I have lurked here for a while but don't normally post, however there
have been a number of threads about DSLR imaging in recent months so I
thought this might be interesting to some people here.

I've had the camera for a few days now but the weather was uncooperative
(as usual) until the night of February 28th. I hooked up the camera to
my FSQ (riding on top of a 12.5" RCOS Ritchey Chretien on an AP1200GTO
mount) and took 12 x 5 minute images of the Rosette Nebula and
Horsehead/Flame Nebula region; the images were unguided but the mount
tracks pretty well and has a corrected PE of around 2 arc-seconds peak
to peak so the stars are reasonably shaped. I pre-processed and
colour-converted the images in Maxim-DL (with the DSLR extension) then
finished off with some non-linear stretching in PhotoShop CS2. There is
some structured noise visible in both images which I believe may be
reduced by dithering exposures and using a sigma rejection or SD masking
combine method - if the weather holds up this weekend I will try some 10
minute sub-exposures guided with my ST-10 camera.

The images are nothing special but generally I am pretty pleased with
the way they came out and I am encouraged to try more imaging with this
camera. Incidentally I bought the camera from SCS Astro and, unlike so
often with Astro kit, the price I paid was pretty much identical to what
I would have paid if I imported it from the states myself.

Comments are welcome
Regards

Derrick

Images can be found at:
http://www.lh-dome.demon.co.uk/Latest_Images/EOS_1st_Light.htm

Be sure to scroll down the page to view both objects.
--
Derrick Farley
http://www.lh-dome.demon.co.uk/