lankywolf

Here are my first 3 efforts.. M31 & M45 were just me practicing with my new kit to see if I could track and focus properly. I think M31 is only 5 minutes exposure and M45 is only 10 minutes, both lights only. 

M42 is my first 'proper' effort. I took 60 x 60sec lights of which half were binned due to tracking anomalies. 10 darks and 20 bias. In my excitement to get processing I detached my camera without taking any flats and was kicking myself.

Camera is an unmodded EOS 70d. 

Scope is the SW Evostar 72ED

Mounted on the SWSA GTi. 

Stacked and processed in Siril and then Snapseed. 

I've since bit the bullet and bought Pixinsight, but still trying to get to grips with it... Much fun to come there me thinks. 

3 hours ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Tweaked your image a little in PS. Hope you don't mind, well done. The data is there to bring out.

Not at all... Processing is not my strong point, I only have gimp at the moment which I tried but wasn't happy with it.  I might jump straight into pixinsight when funds allow and fry my brain trying to master that. 

I like what you've done to it though. 

4 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

Looks like you’ve made an excellent start mastering the necessary skills for the AP game.  Was that with guiding? I suspect not. Your polar alignment must have been pretty good. I think I can just about see some ellipticity in the stars  suggestive of drift.  Only just mind.  Guiding will fix that and, as you’re no doubt aware,  you’ll be able to push your subs out to several minutes. 

Thanks for the feedback... No guiding kit yet, but when funds allow I'll look at adding to the set up.  

5 hours ago, gregbwfc said:

Just bought that kit myself.

If I can get anything like that I'll be well pleased.

Think it's fantastic for a first attempt 👍

I'm amazed what I was able to get on a first attempt with a fairly modest set up and such a short session.  I also got the below (incredibly noisy) shot of M31. I was just trying to get to grips with the kit to be honest so purposely didn't bother with any calibration frames this time. It's certainly given me plenty of encouragement to carry on... Good luck with your new kit, I'm sure you will get plenty out of it. 

Hi All...  Having been a basic level visual astronomer for a number of years, I've gradually been building up some kit over the last few months to finally take the first steps into imaging.  I bought a Star Adventurer GTI a few months back and managed to get the Dear Wife to furnish me with an Evostar 72ED for Crimbo and I swiftly got the Stella Mira flattener to go with it.  So tonight was the first chance I had to take it all out as one rig.  It was mainly experimental to see if I could achieve focus, then get the thing to point at my target and track properly.

Well, this is the result of the experiment.  It's only 10 x 60 sec exposures using an un-modded Canon EOS 70d and no calibration frames.  Some whispy clouds rolled in to bring it all to a premature end unfortunately, but I'm still fairly happy with the result as a starter for ten.  Stacking and a small amount of processing was done in Siril and that's it.  There's obviously so much more I can do to improve, but thought I'd share the fruits of what I'm putting down as a fairly successful first night.  I didn't think I'd get any nebulosity at all from such a short amount of exposure, so was genuinely chuffed to see some come out.

I'm very new to all this, so if there's any schoolboy errors jumping out, I'd be very grateful to be enlightened.

As someone has already said, at this price point, the better bet may be a pair of binoculars rather than a scope. I had some great fun with a pair of fairly cheap 15x70's.  You can get decent views of the moon, you can also see Jupiter's moons, some DSO's such as Androneda and The Orion nebula as well as star clusters.

If you really want a scope, I'd shop in the second hand market. You'll get more bang for your buck that way.  I think if you get a scope with poor optics, you may well become frustrated and give up the hobby before you've really begun. 

5 hours ago, Clarkey said:

I don't think you need to spend 500. You will get something like a 600D for 2-300 which would be a good starter.

You can convert Nikon cameras but I think Canon are generally easier to work with.

I did go through a 600D phase and an 800D phase..  I can't even remember what put me off now..  If there's not much discernable difference for AP, then the saving on the camera could go towards a GTI tracker.

