Only about Astrophotography!
Making beautiful astronomical images of deep sky objects like nebulas and galaxies is not easy. One of the challenge lies in being able to ensure the telescope is precisely following the movement of the sky caused by earth’s rotation. First, one need a telescope mount that is of sufficient precision. Secondly, the mount needs to be properly…
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For those of you who have been following my blog, you know that have been experiencing difficulties with being able to capture images with nice round and tight stars (i.e. sharper images). There are many factors that can contribute to image quality. If one or more of these factors are present in your setup. You can end up…
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On march 30th, 2013, after the acquisition of my new CCD camera (i.e. the SBIG ST-8300M, the filter wheel and filters), with the weather looking promising, I carefully planned an imaging session with the goal of capturing LRGB data of the Sunflower Galaxy (i.e. Messier 63). I used CCD Commander to automate the acquisition of the following frames: 20 X 6 minutes…
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Early last week, in my quest to find the source of my elongated stars problem, I was doing research on the internet when I came across a paper by Craig Stark titled: “What to do When PHD Guiding isn’t Push Here Dummy“. In his paper, Mr. Stark discusses the possible effect of gravity on stars…
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This week, the weather has been very good…it’s the fourth clear night in a row. Futhermore, I am attending a CCD conference on Saturday…what more could you ask to satisfy an astrophotographer? On October 25th, I contacted Moonlite Telescope Accessories about the broken bearing on my focuser, Ron Newman replied on the 27th telling me to ship the focuser to him and explaining…
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Last night, in order to try to reduce the differential flexure problem that have been plaguing me, I replaced the guiding camera 2″ extension tube I was using with the ED80T CF with a 1.25″ diagonal with the hope to be able to move the draw-tube more into the focuser. With the 2″ extension tube, my draw-tube was…
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October 20th I imaged LBN640 taking 45 X 4 minutes sub-exposures at ISO 800. Using DeepSkyStacker and Maxim DL, I did some analysis on the sub-eposures produced during the session. Here is what I found: Over the course of the 3 hours, the entire imaged drifted 38 pixels; Since my image scale is 0.812 arcseconds/pixel, the total drift…
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Monday night, I decided to conduct a quick test to confirm whether or not the modifications (IR filter removal and cooling) of my Canon 350D had indeed introduced tilt of the CMOS assembly. Here is what I did: I replaced my modified 350D with my non modified 450D; Focused; Took 15 unguided images of 10 seconds each, near…
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Yesterday, I took the time to disassemble the cooled 350D from the main OTA and here is what I did: Inspected the T-Ring to make sure that the central portion of the T-Ring was square with the outer ring (i.e. the central portion is maintained in the outer ring by 3 small screws). A few weeks…
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After fixing the Starshoot Autoguider Camera, I re-installed everything and did some tests again (i.e. took 60, 120, 180 and 240 subs while guiding). To my great deception, all the subs showed elongated stars again. However, the elongations were not oriented in the same direction (i.e. parrallel). In the upper left, the elongation was oriented toward the…
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