Post by scottmason on May 21, 2012 9:31:35 GMT -6
Hey everybody
Just finished editing some shots from my last trip up to Wisconsin last weekend. It was mainly a mother's day trip but I took advantage of the dark skies. My mother and stepfather live in Mt Morris, about 2 hours north of Madison in Waushara county. Never heard of it? Well, nobody has. Which is great because it's so far away from everything it's one of the darkest spots i've ever been to! AND it was clear all weekend!
I had my sister pick me up in Chicago with my scope, my new Celestron CG-5 GT mount and my camera equipment.
When I got there and was unloading I began to panic as I couldn't find one of my bags of gear which had the power supply for my mount. I had left it in Chicago. I needed to make the best of it though, so that night I headed out with my regular tripod and camera and decided to get what I could.
Here are results from the first night. These first ones are all non-tracking.
Walked around a bit until I found a clearing next to an old road where I could see all the way to the horizon.
The prime 50mm f1.8 lens allowed me to capture a lot of light and keep my exposure time shorter:
The galactic plane was stunning. Once my eyes adjusted in the forest, I sat there on my foldout chair and stared as my camera let in light for long exposures. Better than any TV program I've ever watched. This called for my wide angle lens.
Try to look for shooting stars, they showed up in a lot of the images.
The orange glow in the lower left corner was from a cabin. For most of these shots I was on campground property next door to my mother's place. Luckily nobody was on the grounds and the only person working that weekend gave me permission to shoot.
Deeper into the woods..
Turned my headlamp from red to white and light painted the wood in for this one:
More shooting stars
Yet another
Cropped
Accidentally picked the camera up at the end of this exposure. I ended up liking the crazy effect that happened from it though!
More of the campground:
Here's a panorama of the Milky Way. The stitching got messed up in the middle, as there is a lot of distortion with the wide angle lens.
And then the moon began to rise. Pretty damn bright and it was about 3am so I headed back.
Before I went inside, I set the camera in the yard pointed roughly at polaris and let it go for about 15 min.
The next day I decided to try to figure out some substitute for the battery I had been using to power my mount. Neither Radioshack nor Batties Plus in the nearby town could help me. I found a charger at my mother's place that was 12v and 250ah which is lightly higher amphour than I needed. I plugged the mount in and tested it out and it definitely was slewing but sounded strange and the dec movement was slow. It made me nervous but I figured "what the hell, I can't not try".
After sunset I set up with an extension cord in the yard, polar aligned and took a test shot of Mars through my Meade 2045 SCT. Success!
I was hoping to see the Leo Triplet which was supposedly near Mars at the time. The tracking was working but I used my directional buttons on my hand controller and they didn't quite cooperate. I figured this was due to the wrong power supply but I've actually been having issues with my ^ UP motion on my hand control since I bought the mount. Not sure if I need to fix the motor or the hand control. Any suggestions of this would be appreciated.
Anyway, I packed up everything including about 50 feet of extension cable and drove down to the campsite. By now it was about midnight and I spent the next 3 hours going for some deep space stuff.
Earlier in the day I had come down to the campground to scout and found that there was a tall light pole on the campground with an on/off switch AND an outlet. Perfect. I plugged in and decided to Use my camera and a variety of lenses on the mount for longer exposure tracking. This was the first time I've ever been able to do tracking with my DSLR. Very exciting. The sounds from the nearby pond were really loud and intense. Loud frogs, birds, and coyotes shrieking at each other in the forest. After a while in this environment I became a bit spooked. Deer would randomly scatter across the lit campground about 40 yards from me and make me nearly jump out of my boots.
I started out wide and pointed at Sagittarius.
I decided to put on my telephoto zoom lens and get closer to the nebulae.
Here we have the lagoon nebula in center and triflid above it.
Closer
Black & White
The Hercules Cluster
Back to wide
Then got the Meade out again
The tracking really helped on this one
Before I called it quits I walked to the other side of camp to see if I could get a view of Andromeda. It was very low to the sky and hard to see by the naked eye. A zoomed photo revealed it:
The golden oval left and above the tree in the image. I then put on my Meade scope and tried to manually slew it to the galaxy but I could not get it and lost patience. It was getting too cold and I was exhausted.
I'm satisfied with what I saw and captured, despite the setbacks. I really need to get my mount fixed up before the upcoming summer star parties. It was bought used, shipped from a store in NJ. Also, in the process of plugging in the AC wall adapter broke the pin inside the mount in half. It's loose now when I plug the AC in and the mount computer constantly restarts itself from the loose connection.
