and done it's a great challenge. And I look forward to another week of Drift work. Back home here in Blackwood I have a reasonably wide area of sky to work with and I should be able to master (maybe apprentice) the Drift alignment.
My background is in music nowadays. I was once in visual effects and timelapse filming. I've released several albums of music and on my last release included a DVD which has a track of timelapse including some all night long sequences using the noisey camera previously mentioned. You can have a low resolution look here
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rigkKVqXJxU
Long term I'd like to do some high quality Astrophotography using a good DSLR camera which will crossover into timelapse.
So hope I didn't bore you. I've already found so much information on here it's been fantastic. Patience I am not good at but with Astrophotography I have no choice.
Thanks again and I'll hopefully have some really silly question soon as well.
Cheers,
Steve.
to the crew Steve.
