Filroden

36 minutes ago, Peter Drew said:

Good heavens Gina, at first glance I thought it was your first solar imaging attempt!  

If it was I think it would be time to move planet!

Good to see you back to imaging Gina. You're taking on another great project and I can't wait to follow your progress.

1 hour ago, geopopescu2000 said:

Hello i have a question if someone can help me.

i Have an Skywatcher 120/600 with an ALt az Goto Mount. Also an Sony A7 and SOny A6500 and my question is if i can take picture with long exposure without star trails. I tried but my mount doesn`t track well and i thought i don`t know how to use it.

Thanks

Make sure you get a really good initial alignment, adding additional alignment points close to the area you want to image. This might help improve tracking.

You have a nice short focal length so as Ian says above, you should be able to get reasonable length shorts which can be integrated to improve their quality. 

23 hours ago, DarkD said:

Here are some pictures  taken the last 2 nights...

Those are lovely. There sure are some nice advantages to a fast wide aperture! Though there are probably just as many disadvantages

4 hours ago, scitmon said:

wow thanks yeah.  I've been playing around with Startools over the last couple of days, as has been recommended and managed to get some more out like you have.  I think you have done a much better job than I have however.  I may try Pixinsight but the price does put me off at this early stage when I have perhaps bigger priorities to spend money on. i.e. equatorial mount.  Although this thread proves that equatorial may not be the be all and end all of astrophotography!

 

I thought jpg's didn't contain curve data?  I thought you could only manipulate the tiff or fits image types?

You can apply almost all processing techniques to a jpg...you just shouldn't! Jpgs are 8 bit and compressed so they destroy data which means tools like curves can have terrible results, making them look very 'stepped'. You're always better working in at least 16 bits and uncompressed (e.g. TIFF or FITS) so you can work over a better range and not have the steps seen in a jpg.

PixInisght comes with a long free trial but it requires it. I needed lots of tutorials and ultimately a guide book to really start to use it well. You can achieve the same results in Photoshop if you know how. I can do a little in Photoshop, such as level and curve adjustments, but I find the tools in PixInsight more in tune with the way I think. As I said above, I only applied some crude adjustements to see what was under the colour cast. You will be able to achieve far more using the original data and taking a little more time than I did

On 6/18/2017 at 18:58, scitmon said:

May I submit my first ever real attempt at a DSO with my ED80 Ds-Pro and Az GOTO SynScan...

M27 Dumbbell Nebula:

Really nice first attempt. There's a lot of data hidden behind that blue cast. I don't know how to fix it in Photoshop but a quick pass through PixInsight's ColourCalibration and some crude curve adjustments shows you this. I've broken the stars (they are all showing orange) but there is a lot of colour in the nebula that you could bring out.

32 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

That's a great image.  Lots of star colour. 

I'm being beaten by it getting dark too late for me.

Same. I set up tonight with the intention of getting 3 hours of Ha. I failed to switch on DST so my first StarSense align failed. When I did get aligned and switched on the camera it showed a massive smear somewhere. So I stripped it down and cleaned it. Realigned and now the sensor was covered in dust. I would still have to do two more aligns and it was getting so late I was concerned about waking the neighbours so I've just packed up. I think I'm going to have to wait until August.

5 minutes ago, Shaun_Astro said:

Thanks man! 33x30 sec subs, darks and flats. What competition? 

Competition details: 

Forum to post images: https://stargazerslounge.com/forum/226-imaging-challenge-3-30-second-exposures/

I liked the first version but this is amazing! And only 16 minutes? We're your subs 30s or less? If so I'd put that into the competition. 

2 minutes ago, Shaun_Astro said:

Took this, but my flats don't seem to work half as well with some shots, the camera is orientated the same way, I don't understand how sometimes they only remove less than half the vignetting; hence the clipping in the corners.

That's a nice result. Lovely star colours and you're just picking up the reds in the outer parts of the nebula.

Do you take new flats after every session. Whilst you can re-use flats if you're certain camera and scope remain oriented, this usually applies if you're using a fixed set-up. If you're tearing down the equipment each session i would recommend trying with fresh flats.

You're showing some trailing. What exposure length are you using? You may be able to take shorter exposures and integrate more of them to get the same total integration time. This might help reduce trailing and loss of exposures. I would never use an exposure that gave less than 80% results. We have far too few clear nights to be throwing away subs!

22 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

Question to all- what capture software are you using and do you get any problems with it, also is it free ☺

Now you're using an EQ mount and have PHD working I would recommend trialling SGPro. It will platesolve out of the box allowing you to precisely centre on a frame taken on a previous night. It will also work if you move to a mono camera with filter wheel. It also will manage focusing if you ever decide to automate.

Its interface and terminology can take a while to figure out but there is logic in its apparent madness! It's definitely made imaging easier.

I fire up SGPro, connect camera, filter wheel, focused and mount. Fire up PHD and connect guide camera. Then I'm ready to start.

i previously used BackyardEOS which was easier to use but is Canon specific.

