A welcome surprise

kiwiapple

kiwiapple

Well-Known Member
This has probably been the best week for astrophotography that I have had since getting started with the hobby in 2021. A week of consecutive clear skies meant that I could leave my rigs set up so I could do some really long integrations and compile several nights' exposures without having to recalibrate and realign my mounts. For this reason, I expected last night's sessions to proceed seamlessly and thus was surprised that neither of my two rigs (an 80mm refractor on an AM5 mount and an 8" SCT on an HEQ5 mount) would successfully find their targets. I scratched my head and tried to reset my ASIAIRs and made sure there weren't errant clouds in the way. I tried to restart my plans and see if that would help. Nothing worked. Finally I remembered that I had shot some dark frames with the 80mm refractor just before my plans were due to start, so I checked to see if it was trying to plate solve through a dark filter (which lets no light through) and voilà! That was the problem! So I fixed that and set that scope on its merry way. Then I checked again on the 8" SCT and saw that I had not plugged in the dew heater when I removed the scope's cap, so the objective was covered in dew. I cleaned that up and plugged the dew heater in and voilà again! I was good to go. But in the meantime while all that was going on I noticed that Antares had risen above the level of my roof so I decided to set up a tripod with my Benro Polaris mount and an astro-modded Canon DSLR to shoot Rho Ophiuchi for a few hours. So this was a nice compensation for 90 minutes or so of hair-pulling boneheadedness.
Rho Ophiuchi Combi.png
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Yep, that's often a night, it's the little things. I am glad you got them all figured out.

I have Rho Ophiuchi on my mind as well! What a great shot of it to inspire me. I just need clear skies now. :)

You are the only person I know who had gotten the Benro Polaris and is actually using it, especially for astro. What lens did you have on your Canon on this? And how easy or hard was it to get it to track? And how long were your subs.
 
kiwiapple

kiwiapple

Well-Known Member
JimFox said:
Yep, that's often a night, it's the little things. I am glad you got them all figured out.

I have Rho Ophiuchi on my mind as well! What a great shot of it to inspire me. I just need clear skies now. :)

You are the only person I know who had gotten the Benro Polaris and is actually using it, especially for astro. What lens did you have on your Canon on this? And how easy or hard was it to get it to track? And how long were your subs.
Click to expand...
Thanks, and this is one of my favourite targets. I used the Rokinon/Samyang 100mm f/2.8 and shot 60 second subs. The tracking was good, but after an hour or so the centre of the frame drifted away pretty badly so I could only use 1/3 of what I shot. That‘s probably down to user error though.
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
As someone who is in the process of trying to sell their Benro Polaris with the astro adapter, I am VERY impressed with this result. I would not have thought that level of quality was possible with that mount. I guess the f/2.8 aperture helped out a lot. This is a truly great result with that equipment. Fantastic image.

ML
 
kiwiapple

kiwiapple

Well-Known Member
Mike Lewis said:
As someone who is in the process of trying to sell their Benro Polaris with the astro adapter, I am VERY impressed with this result. I would not have thought that level of quality was possible with that mount. I guess the f/2.8 aperture helped out a lot. This is a truly great result with that equipment. Fantastic image.

ML
Click to expand...
I understand the desire to sell the Polaris--it's not perfect by any means, but I am determined to make use of it and I find that it can actually do a pretty good job if your expectations are kept within bounds. I'm about to post another Polaris capture that I did last night with no preparation at all and that turned out pretty well, I think. You be the judge!
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Mike Lewis said:
As someone who is in the process of trying to sell their Benro Polaris with the astro adapter, I am VERY impressed with this result. I would not have thought that level of quality was possible with that mount. I guess the f/2.8 aperture helped out a lot. This is a truly great result with that equipment. Fantastic image.

ML
Click to expand...
Hey Mike, I am not sure how fast your Polaris will sell, but I wouldn't mind borrowing it and see if I can test it to see if I could make some use of it.
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
JimFox said:
Hey Mike, I am not sure how fast your Polaris will sell, but I wouldn't mind borrowing it and see if I can test it to see if I could make some use of it.
Click to expand...

Jim ( @JimFox ),

I would be fine lending it out to you. We can discuss logistics on a future phone call. As for that, I would like to accompany you sometime on a Milky Way night shoot, if it was something not too far away (and not during the really cold months...) Perhaps we could combine lending you the Polaris and getting together. But in any case, unless a good offer comes in for it beforehand, I'm happy to lend it out so you can check it out.

ML
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Mike Lewis said:
Jim ( @JimFox ),

I would be fine lending it out to you. We can discuss logistics on a future phone call. As for that, I would like to accompany you sometime on a Milky Way night shoot, if it was something not too far away (and not during the really cold months...) Perhaps we could combine lending you the Polaris and getting together. But in any case, unless a good offer comes in for it beforehand, I'm happy to lend it out so you can check it out.

ML
Click to expand...
Sounds good Mike.

You are always welcome to join me for capturing the Milky Way, I just captured it last night in Joshua Tree NP. I know that's a bit far for you, but I will let you know when I am back in Colorado and have any Milky Way plans. It would be fun to get together again.
 
A

Andy Elliott

Well-Known Member
Awesome! I so want to image this area of sky. Hopefully one for my wide field set up (when its built), but it is soooo low down for me and I will only have 1-2 hours at it each time I would think. Such an inspirational image though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom