Guest Druss Posted March 27, 2015 Share Posted March 27, 2015 Hi all I am a new member from leicester. I have gone and purchased a skywatcher explorer 130 (900mm tube) with the standard lenses, getting on quite well with it (you tube is great)! I am now going to try and start taking some photos with a second and canon 350d, I have bought a t mount for it as well. Does anybody have some tips on getting all this to work together as some of the fixes online seem quite drastic. Cheers in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zidder Posted March 27, 2015 Share Posted March 27, 2015 Hi Neil, Welcome to the forum, I'm sure someone will have the tips you need Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Posted March 27, 2015 Share Posted March 27, 2015 Hi Neil welcome to EMS. I'm only a visual type guy so all I can really say is that you have bought a good scope, it's the one almost everyone starts out with. As far photography I'll pass that one on....... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tuckstar Posted March 27, 2015 Share Posted March 27, 2015 Hi Neil, I'm born and bred leicester init! The 130 is a lovely scope, mine kept me happy for a couple of years. Unfortunately this scope is notorious for not focusing with a dslr. It's either move the mirror or attack the focuser! Webcam seems to be ok. Again I'm just a visual observer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tweedledee Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Welcome to EMS Neil. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daz Type-R Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Hi Neil, nice scope you got there, should get you started, it will show the planets and some of the brighter DSO's nicely, also the moon will look good. Welcome to the forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BAZ Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Hi Neil, a warm welcome to EMS. Sorry, I am just a visual observer as well and that's complicated enough for me. If you are new to the hobby it's a good time to get to know your way round the sky, there are a load of good objects about, with the Virgo galaxy cluster being well placed at the moment. If you haven't already got it Stellarium is a great free bit of software to have. http://www.stellarium.org/en_GB/ Enjoy the forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Hi Neil welcome to the EMS Stephen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orion Posted March 28, 2015 Share Posted March 28, 2015 Welcome Neil. For astrophotography of the planets and moon, a lot of imagers use a web cam or a camera often dedictated for guiding but also finds very good used in planetary and lunar photography - e.g. a Qhy5Lii colour camera (about £180-195) direct into the 1.25" pushfit eyepiece drawtube - often used with a Barlow lens or Powermate lens to increase magnification. you need to take short video sequences of 1-3 mins. Then the best frames out of thousands are taken to make a single composite image. This can be done with Registax software - get that free. The idea behind tnis is to seize moments of good seeing, and discard the poor frames. If your Canon takes video, then you could use that to start with because you've got it - may as well try what you've got first. For deep sky objects such as galaxies and nebulae, you need single frames, of much longer exposure of 20 sec to say 2-5 mins. Best is to start off with short exposures of say 15 sec and see what you get. If you get star trails, theres no point in doing longer exposures until you correct what is known as polar alignment. There are plenty details of how to polar align, some simple, some more involved. A Telrad or polar alignment finder would help you get close and it may be sufficient for perhaps 30 second exposures. You then need to take a batch of images of the same object sequentially e.g. 10-25 images (often called "lights"). Good starting point would be iso 800-1600, 30 sec. You need to take a picture with the lens / apature covered so the camera sensor sees nothing. These images are called darks. They are used as blanks which are subtracted from the light images. This can be done with software called Deep Sky Stacker - free, so download that. I think current version is 3.3.4. You load the darks and lights images into DSS then click register or stack after register, and it does it all for you. It produces a single image. This can be processed in DSS which can be tedious and complex. Many people tend to just save the stacked image and process it in Photoshop or similar. Its probably worth trying the less demanding piggyback photography or your camera with its normal lens or telephoto or zoom, piggybacked for a ride on the main scope. You get wide angle pictures of star fields. The longer focal length you go, the closer you get. But it becomes more demanding on having good polar alignment. If you have very goodpolar alignment, you could get away without guiding. If not, guiding will be needed Which compensates for changes in atmospheric refraction, wind, and less accurate polar alignment. But it cant compensate for grossly poor or no polar alignment, youd still get star trails. For nebulae that are emission nebulae, they give out a lot of hydrogen alpha radiation. Your camera would need modified for these although it still can be done witnout modification. Modification just makes it more sensitive to recording hydrogen alpha radiation. It involves removing an infrared filter, which means the camera might be less suited for daylight photography without making some changes in settings (possibly). I would say use the camera without modifying it and see what you get. You could be more than happy with the results. Later, you might modify or buy a modified camera solely dedicated to astrophotography. Another important aspect in astrophotography is focussing - it's critical. You can focus using a Bhatinov mask (look up on Wikipedia), or focus on tne camera screen using zoom on a single bright star. Once focussed, lock then you're set. You may need to check focus during the night every hour if the temperature changes much. You can control much of the Canon by connecting it to a laptop using Canon's software EOS, or Astrophotography Tools (free or 12 euro for the full version). You need to have the laptop near the camera to be able to focus and see focus change on the laptop. You need a long (5m) active usb lead - you can get them from a lot of sources. I got several from ebay for about £3 each. They can be linked together. Ive linked 3 making 15m and they've worked. But some do, some dont work as well. planetary and lunar photography by video. Polar alignment doesnt have to be accurate. deep sky objects - good polar alignment. 15 sec upwards to several mins. Guiding needed usually. piggyback photography. Less demanding to inaccurate polar alignment. Hope that helps. The experienced imagers will be able to help even more. Derek Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brantuk Posted March 30, 2015 Share Posted March 30, 2015 Hi Neil and welcome to EMS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now