aperture

[brrttpaul]

Hi guys, pretty new to astronomy and astrophotography so bear with me, I have a HEQ5 mount and a skywatcher 150 reflector, I also have the nikon D7100. Upto now I have been setting up my mount using EQMOD and CDC and an invalometer but I have just downloaded the BYN (which is great so far even though its a learning curve). My question is this , when I put in the information for my camera i.e exposure aperture etc in the right hand box how do I know what aperture it is , as the camera is connected to my scope and not a lens. Also if i connect my scope to BYN and try to slew using BYN it starts to slew then stops, this isnt a big issue as I just switch over to CDC and it works fine on that. 

Cheers

Paul

[admin]

The aperture is a function on your lens, in this case your SkyWatcher 150 reflector.

 

The aperture is 150mm on that telescope and the f/stop (speed) is f/5.

 

Regards,

[astroman133]

Paul,

 

Of course aperture is meaningless unless you have a lens attached.  I am a Canon user and in BYE the Aperture column disappears from the Capture Plan when no lens is connected.

 

The ASCOM telescope functionality is not generally used for slewing since you cannot enter a destination.  The scope only moves as long as you press (with your mouse) one of the 4 arrow buttons. This is a nudge operation, rather than a slew.  It is intended to help you frame an imaging target and is usually used only for small, short duration moves.

[brrttpaul]

Thx very much guys, I set it up again this afternoon this time with camera attached to the scope and first thing I noticed was the aperture had dissapered. The slew controls, again I was only just finding my way around the  screen seeing which buttons were which etc and doubt if I use them. I was looking at the panel today and saved a file to load later. It consisted of 5 sets of lights exposure 180 secs, ISO@1600 the same at 800 ISO.  Would be nice to see some sort of data base built up with the resulting images to accompany it so newbies like myself can see what sort of settings would be good for any particular object.

[astroman133]

Providing pre-defined settings is not really possible. It is dependent on many factors and it is unlikely that my settings would work for you.  The capture plan values (ISO and exposure) depend on all of the following

 

1) your telescope

2) your camera

3) sky brightness due to moon or light pollution

4) ambient temperature

5) whatever filter is being used

6) has the camera been modified

7) to some extent the brightness of the target

 

I am probably leaving some items off, but you get the idea.

 

Given all the combinations, sharing settings is just not workable.

 

For deep sky astrophotography, as opposed to planetary AP, I would suggest setting the ISO to 800 and then take test shots of different exposures in the 3-10 minute range to see what the histogram looks like.  You want the bump of the histogram to be between 40-60% of the way from the left hand side. This should put the left shoulder of the histogram well away from the left side and the right shoulder away from the right side.

[brrttpaul]

It was just an idea