First Light @ Tuesnoad

[Tony G]

Hi All,

Here are a few of the images taken (first light) at DSC, and rather do a separte topic for each I've put them all together.
They have all been taken with A canon 350D and WO66, and are unprocessed and are all single exposures.
The skies were excellent in the evenings, just a shame they couldn't stay like that during the day.
Anyway Friday, John showed me the ropes on how to put all the equipment and programs that I've had for ages together and produce the images below (Thanks again John) but I still managed to lose Andromeda on Friday (and Fay you only lost an eyelash), but found it again Saturday.
Well I hope you enjoy the images and any advice will be welcome.

   

2 min exposure of Comet 17P/Holmes,



2 min exposure of M45,



3 min exposure of M42 and



4 min exposure of M31.

The orientation may be wrong on some of the images, but that the way the cookie crumbles as thy say.

Tony G

[Jim]

Pictures are great Tony, well done. You'd never guess they were taken underwater!

[MarkS]

Those are looking good Tony - I bet you're pleased.  And thanks for the headlamp!

[Fay]

Tony, I am so pleased you found your images. They were really worth finding. You must be very very pleased with yourself &, like Mark, are now well on the way now you know the basics.

I hope you don't get this message twice, the site is so slow.

[JohnP]

Tony - I never thought I'd see it.....

'First Light@Tuesnoad - TonyG'........

It was great seeing you get images on Friday & I'm really glad it's all coming together at last. The images are very good for unguided single exposures shot in jpeg mode... We will all be expected a lot more now. Not quite sure why DSLRFocus was acting so strangely but probably worth doing some dry runs before you next go out with it - You shouldn't have to keep rebooting like you did....? Luke enjoyed watching you 'perform' & at one stage we thought you were going for the whole messier catalog in a single night...

It was a great night & it made a nice change not to image myself - unbelievable skies as well.

Good one,  John.

[Fay]

Shame you didn't get The Lizard Nebula, Tony!

[Rocket Pooch]

well done tony, not bad for a 1st attempt!!!!!

[JohnP]

Tony - you should post larger crops as the small images you have put up don't do the images justice. The M42 & M31 i saw on your laptop looked great. If you don't know how to do this just email me your originals & I'll do it for you...

John

[Tony G]

Thanks for the comments, and Mark the answer is yes, i'm well chuffed ,
John, the M31 you see on Friday isn't the same one posted on here as I think the one on Friday was taken in focus mode as we couldn't find it that night or Saturday and Mac tried a retrieval program and there was nothing there, so I can only think it was in the wrong mode, so managed another Saturday, but got into a curfuffle with so many thing (mostly power supply), that I didn't do the many short exposures which I was going to attempt and also the big bloody Oak tree didn't help

Tony G

PS john I'll send those images over via email.

[MarkS]

The images are very good for unguided single exposures shot in jpeg mode...

Are they really unguided?  For 4 minutes? Are you using Periodic Error Correction on your mount?

[Mike]

4 mins UNGUIDED !!! That would be extremely impressive. 

[Tony G]

These are all unguided, give us a chance, i've only started this weekend to use a camera other than the TouCam II, let alone two cameras with loads of software which I wouldn't understand at the moment.
The mount (HEQ5) seems to respond very well and the people who know me know I wouldn't have a clue about the PEC or the insides of the mount, so what I have is the same untouched mount that i've had for nearly 3 years. 

Tony G

PS if anyone wants to buy this very special guiding mount, offers in the region of £1500 ovno 

[Mac]

Excellent Images,

cant wait to see some more.