[Buldric]

Allright, so I went out and tried this astrophotography thing, and needless to say, it didn't go so hot in the end. My telescope got a PERFECT lock onto my target, the scope wasnt the problem. So heres the details of how the night went.

1.)Tried a few pictures of the night sky with the cameras stock lense, to get a feel of its exposure's and ISO's. Every thing is going dandy.

2.)Attach camera to scope. Good good, no problems.

3.) Attempt to take picture with camera after having focused the eyepiece in the camera adapter....This is where it went wrong.

At this point, for some time, all I was taking was black pictures, and for the life of me, I could not understand why. It doesn't show me live image, so I cant check the focus that way, and the viewfinder is so dim I might as well be wearing a blindfold.

I finally decided that the problem must be the focus, that the camera simply does not focus at the same level as the eye. So, after turning the focus nob bit by bit, with 10 second exposures, 100 pictures later, I finally get the camera into focus...kind of. 30 pictures later again, I get the focus fine tuned, and I have myself a lot of blurry pictures of some very bright stars.

4.) After attaining focus, Photograph M31 as planned!
Using 30 second exposures, I took a total of 30 photo's, totaling 15min of exposure. I know thats not very long, but, hey, when you have to keep pushing that button 30 times, it seems like a long time =p.

5.)After taking my photographs of M31, time to move on to M57, and M27, just for fun.

At this time, I start leaning towards doing bodily harm to the chipmunk who's home is currently blocking these objects. But I decide to chill instead, and call it a night, leaving M57, and M27 for tomorrow night.


6.)So I get inside, hook up the camera and download the images. Only at the point where I start stacking them, do I notice I was being a very smart boy earlier, and had decided to use ISO 1600.

So I now have 15 min of exposure of a noisy M31. I did make a dark frame, however I don't know how to subtract it from the others, adding to the difficulty. However, what is there of M31, I can make out the core(phew) and some dust. Tomorrow night is a whole new night to try this again!



Another oddity(to me, being a newb at this), I found that the camera could not see in 30 seconds, what my eye could see immediately. I tried M57 before M31, but it wouldn't show up in a picture, and I'm hoping that it was just the focus, something i will attempt to verify tomorrow night. One would think, that at 1600 ISO, and 30 seconds of exposure, the camera would pick up more than what my eye can see immediately. If anyone knows anything about this, a word of it would be great!


Thank you.

Buldric