Baby's first Polarie exposure

[Octane (Humayun)]

After finishing with a wedding tonight, I managed to get home and quickly set up the Polarie for the first time.

I have never used a polar scope before. But, I used the polar meter to point about south with magnetic declination in mind, and, accurately set the inclinometer to 35(.2) degrees.

I slid the polar scope in and by just moving the tripod head a little bit, I thought I saw the trapezium in Octans. Never seen it before! I rotated the polar scope and the stars were pretty much in the spots on the reticle where they should be. Great success!

I couldn't point at Crux as the body of the camera was hitting the Polarie unit. How have people got around this? I think I'll have to buy an extension arm.

Anyway, I saw Scorpius rising above the house, so, pointed at it and took an 8 minute exposure (with in camera noise reduction). Despite the light pollution and the 84.2% Moon.

This is the result. Very, very happy! Apologies for the JPG artifacts. I saved it as a 200 KB image for forum.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
480 secs f/4.0 @ 40mm iso100

I simply can't wait for dark skies to play with this thing.

H

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Congrats on first light.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Glad it all went so well, H. Thinking of buying one myself

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Good stuff H, you can even see the Milky Way there from Qbyn West

Mike

[Octane (Humayun)]

Cheers, all.

Mike, the Milky Way is easily visible on nights where there's no Moon or its phase is early/late. I'd imagine my backyard would be half-decent to image from.

I might get to start on a project I've wanted to do for a long time!

H

[multiweb (Marc)]

Very cool. You'll love it. I have mine running on the side everytime I'm out imaging. Always using it for something.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Octane

Cheers, all.

Mike, the Milky Way is easily visible on nights where there's no Moon or its phase is early/late. I'd imagine my backyard would be half-decent to image from.

I might get to start on a project I've wanted to do for a long time!

H

Yes, I remember when I lived in Karabah in 2003/4 for 9 months while we were building at Mt Cambell in Googong, the skies were quite good, especially to the East and south. I had the 12" LX200GPS setup semi permanently in the back yard and did plenty of imaging, the last two rows of thumbnails HERE were taken from there (I was a newbie CCD imager then )

Mike

[Screwdriverone (Chris)]

Originally Posted by Octane

I simply can't wait for dark skies to play with this thing.

H

Ahem, IISAC is on the 11th-13th April.......dark skies.......good friends......a few beverages........????

You know you want to.

Cheers

Chris

p.s. nice work with the polarie....baited breath for the darker results from that beast of a camera and the L lenses

[Octane (Humayun)]

Nah, no can do. I have all my gear semi-permanently installed at a friend's place, so, pulling it all down, packing it up and taking it up is a hassle.

Also, the skies are inky black at my mate's place.

H

[leon]

Well that went well H, good on ya mate, nice first effort.

Leon

[Hakka (Lincoln)]

What head are you using between the camera and the polarie? I use a manfrotto ballhead with a rotating base and I can aim the camera pretty much anywhere in the sky. The camera doesn't come anywhere near the polarie.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Cheers, Leon!

Lincoln, I'm just using the standard ball head that came extra in the starter road back. I think I will need to buy a bigger ball head. Or I'm just not rotating my current one properly!

Cheers.

H

[Hakka (Lincoln)]

Originally Posted by Octane

Or I'm just not rotating my current one properly!

If you have the camera upright you wont be able to aim above the scp with a ballhead. Using the base adjustment roll the camera to one side so its in portrait orientation, then use the ball adjustment to aim the camera up a bit to get crux.

[gregbradley]

Great shot Humi. Nice sharp stars.

Yes the camera can be a bit tricky to get above a certain angle before it hits the limit of the ballhead.

I rotate the ballhead so the indent is behind where I want angle the camera. That gives a bit more play.

Or I rotate the base around and try again and that sometimes gets extra elevation or I hang the camera upside down and I get any angle that way! It can be a chore to frame the image though! A tiltable LCD would help there. Otherwise its get on the ground and look up at the camera under the tripod. Oh well, whatever it takes to get the shot.

Greg.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Thanks Lincoln and Greg. That's what I did last night and I think I have the hang of it now. Cheers.

This thing has reinvigorated the spark. I want to make more award winning images.

H