The only free capture software I've used were Sharpcap and Firecapture but these were more designed for short exposures.

PixInsight is starting to implement image capture but I don't think it will ever catch up with dedicated capture software.

Congratulations on your big day! I think the stars shine on your wedding

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

I've never been clear on whether read noise increases with gain or not!

Read noise reduces with increasing gain (you're amplifying the signal so the fixed read noise represents a smaller percentage) and dynamic range also reduces with increasing gain, so you're always is a trade-off. Jon Rista on cloudynights has put up a lot of information about CMOS chips (using the ZWO ASI1600) on read noise, gain, etc. I suspect the principles will apply to any CMOS though the read noise will be different.

Just now, The Admiral said:

A half-hearted astronomer 

So Soul only?

NAN and Pelican, Elephant Trunk, Heart & Soul, Iris, etc are all pivoting around for the 12:00 to 2:00 slot when it is darkest. All within range of 30s shots over a couple of hours.

30 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

Now the moon is getting bright so that's another 10 days of no DSO's  

By which time, for me, I have zero astronomical darkness! I've only got 90 minutes a night now. Not that I'd know because of clouds.

3 hours ago, DorsetBlue said:

Had the Starsense equipped SW130P/Alt Az setup out last week and had a go at M51 and M81/82 - pretty happy with the results, although the tracking on M81/82 was a bit erratic, hence the short exposures:

M81/82 - Best 67 exposures of 10s - stacked in DSS and post-processed in StarTools.

M51 - Best 15 of 60s exposures (cloud came in and I lost a lot) - stacked in DSS and post processed in StarTools.

I'll bet M81/82 were close to the zenith? I'd guess alt az mounts will struggle close to the vertical. 

Nonetheless, it's nice to see the result. I found 60s exposures were more than enough. You just need to stack a few hundred to get really good quality images. 

Id take a look at your colour balance as the images look a little yellow/orange. Maybe check your red histogram. I'd expect all three to be reasonably close together for that area of sky. 

1 hour ago, Peco4321 said:

Have you tried:

http://nova.astrometry.net/

Whilst it's great for solving imaging, it doesn't give you any control over the annotation (at least that I've found). PixInsight allows you to choose what to annotate (stars, constellations, galaxies, etc) and to fine tune it (magnitude limits, colour, font size, etc). It therefore is better for annotating the less well known galaxies.

astrometry.net

PixInisght (showing galaxies only though I suspect it may have solved some noise!)

57 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

I think there all galaxy's

I think you've missed a few or a few dozen! I can see many more after just a quick glance. If you are still trialling PixInsight then it's got a couple of good scripts to solve and annotate images. That should nail all of them!

On 08/04/2017 at 23:09, jimbo747 said:

Got a starsense and Bluetooth serial adapter arriving Monday,

The StarSense makes alignment so easy but I never got on with wireless control. My Evolution uses wifi but the combination of drop offs and the lack of tactile feedback on the screen pushed me back to the handset and, now, the laptop connected to the laptop.

I also tried a mini PC via TeamSpeak but I don't think it's wifi antenna was good enough. I think you were just unlucky with the maintenance so don't give up!

21 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Star reduction (morphology transform -> morphological selection) with contour mask can also give more star colour.

That's the one. I found it did work well at both reducing the star and enhancing its colour. I didn't know about the script so I'll give it a try tonight. Thank you!

If you use Photoshop then Noel's Actions can enhance star colours by drawing in the outer colour into the saturated core. In PixInsight there is a way to achieve the same result using MorphologicalTransformation but having found it once, I've never been able to find it again!

2 hours ago, Nigel G said:

California nebula. 4h 40m of 240s ISO 800. modified Canon 1200D with CLS filter - Darks, flats & bias. 80ED Pro - EQ3 Pro.

No colour work done other than saturation.

Beautiful image. And it must be so nice not having to deal with hundreds and hundreds of subs to achieve that overall exposure

I think I've had four or five clear nights this year. I've had almost clear nights but the high haze ruined any ability to image. Still, every night is still special  Hope you get some soon. 

With the extra hour, the Milky Way through Cygnus starts to rise to a reasonable altitude from about 2am, giving three hours of potential nebula hunting. 

26 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

so I'm wondering if this was the result of thin high cloud drifting in the wind.

I find that almost impossible to remove post process so I don't include any subs with cloud. I wonder is StarTools treats cloud gradients like artefacts and has a wobbly too?

High cloud is my bane. It pretty much prevents me imaging. Frustrating, as I the camera pierces them. I just can't remove them from the stacked result. 

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

There's nothing like it on the flats

If it's not in the flats then it may be dew. Is it in every sub or just some? It doesn't look like amp glow which show stretch from a side or corner rather than curve unless you had both glow and dew!

It's a shame as it's the only think spoiling the galaxy which is showing some nice red areas in the arms.