FIND DEEP SKY OBJECTS IN THE SKY and FINE TUNE star tracker position | Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer

hello in this video i will show exactly what to do in order to find the deep sky object that you want to photograph on the night sky and then how to set up your sky watcher star adventure setup that i have right here with a telephoto lens or maybe a small telescope or something like this in order to actually frame it up correctly to the deep sky object that you wish to photograph so without any further ado let's get started all right so at this point of the process of capturing a deep sky object i'm already assuming that you have your sky water star adventure properly set up properly polar aligned everything is balanced you have your camera mounted on the declination bracket and everything is ready to go i actually have a separate video on my youtube channel about how to properly set up this particular device this whole setup in order to properly track the night sky to get the best results so if you haven't seen that already definitely check it out i will put the link to it up here also by the end of the video on the end screen so yeah make sure to stick around till the end of the video and at this point you are ready to start shooting i'm assuming it's the night it's a clear night and you are ready to shoot so the first thing that you actually need to do and this is something that you can do in sort of advanced in preparation is that you need to figure out what is the deep sky object that you want to photograph because it's not like going to mcdonald's and looking at the menu where you can order uh i just want a cheeseburger with fries and a sprite please if you know what i mean and if you don't that basically means is that not every deep sky object on the night sky is feasible and it's possible to shoot on any given day or any given night on any given location on earth because it all depends on where you are where the earth is with relation to the sun so which month it is which which kind of which season it is what time of day what's your latitude what's your longitude there are a lot of factors that come into play which actually decide whether this deep sky object that you want to photograph will be actually visible during the during the dark night on the night sky high enough above the horizon so you are able to take a photo of it so in order to find out what are the deep sky objects that are possible to photograph even your current location and the current time that you want to do it i would recommend going to a site called telescopeuse.com and i have this site open on my smartphone they also have a pretty good mobile ui and if you go to this website basically you can see if you let it use your geolocation it will already find out what's your location and then what you will see here is basically a list of deep sky objects that are sort of recommended because they are sort of like the easiest to shoot maybe they are the largest or something like this this kind of list is sorted by by relevance whatever that means on this side but basically you can just use the search and you can search for whatever you want to search and you can just use those filters as well maybe you want to shoot some galaxies maybe you want to shoot some globular clusters maybe bright nebula maybe dark nebula you can basically set up some filters right here in the app and the app will tell you what are the objects that you can photograph for instance the first hit that i have right here for my location which is krakow and poland is the pelican nebula and this is actually the nebula that i was photographing the other night and indeed it's pretty easy to find and it's pretty easy to photograph as you can see on this graph right here it shows you the azimuth and the elevation as this object moves across the night sky so you can see that right here it is at 84 degrees south of azimuth and it's pretty high up on the horizon so it should be possible to photograph it and then if you click on it you can go inside to a more detailed view and right here you can see some photographs of this deep sky object taken by other photographers that submitted the pictures to this website but also you can scroll down and you can see uh this chart basically shows you like a like previously but in more detail with colors how this deep sky object is moving across the night sky and this yellow bar right here in the middle the yellow part are the twilights which is like the first half of it is the sunset and the second half of it is the sunrise and in the middle there is a very thin black line actually there is no dark night in my location right now there are there there is this phenomenon called white nights which basically means that the sunset and the astronomical twilight that happens after the sunset just smoothly advances into the morning twilight which basically means there is no truly dark night so actually at this given time of year which is which is june in my location it is not really possible to shoot deep sky objects but you know if the if the black bar is wider then if you are shooting within this black bar you will be good to go in shooting your deep sky object that's your photograph so after you scroll down a little bit more you can actually right here dial in your focal length and the camera sensor and right here i can dial in that i'm shooting with a 300 millimeter lens this is the lens that i have mounted right here this is the lens that i use for my deep sky photos this is the canon ef 70 to 300 and this is an excellent lens and by the way everything that i use right here the tracker the lens the cameras all the gear that i use will be listed down below in the description so you can check out those links if you want to pick up anything or just check out what i use those links are affiliated to amazon so if you use one of my links you are basically supporting the channel which would be definitely so anyway i am dialing in here 300 millimeters and also my camera sensor which is a full frame kind of user 36 millimeter sensor size this is what i usually use to shoot and right here you can see how your frame will look in your camera given the used focal length and even the camera sensor that you have dialed here in the settings and you can see that this particular deep sky object which is the north american nebula on the left and the pelican nebula on the right basically fits your frame perfectly so with this kind of lens i would definitely recommend trying to shoot the north american nebula or the pelican level they're actually very close together so it's best to just frame them both into the into the same shot so after you have that figured out after you have figured out what is it that you are going to shoot you actually need to find it on the night sky you need to find the spot in the night sky roughly where this deep sky object lies and in order to do that i would recommend another app which is called stellarium and this is an app that also have a desktop version and this is an excellent program for your desktop actually it is free for desktop i think they have versions for all the operating systems windows mac os linux i think as well so definitely check it out again links to the software