Utah Astrophotography
New Setup "First Light"
Drove up to Rockport Reservoir tonight to get out of the haze/fog caused by the inversion in SLC, was tired of waiting for it to clear so I could finally put my (new to me) Sirius EQ-G mount and Astrotech AT65EDQ scope to use. Only had about an hour after astro twilight and before the moon rose, of course setting everything up and getting it running was brand new to me so it took quite a bit of time. Not everything went well, I tried doing a 3-star alignment of the mount and the selected stars ended up being WAY off, I'm not sure if it's something to do with the "home" position of the mount or what. Really wish I could have done this from home for the first few times so I could look for answers on the internet while I worked on it. Stupid weather.
On top of that it was absolutely freezing cold, I left around 8:45pm and it was already below 10 degrees. Thought about continuing even with the bright moon up, but I was too cold and worn out from work today to bother with it. Guiding went well, though, I did a polar alignment using the nice sharpcap tool, then did my normal routine in PHD2 and was getting a total RMS error of ~0.5 arc-sec (~1.5"), not bad for my first go round with this mount.
The scope I bought, used, already had a known issue in that the stars aren't perfectly round, it might be a collimation issue and something I can work on (again, would be nice to do this at home in my driveway/backyard). There also appears to be some kind of artifact in the lower left hand corner of the image, not sure if that's related to my camera or the scope. It's not something I ever saw in my previous shots with lenses, though.
Only managed to get one 4-minute exposure at ISO 800 and one 10-minute exposure at ISO 400. Processed the 10 minute exposure because I was curious about my guiding accuracy, despite the star defect there doesn't appear to be any noticeable trailing. The star bloating is probably caused by the fog/haze that was rolling in while I was setting up, this winter has been unbelievable with the lousy weather, I think I've had 3-4 perfectly clear nights in the last 3 months.
New Setup "First Light"
Drove up to Rockport Reservoir tonight to get out of the haze/fog caused by the inversion in SLC, was tired of waiting for it to clear so I could finally put my (new to me) Sirius EQ-G mount and Astrotech AT65EDQ scope to use. Only had about an hour after astro twilight and before the moon rose, of course setting everything up and getting it running was brand new to me so it took quite a bit of time. Not everything went well, I tried doing a 3-star alignment of the mount and the selected stars ended up being WAY off, I'm not sure if it's something to do with the "home" position of the mount or what. Really wish I could have done this from home for the first few times so I could look for answers on the internet while I worked on it. Stupid weather.
On top of that it was absolutely freezing cold, I left around 8:45pm and it was already below 10 degrees. Thought about continuing even with the bright moon up, but I was too cold and worn out from work today to bother with it. Guiding went well, though, I did a polar alignment using the nice sharpcap tool, then did my normal routine in PHD2 and was getting a total RMS error of ~0.5 arc-sec (~1.5"), not bad for my first go round with this mount.
The scope I bought, used, already had a known issue in that the stars aren't perfectly round, it might be a collimation issue and something I can work on (again, would be nice to do this at home in my driveway/backyard). There also appears to be some kind of artifact in the lower left hand corner of the image, not sure if that's related to my camera or the scope. It's not something I ever saw in my previous shots with lenses, though.
Only managed to get one 4-minute exposure at ISO 800 and one 10-minute exposure at ISO 400. Processed the 10 minute exposure because I was curious about my guiding accuracy, despite the star defect there doesn't appear to be any noticeable trailing. The star bloating is probably caused by the fog/haze that was rolling in while I was setting up, this winter has been unbelievable with the lousy weather, I think I've had 3-4 perfectly clear nights in the last 3 months.