Astrophotography

(copied from my DragonflyDIY blog)

I have been somewhat interested in astrophotography in the past, but have only done camera-lens wide field stuff with no mount (30 second exposure type stuff). I just wasn't interested in spending the time or money to get into what can be a VERY expensive hobby.

However, at this year's Astronomy on the Beach (29th annual, in Island Lake State Park near Brighton, Michigan), I went to a talk about smart telescopes. I had been only vaguely aware of this new phenomenon, and went to the talk very skeptical. Long story short, about 3 days later I laid down $550 for a Dwarf 3 smart telescope.

The front runners in the $500 class scopes right now are the Dwarf 3 and the Seestar S50. The Dwarf has a newer generation 8 megapixel imaging chip and a wider field of view. The S50 is more telephoto and has a previous generation 2 megapixel chip. I find that a lot of what I'm interested in are larger objects, and I like the newer chip. Those considerations drove my decision.

Also it seems like Dwarf is pushing new features and updates out faster than Seestar is.

Anyway, my first night after the Dwarf arrived was hazy, but at 5:30 the following morning I had a clear window and took a couple of sets after doing some learning on the app.

As I looked out the back door facing south, Orion was right in my field of view, so M42 was to be the first target.

That went well. That's 100x 10 second exposures and a 120 gain, stacked and edited with the "auto" tool on Stellar Studio, a cloud-based simple editor with astrophotography specific tools. I did have dark frames set for this one.

 

I was inside getting ready to take my shower when this finished, and I thought from where I put the scope on the deck it could probably see M31 from there so I poked M31 in the atlas and let the scope find it. I set it to 100x 10 second exposures again, with a lower gain of I think 60.

I'm pretty happy with this. I'm also happy that the thing is the size of a kid's lunch box, so it's a telescope I can easily bring moto camping on the motorcycle.