Winter H-alpha targets with the AstroTrac

I have finally had time to figure out the AstroTrac and put it to use. At first I had no equatorial wedge and I built one from a giant door henge. The design was sturdy but movement was imprecise. I ended up buying the wedge for the new Star Adventurer made by sky watcher. This wedge, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is fantastic and apparently very similar to the Alt Az controls on an AP mach 1. My polar scope is pretty badly out of collimation and I cannot fix it for some reason, I plan to send it in for repair soon. This has been limiting my guide times to 3 minutes so far, but I plan to master drift alignment next time I am out so that I can get a comfortable series of 5 minute subs.

Here are two images that I have shot through an astronomik 6nm Ha filter, the EOS clip model. I used my Leica Elmarit 138mm F2.8 @ F3.5 for both images. The camera is a modded 550d, subs are 180 seconds on Orion and 240 seconds on the California nebula. Integration time is just over an hour on each image. I am in love with having such a fast aperture for astrophotography. At f5.6 on my refractor these subs would need to be 8-10 minutes long. I actually ended up taking dark frames on both of these images which I usually do not do, but I cannot dither with the astrotrac so I made an exception and it worked out fine.

I feel like the longer subs that I used on the California Nebula hurt me because I was unable to stack as many frames against each other like the Orion/Horshead capture which is very clean and you can even resolve the horse head quite nicely if you look at the full sized image. Also I was plagued with a bit of drift when I imaged the California Nebula, I plan to solve this on the next go around where I will shoot another integration of 180 second subs on the California. Clear skies!

Ps - I plan to add color as soon as I can drive out to my dark site. For now imaging from the front yard will have to suffice.

Orion and the Horsehead

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …sunsetdeluxe/15​852109129/

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …sunsetdeluxe/15​850441548/

Awesome shots

Amazing detail. Congrats!

Core images.
Fantastic.

fantastic.

i was looking at the astrotrac a couple of years ago. i didn't bother with it. I'll keep an eye out on further posts, you may whet the appetite to get one.

Spectacular work Wes.

Thanks everyone!
It is so fast and easy to setup, worth every penny. On sale at optcorp now for $499

Ok two more, the first with astrotrac, rosette and cone nebula, the second with the zeq25 and a refractor, just the rosette in this fov.

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …sunsetdeluxe/16​047744665/

IMAGE LINK: https://www.flickr.com …sunsetdeluxe/15​431732884/

You successfully made your this year's Valentine Card, neat and early.
Great job.

Wow, beautiful structure resolved in these Wes. I'd love to have that kind of H-a data to add to my 5 hours on the Heart Nebula, maybe someday.

You are welcome to add this to your stack, I have the .tiff

Awesome Orion's belt!

Excellent B&W Wes . Thanks for sharing . Did you observe these in a scope before hand ?

Thanks folks, celestron no I was actually only using a lens, so I framed it up in live view first. Luckily these two are pretty easy to find. Getting the framing perfect took a good bit of time however. They will become color later on when I get to a dark site and shoot without the Ha filter.

Edit that, I actually used a telescope for the heart nebula, but again I just use live view.

So Amazing..