Astrophotography with Simple Tools

Adventures with a Barndoor | The Deep Sky | Where The Skies Are

The Deep Sky. In late October 2005, a strong cold front brought the clearest, darkest skies of the year. I tried simply putting the Canon 20d behind the 5-inch refractor on a Losmandy G11 and exposing unguided frames for 30 seconds to 2 minutes. Polar alignment is crucial without any kind of manual or automatic guiding.

The Pleiades, a young star cluster embedded in a nebula reflecting their blue light
(Tennyson's "swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid").

(click image to enlarge)

A sigma sum of 14 one and two minute exposures totalling 1,400 seconds.
Canon 20D, iso 1600, A-P 5-inch @ F4.5, unguided.

(click image to enlarge)

Two nights later: used DSLRFocus to find best focus and a Canon timer/release
to automate 45, 2-minute exposures. A freshly charged battery failed after 34 exposures.
I accidentally left the camera in JPEG mode rather than RAW, so did a simple sum
of aligned images to recover some dynamic range.

Canon 20D, iso 1600, A-P 5-inch @ F4.5, unguided. 34x2 minutes (4080 seconds).

The Double Cluster in Perseus, a spilled jewelbox on a velvet tablecloth.

(click image to enlarge)

This starfield was rising through the tops of pines while I photographed it. I hoped
the diffraction of starlight through the needles would be as interesting in the photo as it was in
the eyepiece, but it isn't very conspicuous. Look at the larger image -- it's worth the
350kb download. It's even better at full, 24MB resolution.

Canon 20D, iso 800, 15 x 3 minutes, summed, unguided.
5-inch A-P @ F4.5 (2700 seconds)

The Witch's Broom, part of a supernova remnant in Cygnus:

(click image to enlarge)

A sigma sum of 9, 30-second, 1-minute, and 2-minute exposures totalling 1,000 seconds.
Canon 20D, iso 1600, A-P 5-inch @ F4.5, unguided.