In my previous posts, I had the same three targets. The moon is easy (ISO24, 1/250s), although the fuller it gets, the more washed out if I don’t use a filter:
And I can see some single frames of Saturn are worse than others (ISO32, 1/10s):
But I was REALLY setting up so I could play with my camera centring. As I noted in a previous post, the feedback from an online FB group was that my EP wasn’t centred. So I wanted to ensure 100% that I was centred last night. For one of my stars off to the side, defocused into a doughnut, I was clearly NOT centred (screengrab of Night Cap below):
But I moved the stars around a bit in the EP and managed to get something a little more balanced:
And then BAM, I got this:
Only minor differences in positioning, no difference in my centring over the EP. The beauty of the adapter I’m using is that it centres on its own (the physical connectors are aligned so they ALWAYS centre properly). Which left me REALLY confused. Does that mean I’m only centred and aligned for that specific spot on the screen? Not out to the edges? I went back to focus, found a single star, tried ISO10K for a short 2s, and got this, a nice little dot:
I tried Altair, and dropped ISO to 8K while keeping it at 2s:
Under the heading of weird, I dropped exposure to 1/2s, and got this, with a few extra stars poking through more than they did above:
When I increased to 4s, I got some more stars, which makes sense:
I tried another EP, the Hyperion 36mm, and tested my “setup” with a screengrab:
And again, I could find at least one spot that was dead on.
But ISO 10K and a 4s burst? No additional stars. WTF?
So I did the same settings again. And got this:
More stars, different sized star capturing. I bopped over to a small open cluster, dropped duration to a single second, and ISO to 8K. And got more stars, but mixed pinpoint and not. Sigh.
Just for fun, I was wondering what would happen if I did a video of the cluster and stacked it. Nothing that useful, apparently.
A second video did NOT stack well at all.
I also tried a video of (I think) Altair again. Then converted in PIPP and stacked in AutoStakkert. After the one above, I wasn’t expecting much. But it actually seemed to work, while limiting it to I think the best 10%:
The little stars aren’t pinpoint, but overall, the image is promising I think. Now I just have to start figuring out why one works and the other one doesn’t.
