Welcome to William L.T. Ng's Astronomy Page
Latest Updated : May23, 2019
Trip to Australia, 2019
In April this year, had a trip to Australia with my family and friend. But very unfortunately, the weather was not so cooperative with us for astronomy. With our 12 nights staying in Australia, we could only have about 18 hours in total for imaging. Most of the time we could do astrophotography was in Rockhampton. But the air quality was not so good. The air was humid, and thus the transparency was just fair. Moreover, we stayed at a Holiday Park just located aside Bruce Highway. The sky was light polluted when those coal trains and road trains driven across.
The last night of our trip was the best. The sky turned total clear for astronomy finally, and the transparency was excellent. But we could do astrophotography up to midnight only as we needed to rush to Brisbane airport tomorrow.
Below were the gears I brought with for doing astrophotography with the trip.
| 1. | Vixen Baby VSD (FL55SS) apo scope with flattener and reducer, |
| 2. | Vixen ED81SII apo scope with flattener and reducer, |
| 3. | Vixen AP non-goto equatorial mount w/controller Star Book One |
| 4. | Vixen controller Star Book Ten |
| 5. | 5cm guiding scope + Lodestar guide cam |
| 6. | 4cm DIY guiding scope + QHY5LII-M guide cam |
| 7. | Canon modified 100Da |
| 8. | Canon modified M6a |
| 9. | Canon unmodified M6 |
| 10. | ZWO ASI1600MM-cool camera |
| 11. | Baadar 35nm Ha filter, 2" sized |
Before the trip, I had planned some new idea on doing deep sky astrophotography. But I couldn't finish it, even just one trial, due to the poor weather. I could use the little FL55SS (55mm F5.6) flourite scope and 100Da for doing wide field astrophotography only due to the unstable weather. So, most of the gears were not used in my trip. So frustrated indeed.
Below is one of the object I took in Condamine (our last night staying in Australia) taken with Vixen Baby VSD + 100Da @240mm F4.35
Total exposure time = 12x300s, @iso1600, autoguided with 4cm guiding scope + AP mount + PHD2
But that is really a good lesson to me. Refocusing on this Baby VSD is necessary if temperature drops more than 5 degrees.
More images will be uploaded once they are processed.
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