Thanks for reading!
Just finished editing some shots from my last trip up to Wisconsin last weekend. It was mainly a mother's day trip but I took advantage of the dark skies. My mother and stepfather live in Mt Morris, about 2 hours north of Madison in Waushara county. Never heard of it? Well, nobody has. Which is great because it's so far away from everything it's one of the darkest spots i've ever been to! AND it was clear all weekend!
I had my sister pick me up in Chicago with my scope, my new Celestron CG-5 GT mount and my camera equipment.
When I got there and was unloading I began to panic as I couldn't find one of my bags of gear which had the power supply for my mount. I had left it in Chicago. I needed to make the best of it though, so that night I headed out with my regular tripod and camera and decided to get what I could.
Here are results from the first night. These first ones are all non-tracking.
Walked around a bit until I found a clearing next to an old road where I could see all the way to the horizon.
The prime 50mm f1.8 lens allowed me to capture a lot of light and keep my exposure time shorter:
The galactic plane was stunning. Once my eyes adjusted in the forest, I sat there on my foldout chair and stared as my camera let in light for long exposures. Better than any TV program I've ever watched. This called for my wide angle lens.
Try to look for shooting stars, they showed up in a lot of the images.
The orange glow in the lower left corner was from a cabin. For most of these shots I was on campground property next door to my mother's place. Luckily nobody was on the grounds and the only person working that weekend gave me permission to shoot.
Deeper into the woods..
Turned my headlamp from red to white and light painted the wood in for this one:
More shooting stars
Yet another
Cropped
Accidentally picked the camera up at the end of this exposure. I ended up liking the crazy effect that happened from it though!
More of the campground:
Here's a panorama of the Milky Way. The stitching got messed up in the middle, as there is a lot of distortion with the wide angle lens.
And then the moon began to rise. Pretty damn bright and it was about 3am so I headed back.
Before I went inside, I set the camera in the yard pointed roughly at polaris and let it go for about 15 min.
The next day I decided to try to figure out some substitute for the battery I had been using to power my mount. Neither Radioshack nor Batties Plus in the nearby town could help me. I found a charger at my mother's place that was 12v and 250ah which is lightly higher amphour than I needed. I plugged the mount in and tested it out and it definitely was slewing but sounded strange and the dec movement was slow. It made me nervous but I figured "what the hell, I can't not try".
After sunset I set up with an extension cord in the yard, polar aligned and took a test shot of Mars through my Meade 2045 SCT. Success!
I was hoping to see the Leo Triplet which was supposedly near Mars at the time. The tracking was working but I used my directional buttons on my hand controller and they didn't quite cooperate. I figured this was due to the wrong power supply but I've actually been having issues with my ^ UP motion on my hand control since I bought the mount. Not sure if I need to fix the motor or the hand control. Any suggestions of this would be appreciated.
Anyway, I packed up everything including about 50 feet of extension cable and drove down to the campsite. By now it was about midnight and I spent the next 3 hours going for some deep space stuff.
Earlier in the day I had come down to the campground to scout and found that there was a tall light pole on the campground with an on/off switch AND an outlet. Perfect. I plugged in and decided to Use my camera and a variety of lenses on the mount for longer exposure tracking. This was the first time I've ever been able to do tracking with my DSLR. Very exciting. The sounds from the nearby pond were really loud and intense. Loud frogs, birds, and coyotes shrieking at each other in the forest. After a while in this environment I became a bit spooked. Deer would randomly scatter across the lit campground about 40 yards from me and make me nearly jump out of my boots.
I started out wide and pointed at Sagittarius.
I decided to put on my telephoto zoom lens and get closer to the nebulae.
Here we have the lagoon nebula in center and triflid above it.
Closer
Black & White
The Hercules Cluster
Back to wide
Then got the Meade out again
The tracking really helped on this one
Before I called it quits I walked to the other side of camp to see if I could get a view of Andromeda. It was very low to the sky and hard to see by the naked eye. A zoomed photo revealed it:
The golden oval left and above the tree in the image. I then put on my Meade scope and tried to manually slew it to the galaxy but I could not get it and lost patience. It was getting too cold and I was exhausted.
I'm satisfied with what I saw and captured, despite the setbacks. I really need to get my mount fixed up before the upcoming summer star parties. It was bought used, shipped from a store in NJ. Also, in the process of plugging in the AC wall adapter broke the pin inside the mount in half. It's loose now when I plug the AC in and the mount computer constantly restarts itself from the loose connection.
Thanks for reading!
