Xiga

On 16/08/2020 at 19:15, Avdhoeven said:

I updated the image using data from the 2 Dark nebulae that I took in the previous years during my holidays in the same location. It became a nice blend I think.

 

That's really something special André, congrats! I also like the Fov that Spacecat gives. 

I know how hard a target this is, having tried it myself a year or two back, before giving up after the realisation i didn't have the gear or skies to really do it justice. 

On 16/08/2020 at 10:31, Allinthehead said:

I managed to get a couple of clear nights last weekend in the south of Ireland. Conditions were poor with high cloud at times but nice to get anything at all. I'm hoping to start my Autumn/Winter project soon so even though this needs more time i doubt i'll get round to adding to it.

Ldn 673 is a dark nebula of dust and gas in the constellation of Aquila. This molecular cloud is massive around 67 trillion kms across, and it is between 300-600 light years from Earth.  LDN 673 lies in front of the larger Aquila Rift that is part of the Great Rift in the Milky Way stretching from Centaurus to Cygnus.

Taken with my Asi2600mc through a Tak Epsilon 130, 5.5 hrs in 180 second subs

Mounted on an AzEq6

Captured with SGPro, satcked in APP, processed in APP, PI and PS.

Richard.

That's gorgeous Richard. A sea of golden stars, punctuated by the Dark nebula. Subtle, yet striking, at the same time. 

Can't wait to see what you've got in store for us with your Autumn/Winter project. 

On 16/08/2020 at 10:32, tooth_dr said:

I decided to try M31 again, but always feeling like it was squashed in at 500mm, I am trying a 2 panel mosaic.

Luminance data so far - 2 hours per panel in 120s subs.

APP done a decent job of combining the panels.

Any feedback welcome.

 

TIA

Adam.

 

I was away at the weekend so only saw this on my phone. Now i see it on the computer monitor, i can fully appreciate it. I like the framing too. 

The Lum looks awesome Adam. That Tak 180 really does suck down the photons! The plethora of teeny-tiny stars it's picked up throughout just look amazing. 

Looking forward to the final version. 

2 hours ago, SamK said:

Nice image and setup - Sh2-119 on the left gives a nice balance to the North American and Pelican.

I've also found vintage (and budget) M42 prime lenses work pretty well for wide-angle narrowband and give a lot of versatility to an existing telescopic setup.

My theory was that with only one wavelength to contend with in narrowband, there's no need to have expensive glass to counter chromatic aberration.

A few notes which might help in case anyone else tries this type of setup:

+Focussing - With patience, I found I could get good enough focus by hand (I measured FWHM in short test subs and adjusted the lens barrel).
+Guiding - Much easier than normal when imaging at 10''/px (works fine even if windy!)
+Drizzle - Since you'll almost certainly be oversampling compared to seeing, drizzle works well if you have lots of subs
+Aperture - With a Ha filter, wide open on a Carl Zeiss 135mm f/3.5 was pretty much the same as stopped down to f/4 and higher, same thing on a Asahi Pentax Takumar 200mm f/4.
+Mount attachment / Differential Flexure - Since the Atik314L+ doesn't have a screw mount on the bottom of the camera, I used a lens collar ring around the lens (see picture below). Even with a tight fit and extra felt tape around the lens barrel I sometimes got a bit of differential flexure (you can compensate for this to some extent using PHD2 comet tracking mode - not recommended but it worked!). Would be much better to use a side-by-side setup like Ciarán's.

As an example of what's possible, here's 60 x 300secs Ha (Carl Zeiss 135/Atik314L+), drizzled to 5''/px on an infrequently-imaged faint area in Vela (Small and brighter RCW40 top slightly right)

Sam

Thanks Sam. Nice to hear from another local member on here 👋

Great to see someone else trying this out too 😀  I agree, for NB work you don't need expensive glass at all, so there's plenty of opportunities for adding a cheap widefield setup, as long as you are prepared to accept it's limitations. 

