Tonight I had two telescopes out to capture the night sky, primarily focusing my astrophotography efforts on the constellation Orion.
December is early for me to photography Orion. Although it’s been rising earlier and earlier each night, I tend to get around to Orion later in it’s season. But tonight I was excited as it was my first real attempt from the cottage with the big guns.
The Redcat 51 & Canon T6 camera preformed decently well with the iOptron Skytracker Pro. After buying the counterweight adapter last summer, it seems more capable of taking the payload capacity of the heavy telescope & camera although I do see it struggle on occasion. Thankfully, it was a cold enough night that cooling didn’t present too much of a problem.
Other photos taken by the Celestron 8″ SCT telescope on the same night:
Comparison between 8″ SCT & RedCat51
Click for larger image.
Capture & Processing Details
Frames: 146×60″ (gain: 240.00)
Integration: 2.4 hours
Darks: ~20
Bias: ~20
Avg. Moon age: 10.24 days
Avg. Moon phase: 78.59%
Astrometry.net job: 3109744
RA center: 5h 37′ 41″
DEC center: -3° 34′ 26″
Pixel scale: 14.539 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: 351.964 degrees
Field radius: 3.016 degrees
Click here for full capture details on Astrobin
