Star gazing

Well, the others aren't much better, Lori

Titan


Mimas


Lapetus


Dione



Rhea


Tethys


You get the idea

 

A couple of images from Monday night/early Tuesday morning. They're single exposures and I've only used a basic process to get a reasonable image but, with more powerful image software I'll get much more detailed images.
Part of the Orion Nebula

 

A couple of later images of Stars that are several hundred of trillions of miles away

Sirius




Betelguese....which is forecast to turn into a Super Nova is a few hundred Million years
and is only about 430 Light Years [2580 Trillion miles] away.

 

They're still "rough" images, Martin, as I'm still using the basic processing software. But among the Star images are Sirius, Betelgeuse, the 1st, 2nd, and 3 "Jewels" in Orion's Belt.

 

Can do, Martin. I've actually got the set up images on my Camera but the latest BullGuard updates have blocked my usual downloads from my Pentax camera. So I've got to contact BullGuard to see what they can do to solve the problem.

 

I think one of the things that makes my "mental jaw" drop is the fact that the light from the Stars takes hundreds, thousands of years to reach our eyes and that, in reality, what we're seeing in the skies is things back in the History of the Uniiverse!!

 

Hi Martin, well, by a long and tortuous path I've managed to download the camera set up on my main SCT scope, so here they are. Don't forget that your scope is a Newtonian with the focuser and eye piece holder at the front and side of the scope but, basically, the set up is the same in principle. We can deal how you set up your scope with a camera later.

The scope and camera in the Observatory............

A closer look at the set up

The blue/purple band at the back of the scope is the scope adapter to take a 2" inch Star Diagonal or a 2" to 1/25 Star Diagonal adapter. Next to that is a black serrated band which is actually a Meade 2" inch Nebula Filter

But that is sometimes replaced by a Meade 2" inch Broadband Filter

The next one after the Nebula Filter is a Meade f6.3 Reducer which gives the scope a shorter focal length and enables it to have a larger field of viewing.........

Then, to get the correct focal spacing between the back of the scope and the sensor of the camera you can see a black tube, [which is actually 3 different lengths of extension tubes screwed together] to get the scope and camera into a focusing area. I can't tell you how much experimenting and time it took to get there. Then attached to the extension tubes is the ZWO 178 cooled Colour CCD Camera.

The yellow band at the front of the camera is a ZWO Heater, bought separately, to keep the sensor window from frosting up. The camera also has an internal cooler to stop it overheating and keeping "noise" down to a minimum in the images.
Your telescope being a Newtonian would need to have a 1/25" inch adapter on the focuser for a 1/25 inch Broadband Filter which would then be fitted to another adapter to fit whatever camera you might get.
Monochrome CCD Cameras are more sensitive and capture more light than Colour Cameras due to the fact that they don't have a Bayer Filter to capture Red, Green, and Blue. But if you want to turn the monochrome image to colour then you'd have to attach a colour filter wheel between the focuser and the camera and then take exactly the same image separately in Green, Red, Blue. I've accepted the minimal, to me, loss in sensitivity by getting the colour version which has the Bayer Filter, as it's less fuss and easier to take and process.