Hi there, I normally post in the wedding / people / gear forums, but occasionally I take an astrophoto-- far fewer with twin 8 month olds and a 22 month old though!
Andrew, this is really interesting...I was just telling someone today how impressed I am with photographers that go to such great lengths to get the shot. I can't even work out how long 43 x 180s is! (Maybe its the longest period of time you get to yourself away from the kids!)
cheers Andrew
Andrew Welsh wrote:
Nugeny, I took 43 pictures (exposures) that were 180 seconds- 3 minutes long each. I used special astrophoto software to stack them together.
Thanks. you would mind telling me what soft ware? DSS? I have been wanting to do this kind of photo stacking. BTW, how did you focus? Thanks ahead. Bob
DSS would work, but I used a program called Iris. Both are free- Iris is geekware and much more powerful-- and difficult for newcomers- to use than DSS. I focused using live view and EOS Utility with the camera hooked up to a laptop. The EOS utility software functioned as my timer as well.
Oh and to answer your earlier question, yes I did track.. the camera + lens were mounted piggyback on a Meade LX200 8-inch telescope.
Andrew Welsh wrote:
DSS would work, but I used a program called Iris. Both are free- Iris is geekware and much more powerful-- and difficult for newcomers- to use than DSS. I focused using live view and EOS Utility with the camera hooked up to a laptop. The EOS utility software functioned as my timer as well.
Oh and to answer your earlier question, yes I did track.. the camera + lens were mounted piggyback on a Meade LX200 8-inch telescope.
So bad you still have to track. I thought you could just stacking instead of tracking. Years ago back to the dark age before digital area, I used to have a big telescope on top of my house. Well, I don't want to go back there again.
But with a small telescope I think we can do wonderfull things nowadays as your images proved it. You do fine jobs.
you could do a similar shot w/o tracking, but you would be limited to 5-10 sec exposures before you got star trails. My shots were 3 minutes long, and even a fisheye lens would have trails at that long of an exposure.
Andrew Welsh wrote:
you could do a similar shot w/o tracking, but you would be limited to 5-10 sec exposures before you got star trails. My shots were 3 minutes long, and even a fisheye lens would have trails at that long of an exposure.
Andrew, I lost you. You took 180" to take 43 exposures. So each exp would have lasted 4.1 sec. not 3 minutes. What do I miss here?
