M20 Trifid Nebula

13 minutes (26x30sec)

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/pkRw​Tc

WOW Peter you are coming along just marvelous ! Ok i see you have 26x30 secs . Is there a reason your only using 30-secs, is it for trailing purposes ? Only thing i would suggest is try using 1 min exposures and stacking 26x1 . More data = Better pictures !

Yeah still having trouble finding the actual SCP. I'm not drift aligning. But after 2 5min untracked shots I now know which star to align too for better than 30 sec.
I did manage 1 min last night but it was like 1 shot good next should trail, next shot good, next shot trail? I guess because I had alignment in RA but out by Dec? Or vice versa?
Thanks for your kind words and feedback it's driving me fwd

Peter -- beautiful!

Thanks Spotz

Nicely done! What was your effective focal length?

600mm f7.5
telescope as prime lens

star alignment adjusts pointing accuracy. Polar alignment is what controls field rotation, if you get trails after a minute it is due to declination not being centered with polaris. A drift align is tough but it will do wonders for exposure times. Many of the higher end mounts, takahashi njp, and astrophysics, have very precise polar scopes which allow you to align polaris to within 2 arc seconds or less. These mounts can easily do 10 minute exposures without autoguiding. With a lower end mount, I am not sure what type of mount you own, Ra only causes problems if the load is improperly balanced or if there is stiction in the drive train. I own a zeq25 which is a low end mount, but it does very well with astrophotography, The polar scope in mine was not perfectly square with the mount and the setting circles did not extend down to my altitude so it took a little bit of tweaking but eventually I was able to get 300 second exposures at 1,600mm F8 with perfectly round stars with no autoguiding. Once you are this polar aligned you can easily autoguide 20 minutes for narrow band. You processing came out very well, nice star color and nebulosity processing. I would love to give this data a go if you shared the .tiff. Clear skies peter.

No Polaris here Wes. Our polar star is not visible to and polar scope that would fit my EQ3 mount. But our star is closer to the CSP than Polaris is to the NCP.
If you see may last thread with the star trail shot I included a single shot showing our CSP.
Once I perfect my alignment visually I'll move on to drift alignment.
The autosave.tiff is bigger than I can post anywhere Wes? Maybe I'll try uploading to flickr later?
Thanks for your input. All assistance greatly appreciated. I've only had my scope for 2 months. Still learning.

Hey Desertraptor,

Looking great, you're leaps and bounds ahead where I was 2 months in. If you can learn from my mistake you may save yourself some months/years of frustration. Be sure to check your gear is balanced in both axes. I was only ever balanced in one axis (due to the small built in bar on my scope) and could never go more than a minute guided. I bought a longer dove tail and now get 10 minutes guided and my house blocks the SCP. If I'm lucky I can see Crux it in winter but no chance of SCP.

Hope this highlights the importance of balance and helps you guide longer.

- Daniel

Thanks Daniel
I am having trouble with balance. Same issue I guess I can't get the weight out far enough. Or I need another weight which I'd rather not do.
Shame to be in Aus and not get a great part of the sky.
But then I have the same problem with Andromeda. I have a shed in front and high enough to block plus a street light which drowns it out.

Will a Losmandy or Kenko polar scope fit in your mount. It has marking for northern and southern hemisphere. Extremely accurate as it uses 2 stars and has date markings for precession. BackyardEOS makes drift alignment a little easier. At least you don't have to look through guiding eyepiece for a length of time. I had the same problem with houses and streetlights when I had my gear 15 years ago. You could just barely see polaris at the extreme back of the property and there was a big drainage ditch just beyond that. I could get polaris in scope but not the other star. Ended up selling GEM and going with Celestron Alt-Az on wedge. Big mistake but much easier to align using 2 stars. Been getting some nice shots but I'm worthless on the processing right now. I used to use MaxImDL wish I still had it. Just getting started with Photoshop. Drift align is a pain but the signal you can get once its done is excellent. I put a clamp for a smartphone onto a swivel mount that fits into hot shoe. There is an app called star tracker its free and shows you what is in sky where its pointed. Poor mans goto It works great though but kinda messes with night vision for a bit after you use it.

Griz

Griz. I bit the bullet and purchased a skywatcher polar scope today. It has etched markings for both NCP and SCP and lit as well. Hopefully my sky is not LP enough to swamp the SCP through the scope as I do fear it will be. Find out in a few days I guess. What's $100 here and there

You will have better and longer exposures. The one for my mount is 180 but I know its a really good scope as I've had one before. Not that critical until you start using longer focal length lenses. I have a 400mm L series lens I want to use most of the time. So I'm going to have to drift align to get long exposure times. I bought BackyardEOS and tried out its drift align module last night. Pretty sweet. Much easier than bending over a guiding eyepiece. What part of Aus do you reside. I have a very good friend in Ipswitch. Looks like you have some dark skies there. Its very good here as well. Except to the east where you have some glow from a small town. Everywhere else its nice and dark. No streetlights either.

Griz

I'm in Adelaide. 2000km SSW of Ipswich.
Skies are light polluted if I look East to the city. But so far my interest are North, South and West. I'll go East when Orion has risen at a decent time