April 21st,2024 I have found an issue with stray light getting into my astrophotos when using my BK80ED 80mm refractor. Here is an example of the stray light. Those arcs of white light appeared immediately after I performed a Meridian flip. I tried everything to verify it was not terrestrial light and nothing changed this issue. When I finally moved the mount away from this target a little bit I noticed that these arcs of light moved as well. I concluded that the source of this stray light is starlight…
Category: Imaging
Off-axis Guider…the first year
Over the 2021/2022 winter I bought a ZWO OAG. I spent those cold months figuring out how to incorporate this device into my set-up. My post Adding an Off-Axis Guider to my Set-up goes into lots of detail regarding back focus requirements for my two telescopes (Celestron 8” EdgeHD SCT and a Skywatcher BK80ED refractor). It wasn’t until May that I finally got a chance to use my set-up “under the stars”. Don’t let your imaging camera drop to the ground! My post “First Light” using an Off-Axis Guider explains…
Optimum Exposure Times
This tends to be a “Holy Grail” kind of topic. I have experienced far too many evenings where I have imaged for hours but the sky glow corrupted the images so badly that the images were not usable. I end up asking myself “would a longer exposure been a better choice?” or “was this just a night to keep the telescope in the house?I decided that I need to research this subject more. I have read lots about “swamping the Read Noise” which sounds like a good scheme. If I…
First Light with an O III Filter
When I bought my first Telescope in 2011 I also bought a BAADER O III filter(10nm) and Light Polution Filter. I had never tried out the O III filter until a few nights ago. The moon was full so I would typical avoid deep sky objects. I decide to try the O III filter because it is a narrowband filter. I decided to image the Crescent Nebula with my 8″ EdgeHD scope at F10 (2032mm FL). I had previously imaged this nebula a few weeks ago using my OPTOLONG L-eNhance…
Adding an Off-Axis Guider to my Set-up
I finally decided to purchase an Off-Axis Guider (OAG) for my astrophotography set-up. Even though I am a QHY camera guy, I decided to purchase a ZWO OAG. The ZWO OAG is is a little less money than the QHYOAG-M and the ZWO OAG has the ability to easily rotate the camera…within limits. I also decided to buy a new guide camera. I chose the QHY5L-II-M because I have written lots of software that uses the QHYCCD.dll to access my cameras so I didn’t want to start over using a…