Dazzyt66

22 minutes ago, Chris said:

Good job! Was this shot wide open at f/3.5? I reckon you can clean those corner stars up by stopping down a little bit. I ended up stopping down to f5.6 which did the trick.

M31 does look well framed at 200mm so I'm looking forward to giving this one a go. I've only ever imaged it with an ED66 which is slightly on the tight side.   

Thanks! Yeah, fixed 200mm Kalimar lens wide open at 3.5. I wanted to grab as much info as I could in shortest time given the weather unpredictability. As this is only my 3rd 'real' attempt at imaging and processing I'm chuffed with it  

Wowsers! Second outing for my used 200mm 3.5 lens after a clean.

I knew cloud was going to set in so I really just wanted to practice focusing with Ekos focus module. When I'd got it focused using the module (I didn't have much luck using the Bahtinov algorithm so just used the standard tool) with my laptop next to the lens as I tried to get the numbers as low as possible. As it was still clear at this point I thought I'd have another go at M31. I got about 50 mins of useable ISO1600 60s subs until cloud set in.

This morning I wasn't really expecting much as I stacked and processed the 50 subs in Siril using the bias and flats I did last time I used the lens (so no additional cleaning taken into consideration) but after a final tweak in Gimp I got this... I nearly wet myself!!! lol

15 hours ago, Chris said:

Despite many years of dabbling, I still class myself as a noob when it comes to DSO imaging. Well maybe another way of looking at it is that I tend to keep things simple and affordable i.e. just some basic star tracker antics with a stock Fuji camera for example. However, It's surprising how much can actually still go wrong even when keeping things simple!

For starters my eyes were bigger than my belly trying to image unguided with a 72mm refractor with 432mm focal length on a star tracker but I knew this going in. Does anyone else try things they know aren't a good idea? 

Much better to stick to something like a Redcat51 or an 8 quid 200mm vintage lens in this case. 

 

   

I've had a similar epiphany regarding vintage lenses - here's 50 mins of M31 captured last night and quickly stacked and processed this morning. Using a 200mm f3.5 lens from ebay (£20) plus my modded 1100D I also got from eBay for £60 a few years ago and had it modded recently. I do use my HEQ5 (which is total overkill) but I'm more than happy with the images I'm able to get from my Bortle 7 garden  

Lots changed over the last few months since there was last a cloudless night. Got a new (used) 200mm f3.5 lens so tried it out on M31 after a few hours of trying to remember how Ekos worked LOL!

This is only my second 'properly' processed image. I've always wanted to do M31 and am happy with this after just 2 hours worth of 60s lights. Stacked and processed in Siril with just bias and flats, finalised in Gimp after using Starnet++  - oh, and yes, i've moved back from Linux to Win10..

1 hour ago, Newforestgimp said:

 Went to then plate solve and it couldn’t resolve the images ??

Not sure about APT, but using EKOS I have to make sure of the correct settings for the lens diameter and length (and camera sensor details) for the calculated FOV otherwise plate solving will fail. Also, in the captures, it will show some noise but the stars should be able to be seen - as someone else has said, you need to be taking around 10s exposures for plate solving to ensure stars resolve above noise/LP

6 minutes ago, Lee_P said:

Following @Magnum's suggestion, I bought an IDAS LPS-D3 to test as well. Obviously this purchase resulted in weeks of cloud (sorry), but over the last two nights I managed to obtain three hours of data to make a comparison with No Filter, IDAS LPS-D1, and IDAS LPS-P3. Drumroll...

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmmm, hard to see much difference. 

I ran the source subs for each stack through PixInsight to get a measure of seeing quality by calculating the average number of stars visible.
No filter: 876
IDAS LPS-D1: 1129
IDAS LPS-P3: 904
IDAS LPS-D3: 787

From that I infer that the D3 had an uphill struggle due to poor sky conditions. (The seeing was noticeably worse when I was out under the stars setting up for the D3 test). Also, I do think that the colours the D3 gives look like the best of the bunch, but it's admittedly hard to tell in the examples above. 

