People's thoughts....

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Originally Posted by kosh

I think I will get the illuminated reticle eyepiece though . I need it for drift aligning right?...

Yes, the dual cross hairs will help with both drift alignment and guiding should you decide to manually guide. It's a handy thing to have.

With a light load and accurate polar alignment, the HEQ5 pro can go for quite a few minutes without correction.

[lazjen (Chris)]

If you get APT or BYEOS, check out Astrotortilla. Besides plate solving, it can help with polar alignment and remove the need for tedious drift aligning.

[raymo]

The manual guiding Kevin is referring to is when you use a separate scope with an illuminated reticle; defocus a star until it fills the square
at the centre of the reticles where the double lines intersect, and then
use the the motor drive buttons on the hand controller to make small
corrections,[mostly in declination] to keep the star stationary in the square. Most of the corrections are in declination, as the R.A. drive on
most mounts track pretty well for short and medium length exposures.
It can be tedious and exacting on long exposures, but o.k. now we are in the digital age of generally shortish ones.
I did it for 40yrs, and I can safely say that 30minute manually guided
exposures were hard yakka. How lucky today's young guys and gals are.
raymo

[kosh]

Thanks guys,

I've installed APT and astrotortilla so it's going to take a while fooling around with these two to get a good feel for their functions.
Very comprehensive.

[acropolite (Phil)]

Originally Posted by Dave the deceiver

yes listen to phil he knows exactly what to do


he taught me all i know

funny, I thought it was the other way round...

[kosh]

Hi again everyone,

Been waiting for the weather in Melbourne to clear so I can have a second attempt ( as a beginner ) at m42.
Finally last night I got a few hours to setup and capture some images.

I think there is some improvement as I was able to polar align much better. I have extended my exposures to 90 seconds which has helped a lot.
My processing skills need improving as I'm really only fumbling around at this stage. Having some trouble keeping the sky black while bringing out the detail.
Any comment critique appreciated and thanks for viewing

Imaged as follows:
13 light x 90 secs @ ISO800 unguided
5 dark and 10 bias
Skywatcher ED80 BD Canon 450D unmodded Heq5Pro mount.

[Spookyer (Brett)]

Hi Kosh, I have been imaging for a few months now with a DSLR. I currently use the LCD on my DSLR to focus using live view. Sometimes it is a bit hard to find a decent star to use to focus. I zoom into the star to maximum using liveview and then tweak my scopes focus knob while watching the screen. I go back and forward until I get the star as small as possible. Then lock off your focus tube and move to your target.

When I start to image I take a frame at high ISO to check composition and also to check focus. Make sure you go to 100% in whatever viewer you are using so you can look at the stars up close.

Guys that are better setup use motorised focussers driven by automatic software routines etc but as a newbie I have been getting sharp images by doing what I outlined above with my DSLR so it can be done.

Cheers
Brett

[kosh]

Thanks Brett,

I have been using live view for focusing, but when i turn the focuser the view shakes, especially as its magnified to 10x.
its a bit frustrating because it looks about as good as it can in the lcd, I have APT so that will help, but I didn't have time to set the laptop up etc last night.

[Rex]

Hi Brett and Kosh, I made a bahtinov mask from a bucket lid that was just the perfect size to fit just inside the front of my scope. The link below takes you to a website that allows you to generate the correct pattern for your scope. I then printed it out at 100% and placed that over the bucket lid and cut it out with a jigsaw. Works perfectly as you can see from the image below. Allows you to know when you are in focus. You still have to check focus throughout the night as temperature changes but at least it takes the guess work out of it.

http://astrojargon.net/MaskGenerator...ookieSupport=1

[raymo]

I wouldn't be without my Bahtinov Rex. People without hands on skills
can buy one fairly cheaply. From memory I think I paid around $39 for
my 8" one inc. postage.
raymo

[kosh]

Thanks Rex, will look into it.

Just so I know, how far out of focus to you guys think that my recent image is?
Is it even close or way out?

[Rex]

To me Kosh, it doesn't look too bad. If you zoom right in on a medium bright star there is only slight variation in uniformity from one side to the other. Considering that you focused using live view only, you have done extremely well. But that's actually why I use the baht mask, it removes the doubt if you know what I mean. There are other ways of focusing also. You mentioned above you installed APT, In APT there is a focusing aid which uses the FWHM of a star you choose. It works fairly well, but is slow and is affected badly by seeing. Using the Baht mask can also be affected by seeing but not as badly as using the FWHM value of a star. Hope that helps.

[kosh]

Im taking your advice and ordered a Baht mask so hopefully I can get sharper
images from now on. Looks like were getting more cloudy weather for a while now so won't get to test until it clears unfortunately