New to imaging and Lodestar (Live 0.90)

[AstroEd]

Thought I would share a few of my first attempts at CCD imaging with a link to my Flickr 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/100203402@N04/

All the black and white images are Lodestar  over the past week. The few color is the Mallincam Hyper Plus (Now have Extreme but no cable).

Also here are a few of my VERY first attempt favorite shots. Celestron 11" EdgeHD on CGEM DX mount, Lodestar w/Lodestar Live 0.90 All are unguided I am new and still learning proper polar alignment and such. Some are mislabeled as I was still learning and forgot to change the information.

I would appreciate opinions and suggestions I realize there is a bit of Drift, I am working on it. might just buy another CCD camera (If I figure out what is best for my scope and start learning how to guide. (Be honest but kind LOL) also how do I deal with the Hot pixels? is that what the Dark frames are for? and is it considered wrong to use Photoshop to clean up the hot pixels?

(OOPS forgot to stop the camera)

(Mislabeled is Lagoon Nebula to me it looks like the Cheshire Cat from alice in Wonderland)

(Mislabeled is Trifid Nebula)

[Stargazer33]

Very nice! I especially like the Eagle and Trifid Nebulas.

[Martin Meredith]

There some great shots, both above and on your flickr page! Good detail in the Trifid etc. I think you're doing a fine job!

On your specific questions, yes, darks will do a good job of getting rid of hot pixels. I usually start my LodestarLive session by collecting around 10 at whatever exposure duration I'm mainly using for the night. I've also used darks saved from previous sessions to good effect (use the save dark option followed by load). I'm not a Photoshop user but it must  be more hassle using it than doing it all in LodestarLive. I find if I really care then I take extra darks every hour in the session to reflect any temperature change, but I must admit I don't do it very often...

Guiding: I'm not sure if any 'sensor-assisted' people bother with guiding. It has crossed my mind that using an auto guider camera like the Lodestar it ought to be possible to guide at the same time as doing sensor assisted astronomy *with the same camera*, but only for very short exposures, since the correction needs to be applied frequently.

I use my mount in alt-az mode and never polar align. But I'm operating at a FL of 480mm and can get about 60s exposures without excessive trailing. I'm not sure what FL you're operating at with the 11" or whether you're using focal reduction, but these things will make a difference.

For me the beauty of sensor-assisted is being able to get the scope out very frequently and just see stuff, so besides the initial alt-az alignment and darks I try not to complicate life further...

Martin

[HiloDon]

Very nice work, Ed. Especially for first attempt. With that 11" SCT you might want to consider some focal reduction to get a wider FOV and a little faster focal ratio. As far as the hot pixels, darks are the best way to remove them. Paul has a good write up on taking them in his recent .9 Lodestar Live download folder. I find that when I'm star hopping and viewing, the hot pixels don't bother me. But, when I see something nice or unusual and want to image it, then I put on the cap and take some darks. It's always better to take them as close in time to the image. Exposure time should be the same.

Thanks for sharing.

Don

[Astrogate]

Thought I would share a few of my first attempts at CCD imaging with a link to my Flickr 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/100203402@N04/

 

All the black and white images are Lodestar  over the past week. The few color is the Mallincam Hyper Plus (Now have Extreme but no cable).

Some really nice captures with your Lodestar camera Ed. Great to see you showing us all live on NSN so thank you!

Chris A

Astrogate

 

Also here are a few of my VERY first attempt favorite shots. Celestron 11" EdgeHD on CGEM DX mount, Lodestar w/Lodestar Live 0.90 All are unguided I am new and still learning proper polar alignment and such. Some are mislabeled as I was still learning and forgot to change the information.

 

I would appreciate opinions and suggestions I realize there is a bit of Drift, I am working on it. might just buy another CCD camera (If I figure out what is best for my scope and start learning how to guide. (Be honest but kind LOL) also how do I deal with the Hot pixels? is that what the Dark frames are for? and is it considered wrong to use Photoshop to clean up the hot pixels?

 

M13_2014.7.15_01.59.59ps1.jpg

 

M13_2014.7.15_02.01.33.png (OOPS forgot to stop the camera)

 

Ring.Nebula_2014.7.15_02.31.37ps1.jpg

 

 

Whirlpool.Galaxy_2014.7.15_22.55.12ps2.jpg

 

M.16.Eagle.Nebula_2014.7.16_00.00.46.png

 

M.8.Lagoon.Nebula_2014.7.16_00.24.31.png (Mislabeled is Lagoon Nebula to me it looks like the Cheshire Cat from alice in Wonderland)

 

M.20.Trifid.Nebula_2014.7.16_00.33.53.png (Mislabeled is Trifid Nebula)

[Paul81]

Good set of results on your first light! 

