SHAKE IT BABY !
“the tale of the vibrating garage”
After a couple of months of really cold weather it finally got a little warmer last night, so i decided to spend some time stargazing again. I set up the scope and used a quick SkyAlign to get going. I received an “alignment error” two times and by the third time i realized that i had not set the correc time nor the correct date.
The alignment process only asked me for my location but never asked for a date or time, so i wrongly thought that it was not needed. But really, how should the computer know what date it was ? It’s not like i’ve been keeping the scope in hibernate mode since last november…stupid me.
Anyway, so i then used the two star auto align method and spent about 30 minutes looking at M42. WOW. The moon was quite bright so i guess seeing conditions were not optimal, but i still liked what i saw.
So i got out my Panasonic G1 and tried out my bathinov mask for the first time. I chose a nice bright star close to m42 and took a couple of pictures and while fiddling with the focus i finally got it to look just like it’s supposed to. Below you can see the two images. The one on the left is out of focus and the one on the right is in focus – or at least that’s the best i could do:
I used 2 second exposures for these images by the way. So far so good. I then moved the scope to M42 manually and started taking pictures. The first picture was really blurry. You could hardly see anything. The second one was crappy too.
Then i realized that the bathinov mask still hung over the dew shield….. Sometimes i defenitely feel my 41 years….
So off the mask went and i stared to take pictures. I started with 5 second exposures with 400 ISO and went up all the way to 25 seconds with 800 and 1600 ISO. From what i could see on the G1s viewfinder i was taking very nice images. I was starting to feel proud of myself.
But when i finally got inside and looked at my great images, all images looked like this:
You won’t hurt my feelings if you’re thinking: “That looks like crap”. Indeed it does. So i went and did the whole bathinov focus thing again and still ended up with shaky pictures. I then realized that whenever i moved, the image started to shake really badly. Even the smallest movements created really bad vibrations. Of course this is what kept messing up my images.
As it turns out, the roof of my garage is supported by wooden beams that vibrate like the floor of a boxing ring whenever i take a breath….. . By the time i realized this, both my power tanks were giving me a nice yellow light, so i had to pack everything up.
GREAT. Another two hours spent outside with nothing to show. But it was still great fun seeing that the bathinov mask acutally works and M42 looked really nice !
Looks like I have a LONG way to go until i’ll end up with decent astrophotography….
But at least i’m BACK and looking forward to try the whole shebang again from my driveway which will hopefully prove much less unstable : )
5 Comments
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I’m getting very similar looking pictures, but I am on a very solid base. I have been trying to make my tripod more rigid, and been thinking of a (not too heavy) sand bag hanging below the lens holder to keep it from moving. Also I think the shutter may cause the camera to shake when I take a picture, so I have bought a remote and also a new Canon 7D camera, I should be able to lift the mirror and reduce the camera vibration … good luck with it, I would love to see more pictures in time …
Hi Wayne – good to hear from you ! well, i certainly hope that i’ll get better pictures once i’m off the garage and on the driveway. If it stays as bad, then i’ll be quite disappointed. I’m already using a remote shutter cable so i was hoping that i would not get any shaking from the camera…
your pics of m42 did not show up in the post.
you should get the anti-vibration pads. they help out a ton.
keep up the blog! It’s nice to see an informative SE blog
Anonymous – did you see the pictures of the bathinov mask images ? does anybody else have problems seeing included images ?
Thanks for your feedback. I think i will get pads once i still have the problems when trying this again on firm ground.
Hi Marc, My first few photos through my nexstar 6se were very similar but since then I have found a few things that really seem to help. Here is a link to a pic I took of orion nebula a few months back
http://www.bebo.com/c/photos/view?MemberId=2093088505&PhotoAlbumId=12035572280&PhotoId=12035628450
A few other photos at same place if you look.
My used a canon 1000d unmodified(yet) on manual settings with ISO800 and 30sec exposure. I didnt have a wobbly attic floor to worry about though as I was out in the garden. First thing I found was that the scope must be level, balanced with the camera attached, perfectly aligned (preferably using stars on opposide sides of sky) and surprisingly not to have any camera remote cable in my hand. Even holding the remote cable by hand can cause movement in the photo. Use mirror lockup and at least a 2 second delay in settings if you have options and use built in camera timer whenever possible. Also after using scope go-to option I find that proper tracking takes about 2 mins to settle enough for photography, possibly because of gear lash?
Hope this infomation may be of some help to others with a similar setup and thanks for all the nexstar advice on your blog.
Paddyman