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Canon 300D/C-8: things I'm learning.



 
 
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  #1  
Old January 20th 05, 06:56 PM
Uncle Bob
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Default Canon 300D/C-8: things I'm learning.

Greets, my brothers!
The rain has ended for awhile here in Mill Valley, CA. It was followed
by two nights of heavy fog, but now that's clearing up.

Night before last, I set up my C-8 on a CG5 mount and plugged in the
300D. I had done a rough polar alignment, but the first photo of M42
showed elongated stars (30 sec exposure @ ISO 800). Since I have the
cam hooked up to a laptop via the USB connector, I tried making a small
adjustment to azimuth at the base of the mount, and snapped another
picture. Stars looked worse.
I tried adjusting in the opposite direction and snapped another pic.
Stars got better! So in five minutes, I was able to adjust both alt
and az enough to get those pesky stars into nice, tight little balls.
My experience with drift alignment is that it takes me 3-10 times longer
if I really want to get it right. If you don't have a laptop, you can
zoom into each pic you've snapped and see what the stars are doing. The
laptop and bundled software is really a big help in speeding up the
process, though, as you don't have to use the shutter delay to avoid
shaking the scope when you snap off a pic.
With M42 as a target, there are enough bright stars that one can focus
reasonably well peeking through the viewfinder. I took exposures at a
variety of ISO settings, and found 800 was working best for this
scope/time exposure setting. 1600 was too noisy, but still not bad.

So now like every other wire-head with a camera, I present to you my
obligatory "first image of M24", the most photographed deep sky object.

http://www.bogusnet.net/gallery/Deep-Sky-Objects/m42v1

The stars aren't perfect, but it's OK for a first time out, imho.
I hope to add a remote shutter release soon, so I can work on some
minute-plus exposures.
Ultimately, I hope to have my 18" dob tracking, but that will have to
wait until summer.

Clear Skies,
Uncle Bob
  #2  
Old January 21st 05, 02:48 AM
Chuck
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Very nice, you can download a free copy of Neat Image which will do a good
job of reducing noise/graininess in your image (last step of image
processing ...)


"Uncle Bob" wrote in message
ng.com...
Greets, my brothers!
The rain has ended for awhile here in Mill Valley, CA. It was followed
by two nights of heavy fog, but now that's clearing up.

Night before last, I set up my C-8 on a CG5 mount and plugged in the
300D. I had done a rough polar alignment, but the first photo of M42
showed elongated stars (30 sec exposure @ ISO 800). Since I have the
cam hooked up to a laptop via the USB connector, I tried making a small
adjustment to azimuth at the base of the mount, and snapped another
picture. Stars looked worse.
I tried adjusting in the opposite direction and snapped another pic.
Stars got better! So in five minutes, I was able to adjust both alt
and az enough to get those pesky stars into nice, tight little balls.
My experience with drift alignment is that it takes me 3-10 times longer
if I really want to get it right. If you don't have a laptop, you can
zoom into each pic you've snapped and see what the stars are doing. The
laptop and bundled software is really a big help in speeding up the
process, though, as you don't have to use the shutter delay to avoid
shaking the scope when you snap off a pic.
With M42 as a target, there are enough bright stars that one can focus
reasonably well peeking through the viewfinder. I took exposures at a
variety of ISO settings, and found 800 was working best for this
scope/time exposure setting. 1600 was too noisy, but still not bad.

So now like every other wire-head with a camera, I present to you my
obligatory "first image of M24", the most photographed deep sky object.

http://www.bogusnet.net/gallery/Deep-Sky-Objects/m42v1

The stars aren't perfect, but it's OK for a first time out, imho.
I hope to add a remote shutter release soon, so I can work on some
minute-plus exposures.
Ultimately, I hope to have my 18" dob tracking, but that will have to
wait until summer.

Clear Skies,
Uncle Bob



  #3  
Old January 21st 05, 08:30 AM
Uncle Bob
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Chuck wrote:
Very nice, you can download a free copy of Neat Image which will do a good
job of reducing noise/graininess in your image (last step of image
processing ...)


Thanks for the tip--I'll check it out.

Uncle Bob
 




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