The thing that I don't want to do is pay a load of extra money for a load of features for improving daytime photography, that make little difference to AP.  I'm trying to find where that sweet spot is. 🥴

5 hours ago, Swillis said:

Looks like you have a pretty good plan for starting with. As has been said above all or most of those items would likely be with you for a long time even after upgrading to a larger scope and mount that would be a nice portable setup. One thing to add to the list might be a Bhatinov mask to help with focus on the Samyang. 

Finding dim targets through the viewfinder can be a little frustrating at times.  I'm sure your experience in star hopping will be useful, and you can always start with the easiest to find targets. I find that the live view is only really useful for focusing, as I can see much more through the viewfinder. If your worried about not being able to contort yourself into the right position I have seen a right angled adapter for the viewfinder (don't know what you call it) which may help. 

I'm very happy with the SW SA2i, and it suits me just fine so far. One day I will look to upgrade, the one main thing missing is the second motor. Not necessarily for the goto function (althought that would be useful) but I can see that I would want to start guiding at some point and I would only be able to guide in the one axis currently. 

On the question of DSLR Vs astrocam as mentioned above astrocams will outperform DSLRs (not that I have any experience, that's likely a while down the road for me). Personally a DSLR was an easy route into AP, its something I'm already familiar with and didn't require any further equipment/ software to learn. At the start with some much to learn, keep it simple. Also with an astrocam you need to download the image to a laptop/pc to see the image, which would mean a very slow process of lining up your target, so you would need a guidescope/finderscope of some description to go this route. 

One other thought is to consider how comfortable you will be with polar alignment. This will require crouching down to look up through the polar scope, there are some polar alignment aids out there (which I don't have experience of), but I think they would all need a laptop. Others may be able to help with this more. 

Good luck with YOUR journey.

Simon

Ah yes, I forgot about the bhatinov mask.  A relatively cheap bit of kit to make life so much easier.  I forgot the ball head to put the camera on the tracker as well.  Blimey, this is adding up already! 😂

Thanks for the reply.

4 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Go To in AP is not like GoTo in visual observing. It saves the commodity in shortest supply - which is time. You don't just save time at the start, you save it when things go wrong and you lose your target - and there are plenty of ways to do that! Once you have your target framed you can note or save its co-ordinates and be back in business in no time. Reframing by eye takes a long time. You have to scan the edges of the image to be able to relocate the previous edge stars.

Tilt screens? It is so much easier and better to capture with a laptop. You have a bigger image at higher resolution which is a boon for focusing. Focusing a fast lens in AP is not like focusing in daytime photography. The quality of focus will not only impact on the sharpness of the image but on the quality of star shapes towards the edge. I wouldn't want to focus the Samyang while peering at a tiny camera screen. Both DSLR and CCD capture software offer assisted focusing usually using Full Width Half Max. (This will Google.)

Back to 'easier' DSLRs. If you take the whole process from start to processed finish, DSLRs are harder. Their output needs a lot more processing in order to get to a decent standard. You have more noise and more artifacts to deal with. It is pretty much obligatory to dither between subs. (Shock horror, I don't dither when shooting with CCD.) When framing, you can, with a CCD, get a clear view of the objects in the frame in very short exposures. No chance with a DSLR.  There is 'perceived easy' and 'real easy.' They are not the same.

Olly

Thanks for this Olly, there's some good advice in there.  I've thought about the time it takes to star hop your way to a target and of course I see the advantage of GOTO in that respect.  I suppose what I meant is that I wasn't worried about being able to locate targets too much.  I hadn't considered so much losing my target part way through a session.  That would be a real pain without GOTO so thanks for bringing that up.  I haven't ruled out the GTI tracker, but obviously waiting for it to be released in the UK and to see how much Moolar I'll have to part with to get my greasy hands on one.  That maybe one area where I could invest a bit more.

I'm not daunted by an image that will need extra processing.  In fact in the early days I'll see this a somewhat of a positive.  Not because I consider myself as some kind of expert processor, quite the opposite in fact.  But the way I see it, the more processing I have to do, the more I'll learn about processing.  It's not so much about getting top quality images (yet), there's plenty of time for that.  For me it's more about getting something I can be proud of and learning the ropes step by step.

