Post by katodog on Oct 7, 2007 7:33:36 GMT -6
Here's a few shots from this mornings grouping of the Moon/Venus/Saturn/Regulus. I managed to catch a few extra stars in some of the shots I took, but didn't want to check Starry Night to see what they all were. These two shots are just of the four objects, and maybe one extra star.
I bought myself a new camera. A Fuji S6000fd. It's a really nice camera, and has a manual zoom lens like those of pro cameras. It's still a fixed lens to the camera, but the lens operates much more like a pro lens than a typical point-and-shoot style. I've been playing with it the past few days, testing different settings, testing different exposures, ISOs, etc.. It's got quite a nice range, and can do up to 30 second exposures. It's been a bit tricky finding the right settings at 30 seconds to keep the camera noise down, which it seems like there's a lot of noise sometimes, even though the camera is touted as being low-noise. But, I guess 30 seconds is a long exposure, and I should expect some noise. Since I was up this morning, I took the opportunity to check out for the first time M42 through the SCT.
Wow, 12" sure makes things awefully bright! I definitely saw a lot more of the nebulosity then I did with the 6" refractor. I didn't really do too good of a job setting up the scope, so the tracking was off a bit. Plus, I was off in alignment by almost 10 degrees in RA, and around 1 or 2 degrees in DEC. But, I wasn't looking for prize-winning shots. I really only wanted to see a few things visually, and then test out the camera on the scope.
The results of the tracking being off, and the mount not being level, showed pretty good in the pics I shot. But, looking past the garbled stars and star trails, the nebula came out pretty good as far as color and size. A few more nights out with the scope and camera should be enough to get the best settings figured out.
I bought myself a new camera. A Fuji S6000fd. It's a really nice camera, and has a manual zoom lens like those of pro cameras. It's still a fixed lens to the camera, but the lens operates much more like a pro lens than a typical point-and-shoot style. I've been playing with it the past few days, testing different settings, testing different exposures, ISOs, etc.. It's got quite a nice range, and can do up to 30 second exposures. It's been a bit tricky finding the right settings at 30 seconds to keep the camera noise down, which it seems like there's a lot of noise sometimes, even though the camera is touted as being low-noise. But, I guess 30 seconds is a long exposure, and I should expect some noise. Since I was up this morning, I took the opportunity to check out for the first time M42 through the SCT.
Wow, 12" sure makes things awefully bright! I definitely saw a lot more of the nebulosity then I did with the 6" refractor. I didn't really do too good of a job setting up the scope, so the tracking was off a bit. Plus, I was off in alignment by almost 10 degrees in RA, and around 1 or 2 degrees in DEC. But, I wasn't looking for prize-winning shots. I really only wanted to see a few things visually, and then test out the camera on the scope.
The results of the tracking being off, and the mount not being level, showed pretty good in the pics I shot. But, looking past the garbled stars and star trails, the nebula came out pretty good as far as color and size. A few more nights out with the scope and camera should be enough to get the best settings figured out.