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My second attempt at Imaging - M3


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Hi everyone.  With the comments and feedback from my first image last week, I made a second attempt at astroimaging last night and chose, after a few recommendations, M3.  The image below is from 30 x 1min 30 second exposures with no tracking (haven't got around yet to setting up my QHY5L-II as a tracking camera).  I used an unmodified 600D, with my ED80 and 0.85 reducer.  I have also added the Skywatcher Light Pollution Filter.  I stacked the images using DSS and then used a few tweaks in Lightroom.  Again any constructive feedback would be welcome as would any suggestions for the next image.  (I am looking forward to trying some of the larger objects (Horsehead, Andromeda etc but none are within my field of view yet).  I don't think this image is as sharp as the last one (M81 and M82).  However this image is cropped and I think there is slight evidence of star trails?

So specifically:

Any advice for how I can improve the capture and/or post processing (and best option without shelling out for Photoshop CS (I have Lightroom and PS Elements).

Next option for a target?  (I did try the Leo Triplet although only took 10 frames and the image is so small that I think I need many more images to enable me to get the detail to make it worthwhile cropping).

I am wondering if I either try another Galaxy or star cluster or perhaps use the QHY5L-II and try and get a reasonable image of Jupiter (it looks great through my 9mm eyepiece although still small).

Thanks

Nigelpost-43463-0-65828300-1429438930_thumb.j

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Looking good. The trouble is that you will not be able to take long enough exposures of most of the fuzzies unless you guide. Jupiter will be very small with an ED80 but why not try it especially if you have a barlow lens. ED80s are not really planetary scopes. I use my C9.25 for planetary work.

Peter

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With your 600D you can use the digital video crop mode @x3 to get a bigger image of Jupiter.

Here is one I took the other night. Might not be up to big scope quality but I think it is still worth trying.

post-34685-0-63816800-1429439966_thumb.j

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Hi everyone.  With the comments and feedback from my first image last week, I made a second attempt at astroimaging last night and chose, after a few recommendations, M3.  The image below is from 30 x 1min 30 second exposures with no tracking (haven't got around yet to setting up my QHY5L-II as a tracking camera).  I used an unmodified 600D, with my ED80 and 0.85 reducer.  I have also added the Skywatcher Light Pollution Filter.  I stacked the images using DSS and then used a few tweaks in Lightroom.  Again any constructive feedback would be welcome as would any suggestions for the next image.  (I am looking forward to trying some of the larger objects (Horsehead, Andromeda etc but none are within my field of view yet).  I don't think this image is as sharp as the last one (M81 and M82).  However this image is cropped and I think there is slight evidence of star trails?

So specifically:

Any advice for how I can improve the capture and/or post processing (and best option without shelling out for Photoshop CS (I have Lightroom and PS Elements).

Next option for a target?  (I did try the Leo Triplet although only took 10 frames and the image is so small that I think I need many more images to enable me to get the detail to make it worthwhile cropping).

I am wondering if I either try another Galaxy or star cluster or perhaps use the QHY5L-II and try and get a reasonable image of Jupiter (it looks great through my 9mm eyepiece although still small).

Thanks

Nigelattachicon.gifM3 - take 3.jpg

Very nice indeed! This makes me anxious to try for my first star cluster. I believe M13 is one that's moving into a good position for me right now so maybe next time out - I'll give it a go. Anyway, congratulations on an excellent capture!!!  :)

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Nice work! Your stars are a bit oblong I see so you will want to very carefully realign your mount as perfect as you can and do a polar or drift alignment. You'll need layermasking so Gimp is the way to go.

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Thanks Dave - nice shop of Jupiter - did you also use your powermate for that image and how many minutes / seconds of video did you take to get that image?

Leveye - thanks for comments I assumed that stars were oblong because I'm not guiding?   I have tried to set up the scope as accurately as possible but as I cant leave it out I have to realign every night.  Interestingly I am obviously doing something wrong as I only did a 1 star alignment on Arcturus last night and (this has happened twice now) when the scope slews it always slews quite far to the right and so I have to manually compensate to get Arcturus into the finderscope.  I originally followed Astrobabys alignment process and used the US Navy to get a date / time when Polaris is in transit and, because those time are in in GMT I use the 'slide rule' on the HEQ5 to match todays date with the GMT and not BST time on the scope (I assume this is correct).  I then get Polaris to sit in the small circle in the polar scope.  So I am not sure what else I am doing wrong.........

Cheers

Nigel

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Thanks Dave - nice shop of Jupiter - did you also use your powermate for that image and how many minutes / seconds of video did you take to get that image?

Leveye - thanks for comments I assumed that stars were oblong because I'm not guiding?   I have tried to set up the scope as accurately as possible but as I cant leave it out I have to realign every night.  Interestingly I am obviously doing something wrong as I only did a 1 star alignment on Arcturus last night and (this has happened twice now) when the scope slews it always slews quite far to the right and so I have to manually compensate to get Arcturus into the finderscope.  I originally followed Astrobabys alignment process and used the US Navy to get a date / time when Polaris is in transit and, because those time are in in GMT I use the 'slide rule' on the HEQ5 to match todays date with the GMT and not BST time on the scope (I assume this is correct).  I then get Polaris to sit in the small circle in the polar scope.  So I am not sure what else I am doing wrong.........

Cheers

Nigel

For polar alignment I usually use Stellarium to find the offset for Polaris. Enter scope details in the Stellarium tools menu, do a find on Polaris, then do a find on NCP (North Celestial Pole) and you'll see Polaris scoot across to one side - then align mount so Polaris is in similar postion in polar scope. Seems to work OK.

