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On Satrday 4th December six of us had a great evening out at the ASWA Tammin Observing Site. The weather was fair - unexpectedly cool for the time of year, wind coming and going throughout the night, but no dew.
I had a great night with my AstroTrac. Again it surprised me by taking 12 minutes to set up (from being in the boot of my car to pointing the camera up at the sky) and another 5-10 minutes to polar align. From that point on, I took exposures up to 4 minutes in length all night without a single problem. Absolutely brilliant! The exposure time was limited largely by noise - being summer the DSLR is much more susceptable to noise.
I took photographs of mostly the usual suspects, but was enjoying playing around with the Canon 50mm F/1.4 lens to see what it's capabilites were like. Objects photographed went something like this:
- Large Magellanic Cloud
- Orion with Barnards Loop
- Northn Milky Way (between Taurus and Gemini)
- Milky Way (near Puppis and Canis Major)
- Southern Cross and Eta Carina
In the mean time while the AstroTrac wih 7D were busy I took a couple of longish startrail shots with a 500D and 17mm lens, which turned out quite nice too.
The photography with the AstroTrac and 7D were so easy and enjoyable I didn't even bother turning on my laptop for the night. Used Live View for focus, the Canon remote for timed interval exposures, and AstroTrac for perfect tracking not requiring autoguiding. Too easy!
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