Steve Paxton's photos with the keyword: Night sky.

My Focuser on the main telescope would not calibrate so I had to send it away to get looked at. So I have turned the Clock back to my old school days when I first started out in Astro. Nikon 300mm D F4 AF-S come from the 2000s days . There is no auto focus on this rig its all manual focus at the start of the Night and tape lens. In the lens defence for its age even though I checked focus each night it never moved. So this setup is just nikon lens, Filter draw With Optolong LeNhance filter inside( for light pollution) and the QHY183C colour camera. This is 29 hour's worth of data in the hope the lens worked out well. To say that I am over the moon with the end result is an understatement who said its complicated. I had thought of more shots but 29 hours is plenty as I have not heard back I will find another target to try. QHY183C -10 174 shots over 5 nights 600 sec each shot. Nikon 300mm f4 D Lens Skywatcher NEQ 6 Pro Hypertuned Guided PHD2, Nina Pixinsight, Ps Lr.

We set out as clouds parted and we wanted to take advantage of no moon. We went to the Lancelin sand Dunes a Huge area. I was very reticent to go as I had the mount shooting the Helix nebula and the focus was not working as well as I would have liked. I did a dummy run of focus it worked so I let nina start it self at 9pm to start the night and night 3 saturday. You can see the position of the Helix nebula on the Milky way close to the planet Saturn. we drove into the dune in a 4x4 and first dune we got bogged in the soft powdered sand way down the end of the valley near the three white tops(exit of the dunes safety light). We got out by the use of tryer boards under the wheel. we arrived at this spot and the three of us started shooting. this was the very end of the night I walked into the "valley" right up close to the dunes to try and cover the lights from the small hamlet of lancelin ( left side). the dune to my left shoulder is bigger than a house you get no usable scale in the black of night. The Milky way was getting smaller and lower so I walked down the dune into the valley. we left a 3 am I got in the house at 4:30 am just in time to turn off the alarm then crawled into bed. It was a very cold night lots of layers on again. technically might be the first photo taken on the 19th only New Zealand is much ahead of australia. D810 ISO5000 Samyang 14mm F2.8 20Sec. 5 Vertical shots.

This was a test to see how well the computer program worked on its own. I had to wait for Orion to rise at 11pm so I could start this 3 hours and a bit imaging and then the all important Darks. It was set up and go to bed set the alarm for 2:45 in the morning to put the lens cap on the lens for the Dark's then go back to bed. This had to happen before the sun started to rise at 4 am in the morning. When I got up at 6 am it was all on computer just as it was programed Looks like we have tamed a few of those dragons. Taken with D810 and 300mm D prime lens. This will be visited again out on the farm in the real dark. Enjoy the first night that Fully went to plan and computer lived up to what it was suppose to do. Cant wait for Orion to rise sooner to get more images. PIP the first look on the Star adventurer.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gapCK5_rMuY For those who enjoy music what i grew up with.

An exploratory shot for Wednesday and the total Eclipse 4 shots stacked. ISO 800 F8 2 min and 10 sec each shot with 600mm lens on DX so 900mm View. you can pick the moon gets brighter in this 9 min shot of the night sky.