I am going to do some more reading on dedicated astro cams though.

Thanks for the advice so far folks... I'm looking to keep things as simple as possible to begin with, which is the primary reason I've been favouring the DSLR/lens rig. I think for me it'll be more about learning and mastering the basics before moving onto more advanced kit. I will read up a bit more on dedicated astro cams, but was of the impression that they weren't really for noobs like me.

I was aware of the GTI mount but I'm already pretty adept at star hopping so don't anticipate too many problems from not having GOTO particularly at this focal length where I should have quite a few stars in the FOV for reference.  I'm also glad I asked about the LP filters as I probably won't bother with those based on the responses above. 

The main thing I can't decide on is the camera.. I don't already have one other than my smartphone. Let's assume I go for a DSLR. It must have a tiltable screen as I suffer a little bit with my back. What's the best I can get for say £500? 

Oh, and is there anyone in the UK that modifies Nikon cameras? I've been restricting myself to Canon as they seem to be the only ones that you can get mods on. 

Thanks for your help so far folks.. Much appreciated. 

Before, I hit you with all my noob questions. I'll just tell you my situation. I've been observing the night sky on and off since I was a kid, but I've never had the time to dedicate hours and hours a week to it.  Now that my offspring are getting a bit older I'm finding I have more time on my hands to dedicate to the hobby.  I've always been interested in imaging, but knew that if you really want to do it properly you need to put the time in, so as I knew I wouldn't be able to do that, I've never bought any kit with a view to imaging.  

I have some relatively basic observational kit, namely an 8" dob and some fairly cheap 15x70 bins that I put on a tripod. I have never owned or used an equatorial mount and have always star hopped my way to targets. 

So, with a view to learning some of the basics (and hopefully achieving some halfway decent results) the plan for my first rig is as follows;

Tracker:  SW Star adventurer 2i Pro pack - £350.

Camera:  Used stock Canon 70d - £350 (plus potential astro mod £100).

Lens:  Samyang 135mm F2 - £370.

Filter:  I have no idea.  But I will mostly be imaging from my back garden in a West Midlands housing estate (bortle 6/7). I'd really appreciate some advice on this.

Tripod :  I currently put my bins on a Camlink TPPRO32B which I think I paid about £75 for years ago.  Not sure if this will be sturdy enough for imaging, so may need to replace.

Accessories:  Dew heater band and intervalometer - £50

I could possibly stretch my budget to say £1500, so I'm curious if there's anywhere I should invest more heavily. I really am undecided about the camera.  I've already changed my mind numerous times and as I only plan to use it for AP, should I just go straight in with a modded camera. 

I'm also aware that this rig will give fairly wide field images, and my ultimate aim is to get detailed images of galaxies and nebulae for which I'll need to invest in a heavier mount and a scope. But for getting my feet wet and learning the basics, I'm hoping this rig would be a good investment that would still get some use in 5-10 years time. 

So, I guess my ultimate question is, if you were starting out from my position and have the knowledge you have now, what advice would you give or what might you change about this rig? 

I think I've ended up going on a bit there, so thanks for reading. 

Any advice will be gratefully received. 

Hi All... I'm slightly nervous about this.  As the title of the thread suggests, this is the first astro image I've ever shared. I'm hoping to try my hand at some deep sky imaging ultimately, but am currently in the research phase of that and the inevitable tying myself up in knots trying to decide what starter kit to invest in.  So as things stand, I've got my old Galaxy S8 smartphone and my 8" dob at my disposal. 

Anyway, my debut image is the phone through a BST starguider eyepiece at the terminator of the moon on 11/06/22.  I've done a small amount of processing using the stock Samsung photo editing app and on snapseed just to try and get some contrast between the light and dark areas on the surface and to sharpen it up slightly. I'm thinking it may have come out a bit too 'white' but happy to hear what you good people think. 

The man himself may have passed but his legacy will live on for generations. A true legend. RIP Sir Patrick.