Noob Alert: Shots of the moon with my first telescope

[Force10]

Hello All!

First time here. I realize shots of the moon are pretty pedestrian around here...but my wife got me an entry level telescope (Celestron 4 SE) for the b-day and I picked up a cheap SV205 to take some shots with.

This is my first attempt at taking shots...and I've been practicing getting the alignment better since...so I should get better shots in the future.

I realize shooting anything deeper sky than the moon probably won't yield results with this small scope. (plus I live in a Bortle 7 area).

Thanks to the SharpCap folks that created this software to give us the opportunity to share our shots! (this is a 1 minute vid on Youtube);

https://youtu.be/xemJ12PbB7A

Cheers!

[turfpit]

Force10

A good collection of images with the Celestron 4SE. Your processing worked well - quite a learning curve when starting from scratch.

This search on Astrobin shows images captured with a Celestron 4SE https://www.astrobin.com/search/?q=celestron+4se to demonstrate what is possible.

Dave

[admin]

Hi, and welcome to the forums

As Dave says, those came out really well - SCTs can be tricky telescopes to work with (especially to get good focus), so you must be really pleased.

Unfortunately you will be limited to the moon and planets with your setup - you could image the sun too if you get a solar film filter (see https://www.ebay.com/itm/374506058180 , out of stock for the 4SE, but there must be other suppliers). The combination of small pixels on the SV205 and a maximum exposure of 1s rules out any real deep sky imaging, and the relatively long focal length of the SE4 does not help.

cheers,

Robin

[timh]

Congratulations - a flying start with the moon! With a field of a degree or so you might also try your set up on some of the brighter and more compact deep sky objects -- thinking M42, M57, M27 and some of the globular clusters like M3 and M13 that are becoming higher in the sky now? i.e while moon and planets may be best targets you should get somewhere with these others too.
Tim

[Force10]

Thanks all for the warm welcome!

While I'm a complete beginner at Astrophotography...I've been in imaging (pre-press) as a career for 36 years...going back to film and scanners that took up a whole room. The last decade or so has been mostly working with 3D teams that render a single image and then we take it the rest of the way in post. Not much proccessing of raw photography anymore...so it's been fun doing these images.

Thanks for the link @turfpit, it's nice to see what's possible with this scope...very helpful. I got my tracking dialed pretty good last night and tried to get mars in the camera view...frustrating. Never got it. With my last sync I used an 8mm eyepiece and still couldn't find it when I put the camera in. I was freezing so I called it a night after trying for about 10mins. I'll get it eventually.

I did manage to get mars in view on the camera last week purely by luck. My tracking chops weren't that good yet that night, so I was just watching the little orange ball zoom across the frame.

Thank you all for the help...much appreciated!

[turfpit]

This is how you can check out realistic targets for your equipment, http://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/

FOV_4SE_SV205.JPG (106.18 KiB) Viewed 3946 times

M57_4SE_SV205.JPG (44.7 KiB) Viewed 3946 times

As @timh says, globular clusters should work for you.


Dave

[turfpit]

With my last sync I used an 8mm eyepiece and still couldn't find it when I put the camera in

I had this problem when I started out. carrying out star alignment with the eyepiece, then swapping for the camera lost the image and it is not clear which way to slew to recover the image. The change in optics seems to cause a shift of the image, tricky with a smaller field of view. I change my setup procedure as follows:

• Start off with the camera inserted in the scope (rather than an eyepiece)

• Line up on a land based object

• Ensure the finderscope/red-dot-finder and the image in the camera are aligned

• Carry out star alignment

This gives a more accurate slew to the object.

Dave

[Force10]

With my last sync I used an 8mm eyepiece and still couldn't find it when I put the camera in

I had this problem when I started out. carrying out star alignment with the eyepiece, then swapping for the camera lost the image and it is not clear which way to slew to recover the image. The change in optics seems to cause a shift of the image, tricky with a smaller field of view. I change my setup procedure as follows:

• Start off with the camera inserted in the scope (rather than an eyepiece)

• Line up on a land based object

• Ensure the finderscope/red-dot-finder and the image in the camera are aligned

• Carry out star alignment

This gives a more accurate slew to the object.

Dave

Wow...that's great advice...thank you!

I never would have thought to re-center the finder scope with the camera instead of an eyepiece...makes sense. When centering it on land, I generally have a clear view across the SF Bay and can focus on something 20 miles away...should I choose a target closer? Or is further away better?

Thanks for the link to the astronomy calculater. It would be nice if Astrobin had folks tag what the Bortle value was when they captured the shots. Since I'm in a Bortle 7 area, I'm not sure if I could get anything close to some of the 4SE shots I saw. (of course the camera is a limiting factor as well) I will try though!

Cheers

[turfpit]

20 miles might be too far because of the atmospheric turbulence. I would say a mile or so. You need an object that is distinctive, such as a mast or chimney, that will show up clearly in the finder as well as the camera image. This is my typical start to a session (the tower is about 1 mile away) - communications equipment on the top of a tower. It was twilight, note the use of Display Histogram Stretch to keep the exposure short.

setting up 2.png (632.53 KiB) Viewed 3916 times

I agree including Bortle scale in the Astrobin images is useful. It is available if the poster cares to complete the value, see https://www.astrobin.com/p63izu/

Dave

[Force10]

20 miles might be too far because of the atmospheric turbulence. I would say a mile or so. You need an object that is distinctive, such as a mast or chimney, that will show up clearly in the finder as well as the camera image. This is my typical start to a session (the tower is about 1 mile away) - communications equipment on the top of a tower. It was twilight, note the use of Display Histogram Stretch to keep the exposure short.

Noted! I didn't know about the crosshair overlay Sharpcap has available...thanks!

It's cloudy right now, but my phone says it should be clear tonight. (fingers crossed) My goal for tonight is to get mars in frame...even if it's just a fuzzy orange-ish ball...I'm fine with it.

I noticed the resolution of your camera in the pic...impressive! I can only imagine how much space your captures take up. I was shooting on and off for 45mins and it was 130 gigs. I'm trying different resolutions...dropping down to 1920x1080 gives me 30fps captures while the two higher resolutions only capture 15fps.

I haven't looked deep into what's better yet...higher framerate vs higher resolution. In my other hobby racing motocross...I set my helmet cam to 1080p @60fps even though the camera will do 4k @30fps. With the speed/motion of racing...higher frame rate seems more "fluid" vs the higher res low frame rate captures. Different animal than astrophotography though.

Thanks for taking the time to help a beginner!