Clear for most of the night. After successfully using the tracker a week or two earlier I managed to get hold of a remote shutter release cable to allow the tracker to automatically trigger the camera - my previous testing was several manual shutter release image (I don't have an external intervalometer at this point).

I took two different images of the night sky - roughly pointing in the same direct, just at a different elevation; one at tree-top level, the other almost vertically up.

Gear:

• Canon EOS 200D
• Tokina AT-X Pro SD 11-16mm f/2.8 (IF) DX
• Tripod
• Star Adventurer 2i tracking mount (with shutter release cable)

Weather:

• Clear (zero cloud for most of the night)

Location:

• Garden

Software

• Rawtherapee - RAW file importing, optical correction & image processing
• ASTAP - Image stacking / general astrophotography toolset
• GIMP - RAW/TIF to JPEG, cropping

First image was taken from a sequence of 5x 30 second exposures at ISO 1600. This was my usual 'at the tree tops' image composition for the garden.

Fig. 1: EOS 200D, Tokina f/2.8, 11mm, ISO1600, 5 x 30 seconds, processed from RAWFig. 1: EOS 200D, Tokina f/2.8, 11mm, ISO1600, 1 x 30 seconds, uncorrected JPEG

The second image is comprised of 6x 120 second exposures at ISO 3200. Something that I could have technically done without the shutter release cable, but not something I'd want to stand around counting down and pressing the button for; the app for the tracker did it all brilliantly.

Fig. 1: EOS 200D, Tokina f/2.8, 11mm, ISO3200, 6 x 120 seconds, processed from RAWFig. 1: EOS 200D, Tokina f/2.8, 11mm, ISO3200, 1 x 120 seconds, uncorrected JPEG