kirkster501

Wow, utterly incredible. I take my hat off to you for your committment in building this masterpiece. It'l like looking at a Titian or a Caneletto painting; you see more and more the more you look at it.

I think there is zero chance of this ever becoming mainstream. Too many people do not give a monkey's about space and astronomy and would rather have light blazing down all night. We forget, the dark is scary for some older and more vulnerable people. Wish this wasn't the case, but it is and will remain so.

I'm going to have another go at this over the next few days. There is seven hours of data in this picture, so many galaxies at 220 million light years. Humbling isn't it?

Thanks guys. I will give it another go tomorrow. This is a hard earned data set and I want every photon to count in it! :)

Yes Steve, but I think I have to tone down this noise reduction. I just applied it to the first two wavelet layers on this occasion and I like the result better.

Thanks. I think I am trying to reduce the noise too much at the linear stage and destroy some of the detail. I am going to have another go tomorrow

You don't need a diagram, the attached tell you all you need to know in terms of getting your spacing right. It just installs onto the nose piece of the camera. telecompressor-techdata.pdf

From November 2019. This seven hour data set is capable of getting much more out of it than I am getting here. I really struggle with these distant small galaxies in processing and need to keep practising. They were nice and clean LRGB masters at at one stage but get progressively noisier the further I go and I lose definition in them. Anyway, TEC140 and CCD Atik 460 and Astrodon filters.

The mirror spot is too far away and too far out of focus to be visible. What you are seeing is not the centre spot but a dust donut of something nearer the sensor, exactly like Vlaiv says.

I bought some step down rings so next time it's clear will see if I can eliminate the spikes.

The focus is extremely sensitive I have found. Concerned that a Dew band will disturb this focus, or make it more difficult to achieve..... I'll have a look into it. Thanks folks.

My DSLR dewed over after 8 x 90s subs the other night. What dew band do you use? Would need to be slim one?

What solutions do you guys use please to keep the dreaded dew at bay? I don't want to use a dew band because that could disturb focus.

The DarkBiasNoiseEstimator script will punch out the numbers if you feed it two darks at the same temp and length as the lights. You plug the numbers it returns into Mure Denoise tool. MD does not work on drizzle images.

Hi all, If I have a complex nebula structure, how do I create a Black and white mask out of it please to use to mask areas for further processing? In PixInsight you'd extract luminance and do an histogram transformation of it, job done. How to do the same in Photoshop please? Thanks, Steve EDIT: I worked it out. Thanks for looking anyway.

Hi folks, Trying to understand this to eliminate the starburst effect on bright stars in my DSLR pictures. When you set a F number on our camera and press the shutter button for a, say, 1 second exposure, you can see the Iris of the lens move to the selected ratio when the shutter is open. It then goes back to wide open again when it closes. So does the step down ring have to be smaller than the smallest aperture that you'd shoot at? For instance, At F4.5 we are already down from fully open to less than a cm on a Canon 50mm. There are no step downs that are that small..... the smallest I have is 26mm wide inside aperture. OR, Is it a case that the step down ring blocks stray light from refracting around the inside of the camera and the Iris as the Iris closes to the selected aperture?

I am have ordered some step down rings in order to control the spikes around the brights stars moving forward. They spoil the DSLR pictures.

60 x 90s exposures of Orion on DSLR 1100D with 50mm nifty-fifty. F4.5 and ISO 1600. Saturday 18th Jan 2020. Mount is Star Adventurer.

Good work! DIY is mandatory in amateur astronomy 😀 does it work well?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0786D35CQ?pf_rd_p=f20e70b1-67f9-48d1-8c78-ba616030b420&pf_rd_r=MQ11F3YSVNHH6HCNJ3B5 Are these the rings? I was expecting something that blocked more of the aperture....? Or do they screw into each other?

Hi, So do you stop down with these threaded step-downs into each other (the bottom one screwed into the lens) to stop it down to the required level to reduce the spikes? Also, if you look at my picture (crop below) there is a strange halo effect with bright stars and this halo is radially away from the optical centre of the 50mm lens. What is that please? Is it a by-product of a cheapish lens?

Hi guys, thanks. Yes it is a modded 1100D. I have seen these step down rings. So you leave the camera wide open and step it down with a ring/ Can you stack these rings one on top? Mean to say this was made using a Star Adventurer, a might fine piece of gear indeed.

85 x 80s ISO 1600 at F4.5. 50mm "nifty-fifty" on Canon 1100D. 17 Jan 2020 when directly overhead. 10 x bias, darks and flats each. How to get rid of the flare on the brightest stars? Any ideas please? Also the red circle to the upper left of Capella ?????

Yes I have. but I thought putting on Bulb is what i need to do? EDIT: The Captur device allows me to set an exposure to 56.7 seconds if i want..... So Bulb needed to do that right?

Hi all, A long shot but thought I'd ask the SGL Oracle in case anyone has come across this before. On my Canon 1100D, can anyone think of why when I use my Captur remote shutter release system the shutter opens correctly but then, when the 30s exposure is up, it does not close the shutter again? The same Captur device works 100% perfectly on my Fuji XT2. It is just a different cable, very simple one too, on the Canon 1100D. A bit lost as to why......? Thanks if you have any thoughts.