Posts Made By: Jean-Denis Douvier

Same night.
Canon 20Da at 1600 ISO, Takahashi epsilon 160 f/3.3.
16 x 3min exposures processed with ImagePlus and Photoshop.

Same night.
Canon 20Da at 1600 ISO. Takahashi epsilon 160 f/3.3.

10 x 3min exposures, processed with ImagePlus and Photoshop.

From US21 between Elkin (NC) and Roaring gap. Very windy. Celestron 9.25 with focal reducer, single shot ISO 1600, Canon 20Da, 0.25s exposure. Taken at 7:03pm.

I also had my regular Canon 20D on a tripod, next to the telescope, with a Canon L lens set at 40mm and f/4. The view is east to Pilot Mountain and Hanging Rock state park. One picture taken every 5 minutes.

I did some experiment this week-end, on Saturday. The sky was clear with excellent transparency, no wind in Charlotte, NC. The light pollution is bad (limiting visual magnitude 4.7), but apparently it's possible to take pictures, so I tried, with the Hutech light pollution filter (as always).
I just had a custom job made on my C9.25, a new metal plate to attach my FS-60 to work as an auto-guider. I use the webcam Philips ToUcam as the guiding chip, connected to my laptop where PHDGuiding is running. I have the f/6.3 reducer on the C9.25 to give a focal length of 1480mm.
The Canon 20Da is set at ISO 1600, takes 2 minutes exposure frames. 44F, but some darn dew came to ruin a lot of frames. I had only 24 usable frames over 40.
I calibrated, aligned, stacked with ImagePlus, removed the light pollution with Photoshop, and cropped the image (half in each direction) because the edges were so ugly. A little boost as usual in contrast, luminosity, reduce background noise, boost saturation, and voila !

I never thought to be able to take M51 from a light polluted sky like that. When I can't go to the Blue Ridge Parkway (or too lazy or tired) to play with photons next to Ivan and others, it's a good option.
Thanks for looking.

Hi,
This was on Monday night from the Blue Ridge Parkway (NC). Celestron C9.25 working at 1480mm focal length with reducer, f/6.3. Canon 20Da at ISO 1600. 29 frames 3 minutes each for a total of 1h27. Autoguiding with Tak FS60, Phillips webcam and PHDGuiding software, Losmandy G-11 mount.
ImagePlus, Photoshop and PixInsight for image processing. The picture has been cropped 1/4 of the original size.
It's amazing what automatic guiding can do compared to manual guiding.
Thansk for looking !

Hi,
Same set up as M51, same night. This time, only 54 minutes of exposure, 18 single frames. The galaxy is much lower on the horizon so I picked up a lot more light pollution.
Thanks for looking !

Hi,

I got this picture of M42 from the Blue Ridge Parkway on Friday around 8pm. Losmandy G-11, auto guided with a FS60, Phillips webcam and PHDGuding. Canon 20Da at ISO 1600 on a Takahashi E-160 f/3.3.
1h 16min 40s total (29 x 2min + 10 x 1min + 10 x 30s + 10 x 15s + 10 x 7s).

Thanks for looking ! Clear skies

Hi,

This was fun. I used the C9.25 at f/6.3 for this one. It's a mosaic, M81 from 02/02 and M82 from 02/08. Canon 20Da at ISO 1600.
The sky was clear for M81 and I had time, so it's 14 x 5min for that galaxy.
The other day, after M42, the sky got cloudy too early, so I got only 7 x 5min for M82 with stars a little bigger due to clouds.

Thanks for looking ! Clear skies

Good luck this time over Charlotte, NC, where the clouds magically disappeared for the entire show !
I used a regular tripod, Canon 200mm lens with 2x extender, f/5.6, ISO 1600, 2.5s. One image not edited, out of the 100+ I took.
Thanks for looking, and hope the weather gods were with you too.