elliot

Hi all, (whoa it's been ages since i've been here. 👋) This is my first stab a tracking and stacking using a Star Adventurer, or anything in fact. I've never tracked and stacked before. I'm using a Fuji X-T2 mirrorless camera with an adapted vintage Pentax Super Takumar 200mm/f4 at f5.6. ISO 2500. Happy enough with star shape (apart from the aperture blade spikes) so I think my polar alignment is ok. Used a 5litre bottle of water to weigh down the tripod. Bortle 4/5 back garden, Moon not yet risen. 15 lights at 165s, 10 darks and 10 flats. (Flats shot by holding the camera to a white screen on my phone). Stacked with DSS and processed in PS using Astronomy Tools Action set using AstroBackyard's methods here. Transparency wasn't the best, i think I was shooting through think cloud most of the time. To be honest I'm not delighted with it: The nebula is a bit dim eh? Very low contrast on the nebulosity. I don't think I could go much longer untracked than 2'30" or 3' on the Star Adventurer. There's a red cast. Stars that should be bluer all seem to be a bit reddish. Not sure why. White balance? I think I probably had it on auto but I was shooting raw so would think I'd be able to deal with that. It's a bit noisy. Big pointy stars. What I think I need to do to improve it: To increase nebula contrast, I'm thinking of getting myself an old 600d off fleebay and getting it modded. Maybe one day getting an h-alpha clip filter for it. It would leave my gorgeous Fuji X-T2 to have normal human being settings, and not weird astro settings. Redness? I don't know. It doesn't look very natural to me. Noisy? More subs I guess. I could drop the ISO but then I'd need have longer subs, and the SA won't be up for it. Spiky big stars. I have a stop down ring that I forgot to use. Note: Don't forget to use it. Does this make sense? Any further advice on improvements i could make would be hugely appreciated. (I'm a budget astrophotographer if you hadn't guessed) Thanks all!

My word look at them!

Hugely tempted with exactly that bino. How are you getting on with them?

That's some comeback! Congrats!

That's so generous of you! I'm new to SGL so I don't know if there's a special place to discuss 3D printed astro gubbins but there should be. At the moment buying a 3d printer is off the cards for me...maybe someone would want to set up a service for 3d printing things for astronomers! Sure they could make a good few pennies...

If I were to say I wasn't just posting this to get away from being called a vacuum, what would that make me?