Taurus, Pleiades and Lovejoy from Stonehaven

[Kenny]

My attempts this evening. Canon 450D. Processed (JPGs - need to work out the problem processing my RAWs) without darks / flats / bias in DSS (may re-attempt over the weekend).

Earlier in the evening (17:51) from the War Memorial over Stonehaven.


Later (18:47) when that part of the sky was a bit higher, taken from Dunnottar Castle carpark, a less windy spot.


Getting very bad distortion at the boundaries of my images. Really shows up in the top left of these images.

[The Thing]

Gosh you have been busy.

Re:distortion  - some lenses are more equal than others. I am new to the widefield game as well, that's why I got the StarAdventurer to have a go. I am playing with a Pentax 50mm which is really fairly good to the edges (£35 on ebay + adaptor for Canon) and two Nikon zooms I happen to have, the shorter standard kit zoom is bilge (see my earlier Orion shot) but the ED 70-300 seems quite acceptable at both ends of the range. Again with a Canon adaptor from ebay.

[Kenny]

Another go last night from the same location, albeit a bit rushed after I'd done my War Memorial star trails. Not much improvement but can see the movement vs the previous capture. I think the focus was slightly off as well.

Canon 450D. 20 x 13 sec exposures at 18mm, f/5, ISO-1600.