Wide Feild astrophotography

Started by Astronomer2b, 07/07/2002 11:45PM
Posted 07/07/2002 11:45PM Opening Post
I just got a new scope not to long ago but im no good at polar aligning, i can get a star to stay in my eyepeiece a good 10-15 mins but never stays where i leave it. I was wondering if i tried a 10-15 min exposure piggybacked with a 50mm lens would i get much trailing since the star in the eyepeice doesnt move to much?

Thanks
Posted 07/08/2002 05:00AM #1
Check-out the book by Michael Covington (Astrophotography for the Amateur). The appendicies have all the information you are interested in, including things like exposure times for different objects at different focal lengths, tracking tolerances at differnet focal lengths, etc. Very readable style (IMO)

John Theodossy
http://geocities.com/myastrostuff/
Posted 07/09/2002 01:59AM #2
Hi Matthew

By "stop down" I mean setting the F/stop
a few notches lower than your 'fastest' setting.
My 50mm gives me f/stop ranges from 2 to 32.
I should've picked F/5.6 for a 10 min shot. By
stopping down, my 10 min image wouldn't have been
so 'washed out' by all those 'Milky' stars.
I'm trying to be more methodical so I'd also
recommend taking field notes with a notebook and pen.

Look forward to hearing how your first widefield shots
turn out.

smile