It's early days yet whether or not i'll suffer from differential flexure. I'm just using an arca-swiss adaptor screwed to the bottom of the camera, but the lens isn't heavy, so fingers-crossed. The whole thing is sitting on a manfrotto 'thingy' (can't remember what it's called, lol), but it allows for about 150 degrees of rotation (in one axis only), which should be enough for most situations i hope. I also was thinking about Drizzling. However, my plan is to only capture about 100 mins (max) per panel in Ha (either 5 x 1200s or 10 x 600s), which won't give me enough subs to take advantage of it. Did your stars look significantly better after you drizzled? I'm currently at 8.4" and i was a little worried beforehand that they might come out a bit blocky, but i think they look decent enough. Not the best of course, but good enough for a big mosaic, where the focus will be on large-scale nebulosity. 

Nice image btw 😎

On 15/08/2020 at 19:24, tooth_dr said:

Looking good Ciarán and nice to see another KAF8300 getting used for widefield imaging. The 135mm gives a fair bit more FOV than the comparable shot I took with the 180mm lens. 

Thanks Adam. I've been wanting to do some widefield work (just as a change really) for a while now. Cygnus is a veritable NB treasure-trove, so i'm hoping to start a long-term project of doing a mosaic of this area in either bi-colour, or possibly all 3 channels. I did think of opting for a lens with a slightly longer FL, but with my imaging time being so low these days i thought 135mm might mean i actually have a chance of finishing it before retirement!

On 16/08/2020 at 10:34, Allinthehead said:

Great start Ciarán. Given the quality of your dslr images i'm looking forward to seeing what you can do with the mono.

Thanks Richard. I'm really liking mono i must say, although it's still early days and i've only really done one full NB image. At the moment, for broadband imaging the plan is to use the D5300 for colour and the Atik383 for Lum. I can't see me having the time to capture separate R, G, and B channels, but the jury is out until i actually try it. 

On 15/08/2020 at 14:40, souls33k3r said:

You're a true artist mate. Every single image of yours is full of clarity and detail. I still ca not understand how you manage 20min exposures on this mount. I know balance is of utmost importance but still. Hats off to you mate. 

Thanks Ahmed, you're too kind. The mount is getting on a bit now, and is in serious need of a re-tune tbh. Even still, it can handle 20+ min exposures just fine. My max imaging scale is only about 1.5" (with the D5300) so nothing too strenuous, which plays a major part obviously. 

On 15/08/2020 at 16:38, Xsubmariner said:

Image looks great and interesting re-configuration of the lens. Nice to see the camera getting used by an expert.

Thanks Martin! Not sure how comfortable i am with being called an 'expert' though, lol. Happy to finally get using the camera i have to say. Thanks again for the sale, and the nice chat we had prior to it. 😀

On 15/08/2020 at 16:53, callisto said:

A very nice image indeed 👍

 

Mark

Cheers Mark. 

A few months back, i bought my first mono camera, an Atik 383l+ from Martin @Xsubmariner off here. I hadn't had a chance to give it a whirl until last night. 

I thought about getting the 80ED out, but i've been wanting to do some widefield stuff for a while, so i attached an old Tamron 135mm F2.8 vintage M42 lens i picked up last year for next to nothing. The lens needs to be stopped down to F5.6 (perhaps less, i haven't tested though) to produce acceptable stars in broadband, but i was hoping it could be used more wide open for Narrowband. I used step-down rings screwed on to the end of the lens hood to bring the aperture down to 37mm, which is about F3.65 (i did briefly try it wide open in Ha, and it wasn't that bad tbh, but i could still make out some comet-shaped stars in a few places so i opted to stop it down a bit to play it safe). I have a TS Optics filter drawer in the optical train, so i can still swap out filters without too much fuss. I still have about 3-4mm of extra backfocus space to spare, but i can already find focus as it is, so i'm not sure if it's that important that i haven't fully used it all up.

Focusing was tough. I was focusing using a Bahtinov mask on Deneb, and i had to use 10s subs (subframes) at 2x2 bin to get bright enough spikes for Bahtinov Grabber to pick up to the spikes ok. Even then, it was showing the focus error moving about quite a bit, even without me touching the focus ring. In the end i just got it as close as i could and went with it.

Conditions were not great. Some clear spells, but there was a lot of cloud passing through. I figures it would be good enough for a test session. The Phd guide graph looked horrific, and was somewhere in the 1-2" range (image scale is 8.4" so not a big deal hopefully). I bodged together a couple of old dovetails to add enough weight to counter-balance the 5Kg counterweight. It just about does. It's not perfect by any means, but hopefully sufficient for this purpose. 

