On 13/10/2020 at 10:28, Onfray said:

Hello! I'm new!

After read a lot about the Star Adventurer, I pulled the trigger the past week. My first astrophotography rig!

 

Is not a "real" image, is more a test of my equipment, so "not-yet-my-first-light". I have not done any balancing or good PA, and not any type of preprocessing, only Siril, without any darks or bias or flats. 

 

I'm very happy with the workflow and seems I can push a lot more the SA. 

 

Thank you folks for all information you posted here, it's trully amazing!!!

 

 

Congrats!

For a first this is exceptionally good! Looks like you will be enjoying the SA a lot  

Can you share more info on your gear and settings?

Ken

4 hours ago, MarkAR said:

Lovely images, these are great examples.

Thanks!

Did a new target yesterday, located just at the left from the last image.

Unfortunately I had to remove 1.5hr of subs due to startrails. Not sure what caused this. Guiding and PA was good. I'm thinking it has something to do with balancing as it happened before when the mount was in the same position. Have to look into that.

Ken

32 minutes ago, HunterHarling said:

Those are great images, I love the size and color of the stars!

Is your DSLR modified with a cooler? It's too hot here to image with my DSLR in the summer

Thanks a lot.

Nope, no mods done on the d610. Summer nights are fairly 'cold' here, 70ºF at night atm  🙂

Ken

35 minutes ago, Victor Boesen said:

Beautiful images! I could imagine you have pretty dark skies at your area?

Thanks!

Not sure if bortle 4 is considered as dark skies? But I can't complain I guess, as it's pretty easy to see the Milky Way from my backyard.

Ken

I'm in love with dark nebulae!

😄😄❤️❤️

A couple of dark nebula targets I did the past week.

If someone has advice/recommendations on other dark nebula targets suited for a 72mm apo + dslr please let me know.

Ken

----------------------------------------------

Imaging set up:

TS72mmf6 apo +ff

Nikon d610(stock)

Guiding set up:

TS50mm guidescope + zwo asi120mcs

Tracking:

Skywatcher Star Adventurer

---------

The snake Nebula Complex in Ophiuchus (07/29/2020)

total of 30 minutes with 240sec subs

Barnard's E dark Nebula in Aquila (07/29/2020)

total of 120 minutes with 240sec subs

Dark Nebula in Vulpecula (08/04/2020)

total of 280 minutes with 180sec subs

31 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

That's good to hear. Glad you're happy with your choice 👍

Thank you!

🙏

Update:

So I recently purchased the Explore Scientific x3 focal extender. Done some tests with it and must say I'm very pleased with its performance.

My biggest concerns were softness and vignette in the corners but I can't see any of those in the images I took.

Here are some examples taken with the barlow+72mm apo and zwo asi120mcs

Ken

Moon mosaic from 07/13/2020

Moon mosaic from 07/26/2020 

Jupiter 07/14/2020

Saturn 07/14/2020

Venus 10/07/2020

Mars 07/19/2020

Just finished 2 days imaging at Cygnus. Always wanted to do a widefield of the N-America and Butterfly nebula.

Decided to do a two panel mosaic, nothing fancy, so one target/night. Managed to do 4 hrs each night, which should be enough to get decent amount of detail.

The first time I'm trying this region with a modded dslr, had good hopes after seeing some of the results from other members Although at first sight I was a bit disappointed. The original stack didn't show too much data but after doing some stretching a lot of the Ha nebula showed up. The more I processed the image the more 'hidden treasures' were revealed.

The most difficult part was the blending, as I decided to do 2 panels and wanted to get as much sky in the image, I only had an overlap of maybe 15%. So blending both with a lens that suffers from 'minor' coma this was a challenge.

A zoom into the image reveals some areas where I did the stitching and blending, just look the other way and no one will notice  🙃 

Here are some of the details on the image and equipment:

Nikon d90(mod)
Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8
settings: 125mm, f4, iso400
2 panels of 4hrs each, 300 seconds subs

guiding:
ZWO asi120mcs
TS 50mm guidescope
Tracking: Skywatcher Star Adventurer
software: 
guiding: phd2
Stacking: Deepskystacker 4.2.2
Processing: Adobe Photoshop

Ken

4 days of active region AR12767 

Ken

Got a clear day today. Comparison of AR12767 from 07/22/2020(left) and 07/24/2020(right)

Sunspot looks stable, not much difference between the two days. Umbra seems to have increased slightly though.

Ken

1 hour ago, Davey-T said:

Nicely imaged.

Wondered why it was cloudy after a few sunny days 😁

Dave

1 hour ago, Macavity said:

Great! Send some of your Sunshine. Looks "uncertain" for next few days here? 🤔

Was hoping to do a new session today to do a comparison, guess what ... ☁️☁️☁️

Ken

For solar enthusiasts, a new active region is facing Earth, AR12767 with HSX classification (McIntosh classification).

Here is an image of it I shot in false color on 07/22/2020

Equipment: ZWO asi120mcs, TS72f6, ESx3 focal extender, Baader solar film nd5, SWSA

Ken

Been doing a bit of planetary work with the SA lately. Got my first 'decent' image of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn a week ago.

This hobby is so addictive I immediately bought the x3 Explore Scientific 1.25" focal extender. 

After reading nothing but positive comments on the optics I was thrilled to give it a go myself. My goal was to do a mosaic of the Moon. The first opportunity I got, which was 8 am during sunrise, I got out and started imaging. 

