Here's a little something literally out of this world!



The Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

The setup:
BackyardEOS software driving my Canon 60D via usb
Canon 60D mounted to my Meade 102mm APO refractor telescope
Telescope mounted to Computer guided Equatorial mount

The final image is a composite of 21 frames:
6 x 10 minutes @ iso 400
6 x 10 minutes @ iso 800,
6 x 5 minutes @ iso 1000 with oxygen III filter
3 x 5 minutes @ iso 800 with a Deep Sky filter

Frames were masked, enhanced & stacked in Photoshop CS6

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Something a little more terrestrial!

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Woot! The West Australian has picked up my images

Lightning causes power outages - The West Australian

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Nice shots Ross!

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So is that anything like what the Andromeda Galaxy looks like, or is it what us humans have constructed it to look like with various camera tricks/settings?

It's an actual image of Andromeda taken through a Meade 102mm refractor telescope.

Because our eyes aren't sensitive enough to see all the colours through a telescope at night it appears grey to our eyes. Cameras are more sensitive to the colours and more so when you stack different exposures (just like HDR images) the colours come through more vividly.

Stacking the images also adds more depth of field than we can see (again the limiting factor is our vision at night).

Here's how the Hubble space telescope see's Andromeda (they only need to take a single frame compared to my 30 odd shot (21 used)).

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New scope arrived yesterday! I bought a Celestron 6SE SCT.

I did a quick backyard session last night - Wow this scope is pin sharp!!

Here's a quick single frame 32 second exposure of the Orion Nebula shot with my 60D through the newbie.



I can't wait to get the proper pc based tracking up & running and get some stacked images going - this thing is sweet!

So much more power and clarity than my 102mm refractor - stacked CCD images with the 6SE are going to jump off the screen!

The new scope is the Orange one

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very impressive

My latest Deep Sky imaging attempt.....

NGC 2070 - Tarantula Nebula



Location: Wembley Downs
Scope: Celestron 6SE (150mm)
Filter: Baader UHC-s (IR & light pollution block)
Camera: Canon 600d
Exposures: 30 x 45 seconds @ iso 800
Processing: aligned & stacked with Registax6

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Is it hard hooking the camera to the telescope?