mikehab

These are beautiful pictures. I especially like dph1nm's image of the Pleiades. Do you guys live in light-polluted areas? 

Yep - I do - My M42 was taken from a very light polluted North-West London.

Mike

I'd have to say no to Barn Doors too, as they still track equatorially. Sorry.

Mine doesn't .... but that's another story.... ;-)

Great thread.   Only one from me on my trusty little Nexstar 4SE - the obligatory M42...26 x 8 sec @ ISO 6400 with 10 darks and 18 bias frames...

I have tried imaging other targets like M81/82, M101, M31, M13 etc. but not had much luck so far.

Mike

I have the 4SE and have found it very difficult indeed to capture DSOs/Nebulas.... the only one I've managed to capture so far is M42 (see below).   As it's relatively 'slow' at F/13 you certainly won't be able to see anything visually except for really bright objects like M42 and maybe some of the clusters (M11 / M13).   As is usually the case though - it all really depends on how dark your skies are and how much light pollution there is ... I'm in NW London so really struggle.   Also the tracking on the 4SE mount isn't that great ... so not good for long exposures, even when EQ aligned with the wedge.

Cheers,

Mike

Very interesting thread James - and congrats on the progress....looks promising.  I'll definitely be following this thread with keen interest.

I would be interested to hear why you've chosen to do this in C++ specifically.  I was a C/C++ programmer for 10 years and then a Java programmer for 10+ years (though never done anything with video capture specifically) ... and I would definitely choose Java over C++ any day purely for a) speed of development and portability ... so I'm just wondering why people tend write these vid capture apps in C# / C++ rather than Java.  Presumably at some point you have to access the camera-specific native drivers ... so maybe that's easier to access those low-level drivers directly via C++?

I definitely don't want to get into any kind of 'religious' C++ versus Java debate ... but if written in Java then it would obviously run on all platforms without the need to port/re-compile... and also be much easier to get an Android (SmartPhone) version too if written in Java.

Just wondering... ;-)

(Still very impressed with your progress though - congrats!)

Excellent post James - very useful. The effect of Wavelets in Registax never ceases to amaze me - going from a fuzzy image to an image with clearly defined detail - yet that's the bit of the process that seems to be (in my limited experience) rather "random" and very much a "trial and error" process. If only they could introduce a "Magic Wavelets" button that automatically adjusts and magically fixes the wavelets to produce the final crisp image ;-)

Thanks,

Mike

Superb write-up James - hugely useful. Thanks!

Same here .... I have very fond memories of my first ever telescope when I was a kid - and of course it was a 60mm Tasco. I will always remember the first time I saw Saturn (complete with rings) and Jupiter & its moons. Sure - they have a reputation for not being the best scopes ever - but you'll find a heck of a lot of people who have owned them as first scopes which got them into the hobby in the first place, and have lots of fond memories. Many years later I bought my son his first telescope - and yes - it was a 60mm Tasco... and he was similarly 'hooked'. So despite their poor reputation, they seem to being a pretty good job of introducing people to the hobby... which can't be a bad thing ;-)

That's a great tutorial - and not just for dob users. Nice :-) I hadn't even thought of using something like VirtualDub to edit & join multiple AVIs before pre-processing and stacking ... but it makes perfect sense.

Thanks,

Mike

My first ever Orion nebula taken tonight with a Canon EOS 60D with Samyang 500mm mirror lens. 11 x 5sec subs @ ISO 1600 + 5 darks. Not on a par with many of the images here - but it's my first and I'm chuffed to bits as it's first light with my new 500mm lens which I'm just playing around with to see whether it's any use for astro photography.

Tried that - but the 4SE has a very short tube and even shorter dovetail - so even moving it forward as far as safely possible didn't really help. I have an EOS 60D with is rather heavy ... maybe I should consider a different, lighter DSLR. (But I do love my 60D!...)

Thanks for the heads-up. I've been doing some further searching and discovered there's even an article on Celestron's own support pages / knowledge base which says exactly the same ..

http://www.celestron.com/c3/support3/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=2009&nav=0,215

Thanks,

Mike

Hi - does any one know how to tighten a Celestron Nexstar 4SE/5SE mount - specifically the Altitude 'clutch'? Now that the weather is getting colder I've noticed that when the mount is cold the weight of my DSLR on the back is causing the scope to drop at the back quite easily, and it can be quite easily moved/lifted with only very slight pressure - so it feels like the altitude clutch (?) is a little loose and the whole thing needs tightening up somehow? When it's back indoors and warm it's a bit stiffer and there's less slip and more difficult to move.... but when outside and cold it feels quite slack and easy to move.

Any pointers / instructions / guidance on tightening greatly appreciated...

Thanks,

Mike

Do you hold yours with your teeth as well?

Hah! YES - I do. Glad I'm not the only one. LOL.

Took advantage of the Diamond Jubilee Bank Holiday to finish off my eyepiece case. It's a cube-foam flight case off ebay, and I've installed some BIG red LEDs (from maplins). Quite chuffed with the end result, even if I do say so myself....