RASC - St. John's Centre
Members Photos

"Comet Neowise" photographed from Lady Lake, Harbour Grace, July 19th 2020. Took a whole whack of 30s exposures of the comet last night after it got dark. One sequence of 25 frames I co-added and attached after largely-derotating. Why rotated? I'd brought out my tripod, venerable Canon T2i and Tamron 18-270 lens (which I managed to stay focused), star tracker pro, shutter cable.... but NOT the tripod head to mount to the tracker, so I could aim the camera!! So I was forced to mount the camera directly to the polar axis of the tracked (which also had a 1/4-20 tripod thread).

While rotating about the polar axis to "aim upwards just a bit" took care of altitude, and rotating the whole tracker took care of azimuth, the polar axis was not point at the NCP and initially I didn't use the tracker. I turned it on a bit into it just the same, and about half the tracking error went away... enough for usable 30s exposures.

I should've saved RAWs instead of JPGs, though... there are curious horizontal (pre-derotation) artifact/streaks present.

Canon T2i at ISO 800, 30s, Tamron 18-270 superzoom at 39mm "quasi-tracked"

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"Comet Neowise" photographed from Terra Nova National Park (Newman Sound), July 24th 2020 during a clear Friday evening last week (24 July) after a day full of rain. I wasn't expecting a clear night, accordingly didn't assemble the camera atop tripod with tracker, etc, and so this is a "spur of the moment" shot taken during a lull in camping, due to the recently-emptied campsite next to ours, which happened to have the right view of the sky.

This is the sum of two successive quick 15s exposures, Canon T2i @ISO1600, Tamron 18-270 superzoom at 35mm, f/6.3, camera half-braced atop a wooden post with a stone under the lens barrel, used to set the elevation (!).

If only I'd brought out my 100 groove/mm blazed transmission grating / fixed 50mm "NiftyFIfty/PlasticFantastic" EF-S lens...

Click on image for full original photo.