Few questions:
What is the exposure time/focal?
Do you use an auto-guider or manual guide through the scope?
Instead of piggyback do you use a camera mount for through-the-lens shots also?
I used to do a lot of astrophotography when I used film. Haven't a CCD setup yet. Getting ready to do some test shots with my Kodak Digital here pretty soon. Planning on using my 6" refractor.
Awesome shots by the way. I noticed your NA Nebula shot is somewhat "dim"...is this because of the limitation of your cameras exposure setting?
The NA Nebula was 86 x 1 min exposures at ISO 800 stacked. Canon XTi 75mm fl lens. Tracking, but unguided. Piggy-backed on a LXD75 mount.
The Jupiter was best 1000 out of 5000 frames stacked. 28 fps. Skynyx 2-0c color planetary camera. 12" Meade LX200 with 2.5x TV Powermate (effective fl ~7600mm ).
The Eagle Nebula was 12 x 5 min exposures ISO 800 stacked. Canon XTi straight thru 102mm TV w/focal reducer. I can't remember the fl bu I get about a 3 degree field of view. During exposure, auto-guiding was thru the 12" with Skynyx 2-01m and K3ccd software.
Yeah, I would have liked to pull more depth out of the NA nebula, but I think that was a factor of using such short sub exposures (1 min). I wasn't sure of how accurately that little LXD75 mount would track or how good my quick polar alignment was. Next time I will take a series of test shots to see how long of a sub exposure I can get away with.
Regards,
Wab
