New Wide Field Scope - Borg 77ED

Wide Field Scope testing this week, and part of the development the Society have purchased the Borg 77 ED-II with focus reducer making a F3.8. Testing it for first time with my CCD Starlight M25c (colour). This is not the best of wide-field scopes, my ideal one is the Takahashi FSQ-106EDX III Astrograph, with its Focus Reduce it will reach a F3.6, but unfortunately I will have to wait.

SXVF -M25C

 

 

 

First Deep Space Photos Nov 2013

This is the first time that I am exploring deep space photography, still a long way to go, but its a start.

The two images taken using the Canon 60Da of Orion, using two difference telescopes and mounts. The first scope is the APM 130/1200mm Refractor, and the other the Celestron 9.25" deluxe CPC, one of them I used my equatorial EQ6 mount and the other was using the Alt/Azi mount. As you well know the main difference is the latter mount does not rotate with the Earth and therefore stars will be elongated if the exposure time exceed a few seconds that can range from 20 to 60 second,  depending on the celestial object position.

Although I am still not using an auto-guider or motorised auto-focuser, which are two of the most important equipment for better quality images, I think is not that bad given that the images are taken using the scope respective mount's motor.

The longest exposure time the more details will appear on the images as more photons will be gathered.

 

 

 

 

 

These photos have been taken using only the Canon 60Da camera and with the mount tracking, no laptop, auto-focuser, auto-guider, or any types of astrophotography software. They have been retouched using Photoshop and Topaz software to bring out the blackness and definition.

 



 

Mars Nov 2013

Last night I got up at 5.30am and when to the Lighthouse to prepare to shoot the comet, using a eyepiece projection technique , 13mm eyepiece that work well shooting Jupiter last week. Once I had the telescope 12", F4 Newtonian aligned and my laptop connected it was around 6.30pm, to make some time until 7.15am when I estimated Ison would appeared, I shoot Mars a couple of time changing ISO to acquire the correct image.

 

 

I used Topaz Detail3 to refine the photo, also Photoshop to complete the sharpness.



October Moon Shoots

 

 



 

                                                                               

By the end of October, using my Celestron 9.25" Deluxe CPC I tried different technique one of them was the 'Eyepiece Projection' which basically placing an eyepiece, in this case 13mm, inside a 'projection extension tube' connected to the rear end of the scope and the other end to the camera (Canon 60Da). Important to place the eyepiece in the tube end facing camera, and not at the scope rear end.



This images was taken using the EP technique. The image is raw,

no Photoshop used

 

I used the 80mm Celestron Guider scope to take this photo of the half Moon.

This is a Photoshop combination of Jupiter and the Moon

Planet Webcam -Oct 2013

Last month of October I started using the new webcam Celestron Skyris 248C for planetary photography. Our normal observation site is at Europa Point Gibraltar, and as you might be aware Jupiter comes our late at night around 11.30pm. The telescope I used was the Celestron 9.25" Deluxe CPC connected directly to the rear end of the scope using T-Adapter to connect it to 2" male thread of the Celestron.

The Webcam was connected to the Laptop via a USB-3 cable. The brilliant thing with this webcam is that it can shoot 10 to 20 frames per second of video of a planet, and later stack them to produce a good quality using a software like Registex6.





This is the image of Jupiter using the Laptop.

The images you see Jupiter and one of it moon named as Callisto.