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Well it was a lovely night tonight, so out with the camera and a new mount to try..here is a pic taken with the 17-85mm lens and it is 6 minutes at 800 ISO you have to love the low noise of the Canon..
The other cool thing is I set up this remotely and used my inside computer to talk to my laptop via the wireless to control the scope and camera to take the pic..got to love technology

WOW! Makes you wonder how many are looking at us

low noise? there are white marks all over the place

What no telescope? you shot this with only 17-85mm lens - well done.

Cool picture!

Is that with a standard tripod or do you have a tracking device (to account for the Earth turning)?

How did you know you needed 6 minutes? Did you just take a bunch of photos at different "shutter speeds"?

Definitely a great capture!!

Tony, mate these night shots that you do are unreal and this is great as we have come to expect from you and yeh great stuff.

Yes this was on a tracking platform, too the telescope off and put the camera on and the exposure just comes from experience, you have a fine balance with the night sky and the light pollution. If you go too long the picture gets ruined by all the reflected light from houses street lights etc.

tony
great shot ! u is the master

cheers rob

Very nice, Big V.

But, since you've got your computer driving your laptop which controls the scope and camera, haven't you made yourself obsolete?

Daniel

Very cool.
Great shot...certainly puts things into perspective.

Nice one Big V. Our place and significance in the scheme of things
cheers
marco

Daniel, nope because I still have to tell the computer what I want to photograph so it knows where to point the scope and when to open and shut the shutter of the camera... but it does make it all alot more comfortable!!!!

WOW, beautiful picture.
Also gota love that technology, sitting back in the warm house letting the computer tell the camera what to do. Great stuff

Great shot Big V!

So as to not go off topic in this thread, maybe you could answer a n00b question about really long exposures like this one in another thread I started here:

http://www.dslrusers.com/viewtopic.php?p=242022#242022

Big V wrote:Well it was a lovely night tonight, so out with the camera and a new mount to try..here is a pic taken with the 17-85mm lens and it is 6 minutes at 800 ISO you have to love the low noise of the Canon..
The other cool thing is I set up this remotely and used my inside computer to talk to my laptop via the wireless to control the scope and camera to take the pic..got to love technology

I certainly do love the Canon, except in my case is the 30D, but I don't like their prices that much. That is a lovely picture Big V and quite inspired too. Now I would like to know how you managed to control the camera with your laptop, this is quite a revelation! I guess I have to start by buying the remote for the camera, which is quite expensive (about $90). I heard somewhere that you could buy a chip TV remote in Crazy Clarks and findtune it to operate the camera, but I cannot remember if it was for the Nikon or the Canon and anyhow I am not very bright and so far I haven't be sucessful.

I use remote capture, which is the software that comes with the camera for remote viewing and capture. This will only allow the 30 second maximum exposure, so I have made up a parallel/3.5mm cable that plugs into the lappy and the other end goes to the camera. I then use another piece of software called guide master to then control the long exposures, this allows me to set the time and number of shots I wish to take. You can of course use the remote to do a bulb exposure but that means you have to puch the button to start and then do it again some time later to stop but it does work well and this is how I used to do it before I got all the cables and software sorted!!!
Saturday night I am going to put my camera on the big telescope and do some hi res stuff..

Here is another shot from the same night..

That is also a fantastic picture. Would like to see the results witht the big telescope. I bet they are going to be spectacular!

Very spectacular, how much does all the equpiment cost to guide the camera (forgot the exact name of the device).

I would love to try one out one day...

wow,what a techniq and capture,amazing detail in this shot.i never tried long exposures.do they only apear at certain monthz? , sorry too stupid to ask.

No such thing as a stupid question so ask away!!
THe mount to guide the camera costs about a grand but you normally have a telescope attached to it..
The software to control the camera is free, remote capture comes with your camera and guidemaster is also free. Guidemaster is the software that will allow you to set the length of the bulb exposure and how many. For example last night I was taking 10 minute, 5 minute and 1 minute exposures of the same object, all controlled by guidemaster. Will put the result up later tonight..
Now, just so peopke understand, when using guidemaster to do this, you have to make a cable up which plugs into the parallel port of your computer and into the remote control plug of your camera. Mine is 5m in length, as this is the same length as the usb cable you plug into your camera so that you can use remote capture, which displays the image on your computer and allows you to hange ISO settings and image quality.
http://www.guidemaster.de/guidemaster_demo_en.asp is the link for the guidemsater program.
http://www.guidemaster.de/interface_en.asp is the link to the schematic for building the required cable..
Hope this helps.