Where is it going wrong?

Stephen, as Frank and Keith said....We all started off with something less...also there is no such thing as a silly question in this Forum. Ask away!!!!............and just wait until you analyse your photos next year!!!!

......well thats what happened to me ......................I think?

Thanks for the tips guys. I'll just keep modifying my setup and ask questions as I go along.

Heya all....

IMHO....ANY astrophotography is a challenge and is MUCH more difficult than it appears...I've been a photographer almost all my life and there's no such thing as point and shoot is this game hehe...keep in mind that with a scope...every small error made is often compounded many times by the huge lens effectively being used.

Here's my first attempt at any astrophography, taken 2 weeks ago so i'm definately not an expert:



Nikon d40x f4.0 1/1000 sec
Celestron 4.5" Newtonian, 25mm EP

U can see that despite being crystal clear and sharp in my scope...the image is still a little soft...FOCUS is extremely important for the subject and I find our eyes are a bit more forgiving than the camera lens so what I do is "bracketing"..that is..I get what I judge to be perfect focus...take a shot...mabey u'll get lucky:) then I off focus the image just a hair and begin taking more shots constantly adjusting focus towards what U originally thought was perfect...effectively taking care of any misfocusing.

U will also notice that my image also has the "blue ring" which is prolly caused by what's called "chromatic aberration" and is very common and somewhat difficult to get rid of.....blue filters, improved focusing, better eyepieces etc will minimize the problem. If your good with photshop etc..u can also take out any blue colors in the pic.

There's one othe thing that you must consider when photographing very bright objects and its called "blooming". This is a common lunar problem caused by the image being so bright, it causes loss of detail and/or blurring. If your pix look VERY bright, kinda washed out and have the blue ring, the problem is prolly overexposure. Many folks often purposely UNDEREXPOSE the moon and then use a basic photo program to adjust brightness/contrast. In my experience, if you have the ability to see the shot in ur display after u shoot...if u see white...its prolly overexposed and susceptible to blooming...so try to increase the shutterspeed a notch or go for a bigger f-stop (smaller aperture).....try to get it so its all grey in color....you'll have to learn by experience tho

The best advice I can give is
1] Use a high shutterspeed (>1/500sec)
2] Use a low ISO (100-200 if possible)
3] Use a wired remote or an IR remote to avoid camera shake (my nikon d40x remote cost $9 on ebay)
4] If no remote is available, use the camera's self timer
5] Use the bracket focusing method

Stephen,
To answer your first question, you are not wasting your time imaging the moon with that camera and scope combo.
Here is an image of the moon with a 300D which is a fairly similar camera to yours and the skylux.


Have a look at the thread where we discuss the image.
www.irishastronomy.org/boards/viewtopic....rder=asc&start=0
I used prime focus method for this, i.e. no eyepiece and no camera lens.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Dave, your shot is exactly what I see through the viewfinder and FoxK, your image is what I get with the camera set up

I'm off to read the thread mentioned and have another go.

Thanks again


Stephen