After two nights of spending around 5 hours each in the freezing cold and failing in an epic way to shoot anything interesting in the night sky I decided that I would try again the following night regardlessly. But this time around I would get to the bottom of the countless issues i was experiencing, no matter what: The guiding system couldn't find any stars to get a lock on and was unable to talk to the motors turning the mount, which couldn't prevent the stars from trailing even though the mount had been aligned to Polaris, etc.
If you get into astrophotography on a budget (and we're talking 4 figures here) don't expect plug & play, but a nerve wracking mess of hardware and software, none of which play nicely with each other.
Anyway, I tracked down the broken connection to the motors (it was the camera driver, don't use the one that comes in the box), I made sure the guiding camera would have focus (which didn't make a difference in the end, because the software just straighout ignored stars and went for noise instead) and I discovered why the motors couldn't keep up with the rotation of the night sky (well, Earth rotation, to be precise).
That discovery would eventually save the day - err night.
I was out from around 9pm to 3am and for five hours it seemed like it would be just another utter failure. I then decided to get the Nikon anyway and shoot what the telescope was pointing at and got trails, of course. I was frustrated with the motor kit that was supposed to counter the rotation anyway, so I turned it off completely and took another shot. Then I noticed something odd: There was still trailing, of course, but it was almost perpendicular to the trailing from the shot before. How was that possible? I came to the conclusion that, although I connected the motors according to the manual the plugs must be flipped. It didn't make any sense but with nothing left to lose those plugs swapped positions.
And lo and behold, the stars ground to a halt. Victory!
Orion was already high in the sky and I was determined to shoot an image of this awesome looking nebula.
I only got a handful of shots in before the hardware played up yet again (going to address that as well shortly) but it was enough to make them into this picture. It's as sharp as I could get, I'm not sure why it's still kind of blurry but I'm going to find out.
I'm not the one to give up easily.
OMG wow its amazing.
Beautiful isn't it? :)
getting better Thorsten nice job...are you addicted?
Addicted is too strong a word, ambitious is more like it ;) The thing is, I've spent roughly $2000 on this DS Photography project - I was going to spend half of that so I'm way over budget.
The first time I did that was with my Nikon gear and I had to promise myself that I'd try very, very hard to make it worth the expense. The same applies for the DS kit, if I spend that kind of money there simply is no excuse for giving in when the going gets tough. As long as there's even a slight chance of success I'll carry on. If at some point the sky had cast over I'd have called it quits, because there's nothing I can do about that.
I have a nexstar 127L I was going to sell it because i hadn't done much sky viewing. I am going to try to do some deep sky photography when the skies clear here perhaps over christmas. I am told though that this telescope is not a tracking device but just viewing. A lot of the terms you used in your write up I do not understand and others as well. I guess I will find out by trial and error, (as I usually do). I love your image. I have done a lot of MW photography in the eastern sierras of california, and it does get addictive. I guess originally coming from the UK and not seeiny the stars when I was there is something I cannot get over going to see in the US. I would love to get the image you got.
It basically boils down to shutter speed. If you have a tracking device you can expose for 5 seconds easily (that is what I picked), if you don't, you must not exceed 1-2 seconds shutter time.
So assuming you don't have tracking, it becomes a question of which ISO to pick and how many shots to take. You will have to try which ISO works for you by taking test shots. Once you've sorted that out, I'd start by taking 100 shots, all the time making sure to keep M42 within the frame.
When you got those 100 frames, get Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and start learning how to stack your shots with DSS. Don't let light/dark/bias/flat frames confuse you, just go for light frames (the actual pictures) and ignore the rest for the time being.
thanks Thorsten, the theory of the light dark and flat frames I don't understand anyway Will do what you suggest - I have to wait until the smoke dies down, hopefully soon. Can't complain too much about this, at least I am not one of the 1,200 people missing - it's just awful.
Blogged about it - https://westheider.com/index.php/2018/11/18/to-the-stars/
You sure went through a lot, but what a wonderful picture, it could not be any better.
Thanks Dr J, I do hope it'll get easier from now on, I have an idea to fix the auto guiding problem already, just need the weather for it.
Great shot. I caught that you used a 5 sec exposure, what was the focal length?