I was at Marathon Motel in Marathon Texas and it was very clear with no moon.
I also got a new Sony A7rii camera and Sony 85mm f1.8 lens that I wanted to test. This system is completely new to me (My main system is Nikon D750). I have always wanted to do the M45 region and it seemed like a good candidate. It was also easier to find and frame using the live view of the camera.
I have also never used the star adventurer for more than 30 second subs. This is the second time using it and I strugged with PA (The number of stars in the sky made it real hard
and I am spoilt with polemaster . I should pack a laser to help with this the next time. But I got it aligned and it was tracking quite well.
I picked 1.5 minute sub length wtih ISO6400 and stopped down the lens to F4 (learned the lession with Nikon 50mm wideopen.. resulting in horrible coma and colors). I probaby could have gone longer but I didnt want to mess with it.
The battery life in sony is real bad (new battery fully charged) lasted about 2 hours. IT was also getting close to freezing and I packed it in once the battery died ( I did have a spare but it was too dark to mess with things ).
I ended up with 59x1.5 min subs. Processed with PI and Photoshop. This has good bit of subs and might be go longer next time if I get a chance. No noise reduction was applied.
I was wondering about the "star eater" algorithm in sony but the subs are very clean and I dont see any loss of stars at this scale at least. Looks real dense to me
Comments