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Received the SSA GTI last week (Jan 13, 2024) and attempted M31 with the Canon 600/4 III + Sony A7RIII in -10C. I started with 15 sec subs for one hour and then 30 sec subs at ISO 800. But thin high clouds had rolled in, so even though the stars looked good at 30 secs, the entire image had a light cast from the clouds. So had to make due with 123 of the 15 sec subs I captured initally. Only used the SSA's built in guidance, but that was enough to give about 80% keepers. Unfortunately we live in a Bortle 6 area so lots of light pollution. I'm impressed by how well both lens and the SSA worked at 80% of max load. Obviously not the perfect lens for astro, but works much better than the 300/2.8 and since I already had it, I had to give it a try. I'm sure I will be trying other DSO's with this lens. Still very new to Pixinsight, so not very happy with the postprocessing, wound up adjusting the tone, and saturation (with liberal artistic license) in Adobe Lightroom where I am more at home. Location: Lund, Sweden - Bortle 6 Date 2024-1-15 20:00CET Lens: Canon 600/4L III (3050g) Camera: Sony A7RIII + metabones adapter Weight Camera + Lens: 4000g / 8.8lbs 123 Light 15secs @ ISO 800 f4 25 Dark frames 25 bias 25 Flat Post Processing in Pixinsight and Adobe Lightroom  |
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Awesome image! did you try to use the built in Polar alignemnt feature in the sa GTI? I was able to get up to 2 min exposures untracked with good polar alignment. although at 360mm. Must be a dream to do astrophotography in sweden if you live up north when the nights are really long  the green cast is a little bit irritating but other than that, awesome photo! hope you'll have a lot of fun with the SA GTI, it has served me really well throughout the last year and is still going strong. |
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Thanks Jens!. This was only using the built-in tracking in the GTI, so will have keep testing to see how long I can go. Just have to decide on a new target. Unfortunately very few clear nights in southern Sweden during winter, but cross your fingers it might be clear tonight.
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Jens: any tips on phd2 settings? I can't get below 1" and last session it was over 2  |
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TiffsAndAstro:Jens: Unfortunately I don't use PHD2 so I can't give you tips about it. I reckon it all comes down to polar alignment. Did you make sure that you're well polar aligned? I use the asi air to control my mount it works really well. I am around 0.7" to 1" which is alright for the 360mm that I use |
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Jens:TiffsAndAstro:Jens: I fairly easy and quickly get well below 10" total pa error using Nina 3ppa and often run it again to double check |
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Update, I have recently sold the Skywatcher GTi and purchased an ASI 2600MC Air and Rainbow Astro 135E mount, and an ONTC 8" Newtonian telescope (for home use), while the Canon 600mm is now my travel rig, so good for birds, nature and astro. The combination of the Canon 600/4 +2600MC Air + Rainbow 135E is easy to use, provides sub 0.5 arc/sec guiding and outstanding imaging. Of course if you don't do nature photography there are probably better and cheaper telescopes, but for me this is the perfect solution. I have also built an M5Stack Core mini-computer to control the focus on the 600/4 and that makes the task much easier than having to use a PC...  |
