M51, ten minute exposure

Well, I would sacrifice a week of clear nights here to see a solar eclipse
imagine if we were clouded out and they saw the partial phases here :shock: :evil:

A GEG is a lumicon "Giant Easy Guider", a very good off axis guider which I cant use alot because its almost impossible to get a star in it that is bright enough for the webcam to pick up, but that wont be a problem soon

dslr focus is a good program for focusing and automatically taking pictures with the canon. I must give maxim dslr a go sometime, it looks abit involved, so I must sit down some evening and work through it.

I havent seen this crud before in any image I've taken, so its a new thing, I'll come back here when I figure it out.

Clouded out in Antalya? Having won the Triple Crown, the luck of the Irish may well be tested.... :lol: And as for sacrificing a week of clear nights, that's pretty much all I've had since Jan 1st :shock:

Can you get rid of the GEG as well as the flip mirror? And is the webcam about to be replaced with the ST4?

Maxim - um, a little time investment is required but it'll grow on you. If you want to really get into astrometry and get an observatory code, you'll need it (or something similar). Then again, I'm not sure if the dslr version does plate solving, so you may need the full version - but that only seems to support the Canon EOS.

I've had sessions before where just about everything went wrong. The next, it was all fine and dandy. You may have just hit a low spot (no pun...)

Fingers crossed for Turkey anyhow.

Cheers

Dave

Nice image Dave, it has a nice blue hue to it. I like it!

thanks, Seanie,

Dave, right now I could take off the GEG, it weighs a fair amount and taking it off would mean a time consuming adjustment of the scopes balance set up, which is much more of a pain then you would imagine. In the long term I'd prefer to loose the skylux given a choice, the read advantage is that if there is any mirror flop/movement in the SCT, then it will also show up in the GEG since its an offaxis guider. A mag8/9 star is easily visible in the GEG, so the st-4 (or modified webcam for that matter) should be able to use it.

The skylux is a fall back position, in that if it's just not possible to get a suitable star in the GEG, the skylux comes in and saves the day.
It doesnt weight much (there is some advantages to using plastic) so I'm happy to leave it up there.

I'm fairly happy with this m51 image, given its the first time I tried getting anything longer the 3 minutes on it, I few refinements and we'll be almost there. I look at this as a starting point.
Many lx200 users on the web would not recommend using the scope at F10 as it is a stretch for the mount, but I'm willing to give it a go.

And I'd add that its a good starting point! Your M51 is certainly better than my feeble attempts - even with the AP

By the way, if you can take that kind of image, I'd say an observatory code is well within your grasp.

Thanks for the encouragement Dave, We'll give it a go sometime in the not too distant future.

As for DSLRs and ccd cameras (I just love fanning the fire) the following image explains why I'm reluctant to go down the dsi route

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...s-1600-008_small.jpg

This is the uncropped and unprcocessed 300d frame (image scale has been proportionally reduced for file size purposes), the dsi is only a fraction of this field of view in my scope, and is also the reason why I'd prefer to go for a wide field ccd format camera (sbig or not), if the sbig can do an hours worth of 300d imaging in 90 seconds, then its well worth. Tracking becomes a much smaller issue, and you get to sleep alot earlier also.