Some astroshots from last night (13th Sept 09)

I managed to take some shots last night (took Monday off from work so I could stay up late!!)
All of the shots were taken with a Canon 450D (unmodded) through a WO Megrez 72 refractor piggybacked on a CGE11. All shots are unguided. Stacked in DSS and levels and curves in Gimp 2.0.
The processing is very crude so please forgive some of the images. The North American nebula came out much better than I expected for such a small instrument and an unmodded camera.

M33 5x 5 minute subs

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Veil nebula wihes broom) 6 x 5 minute subs

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North American nebula and the pelican 9 x 5 minute subs

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M31 Andromeda galaxy 9 x 5 minute subs

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Double cluster in Perseus. 4 x 2 minute subs

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Fabulous photo John,

Michael.

Nice shots John, well done. How did you get shots like that unguided for 5 mins?

Thanks Guys.
I used a 3 star alignment before using the polar alignment routine on the CGE. That is all. The tracking error is pretty low on the CGE. I have purchased a shoestring astronomy guider port but have yet to use it.Shots over 5 minutes tend to get washed out by the skyglow where I live even with a cls filter.

Hi John,

Hope your keeping well. All your images are very good but here is something you should try instead of imaging 4 or 5 different things in one night. Try making a project of one thing and imaging that for the night. See it all boils down to S/N ratio; signal to noise ratio the longer you image an object for the more signal witch is good and less noise. You will end up with an image with lot’s more detail and a lot less noise. Trust me you will see a difference in your images

Well done on the images

Thanks Carl

I fully agree with your comment on longer exposures (quality and not quantity;) .
Unfortunately, I don't have an observatory and the weather in the Limerick area has been ....well....awful:X . The last time I had my imaging setup out was back in May: At this rate I should get through all the Messier objects before I retire (or expire):silly:
My next project is a 2-3 hour (if the camera battery holds up)exposure of the North American nebula and later in the year the Horsehead nebula.