Astrophotography on Kitt Peak

Saturday afternoon I went up to Kitt Peak National Observatory(the picnic area) to do some astrophotography. Dean Ketelsen was nice enough to invite me to join the Tucson astronomy club for their bi-annual "starbaque". For those of you who have never been up there, this was my first time, the observatory is a must see.

The new "unfinished" telescope/equatorial mount

M16, Stack of 3 images, 180seconds each, no darks. Canon 1000D and 12" F/4 Newt  

M33, Stack of 3 images, 180seconds each, no darks. Canon 1000D and 12" F/4 Newt  

M57, Single image, 300seconds, no darks. Canon 1000D and 12" F/4 Newt  

Astrophotography with the 12" F/4 newtonian in Sierra Vista

Here are the first light images with the new telescope setup. The equatorial mount worked great. The polar scope made polar alignment quick and easy and I was able to obtain 90sec exposures with round stars right off the bat. Once I did a 1 star alignment the GOTO function was spot on, we used the sky view planetarium software in the SiTech software to slew the telescope around.

I tried using the Coma corrector, incorrectly, and ended up with some unflattering images. I pulled the corrector out for all the images seen on this page. The images here are all 60second single frames, no dark frame subtraction, no alteration except for cropping. The camera was at prime focus, ISO 800(accept for the moon shot).

Lanna's family was there and got to see the telescope "rig". Next time I will remember to take some pictures of everyone and the telescope setup.

We will hopefully be setting the telescope again on Kitt Peak this weekend. I will be trying out a new auto guider and the coma corrector in the correct configuration.