I would ideally like to shoot 1200s subs, but couldn't last night due to the constant clouds (Phd lost the guide star countless times). I was about to give up, but persisted and aimed for 600s subs. Glad i did, as i ended up with 6 useable subs, even if a couple were affected by some thin cloud. 

Did a quick stack in APP and a 10 min process in PS, just to get a rough idea of what i can expect from this. I used Flats and a couple of Darks just to do a rough calibration. Didn't do any gradient reduction, was in too much of a hurry after packing up last night. Overall i'm fairly pleased with how it performed. I'm obviously not aiming for Samyang 135mm F2 levels of performance here, but for purely NB bi-colour mosaics i think it can do a job. 

I've included a picture of the rig below as well, in case anyone's interested.

CS.

6 x 600s (1 Hr)

Atik 383l+  2" Baader Ha 7nm

Tamron Adaptall2 135mm F2.8 (@F3.65)

On 28/07/2020 at 14:16, tooth_dr said:

I have just stumbled across my Beaghmore Neowise image in an article online

Click - Sky at Night Neowise Article

 

Any other members with images?

 

Regards

Adam

Congrats Adam on a great image! 👍

And just like you say, nice to see somewhere close to home get a nod amongst all the global images 😀

All the best to you and the Mrs @vlaiv. Hope you are both back fighting fit soon 💪 

5 hours ago, Red Chilli said:

Awesome image

Thanks Chilli

4 hours ago, Sunshine said:

One fine closeup you’ve done, very clean and crisp, I’m surprised it was at just 200ISO, fantastic.

Thanks Sunshine. I only ever use ISO 200 on the D5300.

Last Saturday night (Jul 18) i made a trip out to a local dark sky site. I had the pleasure of having the company of Adam @tooth_dr who lives nearby, who very kindly agreed to join me and show me the way around (big thanks again Adam!). 

It was a great night. I got to see the comet naked eye, and the length of the tail was truly amazing to behold, once i managed to get away from the laptop screen and finally get some dark adaptation! 

Conditions started out great, then started to deteriorate when a heavy mist came in from nowhere. Because i was using the mount, my setup time wasn't the best, so by the time i actually started capturing, the best of the conditions had already passed. I then noticed that the scope had also already started to dew up. With no portable psu for dew control, i had no option but to just keep capturing and hope for the best. 

In total i captured 66 subs of 30s. Some were very dubious, to say the least. I tried doing several Comet-Only stacks in DSS. Best 8, 16, 25, 49, 60, 66. Apart from the obvious decrease in noise as the stack no. went up, i was surprised just how little difference there was between them all. The dust tail looked no different at all , and the Ion Tail looked better as the sub no. went up. I can only assume that the dewing up of the scope had acted as a collar on the quality of all the subs. So in the end i only ditched the worst 6, and just went with the remaining 60. 

HEQ5-Pro, D5300, 60 x 30s (30 mins), no filter, no guiding. ISO 200. 

Subs calibrated in APP. Comet and Stars stacked separately in DSS. Gradient Reduction and star colour calibration done in APP. Then everything combined in PS. 

Considering everything, i'm 'content' with how it came out in the end. I'll just have to wonder how much better it could have been if i had a means of dew control and the mist hadn't come along when it did. The 80ED also was never the right tool for the job, but it was the best one i had available. Note to self - time to get a proper lens for AP! 😄 

1 minute ago, tooth_dr said:

Cheers Alan. It does look really blue. I tried but didn’t get a result. I wonder would it be hard to get the background back but keep the ion tail blue

It's not hard at all. Create a new layer and do a Selective Colour adjustment. Target the Blues only, then increase the Cyan and Magenta sliders, while decreasing the Yellow slider. You may have to do it more than once. Then just use a layer mask so that it only applies it to the Ion tail and nowhere else. 

58 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Uncropped version.  I have some artefact running across the middle of the sensor, so I cropped the original (above), but i like this version.

Nice one Adam! Were you able to sort out the stacking in the end? Did you do a split approach of comet + stars? How many subs made it into this image? 

