The Cosmos through my Celestron 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope

Astrophotography images taken with my Celestron 8-inch Nexstar 8SE OTA (Orange Tube C8, out of the Amazon box) paired with the Celestron f/6.3 reducer-corrector. Set on a Celestron Advanced VX (EQ) mount, with a RisingCam Sony IMX571 (26Mp) camera.
USA Today feature article of Feb. 2024 :
www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
Recent images featured on FOX NEWS CH5 SD : fox5sandiego.com/news/local-n...
Another recent article : www.kiksee.com/exploring-cosm...
No guiding, no filters, no wifi, no gps, no apps, no wedge, no useless gadgets, stock red dot finder, kiss 110ac power cord, manual focus with paper printed Bahtinov mask. No software-added stars, no removed stars, no shrunk stars, no re-colored stars, no crossed stars. All images stacked in DSS (free) and minimally edited in Gimp (also free). Some images sharpened using wavelet transforms in Registax (free).
The scope was collimated on the optical bench by Celestron in Torrance seven years ago (2017), and never touched since then (no Bill's knobs or any of that stuff).
Some possibly helpful links :
Celestron Nexstar 8SE with Alt-Az GoTo mount : www.amazon.com/Celestron-NexS...
Celestron 8-inch OTA only : www.amazon.com/Celestron-Star...
Celestron AVX EQ GoTo mount : www.amazon.com/Celestron-Adva...
RisingCam cooled color camera with Sony IMX571 26Mp sensor, www.aliexpress.us/item/225580...
Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) free software : deepskystacker.free.fr/english...
GIMP image manipulation software, also free : www.gimp.org/
Registax software for wavelet transforms (free) : www.astronomie.be/registax/in...
Clear Schmidt-Cassegrain SCT collimation video : • Collimating your Schmi...
Hi-res 8-inch Celestron SCT images on Astrobin : www.astrobin.com/search/?q=Ce...
Disclaimer : I am not sponsored by anybody, nor do I receive any free or discounted merchandise.
Dr. Herbert W. Hamber, Ph.D. is professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a former Fulbright Fellow, and his fields of research cover quantum field theory, particle physics, computation, relativistic gravitation, and quantum cosmology. He is, among other things, a former staff member in the Theoretical Physics (Th) division at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, and a current member of the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) in Princeton NJ. He is the author of two physics textbooks, ‘Quantum Gravitation: The Feynman Path Integral Approach’ and ‘Nonpertubative Methods in Quantum Field Theory’. In his spare time, he enjoys photography, driving fast cars, attending airshows and practicing deep sky astrophotography. More information can be found at www.researchgate.net/profile/Herbert_Hamber
#astronomy #astrophotography #telescope
0:00 Introduction
0:48 Setup
1:24 Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius
1:34 Pinwheel Galaxy M101 in Ursa Major
1:47 Eagle Nebula M16 in Serpens
1:58 Needle Galaxy NGC 4565 in Coma Berenices
2:21 Lagoon Nebula M8 in Sagittarius
2:38 Whirlpool Galaxy M51 in Canes Venatici
2:56 Great Star Cluster M13 in Hercules
3:13 Andromeda Galaxy M31 core
3:24 Sombrero Galaxy M104 in Virgo
3:34 Hale Telescope 200 inch

[@analogdesigner]

Another masterpiece! Thanks again for sharing this. Jay

[@HerbsGarage]

Thanks Jay !

[@icyxxxxx]

Beutiful!

[@HerbsGarage]

Thank you !

[@misaelescobarruiz1193]

Muy buenas tomas yo tengo un meade sct 8 pulgadas y estoy haciendo tomas saludos desde comayagua Honduras

[@HerbsGarage]

Thank you !

[@misaelescobarruiz1193]

@@HerbsGarage gracias amigo bellas tomas

[@kushanvyas7728]

How to auto focus in camera for capturing dso?

[@HerbsGarage]

Reliable manual focus only in my case.

[@kushanvyas7728]

I am very much impressed with your setup.I also have celestron 8se.Kindly upload one video about how to take this pictures through 8se,how to setup camera,manual focus etc.

[@HerbsGarage]

I focus with a Bahtinov mask, I 3D printed one out (paper works too) and it's very easy to use. The camera (here RisingCam) you just plug it in and then use the software that comes with it (RisingSky software) to view and adjust the image on any (Win) laptop. That is all I use, there is no magic. I don't rely on an endless collection of useless gadgets as some do. And I keep the software to a minimum, I am more interested in taking images than wasting time with nested layers of redundant software.

[@kushanvyas7728]

@@HerbsGarage What I know from your reply is always keep it simple. Thank you so much.Keep posting .