A Nice Tip When You Want To Center A Target In A Wide Field

widefield

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give you a really nice tip when you want to center something like a nebula or a couple different objects in a wide field. Use a star to do it!

Here's an example I used to get an advanced request scheduled. If I would have went for it with just the object name it wouldn't have centered it like I wanted. See the example from telescopius.com (which is an excellent tool to figure out what you want to shoot or schedule time for). The framing on just looking at it initially using CHI-2 wasn't what I wanted. The second one is centered on what the star is by using Stellarium and looking up the bright star I wanted to center on, and the third image is my successfully scheduled shot with the name of the star in it.

The way you can use individual stars rather than objects gives some amazing flexibility with your field of view and what you will get in your image. 

So, if you ever decide to spend some points and want something custom, give centering your session on a star a try. You will get an image that is yours and truly custom, so give it a try! This will be extremely helpful if you want to attempt a nice widefield.

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