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[katodog]

Last night was a pretty nice night, not too cold. I decided to get the scopes out and shoot some M42 shots. I was planning on doing that, and then moving on to Saturn, but Saturn was just visible naked-eye, and didn't look to be a good target with the hazy clouds over it. But, I had enough fun with M42, and put the camera on the homemade camera mount for some shots of Orion with the camera only.

Most of the pics came out decent, but it was obvious I was off somewhere. It wasn't until I was about halfway through my session that I realized the scope wasn't level. No biggie. The shots I didn't keep showed some trailing, and other issues, but the ones I kept looked pretty good. I did a few things to some of the shots, like Noiseware or brightness and contrast in PSP, so they are a tiny bit doctored.


The first one was with a Celestron 40mm Plossl, the 12" SCT, and Fuji S6000fd DSLR. The rest are with the 20mm Owl eyepiece, and the //wide-field Orion shots are camera only.

[Bryant]

Nice shots! I especially like the third one down which has a kinda neat color to it.. Was that a filter or simply some post processing you did to it?
Also, those shots just with the camera of Orion are pretty nice! Exposure settings? And did you use anything to track or no? Keep braving the cold and getting nice shots man.. got a lot more cojones than me to do it!

[katodog]

Thanks. In answer to the questions and comments...

...it was actually not too bad last night, which is why I decided to go out. If it were any colder, I would have easily chickened out and stayed inside.

Equipment used: Meade 12" LX200R, 20mm Owl 80° eyepieec, Fuji S6000fd DSLR. The 12" SCT does track, but it's only as good as I set it up. Last night it wasn't level, and even the slightest bit off in any respect will cause me to get small smudges instead of pinpoint stars, and I will get trails. But, I can typically get some decent shots anyway.

The third pic down was filtered, with a SkyGlow filter, but the colors were a result of some playful processing. I was screwing around with different colors and brightness/contrast settings, trying to see what would happen. Here are some pics that were not processed, to get an idea of how the looked before hand.

Shot one is a 4 second exposure at ISO1600. Auto white balance with the SkyGlow filter.




Shot two is 8 sec exp at ISO800 and SkyGlow. Auto white balance.




Shot three is 15 sec exp at ISO800 and SkyGlow. Auto white balance.




Normally, I'd be shooting at around 30 seconds exposures and ISO settings between 200 and 800. Last night I wanted to see if the SkyGlow would make a difference for how much of the nebula and what colors would show up.

This pic is at 30 seconds ISO400. Manual white balance set at Fluorescent #3. With SkyGlow filter.




Even with the SkyGlow, the longer exposure made the pic appear brighter. It seems that the SkyGlow does darken the background more, which is it's intended use, and it also seemed to help bring out a bit of a different color in the nebula, which was nice.

I didn't spend too much time on every setting, since I was just having fun being out for a length of time that was more than 15 minutes. I was bouncing between shooting photos and visual, and it sure was nice to get back to the eyepiece for a decent amount of time. If it gets to be somewhat nice out temperature-wise, I'll spend some more time with a few different filters and run through a lot more exposure and white balance settings.

I absolutely love winter skies, but I have Arabic (Syrian and Lebanese) blood, so I don't like cold weather. The camel jockey in me likes it warm.