Takahashi FSQ-106
Takahashi EM200
Canon 1000Da (modified for astrophotography) with Hutech IDAS LPS (front filter)
Exposure:
8 x 182 sec,
2 x 242 sec
FOV=88.45% of the original frame
Autoguiding with PHD guiding , Toucam 740 , Celestron ED80
Alignment, calibration, stacking with DeepSkyStacker
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Thank you for your great comments!
This is my best ever astroimage submitted in a challenge. It is not easy to control signal-to-noise ratio in astrophotography with just 10 exposures. But my brand-new 1000Da has an excellent overall performance and I am glad for this.
I would like to explain shortly that Astronomy has nothing to do with Astrology. These two terms are confused quite often but clearly, Astronomy is a science while Astrology concerns predictions for the future (not proven to be true or "real").
Finally, yes, this kind of photography is mostly demanding.
Explaining quickly the difficulty of the whole thing:
- Must have a very precise tracking mount
- Perfect optics
- Perfect calibration of the equipment in software and hardware (mount balancing, polar alignment, focusing, auto-guiding, etc)
- Good weather (transparency), low atmospheric temperature, low relative humidity, low wind..
- Low light pollution (and moonless nights..)
- Careful preparation and planning of the targets to be photographed
- Succesfull processing of all the frames (lights, darks, bias, flats)
Statistics
Place: 9 out of 366 Avg (all users): 6.7843 Avg (commenters): 7.8462 Avg (participants): 6.7387 Avg (non-participants): 6.9048 Views since voting: 3036 Views during voting: 892 Votes: 153 Comments: 23 Favorites: 7 (view)
Absolutely stunning shot with that "enry level" camera, thou your lense is not bad :) I will get one for me too, iR- modified of cource. I've always said that if I get millions in lottery I will move to Greece - such a great place for astro shooting. Here in Finland it is so frustrating, nearly hopeless - when it is dark it is cold and when it is warm (all time record today in Finalnd 37C) there is too much light.
Thanks for sharing. Reading about astrophotography, I realize just how difficult an image like this is to create. Well done, really deserves real estate on the front page.
It's refreshing to see astrophotography score high here. It's a niche, I think, and can be easily lost on the voters here. So glad that this did so well. Congrats!
Incredible! It just blows my mind when I see shots like this and start thinking about the size of the universe, and how small and insignificant we are in the whole scheme of things... : )
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