[Buldric]

Well, just got in from another night of astrophotography. The Hartman Mask worked BEAUTIFULLY. Instead of taking 130 pictures to attain an "iffy" focus, I got a really good focus with only 14 pictures! Thank you SO much for that tip.

I tried again at M57, yet still to no avail, I know I took a 30 sec 1600 ISO pic of where it was supposed to be, it was there, but the camera still didn't pick it up. only some stars, odd that it would pick up the stars, yet not the nebula that was brighter than them... However, faced with my failure, I went to my old pal M31, and decided to have some fun with him.


Now, at my place, M31 doesn't come up over the tree line until about 1:00, so the camera had been running for some time, and the battery nearly depleated. I took some more 30 second exposures, hoping something was going to be different from last night, alas, if anything they were only darker. So I decided to go against everything everyone had told me, and attempted a bulb exposure.....without a remote. First off, I went for a 5 min. manual bulb exposure, but it was too much for me, and I ended up with a bunch of little worms. So i decided to cut it down to a 2 min manual bulb exposure. The first one went pretty well. The second one was PERFECT, wouldn't have been any better if I had used a remote, the third one was decent, and on the fourth one...the camera died.

So now im back inside, however, what I saw on the camera (before it died) from my 2 min exposures was VERY promising. It's now charging, so I cant stack the few I got, but I think they shouldn't turn out too bad at all. On the next good night I will have to try a manual bulb exposure on a nebula, see if THAT cant pick it up.


Also, we have already determined that I have fairly steady hands, I found that to check the camera's targeting, I can detach the camera from the T ring, then just hold a 25mm eyepiece at the proper distance (unfortunately, its not anywhere near inside the tube) and I can focus, and see what its looking at. Works fairly well, and don't need to buy any extra parts!


I'll upload the pictures from tonight as soon as I get a chance, I'll be asleep long before that battery will be charged enough.

Also, I'm taking down the pictures of my T ring and tube, to clear up the gallery. If for some reason you wish to see them again, just leave me a post and I'll e-mail them to you, or temporarily re-upload them.

Thank you for your tips, especially the Hartman Mask,

-Eric