9 replies to this topic

[pptw]

Last week the weather was horrible all week long. Forecast looked consistenly cloudy. Then my wife suddenly mentioned she saw stars outside. What? WHAT? How could I miss this? I quickly pulled out all the equipment but it was already late and pretty cold so it was not a good start rushing outside like this.

 

I quickly set up the scope, found out that my wife threw out my bahtinov mask by accident, battery of dslr was half empty, and after shooting for first few minutes I realised my scope was way too warm and focus was chanigng continiously. On top of that, my esprit tends to have pinched optics when not at outdoor temperatures, so stars had weird shape.

 

Also, I did not have a good night of playing around with my settings and longer exposures, so since things started of bad anyway, I decided to play around. Temperature was 16F. I tried 10, 30 and 60s exposures on Orion, and decided I would look inside what worked. Pretty quickly lens was fogged up too.

 

As said, focus was shifting during my session, but in the end I decided to give my 25x30s on Orion a try in Siril. Focus got worse over the session, stars had weird shapes, but I think that my 12 minutes on Orion still give a pretty good result. Bortle 4. I personally like the trapezium part. Details are slightly visible, but in some way it looks burned out white, which is on purpose because I love how it can look like a bright exploding core. hdr versions sometimes seem too fake for me. of course purely personal and artistic approach, rather than correct aproach.

 

Just wanted to share the experience, and I hope I have the opportunity to give Orion 2+ hours one of the next weeks.  Can't wait to see those dust lanes and brighten up some parts with lower noise, and hopefully have decent colors too.

 

dslr is charged, bahtinov mask ordered, and excitement is loaded

 

ps; 12min only gave slight blue/red color but it didn't look satisfactionary so B/W instead. it just looks better.

 

esprit 80/eq5/nikon d5300/25x30s iso200

 

https://www.astrobin.com/6f84vm/

Attached Thumbnails

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Edited by pptw, 24 January 2021 - 08:51 AM.

[Boeglewatcher]

It definitely paid out that you didn’t give up too early. Great to have a picture to share after such a night. And a nice one!

[Dynan]

Nice capture for the circumstances! Any image is better than NO image!

[alphatripleplus]

I'm curious how you did your focusing,  as you say your wife threw out your Bahtinov mask?

[pptw]

My Nikon d5300 has liveview, plus the possibility to have quite some extended zoom. I was able to see the trapezium stars on very high iso, played around with the focus wheel, and locked it where the stars in the trapezium were smallest/sharpest. It took some trial and error but it did work.

[limeyx]

Sounds like one of my nights! Great result given what happened.

[BrendanC]

Buy a new Bahtinov and ditch the wife.   

[pptw]

Buy a new Bahtinov and ditch the wife. 

She’s a keeper, trust me

[TelescopeGreg]

If the new mask is delayed, you can make your own:

 

http://www.deepskywa...tinov-mask.html

 

I just used black construction paper.  Printed the template on white, glued to the black, and the open parts removed with a knife.  The excess paper on one side was folded 90 degrees, and acts as a lip to hold the mask over the end of the scope.  Somewhat fragile, and not one to get wet in the dew, but it's worked for a year now.

[pptw]

Thanks for the great guide! That saves me another 25eur!