KenY Loc: Glenside, Pa

I have a Celestron Advanced VX equatorial mount for tracking. I have a Canon T6 with a 70-300mm telephoto lens. I use the Canon EOS Utilities for focusing and setting the exposure and a Neewer remote control shutter device (intervalometer?) for setting the number of repeating exposures, length of exposure and delay time between exposures.

I am not shooting through a telescope.

What settings should I use for night sky photos to be subsequently stacked using Deep Sky Stacker? I am in a suburban setting with considerable ambient light.

Any help would be appreciated.
Ken

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

This will get you started -

Your settings: Digital Camera Settings for Astrophotography

More info:
9 Essential Steps for Beginners in Night Photography
A Beginner's Guide to DSLR Astrophotography
Quick Start Guide to Beginner Digital Astrophotography
How-To: Astrophotography 101
How to Shoot the Night Sky Introduction to Astrophotography

CraigFair Loc: Santa Maria, CA.

For my DSLR and a lens I have a piece of aluminum stock I made for my Equatorial Mount.
1 1/2" x 3/16" x 9". The settings I would use for a particular lens without PHD Guiding depends.
For a 300mm I would start at 30 sec, ISO 400, f/stop on the lowest setting, f/5.6?
Remember with stacking, RAW files, your end product will show more detail than just individual shots.
You can try longer exposures but after 30 sec the stars will start to have trails. Adjust the ISO if need be.
I assume you know how to do a 2 star alignment with 4 calibration stars and Polar Alignment.
A PEC align would be a great thing to do also. It's all in the AVX manual.
A good Post Processing Program will do the rest.
Craig

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Part of this is to find what your lens and camera is capable of doing together. Start with somewhat shorter exposures and see how the lens behaves with different f-stop and ISO settings. Perhaps at the widest setting, the stars may show too much distortion, so you try stopping down a notch or two. And practice your focusing since stars demand perfect focus. If they are out of focus by the tiniest amout, they look awful. Then you need to see what ISO your camera can produce results that you still like. As ISO goes up, noise levels go up too. There comes a point that raising ISO actually makes the image look worse. I typically shoot at ISO 1600, but different cameras can be different. And then there is White Balance. Some like to shoot with the Sunny setting. But others don't. See what you like.

Start with things like star clusters. They can look good at 300mm and give you a chance to hone your skills.

As for time, if your polar alignment is good, you should be able to do 30 sec without tracking. But if you are a bit off, the time will be shorter.

Good luck

dlmorris Loc: Loma Linda, Ca

With an EQ mount, you should be able to go for several minutes, depending on how accurate your polar alignment is, and how accurate the drive gears are. So a rule of thumb is to expose until the histogram is about 1/4 to 1/3 from the left edge. So if your sky is dark, you can go for a while, if it is bright, you may be able to expose for only a minute or so. 300mm will be good for the Andromada Galixy, Pliedes, and a few others. If you have the kit lens 18-55 or so) that works very well for wide field. Looking back at your post, you indicate your sky is pretty bright. That will be your limiting factor as for exposure. Go out and experiment, and you will understand soon enough! Longer exposures will gain you nothing useful....

KenY Loc: Glenside, Pa

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

Tonight is supposed to be clear and in the 40s, so I'm planning on going out and experimenting. I will share what I learn.

One more question:

Since there is a lot of ambient light, would I be better off using a lower ISO, say 100 or 200 and going for longer multiple exposures?

dlmorris Loc: Loma Linda, Ca

I wouldn't go above about 1600 or below probably around 400, but in fact, I don't *really* know.... I think your colors come out better at the lower ISO's. Make sure you publish your results!