Hi all!
Today I wanted to share my first real attempt of capturing my very first space object. The m31 Andromeda Galaxy.
Living in central Gothenburg it is hard to do a fair gear test. My wife and I got a Celestron Omni XLT 150 with the Cg-4(Eq3-2) mount which works fine but I who also likes to photograph though it would be fun to take some astro-pictures. Well, I made a list of small uppdrages I needed to be able to track and mount my Sony a7iii.
Got a laser collimator, camera mount and so on. And took our setup with us to vacation to Öland (an island south east of Sweden) where it is quite dark. The small house we rented was placed really good until it got dark. Few hundred meters north-west is a damn stone factory with some spots on all night. It wasn't bothering to us but to the telescope it was. I found out then I got home and noticed a glare. Couldn't figure out till I tried to stack Pleiades, which was bit too low on the sky anyways but it was also close to the lights, however, thankfully Andromeda was bit more to the east and higher upp. Luckily it worked alright and I got to learn some limitations of my gear. I would like to share some of it if you care to read.
My gear:- Reflector: Celestron Omni XLT 150
- Mount: Celestron CG-4 (EQ3-2)
- Sky-Watcher Polarscope for EQ3-2
- Enhanced Dual Axis Motor drive
- Extended DIY power supply
- Camera: Sony a7iii
Firstly my collimation seems off. I don't know if it is my primary or secondary. Probably both!
Secondly, I didn't use any Bahtinov-mask for the focus, so that might be off slightly as well. (About to get one cnc-printed).
While doing some brief research of how much weight the mount is capable of handling I got both high and low numbers. While testing the motors I found that I am pretty much at the weight limit. Still after doing some test I could probably push 30sec exposures but I wanted to be safe, so I did 20sec exposures.
- ISO: 800
- Shutter: 20sec
- Lights: 256 exposures
- Bias: 75 images
- Darks: 50 images
- Flats 50 images
Next items I will add to my equipment will be obviously the Bathinov-mask and then dew-shield/heater. Then I will just play around and adjust/optimize further with the gear I've got.
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