Last month I got a Canon EOS 1100D as a birthday present. In additon to the kit lens, i bought a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II. The main purpose to buy this lens was to take indoor shots of my baby but of course i was also curious about astrophotography with this equipment.
I started with basic settings (wide open aperture, highest ISO and 30 sec exposure) but the light pollution was so high (limiting magnitude around 3.5) that all i got a was a pinkish, saturated picture without any star. I played with the setings and got best shots with 3-4 sec exposure, around f/4 aperture and 800 ISO. Here is a shot of Orion, Taurus and Jupiter at 18mm:
Then i switched to 50mm f:1.8 lens; using similar settings (4sec, f/4, 1600 ISO), i shot in Orion Nebula (M42) direction and i got following 100% crop shot of Sword of Orion region:
Open star cluster NGC1981 and M42 can be seen as well as stars up to 9th magnitude brightness. Here is the chart of the region created by Cartes du Ciel software (limiting magnitude is 8.8):
After this 100% cropped picture of Sword of Orion, I got curious about large deep sky objects like M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) or M45 (Pleiades). Pleiades was in a convenient position so i tried M45 and got following shot:
The object was close to edge of the frame so i think that's why there are not 9th magnitude stars in this shot (vignetting). M31 direction was obstructed but i tried M44 and surprisingly the cluster was resolved fine.
Finally, while checking my pictures, i have seen that there are two dots near Jupiter. Here you see 100% crop and 2x magnified photos as well as Jupiter's satellites' position according to Cartes du Ciel:
As you see, Europa and Callisto are captured. Ganymede can be more distant than Europa so it is well within capability of the camera. It seems that Io cannot be captured with these settings. However, as you see Jupiter is over exposed and satellites are bright enough to be captured at 1 or 2 stops lower exposure so I will try Io when it is farthest from Jupiter with less exposure.
These shots show that under heavy light pollution, you can capture 5 magnitudes (100 times) fainter stars with EOS1100D DSLR camera using humble settings (4 sec shutter speed, f/4 aperture, 800 ISO) using a 100$ lens. If you use 100% crops you can resolve brightest deep sky objects too.
