SLD
Contributor
Are those your own photos? I so they are great!. What did you use and how? And of curse, what are they?
I took these with my new telescope. First light. I had a Williams Optics 70mm, 420mm focal length on an iOptron ieq45 mount. I used a modified Canon T3i DSLR with the infrared filter removed. The first shot is of M8, the lagoon nebula, and M20, the Trifid Nebula. It’s just 30 shots at 40 seconds a piece, 20 minutes total, at ISO 800. The second is of NGC 7000, the North American Nebula. Also 20 minutes at 40 seconds per shot, but ISO 1600. Both unguided, and Stacked and processed with 10 dark shots and bias shots in ImagesPlus.
I like this new scope because you don’t really need to guide. Just get a good polar alignment and it should be good for 60 second shots. For the larger nebula, which you need less focal length for, that’s perfect. It’s not a good scope for galaxies, except for Andromeda. I need a ten inch Astro graph for those. And very, very good guiding.
Very cool. What is your new telescope?
I used to be up on all the models. I subscribed to Astronomy magazine and Sky & Telescope for years and years until I ran out of time to read them. Back then I purchased a Meade 6" reflector on a clock drive. It became too heavy and inconvenient for me to move out and in again but now with some teenagers in the house I expect to get it going again. We re-collimated it and re-aligned the finder scope. It's waiting for fall to come as I'm not keen on staying up too late in the summer.
A William Optics Gran Turismo 71mm.