The sky background colour looks fine to me. The artefact running across the screen is a strange one alright. One possible solution might be to run starnet+ to get a starless version. Then susbtract it from the full version to get just the stars. Then go back to the starless version and use the clone stamp tool to fix the artefact. Then finally add the stars to this in blend mode lighten. 

ps - Loving the wee galaxy photo-bombing the image on the LHS btw! Crazy to think the difference in distance between the comet and the galaxy! 

On 19/07/2020 at 13:24, tooth_dr said:

Another late one   I met up with @Xiga off here and we did some imaging at a local dark site.  It was really good, conditions started off perfect, and then started to deteriorate, but I think we got enough data.  We also got to do a bit of outreach to a few members of the public, showing them the MW, the planets, and some constellations as well as the comet.

Quick screen shot of 3 minutes total exposure, 180mm lens. I am away now to take flats.  This is full frame Nikon, so it just shows you how HUGE it is.

 

Yes it was a great night, totally worth the drive out 😀  I'm still working my way through the data, hoping to have an image soon (although it's proving tricky as the conditions weren't great by the time i finally got collecting data). 

It was nice to see the comet with the naked eye (i would never have been able to do so from home, too much LP) and it's always nice to have some company too in this all-too-often-lonesome hobby of ours! lol. 

Thanks again for the meet up Adam, and showing me around the location 👍

On 21/07/2020 at 19:22, tooth_dr said:

Very interesting Francis, thanks for sharing.  I had noticed a similar red streak, but it turned out it was @Xiga walking past the camera last Sat night 🤣🤣

 

🤣 Please tell me it was only this 1 sub Adam 😳

At least I managed to intersect the comet nicely 😋

2 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Don't have photoshop, and am no fan of software rental model, so it isn't likely this will change.

No probs Michael. I was suggesting it for @vpsj 

On 19/07/2020 at 20:39, vpsj said:

I've read all the comments above but I still can't get DSS to work. The problem is I took all my shots of the comet Neowise using a 300mm lens(untracked). I only have two stars at max in my frame that were near the comet.

Because of this, DSS basically refuses to stack my shots with auto-alignment, as it can only see 2-3 stars at max instead of the minimum 8. I even marked the comet in all the frames manually, and selected no alignment mode to stack all of them. That just resulted in a completely gray image, with no comet at all.

Can anyone please help me out. Is there a different program that works better on comets? I tried searching for any tutorials on Comet stacking but I can mostly only find DSS based tutorials, and none of them qualify in my case. Please help me. Thank you

If you have Photoshop and are up for doing it manually, then you can actually stack in PS. It won't be as good as using DSS or the like, but it might get you out of a jam. Have a look at this video, it shows very well what you need to do:

3 hours ago, Ken Mitchell said:

Ciarán,

The different exposures were planned for 2 reasons. 

First, as you mentioned, I wanted to make sure having enough short exposures/data to get as much detail in the core and surroundings.

Second, this was taken in the morning so as the minutes passed the sky becomes brighter and the comet will get lost in the background. So shorter exposure will compensate for the background brightness and at the same time get the detail for the core.

I started with a 30 second frame session and reduced the exposure with 5 seconds every 20 frames or so.

Hope that makes sense.

Ken

Thanks Ken, much appreciated. 

20 hours ago, Ken Mitchell said:

Here is a new edit using the comet stacking mode and the DSS stacking settings for the lights on average to get the most startrails in the final. By looking at the startrails it seems there was some vibration in certain shots.

I tried to do the same post processing on this image as the original one, it's close but not a perfect match.

I like both images but personally prefer the one with the starfield. 

Ken

Love this one Ken. It really gives the impression of the comet zipping through space. 

May I ask, were you just hedging your bets by doing various exposures from 5s to 30s? Did they actually prove useful in the final image, or would the 30s subs have just done on their own? 

Just thinking, did you use the shorter ones for the comet's core?

On 13/07/2020 at 08:23, tooth_dr said:

Next weekend onwards looking ok.

Thats a good image given the circumstances but I can appreciate your frustrations. I have mountains that direction and plagued with cloud too.  

It's still a while off yet, so could all change, but the forecast for Sunday is looking promising Adam. If it holds up, I might take a run up to Beaghmore to get away from the LP. It's only a 70 min drive from home, which isn't too bad. I might ask you for some advice on the lay of the land closer to the time if that's ok? 

