Last night I took my first picture of a deep space object!

[PDCWolf]

Stating outright, I went for the easy stuff. I live in a pretty light-polluted area and for the moment don't have the means to run away from the light, so I had to go for the bright stuff. Before any more text, here's the image:

That's supposed to be Messier 22. Now, I do have eyes, and can clearly see it looks bad, but hey, it can only go up from here (I hope). The image was taken with a Nikon D5600, mounted on a Celestron Nexstar 8SE. I did not do any sort of special processing or stacking of multiple exposures, just a single image and a bit of Photoshop to try and clear it up. My next target is Omega Centauri, definitely bigger and brighter, though the moon is in kind of a bad place right now, but hey, gotta fail fast to learn fast.

Honestly I'm happy enough for now with just this, as it's mostly a proof of concept that the telescope and camera can do some deep space stuff, and it should also be enough to present something to the higher ups.

[HvP]

Congratulations!

Astrophotography is a skill that I've always wanted to pursue, but the equipment and learning curve can be quite intimidating. That's good work under difficult conditions.

Keep on exploring the cosmos.

[Scotius]

It is a very nice photo. Weather must have been excellent if you got good results despite light pollution.

[PDCWolf]

8 hours ago, HvP said:

Congratulations!

Astrophotography is a skill that I've always wanted to pursue, but the equipment and learning curve can be quite intimidating. That's good work under difficult conditions.

Keep on exploring the cosmos.

Thank you! Difficulties with equipment have certainly been a thing, the scope and camera are excellent by themselves, but they don't work together so fine (camera sensor doesn't capture enough light to provide a live view for example, so I have to shoot almost blind), however, the equipment by itself is by no means expensive, and you can start much further below the ladder and do a better job than me lmao.

3 hours ago, Scotius said:

It is a very nice photo. Weather must have been excellent if you got good results despite light pollution.

Yeah, it was a very cold winter night (southern hemisphere here), with almost no turbulence, and maybe a single wispy cloud going around.

[cryptonian]

The image looks nice. I always dreamt about becoming a stargazer. But couldn't even try once.

The image actually gives me the motivation to try at least once. Also, I have started saving funds for the first star-gazing equipment. I even thought of building one at home. 

[PDCWolf]

On 7/12/2023 at 5:57 PM, Tom2515 said:

Nice photos!  Looks pretty. 

On 7/23/2023 at 4:29 PM, Tom2515 said:

Thanks for sharing!

Thank you both!

On 7/20/2023 at 6:58 AM, cryptonian said:

The image looks nice. I always dreamt about becoming a stargazer. But couldn't even try once.

The image actually gives me the motivation to try at least once. Also, I have started saving funds for the first star-gazing equipment. I even thought of building one at home. 

Getting started is the first step, but also the hardest. I do have to say though, whilst I'm extremely privileged in having access to this gear for free, I do stuff with my own gear which is really budget friendly and it's not half bad either.