Did I finally capture decent pictures of Mars and other celestial objects?

  • Topic: Stargazing 
  • Thread starter Thread starter russ_watters
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    Mars Pictures
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russ_watters
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Busy night last night. I finally got some decent pictures of Mars, and with my new piggyback rig, I captured a bunch of open clusters and the Andromeda galaxy. With the moon near full and with a somewhat humid night and lots of light pollution, the Andromeda galaxy is pretty low contrast, but I need to learn some enhancement techniques anyway, so it's something to work on. It was also a little windy, so I'll be able to get more detail on Mars on a calmer night (and when it gets higher and closer). The tracking error is noticeable, but small enough with the 135mm lens that I don't have to throw away many of the long-exposure pics. Anyway, here they are:

The first three are the easy to recognize ones: M31, Mars, and the Pleaides. The number after the name is the exposure. The Mars photo is a stack of several hundred frames and the rest are several dozen.
 
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What telescope are you using russ, and how much is it?
 
The telescope is a Meade ETX-105 (~$800) and the camera is a Meade Deep-Sky Imager (~$300). Of the pictures in the last two posts, only the Mars pic was taken through the scope (and a 2x barlow lens: ~$50). The rest were taken through a 135mm SLR camera lens (~$40, used) piggy-back mounted to the scope and adapted to the DSI (see post #84). Page through the thread for more pics...
 
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