19 hours ago, MKHACHFE said:

I know ..it sucks. Well, even if I don't get to see it again, at least I got to see it once. 

I'm a glass half-full kind of guy (usually more concerned with what's in the glass!) so I'm quite sure that another opportunity will come up to see it 🙂

16 hours ago, tomato said:

I admire your perseverance in getting that shot, I usually don’t care about persistent cloud low on the horizon, but I’m currently obsessed with it!
The trouble is at my location even on good clear nights, it seems to be rarely clear down to the horizon.
 

Hopefully the comet will still look as good after it has gained a few more degrees of altitude.

I feel your pain mate. Fingers crossed it will still be photogenic for a while yet. Have you thought of getting to a dark sky spot the next clear night?

This is spectacular. Easily the best one I've seen so far. Congrats Ken! 

1 minute ago, MKHACHFE said:

Same...I waited all morning and could just barely see it through the thin clouds.

Hopefully better viewing tomorrow

Clear Outside is showing 100% cloud cover here every night until next Saturday night! 😢

What a frustrating night.

I was just about to go to bed (Jul 12, 01:15) when i decided to have a quick look outside (it was supposed to be completely clouded over) and lo-and-behold i could see stars! So i decided to ignore the fact i had already had a few beers, and try and set up the scope in double-quick time, in case i could grab a few quick snaps of Neowise between the clouds. There was only 80 mins of Nautical Darkness left, and i had to set up from scratch, so i decided early on that i would only aim for 30s subs and not even bother guiding or even connecting the dew bands. As it turned out, i couldn't even see Polaris through the polar scope, so had to rely on Sharpcap for the full PA routine (normally i would do a rough PA using EQMod). This took a good 15-20 mins, instead of the usual 5 mins, but i was just happy to get a good PA done! I wasn't prepared at all, so i had to get the RA and Dec co-ordinates from Heavens-Above, and quickly set up a sequence in SGP. 

Found the comet with no bother and got framed and focused. Then just started shooting 30s subs and hoped for the best. By this time, it was 02:45 and Nautical Darkness had passed. I was just hoping for a 5 min window with no clouds (i took over 70 subs) but alas, no such luck. Despite the skies overhead being totally clear, the clouds to the North never cleared, and every single sub was affected by thick cloud 🙁

Rather than just bin them all, i decided to try and at least process one of them. I was able to find 3 potential candidates where at least a fair bit of the comet was visible (i might still try the other 2) and this was the best i could manage.

Happy enough that i at least came out with some sort of image, but boy was it frustrating not to have even a 5 min window of clear sky! The forecast here is pretty terrible now for the next 6 days, so fingers crossed this isn't the only opportunity i get at this. 

Nikon D5300; HEQ5-Pro

1 x 30s, ISO 200

Calibrated in APP, processed in PS.

Thanks for looking and CS!

6 hours ago, mackiedlm said:

Thanks Ciarán,

So you went DSLR to Cooled OSC to mono? I'm at the stage of my first move away from a modded DSLR and have been thrashing about on the choice between OSC and Mono (its down to ASI 533mc or ASI1600mm at this point (Though your QHY seem to give good results). Ive read loads of the threads here and on other forums about which is best (that was fun!) and had largely settled on OSC because of the limited number of good nights here and partly the cost and complications of mono. But Id really appreciate hearing your thoughts - you have the same scope, similar mount (mine is the NEQ6) and very similar skies) and you have gone through both.

Rgds

 

David

Hi David

I owned the the Qhy163c for just under a year, but due to life getting in the way I only produced 1 broadband image, plus this one, with it before i sold it on. Maybe it was my skies (i was shooting from our new house, which has higher LP, as opposed to the old family home which has better skies, i dunno) but i didn't find the 163c to be that much of a leap over the D5300. Part of that is down to just how good the D5300 is. It's modded and has very low noise compared to the Canons, so it pushes well above it's weight. I absolutely love it and i'll never sell it. I only picked up the 163c on a whim, as it was available at a good price, but i wasn't overly impressed with the noise profile. Every camera is different though, and a lot depends on your skies too, so don't be put off by my experience at all. Some imagers get incredible results with OSC cameras. Richard Sweeney (who i think is in Cork?) is one obvious example. 

HTH.