Finally, I’ve upgraded!

[chupathingie]

Yeah, polaris is ~1/2 degree off true north. All of the griping I’ve heard about drift alignment comes from those trying to master it. Before long most are talking about it taking them maybe 10-15 minutes to get aligned for the night. An illuminated reticle eyepiece helps a lot, but simply using exposures from the camera works as well. That long focal length is a benefit there, aligning without the focal reducer (if it’s easily removed) will give you greater precision.

/damn but I gotta stop derailing threads… 😉

[ravnostic]

Derail away! I love this stuff!

[Plamadude30k]

As long as we’re talking about scopes, I was wondering if anybody had experience with a lightbridge? I’d love to get a 10″ or a 12″ (or, really, the 16″, but I am still a poor grad student), and it’d be nice to hear reviews from people who I know I can trust (that’s y’all here).

Oh, and conga-rats, rav. I expect great things…well, okay, even greater things, I guess 🙂

[ravnostic]

chupa; Celestron, I found, has an awesome FAQ on how to set their scopes up for optimal tracking. Man, I can’t WAIT!! Aligning the mount, initially; not so much. I’m going to ask the folks at Starizona if they’ll do it for me. :o)

[Yoyo]

Now before you go getting all excited for me, it’s just to an T2i. I took to comparing it to the T3i, and decided for the money, I didn’t need an articulating screen.

On the other hand, I’ll go from a max 1600 ISO to 6400 (expandable to 12800–anyone know how that works); there’s excellent reviews on battery life, and of course there’s the jump to 18 mpxl from 10.2.

I’ll need some extreme SD cards–RAW files are purportedly around 25 Mb

I’ll have it tomorrow. New, body only, $500 at Amazon (after repairing my original xTi, I’ll sell the replacement, which I don’t feel performed as well in the noise area.)

I’ve got the T2i, and I love it. I haven’t figured out how to increase the ISO yet, as I haven’t really felt the need for it. I like the 4GB SD cards since they fit on a single DVD, but you’re limited to about 200 images each there. My most recent images are 153 in 3.22 GB. K-Mart was having a sale on 4GB cards 2 weeks ago for $8 each, and I picked up 2 more of them. Of course, you can always justify this by comparing to the number of rolls of 35mm film you would need and their costs.

The T3i came out a few months after I bought the T2i, and anticipating buyer’s remorse, I looked it all over and concluded “meh”. I figure a rotating screen is just one more thing to break, and it seems like the video recording modes got upgraded as well, but I’m not a cinematographer, so more “meh”. (I’m not really a photographer either. Ba-dum-bum!)

In terms of astrography, I got some nice (i.e. acceptable to me) images of Orion with the EF-S 55-250mm lens back when I first purchased my kit.

[chupathingie]

chupa; Celestron, I found, has an awesome FAQ on how to set their scopes up for optimal tracking. Man, I can’t WAIT!! Aligning the mount, initially; not so much. I’m going to ask the folks at Starizona if they’ll do it for me. :o)

well, alignment has to be done at the beginning of every session, and the declination of your wedge varies by location. ie, your wedge angle will be slightly different between Phoenix, Flagstaff, Tuscon etc. Phoenix and Flagstaff, for instance, are a full degree and a half off each other… alignment is one of those things you just can’t avoid. 🙂

edit: I’ve never dealt with a fork mount, my old (now deceased) mount was a German Equatorial. Since I was shooting widefield with it, I could eyeball the polar axis and get aligned close enough for 3 minute exposures at 300mm. I still had to toss over half my exposures because the periodic error was so bad on that mount that most of my images were unusable. The error in my estimation would have been obvious with a modern mount, I’m thinking.

[ravnostic]

Chupa the hard part is being done by the seller, Starizona (I recommend them), which is setting it up for viewing for my general latitude (>40 deg). The alignment process allows the fine-tuning, is straight forward, and the rig is user-friendly. It should take me maybe an hour the first time (learning curve), but seems like once you get the hang of it it should be able to be done in well under 1/2 hour.

