About to give it up!

[afterburn]

I am relativity new to astrophotography, in fact I am relatively new to photography in general. I have good success with taking shots of planets, the moon and sun, both piggybacked on my scope and Afocaly. Here are some of my shots: http://home.wavecable.com/~medell/medell/space.html I use a t-adapter to mount my camera (Olympus C-8080) to my scope and am using an Meade ETX-125.

My problem is deep sky objects; No matter what I do I cant seem to get a good shot. My pictures just don’t turn out right even after minor manipulation in photoshop. They seem to be blurred even thought I have my scope focused and my camera set to infinity. To be honest I don’t even know if it is a focus problem.

Could someone layout the steps I should take to get these shots? Remember I’m not familiar with all the terminology so it you could talk to me like a four year old. ;)

Thanks!

[ASEI]

Hi Afterburn.

[afterburn]

Hey ASEI, Small world! :lol:

[Lomitus]

Hey Afterburn,

Never give up! LOL!

Newbie at astropic's here to, but looking at the specs for that camera, it -could- be simply that the camera isn't up to DSO's. From the spec sheet I'm reading right now, while it seems to be an 8 megapixal camera, your maximum ISO equiv is only 400 and the max exposure time is 15 seconds...thru a Meade 125 ETX, that simply may not be enough to get sufficient light with DSO's. With a larger scope like a 10" or 12" (or larger) it might work, but with the smaller ETX...that would be my guess at least. What I would do is maybe find someone at a star party or local astronomy club who has a larger scope that would be willing to let you give your camera a try thru their scope and see how that turns out first and then go from there.

I know I've been looking at those new Canon digital "Rebels" myself (D10's I think?) and they look pretty impressive, but $1000 for a camera is just out of the question for me. I'm willing to bet they'd do the job nicely though :). I'm going to play around with some 35mm stuff with my old Canon, but I need to get a decent drive motor for my RA before I try any prime focus stuff (I also need to get better at polar alignment, but thats a different issue).

Again, I'm a newbie myself, so definatly take it with a grain of salt, but it might be worth considering at least. Good Luck!

Bright Blessings & Gentle Breezes,
Jim

[afterburn]

Thanks for the reply.

The max exposure time is eight minutes in manual mode. I have some piggyback shots that turn night to day so I know it’s not the camera. In fact this is the top of the line that Olympus has out in a digital. I just dropped 1000.00 on this one so I don’t think I will be getting a new one any time soon. :lol:

I think it is just user error somwhere, I'm just to green to figure it out.

[Dave Mitsky]

Are you guiding your shots? No telescope drive in the world is accurate enough to prevent trailing during prime focus shots. Manual guiding via an on off-axis guider or a separate guide scope, or automated guiding using a CCD autoguider is necessary to overcome periodic error. Another point to consider is that the Maksutov-Cassegrain design is not well suited for deep-sky imaging due to its high f/ratio. The higher the f/ratio of the instrument, the longer the exposure that is required.

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/I07/...I0704/I0704.HTM (http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/I07/I0704/I0704.HTM)

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab...mer.html#Guided (http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/6529/primer.html#Guided)

Achieving proper focus is still another potential source of trouble.

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/I08/...I0804/I0804.HTM (http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/I08/I0804/I0804.HTM)

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab...imer.html#Prime (http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/6529/primer.html#Prime)

Dave Mitsky

[afterburn]

Dave Mitsky, I am guiding my shots, my scope does a nice job of keeping an object dead center. I am doing one bad thing, and that is I’m not set up in polar mode. I know that this is not as accurate and the stars will rotate on you but I can keep a star to a pin point for quite a wile this way. I have a large grove of trees blocking Polaris at home so I can’t polar align.

My problem is not bringing the light out of an object, I just cant seem to dial it in.

Here is the best I seem to be able to do. I know the stars are trailing on this one, I think the cat bumped the tripod but this was only a 20 seconded exposure and was a piggybacked shot.

http://www.astronomyforbeginners.com/yourimages/uploaded/m13.jpg

Oh, the perseid meteor showers are picking up. ;)
http://home.wavecable.com/~medell/medell/meteor1.jpg

[Lomitus]

Dave brought up an interesting point....focus. Not sure what the specs on the ETX are (f/15 1900mm focal length?), but I'm sure it has a high focal ratio as my Orion Mak does...is it possible that your just getting "too much" magnification power here? I know with my Orion I just tried some daytime shoots through it (using a web cam) at prime focus and the mag was so high I wasn't really able to get any focus out of it at all other then a white blur. When I tried the same setup with my modified Bushnell refractor, I was able to get an image. The Bushnell has an f ratio of like 600mm where as the Orion has one of 1540mm. It could be that your having problems with the Earths atmosphere here...just too much mag at prime focus. With my Orion, I know that on most nights, the most I can push the mag is about 200-220x on a really clear dark still night, but I know that prime focus thru that scope would be -much- higher then that (if I'm not mistaken) and everything would indeed be blurred. Not sure if a focal reducer would help in this situation or not, but could be well worth a try. If I'm correct here, a 2x focal reducer should cut your f/ratio in half (err...I think...don't quote me on that).

Ok, this would probably be a good one for Dave to field as I really don't know the math here, but what you could probably try and do is find (borrow) an eye piece thats going to give you the same equivilant magnification as prime focus photography thru the scope (would that be like a 1mm eye piece or something? I would think a 3mm would suffice for the experiment) and check to see if you can actually -see- an image thru the eye piece thats not blurred...that would give you an indication of whether it's an issue with the camera and/or your settings or simply too much mag...I'm willing to bet it's the later. If you can't get a clear, unblurred image with the 3mm eye piece visually (or even a 6mm with a 2x Barlow), then it's a safe bet your not going to get any good pics either. I know with my Orion, a 3mm eye piece would give me 513x mag which would be totally unusable...for viewing or astropics and I'm pretty sure it's similar with the Meade if not worse.

