The Pinwheel Galaxy shot at a focal length of 50mm (75mm FF)

This morning I edited the first images I’ve taken with my new iOptron SkyGuider Pro star tracker. I was really excited when I saw the spiral arms of the Pinwheel Galaxy that I’d been focusing on.

To shoot these type of objects, you use the star tracker to rotate your camera at the same speed that the earth turns. This lets you take much longer exposures of the stars without getting star trails.

I’m just beginning to learn how to do this, but it’s nice that I was able to capture something on my first try.

While editing the video below, I thought that I should try one more time with a 400mm (600mm FF) lens to bring out a bit more detail. I spent an hour trying to find the galaxy with that lens. I live on the north side of the city and the galaxy is to the north, but I wasn’t sure if there was still too much light pollution to see it from my backyard and almost gave up.

Eventually around 1:30 a.m. I finally saw the fuzzy trails of the arms and was able to get about 12 pictures at 400mm before it went behind my house.

Shooting deep sky is just as difficult as I had heard. I’ve already learned my first lesson. You need sturdy mountings.

I cheaped out and bought a $35 ball head and $55 tripod specifically to help with astrophotography. While they are better than the other things I had lying around the house, they are not robust enough to handle the weight of my star tracker, camera, 400mm lens, and counter weight. They have too much wobble. Of those 12 pictures, only about 6 of them were clear enough to stack into an image. (img. Pinwheel Galaxy at 400mm).

Well, here’s to the next time. If everything was done perfectly the first time, life would be boring.