scitmon

20 hours ago, Filroden said:

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.

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?

2 hours ago, happy-kat said:

You might want to research the benefits or not of ff camera, vignetting will be one draw back so there may be no advantage. A bigger sensor may be too big for the light cone the telescope has.

There is a Skywatcher FF that was made for the ED80 and I just assumed that would be beneficial regardless of the camera used.  Thanks, I'll look into that and make sure it will be beneficial.

3 hours ago, SteveNickolls said:

Hi, and thanks for posting. You might want to get a copy of, 'Astro-photography on the Go-Using Short Exposures with Light Mounts' by Joseph Ashley, available from the SGL's sponsors. A very worthwhile read on the whole subject. As The Admiral pointed out you are witnessing the effects of field rotation and some mount movement, the book has a field rotation table identifying the maximum exposures of objects at different positions in the night sky, basically longer for objects in the East and West and at lower altitudes.

I'm interested too at the performance of your telescope, do you find there's light aberration, particularly blue fringing (certainly not judging by your image)? The D80 Ds-Pro sounds excellent value at £349.

Cheers,
Steve

 

Thank you for that book recommendation.  I'll make a point to adding that on my next FLO order.  I've not seen any light aberration, and the DS-pro supposedly virtually eliminates it.  Having said that, I'm not really the person to ask as I have not had any experience with other telescopes to form a basis of comparison.  I would recommend looking at this thread for ideas of what the ED80 can achieve: 

13 hours ago, The Admiral said:

You most certainly can and welcome. Indeed, nice small and round stars, and an excellent 1st DSO. What camera are you currently using, how many subs and what sort of exposure?

Certainly processing can't be undervalued, and although Photoshop can and is used for astro work, you might wish to look at other more specialised applications.

I'm sure you already appreciate that there are essentially 2 types of trailing with Alt-Az imaging, field rotation which depends on the direction you are pointing the scope, and the degree of tracking. The former you can't do anything about, apart from limiting exposure duration, and the latter seems to involve black magic and in what mood the mount is in! Levelling and aligning are both critical though, but even after taking all the care you can, sometimes things just don't work out. I think if it was me I'd hone your skills with your existing camera. Don't foget that the larger the sensor the more obvious the field rotation will be at the frame edges, so you will end up cropping.

Keep posting your images!

Ian

I was using a unmodified Canon 1000D on 1600 ISO for 15 seconds exposures. I think I will seriously look into getting Pixinsight, it looks impressive (and pricey).

Thank you for positive comments.  I have a lot to learn about post images processing, hence the blueish tint to the image which seems to be a side effect of trying to tease out those colours of the nebula in Photoshop.  I've only dabbled in moon shots and Jupiter until now.  My original planned target last night was the Black Eye Galaxy but I was getting star trails even with 5 second exposures.  I'm not sure why some targets seem to have less trailing than others, I guess its down the the proximity Polaris?  I still need to astro mod my DSLR and buy a FF too, so hopefully better things are to come.

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

M27 Dumbbell Nebula:

On FLO, the NEQ6 is only £223 more than the HEQ5 Pro? 

For imaging, definitely go for one of the eq6's if you can.  I was in your shoes not so long ago and went with the ED80 DS-pro and have no regrets so far.  I have yet to really see what it can do personally DSO wise because I don't have and eq mount yet, but you can see what can be done with it in a thread like this:

 To say that it would struggle on DSO's is a little unfair imo!

Also buy this: https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html