Again, the way to go here might be a good 2x or 3x focal reducer (short of buying a new scope)...if it is a mag problem thats about the only way I can think of with my limited experience to correct for it.

On that camera itself, I'm curious (not critsizing here) why did you go with the Olympus? I've been looking at a number of the high end digitals (Olympus, Fugi and Canon mainly) and to me at least, the Canon's look like they gave you more for your money (except for the megapixal issue perhaps). Granted, I am a fan of Canon cameras to begin with and since all my 35mm gear is Canon and all my lenses "should" fit the new Rebels (I'll check for sure if/when I go to buy), either way this is the better choice for me. Olympus is a really good brand though, just wondering if you had compaired (and for the price range I'm sure you did) and what you came up with :).

BTW, the pics you posted, especially of the meteor, were really sweet!

Good Luck with it!
Bright Blessings,
Jim

[ORSkywatcher]

Afterburn,


There is a solution to your problem. Find QCUIAG on the yahoo groups site. Itt is the Quick Cam and Unusual Instrement Astophoto Group or some thing close to that. They have several free programs you can download that you might find useful. KCCC3 tools and AstroStax . These will allow you to manipulate your images and to "stack" frames. This way you can pick your best images and pile them one atop another to build up you image. This is a very powerful way to develope more information than is possible with just one expossure. You can even take movies if your camera is capable of that and them pluch the best frames out and stack them to develope your final image.

Give them a try, I think ou will be impressed with your results. It already looks like you've made a great start.

Mike Quilty
President So. Oregon Skywatchers

[afterburn]

Thanks Mike Quilty
I have RegiStax2D, RegiStar, and every thing Adobe has come out with. I already stack some of my images and touch a lot of them up in Photoshop. But I will find that group anyway. There does not seem to be a whole lot of us out there yet.

lomitus1
Yeah, the 125 has a 1900 Focal length. I normally use a 40mm eyepiece. To be honest I don’t know how far I can push the magnification but that doesn’t seem too bad. I have seen many deep sky shots from the 125 that look awesome and I don’t have any trouble with terrestrial shots.

As far as the camera, I chose it for a few reasons; The lenses is top notch, it takes great wide angle shots, less than a one second startup time almost no lag time that you see with all the other digital cameras when snapping a shot. It has a magnesium alloy body (not plastic), I can take movies with sound, and a ton of other reasons. The reviews on this thing are great as well. Lastly, I wanted a great terrestrial camera as well. I was comparing for about a month and for what I wanted and needed this blew all the other out of the water. Yeah, I did a bit of research. :lol:

Now as far as being in focus... I don't know if you can tell anything from this but, with that camera and scope (prime focus) I have picture of a spiderweb 150 feet up a tree and over 1/4 mile away and you can see baby spiders in it, Perfect focus. Verry cool! I can post it if you like. :lol:

* 8.31-megapixel (8.0 effective) CCD delivering up to 3,264 x 2,448-pixel resolution images.
* 1.8-inch, color LCD display that tilts 90 degrees upward and 45 degrees downward.
* Olympus 5x, 7.1 - 35.6mm, f2.4 - f/8.0 zoom lens (equivalent to a 28-140mm lens on a 35mm camera).
* 3x Digital Zoom.
* Dual (contrast detection / phase-difference detection) AF system with Auto (iESP), Manual, Macro, Super Macro, and Super Macro Manual Focus control, with AF assist light for low-light shooting.
* Shutter speeds from 1/4,000 to 15 seconds, with a Bulb setting limited to 8 minutes.
* Program AE, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual exposure modes, plus four preset Scene modes.
* My Mode for saving custom user settings.
* Spot, Multi, Center-weighted or ESP multi-patterned metering systems.
* Adjustable sensitivity with an Auto setting and 50, 64, 80, 100, 125, 160, 200, 250, 320 and 400 ISO equivalents.
* Auto Bracketing, Sequence Shooting and Panoramic capture modes.
* Adjustable White Balance with 11 settings, plus a WB color adjustment function.
* Built-in flash with four operating modes, three Slow Sync modes.
* External flash hot-shoe accepts generic strobes as well as dedicated Olympus units.
* Noise Reduction for improved image quality on long exposures.
* Optional autofocus-assist illuminator.
* Live histogram display option.
* Image sharpness, saturation, hue and contrast adjustments.
* Black-and-White and Sepia capture modes.
* QuickTime Movie mode with sound, and Voice Caption mode.
* Compatible with optional infrared remote control.
* JPEG, uncompressed TIFF, and RAW file formats.
* Images saved to either CompactFlash or xD-Picture Card memory cards (32MB xD-Picture Card included in the box in the US).
* USB Auto-Connect for fast image download.
* Video cable for connecting to a television set.
* Software CD with Olympus' Camedia Master utility software (includes QuickTime and USB drivers).
* DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) compatibility and print settings.
* Power from a single lithium-ion battery pack or optional AC adapter (battery and charger included).

[astronomy2004]

afterburn. nice pics.
in this shot those stars are the Pleiades.
and don't give up.
http://home.wavecable.com/%7Emedell/medell/md.html

[afterburn]

Thanks astronomy2004,
Someone else told me that as well. I am surprised that I didn’t catch that right off. I really need to update that page, I have about 200 more shots that I want to put up :lol:

You can see more of my stuff at:
http://www.thespacesite.com/ (under the name “Afterburn”)
And here: http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/galle...ery.asp?c=14642 (http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/gallery.asp?c=14642)