To be honest I'm not sure if the D3 is having a positive impact, or if I'm just making excuses to avoid returning another filter to FLO! What do you all think? 🤔 

Another great comparison test @Lee_PTo me, the difference isn’t worth the cost 🤔

Great image - M101 is on my to do list and I hope I can get something as good as that 😀

3 hours ago, alacant said:

Hi

Nice shots. Well done.

A big +1 for EKOS. We have a lot of visitors who bring their own equipment and it just has to work. No fiddling around trying to get different apps talking to each other.

There are some nice lenses to be had economically in the 50mm to 300mm range. Here's our side by side arrangement with a 135.

Cheers

Thanks! Yeah, am loving Ekos and looking forward to experiencing a number of lenses - dunno why I never tried it before! 😀

So it’s a little Heath Robinson but now I can use the camera only on the HEQ5 with Ekos. Just need a clear night now... 😂

3 hours ago, callisto said:

https://www.cheapastrophotography.com/  👍

2 hours ago, Daf1983 said:

+1 for cheap astrophotography. I recently had my 600d done by Juan👍 

2 hours ago, mackiedlm said:

another +1 for cheap astrophotography, Juan is extremely helpful, did my 11OOd and supplied my 700d. I'd look no further.

Thanks guys, Ive emailed Juan and will be sending mine off soon! 😀

Finally deciding to take the plunge and get my 1100d modded.

Has anybody got any recommendations of where to send it (UK)?

Cheers

Daz

So I had some time last night to do some widefield using the 135mm at f2.8 which looks promising! Both images are just 20x30s (with bias and flats). M31 and North American Nebula (although with an unmodded DSLR I don't know how to process it, so I guess I'll have to read up!).

I'm gonna try my 80-200 zoom next at 200 and see what occurs!

So, there are no nice scopes in the shops (that I can afford anyway!) and I really wanted to try and get better images than either my ST80 or my Mak can achieve. I'm really liking the wide field stuff especially. I do have a DSLR and I do have some older M42 lenses. 'So,' I think, 'I REALLY LOVE ekos, plate solving et al. I wonder if I can get it to work with my 135mm lens?' Googling it didn't come up with much definitively either way apart from other people have asked the same questions...

The answer friends, as I found out last night is yes!! Put the lens details in Ekos in place of the scope. It worked out the FOV, plate solving worked fine. Focussing worked fine. PA was spot on. Quick test images of M81/82 and M39 - bloody promising (although I had left the lens at a midway f number (not sure which as I moved it in the dark when I put the stuff away 🤣) rather than its fastest f2.8, and I imaged at ISO 800 rather than the 1600 I usually use. BUT, the images I did get at 30s, seem better than either the ST80 or the Mak could get for the same exposure (albeit a different FOV obvs!).

I really rather excited to try a few more - better results will get posted here obviously!

😀

6 hours ago, rickwayne said:

No  one who  frequents this  forum  will be  shocked that I  endorse  the astro-Pi idea. Advantages:

• Cheap
• Can be an extremely capable observatory-control system
• Small, light weight, very low power consumption
• Versatile

KStars/Ekos has everything from planning (including automated generation of mosaic jobs) to control of just about every astro device you can think  of. The Pi is easy to run off mains, but will last all night with even a pretty inexpensive battery powering it and your mount. For my CEM25P, I used to use a 14 Ah deep cycle sealed lead-acid. Lasted WAY longer than the battery in any laptop I've ever had!

If you spend US$50 on the turnkey StellarMate OS software, you can use a dedicated app on a mobile device at your scope to set up, then retire inside to run everything with your regular computer. Or you  could spend maybe $120 on a touchscreen HDMI  display and a Bluetooth keyboard and use that at the scope.

The Pi stands up  a short-range WiFi hotspot if it can't sign in to a local WiFi network, or you can run an Ethernet cable (I use a 30m one) out to the scope. If the network goes down, or your computer  goes to sleep, the Pi doesn't care, it just keeps on  imaging.

The versatility really appeals to me -- I can run KStars/Ekos on my MacBook or Windows laptop and plug directly into the equipment for testing, or set up the Pi and remote into it with a laptop, tablet, or  even a phone  and have exactly the same interface at a remote site.

