first light via new cam

[nytecam]

First clear night for ages for first-light with new colour cam on piggybacked scope on some very faint deep sky objects eg planetary nebs, a galaxy and two globular clusters - hope they are of interest

[nytecam]

Here's twin galaxies 13 million lightyears away in the Ursa Major [Plough] eg M81 and M82 [top] - M82 = Cigar Galaxy with starburst region showing red from hydrogen light

[turkeyneck]

Hey amazing pictures. Bet it's even more amazing looking through the actual eyepiece of the scope? Let's us know how insignificant we really are in the big scheme of things.

[nytecam]

Originally Posted by turkeyneck

Hey amazing pictures. Bet it's even more amazing looking through the actual eyepiece of the scope?

Well no actually - unfortunately the eye is no match for even a small 7cm f/5 telescope,as used, with sensitive CCD cam replacing the eyepiece.

A 30s cam exposure, like below, vastly outperforms the eye and needs a big telescope of 30cm aperture to glimpse these stars - according to posts against pics on a dedicated astroforum and most certainly no colour



ps: I don't use the scale of the universe to mock anyone

[nytecam]

Doesn't get dark 'till quite late but tried new colour cam on main 30cm scope last night for these shots of deepsky planetary nebula M57 and M27 in summer sky and also globular cluster M56 near M57 - hope you like 'em

[glojo]

Hi everyone,
I have just found this forum and saw these excellent pictures. My wife is very interested in astronomy and has a 12" LX200GPS telescope. I would love to read how you use thta camera although 'she who must be obeyed' much prefers to actually look at the stars\planets etc

[nytecam]

QUOTE=glojo;628826]Hi everyone,
I have just found this forum and saw these excellent pictures. My wife is very interested in astronomy and has a 12" LX200GPS telescope. I would love to read how you use thta camera although 'she who must be obeyed' much prefers to actually look at the stars\planets etc [/quote]

Thanks for your interest I too have a 12" LX200 Classic from over a decade ago but still working well. Most folk like to use the mark-one eyeball and I did once but even a brief exposure like 80s on the Whirlpool galaxy and 60s on the remote quasar in Lynx shows so much more especially under town light pollution or moonlight as below The image builds-up on the laptop monitor in real-time so I'm eyeballing the sky too but indirectly!

BTW - the light from the quasar takes 12 billion years to reach Earth so the photons collected last night began their journey long before the earth existed

[glojo]

Thank you very much for replying and I would definitely like to 'pick your brain' regarding how to take those very nice pictures.

When I bought my wife her telescope, I also purchased a Deep Sky Imager and the Lunar Planetary Imager with Autostar suite, but none of it has been used. Are these items capable of taking pictures similar to what you have acheived?

Regards

[nytecam]

Originally Posted by glojo

Thank you very much for replying and I would definitely like to 'pick your brain' regarding how to take those very nice pictures.

When I bought my wife her telescope, I also purchased a Deep Sky Imager and the Lunar Planetary Imager with Autostar suite, but none of it has been used. Are these items capable of taking pictures similar to what you have acheived? Regards

The Lunar imager will take nice shots of the moon and planets and is fairly easy to use to get pleasing results quickly.

The Deep Sky Imager [DSI] is designed specifically for faint deepsky objects - give it a go when you're ready - experiment is the way to learn and there effectively no cost eg film/processing or printing - just a little more disk-space on the laptop collecting the images.

Once you've got some images try freeware DeepSkyStacker to auto stack images of the same object together to get better, 'deeper' and more detailed results - almost Hubble pics from the backgarden

[glojo]

Thanks again for your quick response and for the explanation.

It is much appreciated and all will be passed on to 'she who must be obeyed'