I spent a long time fighting with polar alignment before I had guiding -  in the end no matter what I did I got some blurring due to periodic error etc. Once I went to guiding, its all much better and easier too, although a bit of a faff to start off. If you've got a guide scope and camera, probably worth spending some time sorting guiding. Then you'll be able to go to much longer exposures, and capture lower magnitude targets.

In any case, its a nice image so well done!

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Thanks Dave - nice shop of Jupiter - did you also use your powermate for that image and how many minutes / seconds of video did you take to get that image?

Leveye - thanks for comments I assumed that stars were oblong because I'm not guiding?   I have tried to set up the scope as accurately as possible but as I cant leave it out I have to realign every night.  Interestingly I am obviously doing something wrong as I only did a 1 star alignment on Arcturus last night and (this has happened twice now) when the scope slews it always slews quite far to the right and so I have to manually compensate to get Arcturus into the finderscope.  I originally followed Astrobabys alignment process and used the US Navy to get a date / time when Polaris is in transit and, because those time are in in GMT I use the 'slide rule' on the HEQ5 to match todays date with the GMT and not BST time on the scope (I assume this is correct).  I then get Polaris to sit in the small circle in the polar scope.  So I am not sure what else I am doing wrong.........

Cheers

Nigel

Hi Nigel, Suddenly realised I am pretty sure my shot was taken through my 5mm Baader Hyperion eyepiece so I may have accidentally misled you. Sorry. 

It was however taken with 600D in DVC mode x 3 and I took roughly 2 minutes of video. These were centred in PIPP then stacked with AS2. Post processing included sharpening and increased colour saturation and vibrance.

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Hi knobby - yes sorry I did mean no guiding.

Thanks for the advice Tommohawk.  - My problem is at the moment that my laptop is a MAC and having bought the  QHY5L-II as a guide camera it doesn't have any MAC drivers.  However I do have a very old Vista laptop (that takes an age to boot up) and so maybe I'll try setting up guiding on that.  I was trying to get familiar with each stage before moving on and adding new stuff into the workflow.  A quick question - once you are guiding does that pretty much mean that you don't have to be as accurate with Polar alignment?  maybe a second hand windows laptop may be required.  There seems to be no end of expense in this hobby.  

OK - thanks for letting me know Dave - I don't have any barlows (apart from a 2x that came with the guide scope) so the best I can do will be whatever the 3x crop zoom give me on the 1920 x 1080 movie mode on the 600D.

Next clear night I will post some pictures if I try Jupiter.  Certainly looked very impressive (though small) through my 9mm eyepiece.

Nigel

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You should be able to get 2 minutes unguided with an 80ED on a carefully polar aligned mount - I can with a WO ZS71 (420 mm FL) on an EQ6. I use the polar scope on it and don't bother with drift aligning (got a freestanding autoguider for longer exposures).

Adobe Photoshop CS2 is now officially free (search on the Adobe website) and has all the necessaries for astroimages, or you could use Fitswork which is a free alternative and very good for stretching the FITS image after DSS before saving as a TIFF or JPEG. There aren't many tutorials on it in English (German author), but there is one good guide if you Google for it

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Hi knobby - yes sorry I did mean no guiding.

Thanks for the advice Tommohawk.  - My problem is at the moment that my laptop is a MAC and having bought the  QHY5L-II as a guide camera it doesn't have any MAC drivers.  However I do have a very old Vista laptop (that takes an age to boot up) and so maybe I'll try setting up guiding on that.  I was trying to get familiar with each stage before moving on and adding new stuff into the workflow.  A quick question - once you are guiding does that pretty much mean that you don't have to be as accurate with Polar alignment?  maybe a second hand windows laptop may be required.  There seems to be no end of expense in this hobby.  

OK - thanks for letting me know Dave - I don't have any barlows (apart from a 2x that came with the guide scope) so the best I can do will be whatever the 3x crop zoom give me on the 1920 x 1080 movie mode on the 600D.

Next clear night I will post some pictures if I try Jupiter.  Certainly looked very impressive (though small) through my 9mm eyepiece.

Nigel

The Mac issue is a bit of a blighter. That said, I cant help but wonder if Vista might also be asking for trouble - see what others say. Maybe a second hand lappy with Win 7 for about £100? Not sure if others have made a go of it with tablet?

Take your point about trying to master one trick at a time, but just saying I spent forever trying to get longer images and ended up having to ditch the majority of them eash session - maybe 20% were good.  Now I spend about 60 seconds doing PA as described above for DSOs, and seems fine.

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Thanks Tom - a bit confusing as I just check Stellarium to find the current hour angle of Polaris and then checked it on Synscan and there is about 20 minutes difference?   Polaris is 6hrs 38 mins and Synscan says 7 hours and 3 mins?

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Thanks Tom - a bit confusing as I just check Stellarium to find the current hour angle of Polaris and then checked it on Synscan and there is about 20 minutes difference?   Polaris is 6hrs 38 mins and Synscan says 7 hours and 3 mins?

Not sure why youre getting different times - have you set location correct in both Synscan and Stellarium?

TBH not sure how much difference 20 mins would make anyhow - could you align that accurately?

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Nice image Nigel, maybe tone down the magenta a little bit.

Guiding isn't a magic bullet to sharp images. You still need as good a polar alignment as you can get. Otherwise the guiding program is having to do a lot of work to keep the target star in position. I am going to spend my next session learning how to drift align using the DARV method in APT (Astro Photography Tool).

M53 in Coma Berenices is a nice globular cluster you can try. M13 in Hercules is very nice although you will have to wait until about 03:20 (BST) to get it due south at the moment.

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