and the apps that i use everything will be in the description so you can check it out later and the mobile version of this app at least for ios for iphones is actually paid but it's very cheap compared to the things that it is capable of so i would definitely recommend going and downloading that so once we open this app we need to actually change our time because currently it's like 4 p.m so i need to change the time i can tap here and i can just drag in order to let's say let's say that it's midnight so somewhere around here then i can tap again and right now what i can see is that i saw previously in telescope use what is the azimuth of this deep sky object that i want to photograph it is somewhere somewhere around east so i can look east in order to find it out but actually there is a search engine built inside this app so you can just type the name of the deep character that you want to photograph and the app will actually show you where that lies on this on this ui right here so in order to do that i can just tap on this button right here at the bottom and then i have a search so i can type pelican and then i have the pelican nebula and it will frame it up nicely with this kind of crosshairs this kind of pulsating rectangle or square or whatever you want to call it and right here i can zoom into it i can see what's in the vicinity and right down there you have a fov in degrees and this is the field of view this is the angle view in degrees and this is very important because it actually correlates to your focal length and if you want to find out how your focal length corresponds to your actual angular view i can recommend another website in order to find that out this website is called points in focus.com again linkable below and basically what you can do right here is you can dial in your sensor size so in my case it's a full frame camera you can dial in your focal length so in my case it will be 300 millimeters and then if i scroll down here i can see that my angle of view is 6.8 degrees and i can use that information in order to see in stellarium how much do i need to pinch and how much do i need to zoom in in order to see pretty much the same portion of the night sky that i will see with my camera so let's do that alright so if i pinch in i can see that somewhere around 6.7 this is pretty much what my framing looks like you can see a bunch of stars here in this app and it's pretty hard to identify the spot in the night sky like with your own eyes just by looking at this kind of ui so it's definitely worth to zoom out first and then what you need to do is that you need to physically locate some stars in the night sky one of the brightest stars and look for patterns look for geometrical patterns in order to find out where exactly well not exactly but where roughly this deep sky object lies in between some bright stars in order to point your camera roughly at that spot and then you can take some test pictures and fine-tune your framing and in order to do that there is a very very useful tool like right here in stereo because if you are not in under a super dark night if you are shooting with maybe your backyard maybe you're in some kind of an urban or suburban areas chances are that you have quite a bit of light pollution and you don't see as many stars with your own eyes in the sky as you can see in the app so what you can actually do you can go here and if i click on this icon i can go to advanced and then i can go to light pollution setting and basically what you can do right here you don't need to dial in your exact portal class number right here in the app but what you can just do is basically just move it a little bit up in order to make those stars those dimmer stars disappear and doing that you can sort of match the amount of stars that you see in the app the amount of stars that you actually see on the night skies so for instance for light pollution 5 if i zoom it out you can see very little stars we can see that danab here we can see singers we can see vega somewhere here and what you can do is just fiddle around with the light pollution settings in stellarium in order to recognize the patterns of stars that you see with your eyes with the patterns of stars that you see right here and if we go back for instance let's go to light pollution 4 and let's search again for pelican nebula and we can see that it is very close to the start called daynab and dayna is actually it has kind of a bit of a story because i don't know if you are aware of the the book and the movie adaptation the martian the adaptation was filmed with matt damon it is an excellent story with the guy that was stranded on mars because his crew left because they thought that their their vehicle is going to be destroyed by the storm and he is basically struggling on mars and he uses danab in a very clever way to well i'm not going to spoil it you just have to read the book i will put the link to the book as well in the description so anyway in terms of pelican nebula and north american nebula it is very close to denap and deneb is actually very easy to spot on the night sky so once you have denim spotted you actually need to take your rig and you need to point it at this spot in the night sky and take some test shots and see what's your framing so let's do that alright so if you have watched my previous video then you know that i was recommending to not mount the camera using a ball head because normally if you use a ball head you can just loosen the ball head and basically move it around in 3d space in order to point the camera literally like pretty much anywhere you want but we are not using a ball head here for two reasons we are not using it because it would make the entire setup less sturdy more susceptible to wind more unstable and the second reason is that if you are using long focal lens it is actually extremely hard to fine tune your framing by just loosening the ball head and moving it around a little bit a little bit even the slightest movement with the ball head will result in a very large shift in your framing and if you if you have your framing perfectly and you tighten the ball head and you let it go chances are that the ball head will slightly sink down and it will basically ruin your frame so it's definitely not recommended to use a ball head with this setup with deep sky astrophotography with long focal lens because it's just it's just it's just impossible to to frame it up the way you want so we're not using the ball head and the way we are going to frame our shot the way we want is that we want to uh loosen those both clutches there's one clutch right here this big black ring and then there's a second clutch right here so i'm also loosening that and then you can just move it around you can rotate it like this and you can rotate this guy like this and because those two axis of rotation one is right here and the other one is like right here so one is right here and the other one's like this they are orthogonal which means that they are perpendicular and using those two axis of rotation it is it is like mathematically proven that it is possible to point your camera anywhere in the 3d space so it means that you can put it anywhere in the night sky so you can just rotate it around in order to