1476e 2011/08/08–09

1476e 2011/08/08–09 21:30–22:35 EDT Foxmead POD 8–3 28cmsc

Tonight was my first attempt at astrophotography in many years using my Celestron 28-cm Schmidt-Cassegrain at Cassegrain focus, Canon Digital Rebel XT, 2-inch T-adapter, remote release, and angle finder, set to aperture priority (Av) and mirror lockup enabled. Otherwise all default settings on automatic. First the southern half of the Moon:

Then the northern half:

Then I made an image of Altair with the same settings:

Comparing this image to Starry Night, I find I've reached down to magnitude 15 with a 15 second exposure. The stars have trailed, probably due to the jumpiness of the drives on the CPC1100.

I was going to try to image Albireo, but clouds moved in and I called it a night.

I haven't tried any adjustments of these images other than shrinking them to 650 pixels wide and rotating the Moon images. Not bad for what my goal is: to make images to show what normal astronomical objects look like to the human eye through amateur telescopes.