 

I second this. Although I’m new to the Raspberry Pi scene, it has changed my Astro experience considerably for the better. It just works.

My scope is situated around 20m or more from my router yet I can still access it via VNC over my own network, failing that I could do the same using its own hotspot. All in all including the pi4 (2gb), case and memory card, the solution cost me less than £100 (Astroberry is free but I also made a donation too) and it all works from my Halfords power tank (which was around £60 but I already had that).

It works great, and has been said already, it’s standalone, so should WiFi or electricity fail, the RPI will carry on and finish its job.

Oh, and you can go to bed while it does it! Bonus!!! 😀

48 minutes ago, AstroMuni said:

Looking good. 🙂 Did you use the Photometric calibration? Reason for asking is that some of the stars look a bit too blue.

Thanks! Yeah, I used the photometric cal in Siril - I too think they are a bit too blue but I guess I’ll get better at sorting that out as I go 🙂

Made a few tweaks using some of the suggestions above (still reading up on others to try). I'm very happy with this now! Kappa Sigma stacking and Sinh stretching initially made quite a huge difference I think:

11 minutes ago, Old Clive said:

Hello

I'm still awaiting delivery of my first telescope, a Sky-Watcher Star Discovery 150i WiFi. So, without any user experience, I have this question (and apologies in advance if it's a ridiculous question!):

If, as described in the FLO website, all I need to do to find objects is enter the detail of my location into the GoTo app, why's is a red dot finder provided? Would I ever need to use it?

Maybe the finder is provided as standard on the tube and it's easier to leave it there rather than manufacture a separate tube without it for GoTo use?

Thanks

Hey Clive. There are no silly questions here 😊

You will need to use the red dot finder to make sure the scope is aligned properly when using goto. Goto will aim to get you to the right target but initially you will need to make sure it is aligning accurately. This will be explained in the instructions but there is plenty to read here if you search on ‘star alignment’. You will also need to make sure the scope is centred on where the red dot points - this is easily done in daytime using a terrestrial target - you basically find something in your scope (lampposts or chimneys are good) and then adjust the red dot to be pointing to whatever is centred in your scope.

Hope this all makes sense. Enjoy it and clear skies.

Daz

1 minute ago, rickwayne said:

Sorry to be idiolinguistic! Happy to explain any obscure bits.

It’s ok, I can work my way through it! 😂 Being new to image processing though, stuff like stretching, masks and layers still has me thinking! 🤔

3 hours ago, Seelive said:

What stacking method did you use? A lot of the brighter stars appear to have a fainter companion so it's hard to say whether it's a problem with the individual images or with the stacking software or both. If you've not already, try a Kappa-Sigma stacking method to see if that reduces the effect of the 'doubles'?

I think I may have used Kappa-Sigma but if not I’ll give it a try. Thanks 😊

12 minutes ago, rickwayne said:

I think your focus is pretty good -- look at the smaller stars, hardly any doughnuts. Likewise your tracking is good enough  to pull out good detail in M82, even if it isn't technically perfect -- I see what they mean about "multiple" stars, in fact I see three lobes to some of the brighter ones.

You may be able to get better star color out of this -- or not. Check out your stacked but unstretched image with a tool that allows you to read pixel values (I don't recall but I think SiRiL will do it). Are the stars saturated before stretching? Are the RGB values different enough for some of them to indicate color? If not, they're just overexposed and that's pretty much that for this try. But if you do have color lurking in there, you can use a star-removal tool to produce a "stars-only" image and a "no stars" image, stretch and saturate them separately,  and then recombine them (Photoshop "screen"  blending mode works well for me, not sure what the equiv is in The GIMP).

I use starnet++ for this, it's a neural-net tool that the author trained to pull stars out of images. My workflow is to run starnet on the image, use "difference" blending mode in Photoshop on the original and the starless image to produce a stars-only layer, then save that and process the starless and stars images separately. You  can run  an aggressive stretch on the nebulosity to bring out details, and use a much lighter touch on stars, and whomp the saturation to egregious levels as well to bring  out the little twinkly  jewel-tones.

