Yes Wayne, all piggyback 300D. 50mm lens @f/2.5 (will try slower f/ratio next time to try to limit field curvature). Some of the shots were also taken with a 2X Kenko Teleplus converter. The piggyback bracket wasn't the standard one that comes with most refractor mounting rings. I used a manfrotto miniball head, which allowed me to select the most suitable star to guide on with the scope and then swivel the camera to any angle and direction I want. That head is one purchase I couln't do without now. It make life so much easier. Piggybacked on my Celestron hd-102EQ refractor mounted on Losmandy GM-8. Drift aligned and autoguided using K3CCDTools V3 and focused using DSLR Focus.
I doubt that I would be able to get these shots and be happy with them without either of these programs. Like many people I have astigmatism so I have difficulty getting an accurate focus without wearing glasses. Which is frustrating to say the least when focusing stars. When focusing using DSLR its a slow process through a piggybacked camera, as its designed to be used by focusing your scope with the camera in Prime Focus or EEP and use your telescope focus knobs. But I wouldn't even attempt it (piggyback) now without using DSLR Focus after comparing my previous results. When using with just the camera lens I need to put a bit of blu-tac on the focus ring and stick it to the rest of the lens body. This alows me to get smaller movements in the focus ring without overshooting and adds a bit if stiffness/firmness to the mechanism.
Again I'd like to thank Robby for showing me how to drift align and autoguide with K3, and for the StarMate system. Its a sweet combination and makes life a hell of a lot easier. Also used the Starmate for automated exposure control and capture and mount control when not autoguiding.
As mentioned at the start, all at ISO400 at 240 sec. Anywhere from 3 to 8 shots per final image. Generally played with the stacking method using Registax, Imagestacker and PS depending on how I felt at the time and which program would do the job I wanted. I somethimes even used multiple programs. eg, stack in registax, use same images and stack in Imagestacker. Do a few adjustments in PS (levels mainly) on the final images and then re-run them through either Registax or Imagestacker again along with the originals. Most dark subtracted. Levels and cropping only in PS. No other post processing. Generally just played around with them to see what worked best. I'm still very much at the experiemental stage atm.
Hope that's helped Wayne
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. Bit of a challenge though. Everything was jumping around all over the place from the bad seeing. If you thinking about the stretched stars at the edge of some of the shot, its from the lens unfortunagely. I'm going to stop it down a couple more stops next time.
