Basel (and Cambridge) Astrophotography: febbraio 2013

martedì 5 febbraio 2013

Canon EOS 1100D and DeepSkyStacker

At the beginning of 2013, I thought it was time to start with some deep space objects.
My Imaging Source camera is not suitable for galaxies and nebula, so I decided to buy a digital reflex camera. I found a good price for the new Canon EOS 1100D, so I bought it.

My idea was to start with piggyback photos, without using the telescope, so I needed a good macro lens. I found a cheap one: Sigma 300mm.

I wanted to try an extreme technique: to take many many pictures of a DSO (deep sky object) without any tracking, just putting the camera on a fixed tripod, then adding them together with the user friendly software DSS (DeepSkyStacker): http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html

It was very helpful the tutorial of Forrest Tanaka:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0JSTF8SGi4

Here two images obtained with this technique, during our ski-week in the Dolomites...

Orion Nebula 18/2/2013 from San Cassiano (val Badia).

Canon EOS 1100D on a fixed tripod (no tracking).

300 frames 1sec (5 min tot exposure). Macro lens 300 mm

f/5.6, ISO 3200. 40 dark frames. Elaborated with DSS.

Pleiades 19/2/2013 from San Cassiano (val Badia).

Canon EOS 1100D on a fixed tripod (no tracking).

300 frames 1sec (5 min tot exposure). Macro lens 300 mm

f/5.6, ISO 3200. 40 dark frames. Elaborated with DSS.

sabato 2 febbraio 2013

Finally Saturn! 31/01/2013

I was waiting for this moment from a very long time... I woke up suddenly in the night thinking that the sky was probably clean: it was. I run downstairs and mounted the telescope quickly. With a very rough polar alignment I pointed Saturn at 4.45 am. The planet was quite low on the south horizon (about 20 degrees).