Saturday 10th January 2009

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I’ve had a good start to 2009. Not only have I got the autoguiding working with a new guide camera (QHY-5) but I managed to pick up a bargain from ebay last weekend.  I purchased a Canon EOS 300D digital SLR camera for just £80 due to a broken pin in the memory card slot.  I’d put in a work-around within 20minutes and ordered an EOS to M42 adpater straight away. The adapter arrived yesterday, but what appeared to be a clear sky turned into fog and I had no chance to test things out.

I spent the time indoors making a long exposure cable for the Canon using some diagrams I’d found online.  I don’t need auto focus just “bulb” control so the circuit is a simple transister switch running from the parallel port.

Today has been overcast all day so I was surprised to see Venus through the kitchen window when I went to cook dinner. A closer look and my hopes were dashed, it was foggy again, but not as bad as last night. At the front of the house I could see the full moon with a halo around it as it shone through the fog. But I knew it wasn’t worth setting up, everything was against me.

I took some time to add the new camera details to Starry Night so that I could compare the field of view with that of the Atik 16ic – WOW what a difference. Using the software I panned from galaxy to nebula to cluster to …. the Moon, and found the whole moon fitted in the field of view – and there was a full moon at the moment. Well that changed my mind and I gathered my equipment and started setting up with a view to using the full moon to help me focus the Canon camera.

My first shots were not bad but I moved the focus in then out, then back in until I thought it was close.  I then used the canon remote software to take a series of images with a view to stacking them – but I couldn’t get the stacking to work, I may revisit that.

So here is my “first light” with the Canon EOS 300D. It’s a single frame taken with the camera set to portrait (I’m not familiar with the manual settings yet) and using a 10″ Newtonian Skywatcher on an EQ6Pro mount. EQMod was used to find then track the moon in “lunar” mode.

The Full Moon

Image processed using the GIMP on Ubuntu Linux.

Image details: ISO 100, 1/500s.

2009-01-03

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Happy New Year

A new year and a new start for me. I’ve bought a QHY-5 guide camera and some scope rings to have a go at autoguiding. I had several viewing sessions towards the end of last year, but haven’t updated the site as most of the images are duplicates of those I’ve taken before. Now that I can improve my images I will consider rebuilding this site to make it easier for me to update.

I’m looking forward to being able to start imaging fainter objects and also to tease more detail out of those I have imaged in the past now that I can do longer exposures.

Initial tests look promising but I’ve had to overcome a number of issues, such as the guide software crashing every 5 minutes and the weather not cooperating! Last night was my first chance to get everything working but it didn’t clear until after 10pm so I didn’t get to bed until after 3am but I did leave the scope tracking so as not to miss this rare opportunity to image with a clear sky.

Here are a couple of images from last night:

The Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula in Orion		 M1 - The Crab Nebula
M1 – The Crab Nebula		 The Owl Cluster
NGC457 – The Owl Cluster
NGC891
NGC891 – Edge on Galaxy		 NGC2403 2×300 seconds
NGC2403 2×5 minutes		 NGC2403 6×60 seconds
NGC2403 6×1 minute
NGC2841 100×120seconds (3hrs 20minutes!)
NGC2841 – 100×2 minutes		    

Guided using Guidemaster 2 (beta) 70mm refracter and QHY-5 guide camera. Guide signals from camera to mount, not ASCOM.

Images with 254mm Skywatcher relector on EQ6 Pro Mount with Atik 16ic mono camera.

NGC457 the Owl Cluster was one of the first objects I imaged, so I thought it fitting that I was able to include this amongst my first autoguided images.