The DSLR experiment continues. This time with a mosaic. Each panel of this two-framer of part of the M31 region is made up of about 12 x 300s exposures at ISO800.

The Canon 350D DSLR is mounted at prime focus on my 8 inch 1000mm focal length Newtonian telescope. The camera is modified with a higher band-pass IR filter, but no light pollution filters have been used.

As you can see I've made a poor job of joining the two sections together. Getting the background colour flat across the whole image is proving troublesome.

Because of this I've pushed the background rather too dark, so more processing practice needed!

Click here for a larger sized version.

The ongoing experiment with DSLR astrophotography is coming along fairly well. Here is a fairly large integration (about 4 hours exposure) on part of the IC1805 Hear NEbula complex (also known as the Rolling Stones Nebula).

After spending so much time hiding behind a hydrogen alpha filter, I've almost forgotten about star colours. The DSLR gives a nice quick route to a full colour image. Of course, they have their drawbacks with noise and so forth, but this this has been a lot of fun.

Processing colour DSLR astro photos in photoshop is yet another learning curve I'm struggling with.

IC1805 Heart Nebula with 8 inch F5 Newtonian and the homemade mount. No filters. Click through for the larger version.