My Astrotrac Advenuture

Great shots Dave wow they are really dark skies, looking forward to seeing some more soon !!

Keith.

Keith, not sure if you have getting my emails? can you drop me a link dave.w.connolly@gmail.com

Thanks John,

I have a 10-20mm Sigma which is f4, not fast enough.
next lens I get will be the 14mm Samyang.
and following that I want to move to full frame. The 6d is the market leader on handling noise at ISO 6400, I may have to be nice to Santa !

johnomahony wrote: Great shots Dave ! I love the one of the milkyway with the scope in the foreground. What lens did you use for that shot?

Get yourself a good wide angle lens for your Astrotrac set up, something around 10-20mm if you don't already have one for those milky way shots. You won't regret it.
The Canon and Sigma 10-20mm lenses work well. The Samyang 14mm lens has a good reputaton and is inexpensive. They are brilliant for milky way shots and for nightscapes and grabbing those last minute shots. At that focal length there is very little set up time and almost no tracking restrictions.. Highly recommend the Tokina 11-16mm if you plan to stick with a crop frame sensor (see below)

www.flickr.com/photos/7703127@N07/9432348452/

Hi Dave, I gave the astrotrac a go a few weeks ago with my C80ED and Canon 6D combination to try and at least get a decent shot of the Lagoon Nebula M8. I found the ball head a serious pain in the neck trying to centre the nebula, and with other things like focus, tracking and some light pollution to deal with, the best I could do on the night was my result here, 10x45 second subs stacked.

Not bad overall I think...

Keith..

Dropped you an email Keith.

That M8 is a great shot. Have you tried Noels actions or Gradient Exterminator to kill the orange glow?
worked wonders on my images last few months.

The ball head issue I really feel your pain on. What I want to do now is introduce some slow motion control to my rig.
I plan to have a piece made up (some drawings for it on the astrotrac yahoo group) so I can attach my gear head to the top of the astrotrac head. then I can roughly point at a target with the astrotrac head. Then use the slow motion controls on the gearhead to fine tune.

Looking at an adapter I saw on TS website, that allows you to put a red dot finder on a camera flash shoe.

Id love a go at processing your M8 image, so I can try out some of the methods in PSCC and Lightroom I have found. if you email me the export from DSS.

Attached is a shot I took at the Skellig Star Party a few weeks back.
This is an Un Mod Canon 60d.
100mm Canon Marco lens
on the astrotrac.

Its 5 x 45 second shots at ISO 1600. I used the HDR Toning method Ken Crawford has online.
its able to tone the dust lanes and the stars separately. Which really makes them stand out.

Keith g wrote: Hi Dave, I gave the astrotrac a go a few weeks ago with my C80ED and Canon 6D combination to try and at least get a decent shot of the Lagoon Nebula M8. I found the ball head a serious pain in the neck trying to centre the nebula, and with other things like focus, tracking and some light pollution to deal with, the best I could do on the night was my result here, 10x45 second subs stacked.

Not bad overall I think...

Keith..

Hi Dave, I don't have noel's actions or gradient exterminator yet, I must get them! I think the slow motion control is the way to go, it was so annoying that my tripod moved every time I adjusted my C80ED and put the polar alignment out.

And I will look up Ken Crawfords HDR toning method, I am really interested in bringing out those dust lanes. I have tried to email you the M8 image but my email client says it's too big at 1.9MB! Is there any other way I can do it?

Keith