It's all good practice!!

[Carole]

After all the problems with not being able to get my Cooled CCD camera to work on LX with my laptop, I decided I was not going to waste any more of my time, and not to mention the time of other helpful members of the society and have decided to buy a DSLR.  This of course is yet another learning curve.

I arrived at the Imaging session last night only having received my new DSLR the day before and was still trying to read the manual (by red torch light).  I don't yet have a shutter cable so Simon offered to connect my DSLR to his laptop.  I am not guiding yet as a) I haven't yet got myself a guide cable and b) Wanted to learn one thing at a time.

Simon has software that will do all the settings on the laptop (instead of the camera) and so we tried to take a few of M45 (Pleides).  Unfortunately they got saved as Jpegs and because I am not guiding I was only able to use 3 of these frames.

All I can say is, it's all good practice.
Anyway, here it is:
Sorry we kept you up so late Mike and thanks for hosting the evening.



Megrez 72 APO
3 subs totalling 1 min 15 secs (no darks), no guiding
DSLR EOS 450D
Minimal processing in Photoshop
Oh!  and processed in Deep Sky Stacker, first time I have used this too.  

Carole

[Carole]

Shutter cable has just arrived.  
Now to purchase a guide cable and some rings to hold the guide camera on!!!

Fay said there would be a "spending frenzy" !!!!

Oh, and I will also need a plate to mount both the telescope and guide scope on. 

Carole

[doug]

     You spent an awful lot of time trying to get an image, Carole, and I am pleased that after all your efforts you managed to get one.  Practise makes perfect, as they say, and doubtless in time you will be producing marvellous images, so keep on with the good work.  Looking forward to seeing your efforts.

     Doug ....( wish I could do it!!!!!!!! )

[doug]

     ........... what time did you stay up until, then??   

[Mike]

Carole that can't be the size of the image from the camera. Can you put a link to the original image please.

[Carole]

Can you put a link to the original image please.

Not sure how to do that, I'll E mails the files to you, as I said they were saved by Simon on his laptop as Jpegs, which he then gave me on a memory stick. 

I didn't have much to do with the capturing so no idea what size was used, I just did the alignment GOTO and tracking as I hadn't got a shutter cable and was still reading the camera instructions (in the dark). 

Carole

[Carole]

what time did you stay up until, then

We packed up at 12.30 approx.

Yes I am slow at getting set up and aligned, I do find the polar alignment a real chore, especially not having a light in the polar scope. 

Carole

[PhilB]

Nice, worth the effort.

Phil

[RobertM]

Sounds like you had a hard time but I'm glad all that effort has payed off, well done.

[Carole]

Thanks Robert, I do realise that I won't be able to progress much further until I get a guiding set up organised.  But my main object currently was to finally get myself something that I could do long exposure with and get reasonably confident with that before taking on anything else new.    

I'll practice with the camera and shutter a few times and in the meantime will look at getting what I need.  
I've got a guide scope that Mark sold me last year, and could use the CCD camera that I have stopped using as my main camera.  I've got guiding software.  

I need a bracket/plate to fix all this to plus
Rings for the guide camera.  
Guiding cable
Any tips (pointers to places to buy them) would be welcome.

Here is a cropped image of the centre of above image.



Carole

[Carole]

Carole that can't be the size of the image from the camera

Hi MIke, I've E Mailed those files to you, but I agree with you, I have looked at the size of the image and it is only 476 x 317 pixels, whereas most of Mark and Fay's are 800 x 800 or 800 x 640.

I can't explained it but it is the full image.  Maybe it's something to do with the settings which Simon did.  I guess this is really a joint image between myself and Mark.

Carole

[JohnP]

Hi Carole - nice start - this is it stretched horribly but starting to show... John

[Tony G]

Carole,

Sometimes you don't need to guide, just a few minutes on your mount (polar aligned), below are 2 images taken a couple of years ago at Tuesnoad and with JohnP's help in processing which are on the gallery, but these go to show that until you start guiding, you can still image and get results.





Good Luck.

Tony G

[JohnP]

Tony - I remember the night....   You were like a kid at christmas when you got those images...  

[Carole]

Hi Carole - nice start - this is it stretched horribly

Wow!  Is that my image above?

If so I'll have to ask you how you did that.

Sometimes you don't need to guide

Hi Tony, yes I know you can get away with it sometimes, but I was looking at my 30 sec subs and 1 minute subs (the ones I didn't use) and there was certainly some elongation on the stars on those, although interestingly another 30 minutes sub the stars were perfectly round.  This is one of the reasons why I have not ventured into Guiding yet, I was hoping to "get away with it" for a short while until I was ready to do so.

Those are nice images Tony.

Carole