I cannot seem to get a good shot of Mars so last night I had another go - it was another flop. Took this shot quickly so it was not a total waste of time - Canon 20D, 14x30s @iso 1600 added, F9 480mm.
This was not guided shot, it is a stack of 15x30s shots near the pole so even the ETX90 mount can track stars (sort of) at 480mm. The 20D was piggyback on the ETX and the shot was through the Canon 75-300mm F4-5.6 zoom. The lens is not good for astro shots (you can still see the CA) so I stopped down to F9 to get rid of the worst of the aberration. I stacked in Registax, leveled in Photoshop elements 2 and removed remaining noise with Neat Image, finally it was reduced to 800*600 and jpg'ed in elements again. I must admit I have pushed this image too much to get an inky black sky (that I do not have in Hornsby Heights) however this masks the vignetting that would be visible otherwise (I did not take any flats!). Just lazy I guess, but then I had not planned to take this shot it was a grab and hope after getting so many fuzzy blobs when shooting Mars...
Hi John great stuff I remember when Hornsby Heights was considered the bush.. lived at Waitara many years way back. Cool for zoom I recon there is a lot you could do with that set up
alex
