Deep Sky with C8

Well, just yesterday I bought a T-ring connector to use The Canon at the prime focus of the C8.
I have been so lucky because the night has been fantastic here in Binningen! For the first time I have left the telescope open with the corrector glass completely exposed all the nigh (from 9pm to 5am) and no sign of dew at all! I decided to work on M81 (the Bode Galaxy) and M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy) again, to compare the new results with those obtained in the biggyback fashion...

M81 - Bode Galaxy

Canon at the prime focus of C8 (tracking not guided)

90x30 sec frames , 40 dark , ISO 800 

stacked with DSS and elaborated with Gimp

M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy

Canon at the prime focus of C8 (tracking not guided)

50x60 sec frames , 40 dark , ISO 800 

stacked with DSS and elaborated with Gimp

Whirlpool galaxy 10/03/2013

Four days ago I  spent a couple of hours to take 160 x 30 sec photos of the Whirlpool galaxy M51. I made it putting a Canon 1100D camera on my Celestro C8 SC telescope in piggyback position. Unlikely the night was very wet, so after 20 min the camera lens was completely covered with dew. Nevertheless 40 frames were good enough to create this image:

                      

Canon EOS 1100D piggybacked on C8 (tracking not guided)

40x30 sec frames , 30 dark, f / 5.6 , ISO 800 , macro 300mm

stacked with DSS and elaborated with Gimp

M81 and M82 galaxies 04/03/2013

Second experiment with piggybacking...

M81 and M82 Galaxies - 04/03/2013 from Binningen. Canon EOS 1100D piggybacked on a GE mount (no guide). 300mm macro lens, f/5.6, ISO 800, 120 x 30 sec RAW frames + 50 dark frames, elaborated with DSS and Gimp.

Orion Nebula 03/03/2013

This is my first picture done in a proper piggyback asset, with the Canon mounted upon the C8, tracking the stars but with no guiding system.

Orion Nebula 03/03/2013 from Binningen. Canon EOS 1100D piggybacked on GE mount (no guide). 300mm macro lens. f/5.6, ISO 800, 100 RAW frames 20 sec expo each + 60 dark frames, elaborated with DSS.

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.

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).

400 frames 1/25 sec stacked ed elaborated with Registax

HD Moon 31/01/2013

I am very happy with my Imaging Source camera! These are two high definition pictures of the moon.

Each is obtained with 5% of 400 1/125 shots with Imaging Source cam elaborated with Registax.

Mare Serenitatis and crater Posidonius (the big one)

Mare Nectaris with craters Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina

Jupiter 18/11/2012

This are my best picture of the big planet. I used a red filter to enhance the clouds details.

Celestron C8
CCD Imaging Source DMK31AU03.AS Monochrome with a red filter.
800 frames at 1/20 sec elaborated with Registax.

10 min delayed images to show the planet rotation

Color picture obtained stacking three RGB images

Jupiter 20/10/2012

After some tries, I understood that the quality of my CCD Imaging Source DMK31AU03.AS Monochrome, was incredibly good compared with the Orion Starshot Color cam. 

I decided to left the Orion cam in a draw...

This picture, obtained stacking about 100 frames with Registax,

has a problem of over-elaboration. Some details are too enhanced

In this sequence three pictures taken with 10 min interval

from each other. The planet rotation is visible.

First shots

Here two Jupiter pictures,  the first ugly attempts...

22/02/2012 - Very bad image taken with the Orion Starshot cam. I thought my C8 had some serious collimation problems...

09/09/2012 - Second attempt. Too fuzzy. It's almost impossible to see any details.

The Moon 27/08/2012

Pictures of the moon taken with Orion Starshot cam as single frames. The images have been taken with Celestron C8 SC GT telescope from my garden in Binningen (Basel land CH).

Crater Gassendi area

Copernicus (in the middle) and Eratosthenes (in the shade)

Mare Cognitum and crater Bullialdus

Collimation

In date 15/03/2012 I decided to do a collimation process for my C8, following the instruction of Thierry Legault in his fantastic webpage:   http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/collim.html

This was the situation before

As you can see the diffraction pattern is definitely asymmetric. Working on the three screws on the secondary mirror, I succeeded in obtaining this:

Really better, but not perfect, so I finished the job with some more little adjustments.