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Canon D60 60 second Orion

Started by mccarlp, 09/27/2002 07:29AM
Posted 09/27/2002 07:29AM Opening Post
Hi,

Sure any camera can shoot the moon. After all, we are talking about a "daylight" shot with the moon. However, I had seen so many promising images from a guy in europe with a D60 that I couldn't wait to try mine out on dark sky objects. Well the sky wasn't too dark. I tried a piggy back shot with an f/2 50mm lens and 30 seconds at ISO 400 pretty much gave bright white stars on a uniform gray background. So I spent most of the night shooting the ring nebula and the dumbbell nebula.

Towards the end of the night I tried Andromeda. I don't think that those shots will win any awards, but you can see two faint dust lanes even without processing in just 60 seconds at ISO 1000 on a 8" f10 SCT. I can't wait to try it out under really dark skies at the next new moon.

Finally, I tried Saturn, but it was still low enough to be gooped out by the poor seeing. I am almost convinced that web cams are the way to go for planets anyway. They are certainly easier to focus. But as I was getting ready to break down, I noticed that Orion was just starting to clear my neighbors trees. So I shot two frames at prime focus before the battery died on the camera and I decided to pack it in.

This is a single frame at ISO 1000 for 60 seconds and dark subtracted. I processed it in photoshop by adjusting the levels and resizing by 1/3 on each axis, so this is only 1/9th the original size (50%,radius 1, threshold 0 unsharp mask on the sized down version). Shot through my Meade 2080 8" SCT OTA mounted on my LXD-55.

Keep in mind this was last night with the moon making the sky a white soup and from a light polluted front yard in the city to boot. Also since it was only about ten degrees or so up when I shot it, the seeing was pretty bad. Did I mention I like my camera?

Thanks,

Paul McCarl


Attached Image:

mccarlp's attachment for post 1737
Posted 09/27/2002 08:12AM #1
I'm impressed at what you can do with the D60. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

Ron Wodaski
author of "The New CCD Astrnomy"
http://www.newastro.com

Ron Wodaski
New Astronomy Press
http://www.newastro.com