find the position that will ensure that you are pointed at the correct place so for instance if i wanted to frame our shot sort of away from this camera that i'm filming on right now i would have to move it around like this then move it around something like this and that means that i'm pretty much straight away from the lens of this camera then i can tighten this clutch i can tighten this clutch and then i am pointed let's assume that i am pointed at the deep sky object that i want to photograph but there is one problem as you can see the camera is sort of in this funny location because it's backwards it is also a little bit diagonal and it may not be the frame that you want to shoot but if you're shooting astrophotography it's not really that big of a deal because there is no horizon for reference so it's not like your horizon is totally up top you're just shooting a small very tiny fraction of the night sky and it just happens so that the deep sky object is sort of rotated around but who knows anyway what's the orientation of of the object that that that it should be it's sort of subjective but if you are using a ring mount on your lens like i was recommending in my previous setup video then you can what you can do it's actually really interesting you can just loosen this screw and then with this screw loosened you can actually rotate this around and look at that you can dial in any angle any sort of roll angle of this camera right here that you want and if you want to make it like straight up here i can just tighten it and then at this point my camera is pointed where i want it to be pointed at and i have dialed in my rotation so the orientation of the deep skeletons that i wouldn't photograph is basically the way i wanted it to be alright so at this point we are actually ready to take some test shots and what i would recommend to do especially if you're like a beginner and you don't have a lot of experience is to use a zoom lens because with a zoom lens and let's rotate it around so you can better see what's going on so let's release it again put it up here let's put it like this tighten tighten loosen this guy rotate it around okay so we are back up and what i would recommend you to do if you're a beginner and you have a zoom lens is just zoom your lens all the way down to the widest focal length which in this case of this lens it's 70 millimeters and then with 70 millimeters take a test shot and then look at the image i would recommend to use a relatively fast shutter speeds like maybe one second two seconds or something like this you definitely don't want to use the final uh shutter speed which would be like two or three minutes on tracker like this because it would be such a long process in order to find the correct framing so just crank up the iso all the way up to like i don't know 25 000 or something like this then use a fast shutter speed in order to take a few test shots you will be able to see the star patterns and once you have decided on your final framing then you will go the iso way way down to like 800 or something like this and crank up the shutter to like two or three minutes and then take the actual shots so at the face of taking test shots like i said the first thing that i would do is just zoom the lens all the way down take a shot and look at the stars that you see in your shot and try to identify those patterns try to identify the stars that you see end the night sky with your naked eye and try to identify the stars that you see in the app in stereo and try to fine tune your framing and at this point if you are fine-tuning your framing you can actually turn on the tracker just set it to celestial tracking because right now when we are fine-tuning our our position we don't want the night sky to be shifting in the frame just because the earth is spinning we want the tracking to already be going on because that way if we are fine-tuning the position we are keeping the same thing and the same framing basically in your in your camera if you know what i mean so the tracking is on and in order to fine tune your frame what you can do instead of fiddling with the ball head like i previously said you can use those two arrows in order to rotate the camera and rotate the tracker around this axis very very slightly and then there is a knob on this side of the declination bracket in order to rotate the camera around with these axes and you literally just need to press here and hold and as you hold the camera the entire tracker will rotate either clockwise or counterclockwise and this movement is very very very tiny and very gentle but if you are using a long focal length like 300 600 or something like this this kind of movement will be a perfect speed in order to frame up the deep scarabs that you want to photograph in the center of your frame so use those arrows to move to rotate around this axis and then use this screw in order to fine tune the rotation around this axis right here and take another test shot take another test shot it is an iterative process and once you have your deep sky object in the center then you can actually zoom all the way in in case of this lens this will be 300 millimeters but be careful that after you change the zoom you will probably need to refocus and of course we are focusing manually for obvious reasons if you don't know these reasons check out this video but what i mean is that after you zoom in you need to refocus in order to have your star stack sharp and then you can also fine tune your position using the arrows and using uh this screw right here and when you have your framing dead on center or maybe the framing that you want not necessarily in the center then you're pretty much good to go so in this situation when you have everything framed up make sure that everything is tightened make sure that everything is um you know properly set up definitely don't want to be moving the tracker at this phase because it will screw up your alignment so make sure that the polar alignment is the way it should be and then you are just using these arrows and this screw in order to fine tune the exact framing then of course plug in an external intervalometer like a pixel tc252 into your camera and start taking your shots and hope for the best that you know there's no wind blowing into the tracker which would mess up your exposures and that's pretty much it that's pretty much all i had to share for this video so if you like this video make sure to leave it a thumbs up i will really appreciate that also leave a comment down below if you have any questions or if any part of the video was confusing to you i will be more than glad to answer you i pretty much try to answer every single comment i get on youtube so just don't hesitate ask away and also in the meantime you can check my other videos i have a bunch of astrophotography related content on my channel already and i pretty much upload new videos every single week so definitely also consider subscribing to the channel and in the meantime if you haven't seen my previous video about static of the star adventure definitely check out the video right here i also have a video about editing milky photos from the tracker so you can check out the video right here and see you next time clear skies bye bye you

