ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH THE NIKON D70 DIGITAL SLR CAMERA Last updated: 11 July 2005

Sky Astrophotography - Guided
During my 2-4 July 2005 trip to Oracle Observatory I did some piggyback guided astrophotography with the D70. The D70 was mounted on my LXD55-8"SC using a Meade Piggyback Bracket, model #07394, $39, purchased from OPT:

There were no instructions but it easily mounts to the 8"SC as seen in this photo:

The bracket includes two longer bolts and washers to attach it to the OTA. But there was no hex wrench to use to with existing or new bolts. I did find a proper size one that came with one of my telescopes, possibly the LXD55-8"SC.

The bracket has a recessed area that looks like it should hold a rubber pad for the camera to sit on when attached. No pad was included. So I made one. It helps keep the camera from slipping sideways on the bracket.

The scope is slighly out of balance in RA with the D70 attached as seen in this photo. I had to add the second counterweight to the LXD55 mount for Declination balance.

With the Nikon D70 DSLR, the full wide angle setting (18mm focal length) shows the telescope tube. It goes out off the viewfinder (which only shows about 95% of the actual field of view) at about 30mm. Adding a dewshield will require an even longer focal length.

I manually tracked a guide star using the Rigel System PulsGuide reticle eyepiece when doing piggyback astrophotography.

The camera was set for ISO 800 with Noise Reduction enabled and the "hat trick" method was used for the exposure.

Sagittarius and the Heart of the Milky Way
This is a 5 minute and 30 second exposure (single image, not two stacked) piggyback at ISO 800 with the Nikon zoom lens set for 28mm (some telephoto). Some editing was done in Photoshop.

Andromeda and M31
This a piggyback exposure of three images (one 5 minute and two 10 minute exposures at ISO 800) stacked using Lynkeos. It was cropped and edited in Photoshop.

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