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Old 30-10-2020, 10:54 AM
evltoy (Wayne)
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DSLR Exposure Times on a Altazimuth mount

Hello All,

As some would know I have myself a Celestron Evolution8 (noneHD) setup.

A few nights ago by pure luck I stumbled onto M8- Lagoon Nebula while I was setting up to take shots of the moon. As I wasn't prepared to take images of any DSO I just thought... what the heck let just see what happens as I was excited to have found M8 in the first place.

My setup is my old Nikon D80 DSLR attached to the C8 with the celestron T-adaptor. No filters, no reducers..... very plain Jane. As my D80 doesn't have live view I had to focus as best I could on a star I could see through the view finder. I only have a very basic remote, so the best I could do for exposure times was 30sec and take as many as I could... did around 60 frames.

Like I said... I wasn't prepared or did any research on shooting for DSO yet, so now I find out my exposure times were very short.

After reviewing my images I found that 95% of them were pretty good. So my question is:

What would be a reasonable max exposure time I should get using a Altazimuth mount when tracking well?

Here is my first ever image of a Nebula and using Post processing software DSS & PS. I dont have a clue what I'm doing. lol

Cheers
Wayne
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Old 30-10-2020, 12:27 PM
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rustigsmed (Russell)
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I played around with this when i got my goto dob many years ago. i came to the conclusion that 20 seconds was the best. it actually changes with the altitude and "distance" from the SCP. mid altitude was best from memory. 20 seconds and i didn't have to really think about it.

here are some of my old pics - i didn't know what i was doing back then processing-wise and are certain that much better results could easily be had with flats and a lot more data (and just generally better processing!)

Cheers

russell
https://www.flickr.com/photos/803366...57634243605994
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Old 30-10-2020, 12:55 PM
evltoy (Wayne)
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Hi Russell,

Thanks for the information. I was really hoping I would hear that I could extend that exposure time to at least 60sec.

Since the scope is natively F10, the only way to get more is to buy the reducer/corrector which will give me more field of view, but also bring it to F6.3. Looks like something needed on the list.

By the way.. I had a look at your site. You have some very good images

Cheers
Wayne
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