Huge Sunspots

The whole of the sun yesterday with different filters. The colours are beautiful and you can clearly see the huge sunspots disappearing into the limb of the sun.

Sunspots on a limb

Just managed to capture the huge sunspot as it disappears into the limb yesterday. Not seen the sun here for almost a week! I wish that I could have imaged it a few days earlier, it looked spectacular.

Captured using my Skywatcher 80ED with Baader film and yellow filter. Canon 1200d camera.

ISS Photos 18th October

A couple of lovely images of the International Space Station tonight taken from Starmount at Radcliffe. Tonight I decided to take my camera out to take some photos of the ISS for a change. Used my Canon EOS 1200 with the bulb for long exposures.

First light with the Canon EOS 1200D

In 2007 I bought myself a Canon EOS 350D and used it until recently to capture astro images. The 350D was a great camera for both astro and normal photos.
However, the 350D had it's limitations, particularly the lack of a 'live view' and zoom to help with focusing and the old CF Memory Cards. It would also be nice to have more megapixels!

I decided to have a look at the new Canon EOS 1200D and read some reviews about the camera. On one astro website this camera was given very poor reviews, saying that the Canon 1100D was much better. Other sites have said the 1200D is excellent for the price.

I looked on Argos and found that the 1200D is sold at a very reasonable £300! Also, the 1100D was sold at just £200! What should I do?
Well after a lot of thought and reading more reviews I decided to go for the current 1200D model.

I am very impressed with the camera, looks good and easy to use. Has a live view with zoom facility, 18Megapixel and SD Card, my current AF zoom lenses (200mm and 300mm) also fits the 1200D. The other facility I like are the on-screen settings in big letters. On the 350D I had to look through the viewfinder or try to read tiny LCD display which was frustrating at night.

Last night I used my Skywatcher 80ED Pro with SkyQ link and Skyportal App and set it up to take some old favourites - Andromeda and The Great Hercules Cluster. I have images these many times with the 350D.
Although the software for the 1200D is the same as the 350D the control part took a bit of time because it does much more. You also get a live preview of each image on the computer screen which is great for setting up the focus and checking tracking.

Quite pleased for my first attempt with this camera. The images were only 20 subs each at 30 seconds exposure and set to ISO 1600. Could have done much better with longer exposures and more of them, but these were just for testing.

Finished with an image of the Moon with camera set to ISO 200, 1/1000s exposure.