AstroLearnerWill

I found it quite interesting that on one of the frames I captured, I see a strange light next to the galaxy, that appears to match the shape of the galaxy. It's the only frame out of 200+ that has this. What do you think caused it? You can see it here in a screen recording I captured of the raw image with the strange light while switching to and from another raw image that doesn't have the light showing: edit: most likely a cosmic ray!

Hey Fairly pleased with how M51 came out last night. Very clear skies and mostly a straightforward imaging session minus the telescope hitting the mount 6 minutes before I was due to meridian flip (whoops) - I've updated the meridian flip settings in NINA to account for this now. As always, I'm keen to hear folks thoughts and especially where any improvements can be made. I do consider myself a rookie with this hobby still! 141x 60sec lights 75x bias 75x flats Using NINA, PHD2 for capturing. Siril for stacking, pre-process, background extraction and photometric colour calibration. Photoshop for various actions from Annies Astrotools, including stretching and finer adjustments.

Needless to say I will be purchasing an assortment of REAL fuses! Thanks all for the help.. and what an interesting 'edge-case' you come across in the hobby.

Thanks @Carbon Brush Out of interest I broke open the fuse of the offending plug to see what was inside, what do you make of this? Certainly no fine sand, for one.

Thanks for the recommendations!

Agree - I do struggle with understanding how and what this is, and it ends up being a bit of a lottery how it turns out. I've got the basics of what a histogram is but need to find some tutorials / videos on proper stretching / transformation / that side of things

Ah yes it could possible be related to the cold as it was near 0 celcius when it happened. Also, it was definitely a cheap cable that came with the cheap coupler, from Amazon. How would one go about avoiding mains on the scope? Say I've got a pegasus advance box on the scope, that reduces all the mains cables to just one, ie the cable powering the advance box. This is a cable / power supply from pegasus so I'd hope that would give a bit more durability. But is even just one cable attached in that fashion avoidable? Thanks

Yep, did this too They're definitely too expensive! As is the norm for this hobby unfortunately.. Nearly everything I've bought for my setup including the pegasus has been second hand from https://astrobuysell.com/uk/, which helps a little. Then you have the expense of all the short cables you need to do it neatly. Still, I'm hoping that it will reduce my setup time somewhat.

As a relative newbie, my approach to the hobby has been to: 1) take some images 2) realise where an improvement can be made (there are always improvements or something new to do) 3) make the changes / spend money / optimise 4) rinse and repeat I went through such a journey this week and learned why you shouldn't have six cables all sporadically sprawled across an active mount & telescope (HEQ5 + SW 80EM). (I have three 5m data cables heading to my laptop, three power cables, plus dew heater cables) A loud bang and a bright flash later I find that the power cable to my Canon coupler had completely blown off.. Needless to say, I have a Pegasus power box advance on order..

Gotcha. I was thinking I might take some more lights when I get a chance in the upcoming weeks, and also some darks (though the jury seems to be out regarding if they're useful for DSLRs with the temp fluctuations), and then compare the images. On a separate note, I would love to learn more about post processing, someone with a lot of experience should do an online course on it, I would certainly pay for that! For now though I guess we have tutorials and youtube videos. But it's a tricky one to know where to start for beginners.

Posting only the third image I've captured and processed after building an astrophotography rig. Any thoughts / guidance is appreciated and welcome, you only get better by listening to what other more experienced folk have to say. I'm using the updated version of Siril (1.2), and trying the new generalised hyperbolic stretch tool. My peak ended up being left of the 25% mark so I don't think I did that well. You can also see a satellite artefact in the image which isn't great. Overall I think there is a ton of detail in my images, which I'm pleased with and I'm sure can do better with it, but the contrast isn't great and the sky isn't very 'dark' in the image. I'm bortle 5 and this was taken on the 26th Feb 23. Thanks Equipment: HEQ5 Pro, skywatcher 80ed, 0.85 flattener, modified D600, guidecam, l-enhance filter. Images: 18 x 9minute subs + biases + flats + only 2 darks. Processing: All in Siril 1.2.0. Preprocessing + manual selection of stacking images. * Photometric CC, Background extraction, generalised hyperbolic stretch.

Thanks all, again, that makes perfect sense re PA now. Thats cleared things up. I've also marked the mount where 'home' is using the video linked above. I'll set the mount to this position at the beginning of every session to make things a bit easier.

Thanks all for the help, very insightful. I'll be adding a step to do a manual platesolve and ensure the 'sync' setting is 'On' in Nina. This will ensure the mount knows where it is. I presume the automatic platesolving as part of 'skew and center' in the framing tab does not sync to the mount. I'm a bit confused why I don't need to polar align necessarily. My understanding is that this is important to reduce any field rotation in long exposure images and to give the guider higher accuracy and therefore better sharper images.

Hi My current startup routine looks something like this. Balance scope and mount put heq5 pro roughly in home position and switch on nina 3 point polar alignment to get roughly in the right place nina 3 point polar alignment to get more accurate Slew and center on a bright star so I can manually focus with a mask. Slew and center on target, start guiding, begin imaging. The thing is, every time I slew and center the mount is never very close to where the target is on its first attempt and usually goes through 3 or 4 re-slews and plate solves to get it right. Should I be doing some kind of goto alignment or home calibration so the mount knows where it is? Presumably it’s solely relying on the best guess home position I start it up in, at the very beginning of my process. Also, I’ve previously had the mount unable to move on occasion stating horizon limit, despite not being close to it, which makes me even more curious about the goto alignment. Thanks for any advice!

