That poor pic hasn't put me off though and despite the "not so good" skies here think I can do better. The plan is to use a modded canon 600D with a Samyang 14mm F2.8 lens and travel out of town to find less polluted skies.
After asking some advice on this brilliant, friendly forum, the feedback was short exposures on a fixed tripod with no filters. I did a couple of tests in my back yard (
I stacked some pics together in Pixinsight. There was a bit of cloud but I managed to capture some of it. No calibration frames, just stack em and let the foreground blur.
This time lapse shows how little time I had.
https://youtu.be/y1S5YRok-rw
The main thing is I learned a lot. The camera battery didn't last long, the pan and tilt head on the tripod was useless and as expected and the lens misted up. I've now got a ball head for the tripod, ordered a dummy battery and dew heater. Both of these are USB and will take about 2A each. That equates to about 20W. I've also ordered an Anker 337 Power Bank rated at 26800mAh which should give about 7 hours. In addition, I've made up some cables to run the rig from my 12V 110Ah Lipo RV leisure battery which would run it for days. Talking of cables, I don't like the car power plugs most astro kit comes with. They pull out and are notoriously unreliable. I've cut them all off and I use XLR type connectors for all low voltage connectors. I've used these for years and they have proven to be reliable in the harsh environment of TV and film production.
This is the 12V to usb adapter I've used.
That's where I'm up to. Any comment's, help or advice as always, is very welcome. It's how we improve.
Many thanks for looking,
Clear skies
Pete