As Martin stated, taking some dark exposures in the dark acquisition mode should sort out the majority of your hot pixels. Given the very long focal length of your scope I suspect you will see some trailing so looking towards some focal reduction will help in that area in addition to speeding up your optics to get more detail in the short exposure time.

I have just recently got a 0.5x focal reducer for 24 GBP for a 6" RC I'll be using for electronic observing, not sure if that will work with the EdgeHD or not (might be worth a google - Antares 0.5x reducer).

[shirva]

Great images. .davy

[AstroEd]

The Antares FR was suggested to me before I have and was using a MFR-5 on the last few days but not set up right I was missing one part of it my next broadcast "should" be better

[AstroEd]

Actually my next broadcast will be mostly Globular Clusters and small objects like The Little Gem Nebula so wont use FR then. I want to image all the Visible Globular in the order they were discovered. 

[nytecam]

Excellent results Ed and nice image scale keep 'em coming :-)

[AstroEd]

I have yet to try to learn the stacking and binning part of lodestar Live 0.90 I turned it on with sum and the histogram was shifting all over the place so turned it back off till I understand it better. Would love a post explaining the use of those features that even a newbie like me could follow.

[Paul81]

Hi Ed, there is a PDF in the download file which explains some of the principals of the stacking.

The histogram will shift in sum mode as basically each new exposure is added to the last. This helps fatten the histogram and bring out faint detail but will saturate the image quickly in bright areas.

In the near future I will be adding the hybrid modes where a small number of exposures are summed and then this summed exposure is median combined with other summed exposures. Still playing with this one in development though!

Look forward to seeing your future efforts!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AstroEd]

Do you plan to add masking so for instance you can mask out the core (Trapezium) in Orion to get detail in the surrounding area then image the Trapezium in shorter exposures to bring out details wit out blowing out the image for stacking later? (Did that make sense)?

Differant focus crosshairs would be nice too like bullseye, cross hairs with small red dot etc. for use in alignment process.

This work your doing is outstanding and iressive. These are suggestions not demands I would rather have a small easy everything work program than a bloated lets make it do everything slow buggy one.

Thank you for making the software that has given me the most joy since I started learning imaging less than a year ago (actual scope time maybe 5 weeks).

[Paul81]

Very glad to hear you are having lot of fun with the app. It's nice to share the app with the astro community so anyone can enjoy the benefits this type of observing can bring, and thank you for your kind comments. I imagine the much simpler nature of electronic observing has a much less steeper learning curve than full blown imaging so gives you more of a buzz quicker.

In terms of your suggestions, both are very good ideas. With regards to the masking, this is quite an advanced 'imaging' type of operation, and currently I am focussing the app on simple processing that can be applied whilst at the scope to get the most out of the data. I'd probably say this type of feature isn't a priority in my head for the time being, but I have added it to my notes of good suggestions to think about in the future (I have the feeling work on this app will never end - folks always come up with tons of good ideas). I think the biggest challenge is how to integrate masking without complicating the UI so its quick and simple to use when half frozen in the cold and at 1am in the morning 

For the target reticles thats very simple (my red dot has most of those suggestions) so I might sneak that in at some point in the near future!

[AstroEd]

Ok New question The images others are posting are they save image of the image export tab OR images made by stacking the FITs files in another program? all mine are Export images I been deleting the FITs files but now I wonder would they make a better image? and what software would I use to stack them Deep Sky Stacker?

[DoctorD]

Hi AstroEd

Most of the images are exported images or screen grabs to show what can be achieved in near real time. However sometimes we also post "processed" images showing what can be dome with the data.

I like to keep my FITS data so that I can process later during the cloudy nights - Lodestar Lie is not meant not be a replacement for image processing. Typically people start with Deep Sky Stacker to stack the images and Photoshop or Gimp to edit (Gimp cannot yet handle 16 bit colour depth so is a little limited).

After stacking, the fine tuning in Photoshop or similar can be used to extract even more detail from the image using layers to adjust specific areas of the image whilst leaving others with less processing.

This side of Astro photography can be very rewarding - have a look at the imaging specific groups here on SGL to see what people acheive.

Hope this helps

Paul 

[Paul81]

I can also confirm I post the export of the live view from LL - the images I post here are what I saw when I was out with the scope.

The export to FITS function was added to so folks can choose to post-process the data with the variety of superb tools out there if they so wish. These tools will certainly make a better job than LL - mainly because they are the product of significant investment (of both time and money) so will have more sophisticated algorithms and tools to get the best out of the data. They also have the benefit of having all the data to hand at the start, so this means that can perform better noise rejection (whereas LL has to cope will on-the fly stacking and noise filtering). That coupled with the fact that when people do post-processing they tend to spend a long time tweaking everything just right. LL is more about being out there under the stars and getting a quick result to enhance the view that you would normally get visually.

[AstroEd]

I would love to see some images comparing the live captured image and the FITs version of the same.