A Cold Night off the Balcony

Gary George

Well it was one of those days where you think to yourself “should I or not?” As I started to gather my telescope I kept watching the weather and so far they are predicting clear skies, so off I went, got the telescope set up, laptop running, and here we go. To those of you that know me, venturing out to shoot the Moon is a must, but deep sky objects, well I made myself a promise to try and capture the Winter objects that we all know. However, tonight I am going to shoot “prime focus” and connected to my laptop using Canon Utility.

After a two star alignment off we went to M45 for a look or two while we are waiting for Orion to clear the roof of the balcony, finally slewing the scope over to M42 I took several shots for focus, and I mean several, after getting what I believe is focus, I set the intervolameter for 15 seconds at ISO 800 and set back, put my earbuds in and watch the clock tick by. After about 40 shots at 800 I change the ISO over to 1600 and shot 40 more.  After a good cold night on the balcony I finally wrapped everything up and came back inside about 11 PM with Orion setting behind the trees. I wondered how things turned out.

So today I imported all the images and spent most of the morning and late afternoon cataloging my shots, putting the master copies on the external drive and began stacking the best shots. Using the latest version of Deep Sky Stacker I was quite surprised as to my results, several different shots , different ISO settings. I finally put them away for safe keeping. YES I have learned a lot about the different programs, EOS Utility, Lightroom Classic CC, Photoshop CC, and the camera. This has been quite a trip for me. In the beginning all I really wanted to learn was how to use a “point and shoot camera to take moon pictures” it’s fun, and I always have a bunch of questions for the ones who know the answers.

Thanks for reading and I hope you like the pictures. Enjoy!