astroman001

Can you post an image showing your problems? Are you using a tripod? Also use manual focus and turn image stabilisation off. The camera can't focus on a featureless sky. The camera was a 5200 and the lens a Tamron 18-270mm. Other details in the original post above. Peter

Beautiful

Thanks for the feedback. They were taken with a Nikon DSLR and zoom lens on a tripod 1/6th sec f/13 at ISO 320, 60mm and 110mm f/l. Peter

The crescent Moon, Mercury and Venus made a lovely sight after sunset tonight. Mercury is to the right of the moon about halfway towards Venus at lower right. Peter

Thanks everyone. it's also visible in your image CraigT82

Despite some high cloud, I managed to capture my first surface detail on Mercury. The image shows the WINJupos map on the right and the bright crater is Kuiper which can be clearly seen in my slightly fuzzy image on the left. A small milestone. Peter

Mercury s only a few degrees away from Venus which makes it fairly easy to set the scope/camera up on Venus then slew across to Mercury. Unfortunately there was some thin high clouds, hence the milky appearance. There is nearly a 10x difference in diameter with Venus at 52.5" and Mercury at 6.0" diameter. Both images at f/22 on a C14 using an IR742nm filter. Peter

Venus is showing a nice crescent phase now as it swings back towards the sun. Phase was 17.9% illuminated today. Seeing was poor and this is 25% of 20,000 frames. Peter

Here is a DSLR image of M101. ISO 400, 25 x 2 min subs ED80 f/6.3. There is a lot of background noise which is annoying. Peter

Sorry so many questions. Thank you, FaDG. When I said one dark, that was in fact a stack/average of about 20 dark frames. It was about 6 months old, so I am wondering if doing a fresh average dark will be more accurate?? Thank you Almcl, I will try dithering, it is not something I have used before. Any idea how much to use, how many pixels etc? I use PHD for guiding. Thank you Happy-kat, how should DSS be set up for dead pixels? Best regards Peter

I do register and stack separately. The black areas are not there without darks, see second image above. The coloured hot pixel areas coincide with the black defects in the first image. I'm trying to find what processing steps are causing problems. I noted that HLVG plug in makes dark areas in the background when it removes green. Thanks anyway for the advice

What is the cosmetics tab?

Here is a close crop of M101 after DSS stack with no darks at all. Just levels in PS to highlight whats going on. There is good correlation between the coloured hot pixels in this image and the black marks in the previous image. Can't explain why they end up black after processing. I did use Gradient Exterminator on the previous image as well. Peter

I ran a test using my DSLR on M101. This is a crop of a wider field view taken with a Nikon 5200 DSLR (unmodded) 30 x 2 min subs at 400 ISO with an ED80. Stacked with a dark frame only in deepsky stacker and tweaked in Photoshop. What is causing the horrible mottled background and all the small black defects everywhere? It's all over the full frame. Any DSLR users out there seen this before? I don't think it's dust. Peter

Great result, aesthetically pleasing as well. Peter

Hi Simon, what would be interesting is seeing the results at all the same image scale. I believe for this you expanded to fit the cropped image size? Peter

Fantastic achievement. Well done and well executed. I have a poster a bit like that on my observatory wall except using professional images. Peter

Venus close to the Pleiades part II on 4th April. Taken with Nikon D5200 and 150mm lens 2000ASA 2 sec exposure Peter

Here are images a few hours apart of Venus through the telescope and later near the Pleiades. Unfortunately high clouds interfered with the view of Venus near the Pleiades.

A mosaic taken with ED80 and ASI120 camera, stitched in Photoshop Peter

The crescent Moon tonight, seeing poor. Single shot with Nikon DSLR on an ED80

Yes, I think you have the image back to front. Peter

Thanks Ckemu, yes I took some 40 sec subs for the core and used layer masking in PS. Peter

The famous M42 Orion Nebula and neighbouring M43 the Running Man nebula. Nikon DSLR on ED80 12 x 4 min subs at 500ASA

Lovely image, loads of detail. Pteer