The weather last night was positively super so I set out to test the Daystar refractor scope that came with the CATE Experiment for some deep sky imaging. I used the same mount that we used in the 2017 solar eclipse experiment as well.
I really didn't think that the mount would perform as well as it did. But I was able to get up to 15 seconds of exposure occasionally before I encountered star streaking. That may have been more an issue of lack of polar alignment than the motors themselves, as well as the scope not being balanced all that well due to the additional weight of the Canon T3i that I used to capture the images below. I think I will have to put the Daystar scope on a longer mounting bar to achieve better balance.
And add to this the fact that the Moon was near 1st quarter and "polluting" the sky with its reflected light from the Sun. All the same, the weather couldn't have been more promising!
Since the mount is not a "go-to" mount I had to rely upon the age-old eyeball to put me in the ballpark of the objects I knew would be good tests for the setup.
All the images that follow were post-processed using Luminar (for Mac and PC, now).
First up was M 57, the Ring Nebula. Its that little greenish ball near the top center of the image. Granted, this was a challenge, to be sure for this setup but I was pleasantly surprised all the same! It is so very small that I wasn't even confident that it would be more than just a green-blue star, but there it is!
Next I headed over to the great globular cluster in Hercules, M 13. This was easy to image and it was much larger in diameter and easy to see!
I really didn't think that the mount would perform as well as it did. But I was able to get up to 15 seconds of exposure occasionally before I encountered star streaking. That may have been more an issue of lack of polar alignment than the motors themselves, as well as the scope not being balanced all that well due to the additional weight of the Canon T3i that I used to capture the images below. I think I will have to put the Daystar scope on a longer mounting bar to achieve better balance.
And add to this the fact that the Moon was near 1st quarter and "polluting" the sky with its reflected light from the Sun. All the same, the weather couldn't have been more promising!
Since the mount is not a "go-to" mount I had to rely upon the age-old eyeball to put me in the ballpark of the objects I knew would be good tests for the setup.
All the images that follow were post-processed using Luminar (for Mac and PC, now).
First up was M 57, the Ring Nebula. Its that little greenish ball near the top center of the image. Granted, this was a challenge, to be sure for this setup but I was pleasantly surprised all the same! It is so very small that I wasn't even confident that it would be more than just a green-blue star, but there it is!
M 57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra
Next I headed over to the great globular cluster in Hercules, M 13. This was easy to image and it was much larger in diameter and easy to see!
Here is a cropped image of it:
Next, I headed over to the Dumbbell Nebula, M 27. Again, these are "stacked" images using DeepSkyStacker and post-processed to bring out more color and detail. Again I was quite well pleased that the scope and mount performed so well.
Here it is cropped in:
Now I went to the north-eastern sky and captured the Double Cluster in Perseus. This was a breeze to find and capture due to the large area of sky and the fact that I am just imaging stars.
Now it was on to the Andromeda Galaxy, M 31. This is a stack of 12 images at 10 second exposure times (total: 2 minutes) with the ISO set at 3200 on my Canon T3i camera. Very nice! I will be trying more of this in the future with many more images to stack! Should be beautiful!
Finally, I decided to try and capture a much dimmer galaxy, the Triangulum Galaxy, not far from Andromeda. This again was a stack of about 12 images, each for 15 seconds, with the ISO set to (12,800 (extreme!) With a lot of post processing of the final stack image this is what I got!
Camera running out of memory and desiring to see the results, I closed up shop and headed indoors!
Clear skies!
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