Camera has arrived! Nikon T-adapter has arrived! Starizona confirms they have the solar filter and polar mount ready for pickup! I’m so excited I think I just jizzed a little!!

[chupathingie]

So lemme guess, Rav’s gonna be out-of-pocket all weekend? 😆

[ravnostic]

A-yep, Chupa! I’m gonna be busier than a skanky cheerleader in the footballer’s locker room.

//spent over a grand. Expect it to be worth every penny.

Here’s how celestron does it. You do a rough alignment, just proper placement. Then you do a star alignment, and tweek as directed by the console the alt and az. Then do a star ‘tour’ tweeking as needed (the scope will guide to stars around the sky and direct the adjustments based on my corrections. After, redo the star alignment part, since tweeks will have been made. Repeat as ness. Celestron guide says alignment within 1/4 degree is sufficient for most stuff–but I’m going to shoot for perfection. When I’m done, the forks should rotate perpendicular to the pole point, but the scope body should not move within them once it guides to a location (thus removing 1 of two, and the greater, sources of in-scope vibration, so I’m hoping for clearer images.)

We’ll see how it goes–wish me luck! I’m also planning on trying to work in noir into some shots–but haven’t gotten that creative yet. The drive from/to Tucson, I’ll think of something.

[chupathingie]

well here’s to ya! I’ve got a week before my toys arrive, and I still need to scare up a power supply for the astrotrac.

CSB segue: I was lamenting not having the FOV crop of the Rebel making a long lens longer, but since the 5dII is at 21mp, my FOV is actually tighter pixel-for-pixel.

[ravnostic]

I don’t expect the SOOC shots to improve in regards to clarity; the xTi sees 3-4 pixels/arc second; I’ll get 4-6 from the new one–but ‘seeing’ conditions usually are greater than either (1/2 arc sec as I recall, is a good night.)

I DO expect that noise will be reduced (I’ll take dark frames every hour, apply whichever one works best on either side–dark frame ‘bracketing’ as it were), and that that will remain true though I’ll be working with 1600-3200 v 800-1600 ISO (don’t know if I want to mess with 6400). I expect to have brighter shots in shorter times, SOOC. I hope that guiding on 1 less axis will prove to provide a tighter focus. My Bahto-whats-his-face mask lets me get as tight as I can, but I’ve a feeling that the two tracking planes have been a culprit of a ‘globularity’ in zoom-close up shots of the stars, beyond seeing.

If I could, besides eliminating field rotation, get just 1/3-1/2 sharper images, I’d be stoked. Planets will be video-based; 1280×720, through the eyepieces as appropriate. Should be able to use the smaller mm lenses, capture a few minutes at 30 fps, and let registax extract the best ones to compile. I. Want. Hubble. Quality. (or much much closer to it.)

[chupathingie]

re: video… There’s a whole new ball of wax.

If you have a bracket mount, you can go the eyepiece projection route, and in addition use whatever optical zoom the camera has to give you high-rez and high detail.

~or~

You can pick up a ToUcam (cheap webcam). Custom drivers have been written, and once you tear off the old lens the tiny sensor makes a perfect match for prime astrophotography of planets. When I was a kid, the science textbooks showed pictures of planets taken with the (at-the-time-largest) 200″ telescope. Those are put to shame with the images you can get with an 8″ Newt and a $50 webcam.

I haven’t done anything with video stacking, since I don’t have a usable mount for my dinky 4.25″ f10.6 Newt. Even so, you don’t need to track accurately to do planetary, since the stacking software aligns frames and the exposures for each frame are <1/30". You can even do it with a Dob. I've been wanting to play with that whole process, but it's going to be a while (end of next year, perhaps) before I manage the scratch for mirrors, hardware, and a good GEM.

[orionid]

Reading this thread makes me hate being broke.

[lokisbong]

Reading this thread makes me hate being broke.

Yeah same here.

[ravnostic]

Sorry orionid and lokis!! I hope that when things are different and you get new toys, you’ll share them, too!

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