first astrophoto, Carinae & NGC 3532

[Adrian-H]

this came out of a batch of my first astrophoto's ever, the sky finally cleared up, 10second exposure ISO 1600, modified 350D with sigma 18-200mm lens set at 200mm, ontop of a camera tripod, from my backyard with no filters.
someone teach me how to stack images please!

[h0ughy (David)]

umm have you an image?

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice start Adrian.

Looks like there is either a fair bit of curvature in that lense or your alignment is off. For such a short shot though your alignment would have to be way off to produce those trails, so I'd go with field curvature.

How many shots do you have? What programs do you have? If you have registax and plenty of ram (recommend at least 512, preferably 1 gig) then you can use registax to stack them. Other wise track down IRIS (free) and download Jim Solomons Astrophotography Cookbook

[Adrian-H]

cheers, i didnt do it on my mount, i just took a snap shot off a regular photographers tripod. maybe thats why it has visable movement there.

i have to find some kind of mounting brackets or something so i can stick my camera onto my astronomical mount sometime or make something so i can.

seems if i make my exposures to long i get really long trails, a single 10second exposure photo at 1600 iso is as good as i could do without tracking, aka that photo.

i have many photos yes, maybe i will need tracking for photo stacking?, cause you can see the movement from image to image without tracking, i think im gonna go outside later and try some more too.

i only have paintshop, and the imaging program that comes with the 350d "PhotoStudio 5.5" which i used to clean the image up, i will try to look for IRIS, would be cool if i had photoshop.

thanks alot for the link, i have been trying to track down information with search engines, they just dont cut it for astrophotography!

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Ok if you have images that are difficult to line up and stack then the best program around that I am aware of is Registar. Not registax. I'm not sure how much Registar is though. The easiest way is to get your camera piggybacked onto a scope on your EQ mount.

As for how long you can image for with a 200 mm lense. At the declination of Eta Carina, I'd say between 4 - 5 sec. Any longer and you will start to get trailing. The formula is

t (sec) =1000/FL near the celestial pole and
t (sec) =700/FL near the celestial equator.

[Adrian-H]

hmm this is great, i am so happy with my new camera, this one 30second exposure set at 18mm

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice shot Adrian. They are a great camera that's for sure.