That's right. I do get fairly good guiding with my setup so I can afford to increase the exposure time (clear sky time permitting). I'll give that a go and get some more detail. I landed on 164s subs after using Nina's optimal exposure calculator, plugging in data from a sensor analysis with Sharpcam. L-enhance. First time using this filter. I'm in bortle class 5 skies and on the day had a 100% full-moon very close to where I was pointing the telescope (brilliant timing with the clear skies). I used the l-enhance because I wanted to isolate the Ha which as others have mentioned is strong in this nebula. So perhaps I can expect a stronger red detail due to that choice. On another night with no full-moon and darker skies, I'd like to try without a filter and see the difference with this nebula. Thanks everyone for your feedback, I am amazed and grateful for the constructive critical feedback. Really is the only way one can improve. I've got some new post-processing techniques to try and also probably the biggest factor is to get more data as mentioned by some of you above. Ideally on a night without a full-moon close-by. Due to being impatient and lack of clear-skies I've tried to get everything done in one evening, I should consider multiple evenings or leaving the scope out capturing images overnight.

Hey Thanks for your advice and feedback, that's exactly what will help me improve. It's a good experience actuallly doing some of the stacking myself, I've learnt a few new things about the process. I went through the process you mentioned step by step and came up with the attached after some minor editing in GIMP. What do you think? The colours appear to be a bit better balanced, not just full on deep red. A bit more of a spectrum of colours visible and some extra detail. Of course I'm only expectations minor improvements here, but as long as I'm heading in the right direction. Thanks.

Hello, I'm a beginner and have been following some tutorials on pre and post-processing, but I'm sure I can do better with this nebula! I managed to get some clear skies last night and took around 30x160s lights and the same biases, flats, and darks. Using an 80mm SW refractor, HEQ5 Pro, flattener, 600d astromodified. I'm using an l-enhance filter for the first time too. I've used siril and this guide to both pre-process all of the frames into one image, and then some basic post-processing as mentioned in the tutorial. Which produced the image attached to this post. After pre-processing and photometric colour calibration, I see a lot of detail in the red channel, more so than comes out in the final post-processed image. I'm not sure but based on this can I do a better of job of getting all of that detail from the red channel to show in the final image? Any advice on how to produce a better image with this nebula would be much appreciated. I've used Siril and Gimp so far but I also have a trial licence for PixInsight I can use too. Thanks!

The image processing makes such a huge difference, I spent hours pouring over youtube videos and tutorials which netted some significant improvements in my images. It's amazing what you can do with data that you didn't even know was hiding in your images. Great efforts with M42, really got what looks like some deep reds there in the 2nd image. Did you use a h-alpha filter at all? I think the next step for me will be to take some shots with (and buy..) a ha filter and take some shots without, then combine into a HaRGB photo. I don't know if that means I'll need to take two sets of darks/biases/flats as the optical train will change, that would add a lot of time to the process and a lot more cloud-free sky required.. I'm not there yet but also have aspirations for a proper zwo cooled cam, definitely an improvement on the DSLR by the sounds of it. This hobby goes like something like this: - Buy expensive gear - Learn, practice, create awesome image - Look to improve further and reach the next level of photo, which requires new accessory / filter / equipment - Buy expensive gear - Learn, practice, create awesome image - Repeat... 😁

Wow, your photos look spectacular! Very nicely done! Love the colours and vibrancy. I was waiting on a trial licence from pixinsight, so I got going with Siril and GIMP and followed these tutorials: Siril - Full image processing (pre-processed with scripts) The Budget Conscious Astronomer: Background Extraction using Gimp - YouTube Star Reduction in GIMP — a tutorial using Wavelet Decompose | by Paul Bleicher | Medium Which helped me produce my first image of M31, I'm proud of it but as always there is a lot to improve on. Kit: Sky-Watcher Evostar 80ED DS-Pro, 600D astromodified, HEQ5 Pro, 0.85 reducer/flattener, no filters. 200s lights.

Thank you and everyone for the advice here! That makes a lot of sense. I've also heard that using something like the l-extreme with a 600d (modified) will require long exposures since its such a narrow pass,and as such the images get quite noisy. So perhaps sticking to a ha filter will be best, as a starting point as you say. If I'm going for galaxies but also some emission nebula. Then combine with a true-colour broadband image. Are there any HA filters you or others would recommend on that front? for my setup of astromodified DSLR, 0.85 reducer/flattener, ED80 scope?

Hi I have an Astro modified 600d dslr, ie allowing h-alpha through now. I’ve been advised that an optolong l extreme filter would be an excellent choice for capturing detail and colour from galaxies and nebula. I’m in a bortle 5 area, and have a 80ed scope with 0.85 reducer. I understand the filter works by allowing two different frequencies of light through, while blocking others (presumably light pollution and everything else). Does this suggest that galaxies only emit light in those two different specific frequencies? Hence why you’re able to capture a complete looking image even with the filter? Or perhaps they are just the two most prominent frequencies emitted by galaxies. Related to that, when capturing images would you usually only take images with the filter or would you take both with and without and then stack them all together? Thanks!

Looks incredible! Awesome first effort. Thanks for sharing.

It really does seem like a hobby that you can as far as you want to, both in terms of complexity but also the strain on your wallet! I think that only adds to the allure. That's fantastic you were able to get your first image. I'm not sure if you've already shared anywhere but I'm sure we'd all love to see how you got on.

Ah good luck! You are lucky to be in a bortle 3 area I think, hopefully that will help you get some great results! I'm in a bortle 5 area, so I'll be looking in the future for any filters that might help me remove the light pollution. Based on other folks results it looks like should be able to produce something though.

The only upside to the clouds is that I now feel over prepared for the my first imaging session, if there is such a thing. Good luck and would be interested in how you get on from one beginner to another!