alacant

Hi Unfortunately, there is a lot of mis-information out there. Try Seronik and Telia. Both tell it just as it is. Cheers

I'm guessing that the banding is visible only on staked images, whilst individual frames seem fine. It looks like a combination of polar alignment and/or drift error between frames has caused the target to move out of view. The intersection of -in this case 100- frames therefore coincide less and less as the session proceeds. The bands are the non-coinciding parts of each frame. HTH

Remove them using Siril first. You'll probably find that Siril will do a better job on both the background and the development. Maybe reserve gimp/ps simply for cosmetic stuff after the main event?

Did you try the latest version with GPU support? Even on a modest box running vanilla Ubuntu, it flies. But yes, Siril for Stacking. A must have:) Cheers

If there were more of them and you didn't dither, yes. Or perhaps just get a proper astro processing app meanwile? Cheers

Hi Looks fine to me. The data is ok but could easily be improved. The calibration frames are not party to the light stain (English?) bottom corner so this must have been introduced when you took the frames in the field. Make sure the viewfinder is covered. The banding is present in the dark frames and there is significant walking noise. With a 600d, lose the dark frames. The image will be cleaner that way. Be sure to dither between each frame and stack with a clipping algorithm as this will also help minimise the walk and bands. Bin the image before processing. Here is a quick 5 minutes in StarTools:

Hi I don't think so. They're lovely shots. Maybe simply take the raw frame from the camera, but don't stretch it as much? Even the .jpg responds to a bit of tweaking. On the raw, you should be able to do a better job. Even better, take loadsa 240s frames and stack them with flat and bias frames. Stop the lens to say, f8 to tame the stars? Full spectrum (fs)? So, one last thing, Use a strong ir cut. On a fs eos, this one worked well. The one-filter-does-it-all approach doesn't seem to work well with fs. Cheers and HTH

Hi Yes, but this one just works, produces small stars and will correct all the field of your 5100. One of these. And one of these as below. Bottom cut and a 2mm hole in the centre of the cap. A place which develops old type film cassettes will give you several. Most important of all, before you adjust anything, be sure to cut through all the Internet mis-information by reading Seronik and Telia. 5 minutes of your time which will save you countless hours in future when collimating. Cheers and HTH

Nice. It's good to experiment to see which style suits best an image. I think you may be losing some detail though, especially the outer bits of the galaxy. But hey, your star colours are great.

Unfortunately not. For dithering to be effective, it requires camera movement between frames only. Not constantly during them. As noted by @ONIKKINEN, this results in streaks/lines of noise in the direction of the drift. Cheers

... or -and this is one of StarTools' big plus'- as many times as you see fit during the whole process;) ** sorry. I wrote this at the time but didn't hit Submit. Better late than...

600d, so no. Randomly up to about 15 pixels after every frame. Most astro capture apps will do it for you. 600d, so better without. Flat frames aren't really optional. HTH

Hi By far the best place is in person at your local astro club. You'll be able to witness someone take a video of say Jupiter, using a 200p or a 150p and a Nikon 5300. Gut reaction: if all you want is planets, the 150pl would be better. But go and see it, do:) Cheers and HTH.

Hi Yeah, it looks great. A big improvement. The data is good. A few bits and pieces, but I'm guessing as we don't know what camera or frames you took. There is horizontal banding (dslr?). Dither between frames. There is vignetting. Use flat frames. You lost a bit of the galaxy. Maybe ease off on the processing? To my eye, the background looks blue. Gather more and more frames. Anyway, to get an idea of what's actually there, this is a 5 minute thrash in StarTools. Cheers and HTH.

Hi Yes, the Zeiss 135 is great value. Nice shot. On our example, 'infinity' for astro is as indicated. You should also observe a red halo when you've gone too far toward the lens stop. The best way to do this is live view on a decent resolution screen. Your 'phone for example. eos70d? Lose the dark frames. I don't use DSS but are you sure you debayered the frames before stacking? Cheers and HTH

No. I took the bi-colour default without channel interpolation so I had only red and green and then chose linear to close the compose module. I then discovered the absence of flat frames so I had to crop tightly to remove the vignetting and associated circular gradient. Or I suppose you could try the synthetic flat algorithm in wipe. Apart from that, the bi-colour preset with boost to dark saturation in colour and a tight crop on core for the second AutoDev. Otherwise, the defaults. A good rule with ST is that if you've been going at it more than 10 minutes and it still looks hideous, roll back before the wipe and redo the stretching development. Cheers and HTH

Hi Nice image. Loadsa detail. Are you sure you composed the channels and their weighting correctly? Flat frames aren't really discretionary though, even for a wip, as they make processing much more difficult than it need be and this in turn makes it harder to see what's needed next. TBH, I think this is gonna be good. Just keep collecting frames. Oh, and of course learn the StarTools compose module;) Cheers

Sorry. This is cluster m52, nebula ngc7635 and another patch of gas in Cassiopeia. **edit: @Tan Zhi Qi700d, hot mirror removed.

Hi everyone We'd not given the 130 an airing for some while. Shame on us. This is 3 hours before the Mediterranean haze caused the EKOS scheduler (and for quite different reasons, us!) to give up. Thanks for looking. 700d on 130pds @ ISO800

Hi To future proof yourself and have a great all round astrophotography setup, you could consider an eq6 which would be great for wide angle with the 130 and have sufficient clout to track your 200 for closer views and galaxies. Cheers

Hi everyone Nice to have a fast reflector for the weekend, enabling this sort of shot in just 2-1/2 hours, UHC filter notwithstanding. Don't believe the horror stories you read about -in our case- f3.9. You collimate them in just the same way as you would any other Newtonian and with simple modifications, even the most budget of cheap models hold collimation all night, every night. Another one we're not certain about is the temperature. In a minimum ambient of 24º, the sensor was around 32º; the background is a mess -or maybe that's what it's like- but nothing a few hundred frames more won't fix! Anyway, 32° doesn't spell impossible, so don't put away your gear. We'd also planned on the Pacman nebula, but the Mediterranean haze blew in on the easterlies, so it was cool beer only from around 01:30. Thanks for looking and dslr users, do post your experience of the same. eos700d on ES pn208 ISO800

An acronym for a number we use in astrophotography. It gives an idea of if you're in focus. No. To lose the spikes, either use the lens at f3.5, or if you want to try f5.6 (recommended) without the spikes, stop the lens aperture by using a circular cardboard or plastic cutout of around 25mm diameter 135 / 25 = 5.4 Close enough. HTH

Hi Lovely image. 1- Use ISO800 2. The Takumar 135 (and other Takumar lenses) focus the green and blue, leaving the red blurry. Focus on a brightish white star as tight a HFR as possible. Now move focus away from infinity until the red halo just disappears. 3. Unless you have the f2.5, it doesn't look like you used f3.5; there are diaphragm spikes. Try f5.6. 4. eos70D? Lose the dark frames. 5. Set the camera to RAW. 6. Take at least a thousand frames. Cheers and HTH

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Looks identical to me.