Channel: Kamil Pekala

Views: 22,639

Keywords: telescopius, stellarium, how to find deep sky objects in the sky, how to find nebula in sky, how to find nebulae in the sky, sky-watcher star adventurer, star adventurer Fine Tuning Mounting Assembly, deep sky photography for beginners, deep sky photography best apps, equipment for deep sky photography, locating a star in the night sky, locating a deep sky object in the night sky, locating a galaxy in the night sky, locating a nebula in the night sky, fine tune star tracker position

Id: D-l_SSirq2E

Length: 20min 21sec (1221 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/QuantSeven]

This is awesome. Thank you!

[u/danborja]

Great video! I actually watched the previous one on the weekend and couldn't find this part!

I have only imaged twice with my new star adventurer and I think it would be a good idea to re-balance and re-check your polar alignment after framing, cause in my short experience, framing can screw up your polar alignment. Specially when loosening both clutches.

So next time I'll try the following workflow: 1. Rough polar align/balancing. 2. Rough framing. 3. Re-balance. 4. Precise PA. 5. Re-frame.

[u/wheat-thicks]

Awesome. Lots of channels skip over this stuff and it’s very important.

[u/pnnytwstr11]

I haven’t watched it yet, but THANK YOU! I’ve been googling this like crazy the last couple of days! I just bought the pro pack and it should be here this week!

[u/srikarchinna]

Spectacular explanation.

I've been thinking to step into astrophotography for a while now, and after seeing this detailed explanation I'm very scared and seems like a lot of fun :D

The hardest part seems like finding the location of the DSO. Is there an automated way to move your camera to point at a given DSO? is that what an auto guider does?

Thanks!

[u/[deleted]]

Thank you so much exactly what I needed.