What a great feeling seeing the Moon so close! It felt like 30 years ago, a 10 year old kid looking for the first time through a telescope at the Moon. 

Can't wait to explore those craters and Moon features a bit more.

I took about 30 panels, to make sure I had every part of it. 

Sessions of 100 frames each, stacked in AS3! and run some wavelets in Registax. The files were imported in Photoshop, aligned and blended using auto panorama mode. Removed some of the missing frames in the background and did some pp in adobe raw.

Camera: zwo asi120 mcs

Optics: TS72 refractor with ff

            ES focal extender x3

Captured with ASIcap

Ken

1 hour ago, Xiga said:

Love this one Ken. It really gives the impression of the comet zipping through space. 

May I ask, were you just hedging your bets by doing various exposures from 5s to 30s? Did they actually prove useful in the final image, or would the 30s subs have just done on their own? 

Just thinking, did you use the shorter ones for the comet's core?

Ciarán,

The different exposures were planned for 2 reasons. 

First, as you mentioned, I wanted to make sure having enough short exposures/data to get as much detail in the core and surroundings.

Second, this was taken in the morning so as the minutes passed the sky becomes brighter and the comet will get lost in the background. So shorter exposure will compensate for the background brightness and at the same time get the detail for the core.

I started with a 30 second frame session and reduced the exposure with 5 seconds every 20 frames or so.

Hope that makes sense.

Ken

Here is a new edit using the comet stacking mode and the DSS stacking settings for the lights on average to get the most startrails in the final. By looking at the startrails it seems there was some vibration in certain shots.

I tried to do the same post processing on this image as the original one, it's close but not a perfect match.

I like both images but personally prefer the one with the starfield. 

Ken

4 hours ago, Victor Boesen said:

Beautiful image! I believe you can remove more of the stars in the comet stack by increasing the iterations and decreasing the Kappa in the stacking settings for light frames. Decreasing the Kappa does however introduce a little more noise.

Thanks, I've thought about experimenting with these settings. I'll give it a go 👍

I just want to show you the results of the mixed stacking by DSS. No color and full of banding, no idea why it turned up like this. I believe the blending algorithm in DSS is just bad.

No idea if different stacking settings would give better results.

Ken

48 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Very very nice!  How much was cropped off this at 432mm

This is a single uncropped 20sec SOOC sub for size reference.

Ken

42 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Very very nice!  How much was cropped off this at 432mm

Thanks!

Very little cropping, I just cropped the stacking artifacts on the edges.

Ken

On 06/05/2020 at 21:29, Alanjmolloy said:

Ken,

Your work is amazing. You set a really high bar that it would be great to follow. I have the same guidescope. Two cheeky questions: do you have a foto of your rig? I'm trying to figure out how to set up my SA for guiding and have been playing with a lot of options, I have the guidescope currently on a ballhead screwed onto the L bracket. Second question: How do you polar align? I'm worried I might be knocking things off by polar aligning and then moving the scope and guidescope around.
Do keep the fotos coming, they're amazing!

Alan   

Hi Alan,

Sry for the late reply,

About my setup, it is almost identical to yours, from what I see in your post. Guidescope is also on ballhead.

For polar alignment, at first I put Polaris more or less at the right spot.  Then I start to locate the target, once it is centered I adjust the polar alignment and do a calibration in phd2 and start the guiding.

I start my exposures and look at the graph in phd2, in particular the red dec line. The better your PA the longer the red line will stay in the middle. If it drops or rises too fast I make small adjustments to the PA

If it stays in the middle for about 10 minutes I know the PA is pretty good. If it drops or rises too fast you will have much more drift and it will be visible in your stack(edges).  It doesn't really affect your guiding.

Ken

4 hours ago, Nerf_Caching said:

Very good image! What was your sub-exposure time?

Thanks! 240sec subs.

This is a single sub cropped. Stars are still a bit bloated because of the mod and I don't use any uv filters.

Ken

12 hours ago, Nova2000 said:

Beautiful image! Your guiding was spot on I suppose.

Thanks!

I had a good PA, subs were very good at 240sec. Guiding was around 2", pretty good for the SA

I've been doing some 'experiments' with phd2 to refine PA on the SA. As it doesn't guide in Dec there is usually some drift and the graph won't stay in the middle.

This can be used to perfect your PA. When the red dec line falls to the bottom of the graph it means Polaris is too high on the polar scope hour circle. When it drifts to the top, Polaris is too low. From there on you can do some fine adjustments. Usually the red dec line disappears from the screen after +-10 (in my previous sessions) now it stayed in the middle for the whole session, around 3 hrs.

I also just cleaned and re greased all the gears which might also play a roll.

Ken

12 hours ago, MarkAR said:

Lovely image, is that around the Cone Nebula?

Yes indeed, that triangle in the middle is the cone nebula  

You can also see the Hubble's Variable Nebula at the top right

Ken

My latest with the Star Adventurer.

Never imaged this area before, interesting stuff up there. I'd wish I had a bigger scope to make some close ups.

image and equipment info:

Nikon d90(mod)TS72 APO + TS72flat

settings: 432mm, f6, iso800, 360min

guiding:ZWO asi120mcsTS 50mm guidescope

Tracking: Skywatcher Star Adventurer

software:

guiding: phd2

Stacking: Deepskystacker 4.2.2

Processing: Adobe Photoshop CC, automated action set, GradientXterminator, Nik software, HLVG

Her are my previous attempts with the same data. 

They are all slightly different framed or rotated, it as just the way I liked it back then.

Ken

1st edit

2nd edit

3th edit