Of  course, on  an image like this, where the nebulosity to protect is such a concentrated and defined area, you could just use masking to apply different stretches and saturation to different parts of the image. For something where nebulosity is most of the image and it's speckled with stars all over, that way madness lies. 🙂

Really nice result for a first shot. I mean, I am super-jealous here.

Really great feedback, thank you. I’m pretty sure there were star colours in there (various shades of oranges and blues) but I lost all that when I did the stretching to bring the galaxies out. So, I’ll try the suggested tweaks above and see what I come up with - I may have to re-read it a few times though cos some of it sounded like a different language! 😂

2 hours ago, Laurieast said:

I can't see that you say what ISO setting your using? I'm in a Bortle 8 sky, and use ISO 400 or 800 and have got good results with an ST80 at 60s 120s and above, give it a go!

You could try GradientXterminator on that to even out the background.

Cool! I used ISO 1600 as I’d read somewhere that it was the signal to noise ‘optimal’ for my 1100d for Astro. I have used 800 too and (personally) didn’t notice that much difference so I just stuck to the 1600 😀

2 hours ago, Ouroboros said:

Far be it from me to pour cold water on the idea of a dedicated website, most of us in the UK image in light polluted skies so whatever is relevant to you in cities is relevant to most of the rest of us. So personally I’d rather see astronomy info and discussion shared on one site like SGL. Maybe a special sub-section could be started on Stargazers Lounge?   

I like that idea!! 😄

4 hours ago, Lee_P said:

Super, well feel free to suggest what you'd like to see on a website dedicated to OSC from a city, Knowing that the effort will be useful to at least one person might motivate me to do it!

For me, the useful stuff was:

How long to image (‘optimal’ sub length and amounts before diminishing returns)

What to expect with various imaging combinations  - ie really faint DSOs may not be an option with LP, what LP images look like at different subs etc.

Gear lists (especially the stuff around filters (LED v Sodium pollution)

‘Easy’ step processing for simple results - for me personally this was a biggie. I suspect most starters just want to get a ‘decent’ image. Bringing out really faint nebulousness wasn’t a key thing for me.

I think positioning is key. The need to get the darkest position to hand and making the most of that probably limited view

Theres probably lots more! 😂

2 hours ago, Clarkey said:

I would agree an HEQ5 should manage to track reasonably well at 400mm. I have use one at 1000mm for a couple of minutes and that was OK. As you are not using a field flattener (I assume) the stars round the edges will always be stretched. The central stars are not too bad and with perfect polar alignment I see no reason why you could not manage 1 minutes subs. Check the mount though, as my HEQ5 did have quite a bit of backlash from new which I had to adjust out. Also the worm gears were loose and needed tightening. Both of these made a lot of difference, along with the belt modification.

Thanks for this. I’ll defo check the PA again. I’ll also have to read about the mount adjustments, although as I’m in a Bortle 8 zone I don’t think subs longer than 30s or so would bring me much benefit anyway? 🤔

1 hour ago, AstroNebulee said:

Great capture there, especially with manual focus and no batinov mask. I use deep sky stacker to stack my files and photoshop to process so can't advise on your software processing. But you've made a great start and I to am trying with no darks and the final image is a lot better as long as you take lots of light frames. I'd definitely recommend getting a batinov mask makes focusing so much easier and quite cheap to purchase. I'd also say you can crop the frame in a little as they may help you, the stars are a little eggy, so maybe cut the exposure time down or adjust your PA (what mount are you using) but still a fantastic cadprure seeing the arms of the galaxy, just keep plugging away and enjoy what you do because as soon as it becomes a chore you wont enjoy it. clear skies 👍

Thanks for this. I’m using a HEQ5 semi permanently sited - I adjusted the PA using Ekos, but it may still be a little out so I’ll check it again next time - good tip about lowering exposure time - I may drop it to 20s and combined with a better PA may get rounder stars.  I have now got a Bahtinov mask. I’m definitely enjoying it and was pretty pleased with this image. Still a lot to learn though 🙂