Swoop1

IWOOT!

After a perfectly gorgeous afternoon during which I got 90 youngs to look at the sun through my societies Lunt solar scope (I got the solar stand and stood in the nice warm sun all afternoon) I was expecting an evening of trying to bag PANSTAARS 2017 T2 (or whatever the one doing the flyby of the double cluster later in the week is called). Got all my warm kit on and went out to deploy the mount, only to be met by total overcast.

How did you get the histogram to look like that? Matt

At the moment, I am limited to 30 sec maximum exposures- my cameras longest timed exposure (as far as I know). I can do Bulb exposures but this would involve getting a remote shutter release whereas I currently use the wireless release via iPad.

Some cracking images there Grommet (sorry, I mean Mick!). What you will need for astrophotgraphys is a driven equatorial mount which will track the movements of the targets accross the sky as well as keeping the orientation of your telescope consistant with the target. I don't know wheter your mount is an EQ (equatorial) or ALT/AZ (Altitude and Azimuth). The issue with ALT/AZ is that the telescope and therefore the camera stays on the same plane in exactly the same was as panning and tilting on a camera tripod. The movement of the styars accross the sky follws an arc so the telesope needs to move from east to west and also 'twist' so that the target remeains orientated the same way for the whole capture period. A basic EQ mount would be a EQ3/2 like this which can be motorised-https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-eq3-2-deluxe.html Other optios are available with bigger capacity and slicker drives such as the HEQ5- https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-heq5-pro-synscan.html many options exist either side of the HEQ5 price point. For straight DSLR astrophotography there are mounts like this that fix to your tripod- https://www.firstlightoptics.com/skywatcher-mounts/skywatcher-star-adventurer-astronomy-bundle.html Good luck and enjoy.

As a result of some tremendous coaching from @vlaiv on how to usen GIMP, I had a play with some data of M31 I captured on Sunday via my Sony a6300 mounted on my C6 and HEQ5 combo. 15 x 20 sec exposures at ISO3200 First is a single frame from the stack- Followed by the stacked product (JPEG image as an idea of product) Followed by the product of my first processing attempt Far from perfect but I can see some detail. As time progresses I hope to develop better skills. I may also benefit from obtaining some more robust software (No.2 Son is a graphic designer so I may be able to get a copy of Paintshop Pro at a resonable rate). Raw data is here for a short whuile if anyone wants to play and show me what to aspire to- https://we.tl/t-7WH84Wb2vd Thanks Matt

Cool. Thanks

@vlaiv. Quick question- when opening a file in Gimp, Open OR Open as layers? Thanks Matt

Years of shoving fingers in ears and up nostrils causes the hairs to catch under the nails and, as you withdraw the digit form the orifice it pulls the hair with it. Therfore, the hair on the head thins as you pull it through to the now hirsuit orifices.

Got the C6 out tonight on the HEQ5Pro and grabbed 3 handfuls of M31 frames ready for more processing practice. Hopefuly time will be available tomorrow.

Thanks for your input and tutorial vlaiv. Very useful as, for me, self learning software packages is difficult. I'm a VHS type of learner (front loader like a VHS machine) so respond better to demonstrations. Thanks to everyone else for your input. I hope you can make better use of my data than I currently can!

here is the We Transfer link to the stacked but unaltered data (lights, darks and flats). https://we.tl/t-dXooLpJYnj

Thanks. I'll get on to that.

Thanks vlaiv. How do I upload the raw stacked data?

Three images from 15th January. The rig was my Sony a6300 with the Tamron 70-300mm zoom (set at 250mm) on my pre Omegon Mini Track clockwork mount. 1st image single unprocessed frame 10sec exposure f5.6 ISO3200. Second image is a stack of 10 frames at same exposure plus darks and flats. This was processed in DSS which, when saved looked nothing like the finished article on DSS so I went to paint.net to fiddle. and came up with image 3. Where did I go wrong post DSS? Was it my saving regime? The yellow caste to the stacked images seems to show when I adjust stuff to make the detail stronger? Edited to add- just found a post DSS stack save that looks more like the product I processed. I have had to convert from a 168mb TIFF to a jPeg to upload it-