TheDadure

Hello everyone, haven't posted anything for what feels like a year or more, but my images and editing skills have come a long way, or so i think. Just wanted to make an update and post some of my recent and not so recent pictures taken with the same equipement as always.

tair 3 300mm old russian lens

unmodified canon 1300d 

and a skywatcher adventurer startracker

in all of these images exposure is somwhere between 1.5 and 3 minutes, but the total integration time varies from 1 hour on orion to something like 7.5 hours on the andromeda galaxy

I think objectively i made a lot of progress, especially when you take into consideration all of my previous results(alot of which i shared on this forum a long time ago)

Still i am always my worst critic, and am never happy with how they turned out(probably will never be)

Here are the result, i am hoping to hear back from all of you, feel free to share your thoughts and opinions

as always

- clear skies, David

PS guess saturn and jupiter dont belong to this thread but i included them anyway,hope it is not a problem(they were taken with my mobile phone and an 8 inch dob),that was my best attempt to capture other planets to this day

Hi everyone, i just wanted to share my results from a week ago.After deciding between mw core and cygnus i decided to imagge the latter.Shot was taken from bortle 4 suburban sky and exposures of about 4 minutes with unmoded camera.Lens was 50mm canon lens although not wide open,it was on f3.2 i think and iso 800.It is about 45 minutes worth of exposure time stacked in dss without any calibration frames.Edited in pixinsight.I could pull out a bit more colour for that surreal effect but i just prefer this natural look more.Hope you like it,and am looking forward for your reactions and opinions.

-Davidcygnusregion.tif

edit:heres the preview because for some reason it was posted as an attachment

4 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I'm perfectly happy shooting galaxies with a focal length of a metre. I don't think I would lose much if I came down to 800mm provided I used slightly smaller pixels. You can crop images so that they instantly appear at, or close to, full size when opened on a forum like this. These are at about a metre.

 

Olly

WOW olly,those are trully some extraordinary shots.

In case you are wondering how some of my pictures look like here is one taken with 300mm f4 lens.I don't really remember how many light and calibration frames i took.

ps. this was actually a failed attempt,since clouds covered the sky,just after 15 minutes.But it gives you a clue.

Thanks for the response everyone,this really gives me hope

4 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Nothing wrong with imaging smaller galaxies with focal length under 800mm.

It is not focal length alone that determines scale of object in the image.

There are two different metrics that are important - one is FOV and other is pixel scale.

Field of view is determined by focal length and camera sensor size. You can have small FOV on short focal length scope if you use very small sensor. You can have largish FOV on a long focal length scope if you use large sensor.

In any case, field of view, or proportion of field of view to object imaged gives how large object will appear when image is viewed on screen size. Screen size is size that we see here on forum or when you view your image with some image viewing application and you "fit image to screen". This is in fact often "scaled down" version of the image as image can have a few thousand pixels in height and width and still it is displayed on screen that has less pixels than that (like 1920x1080 or similar).

Pixel scale or sometimes referred to as sampling resolution is number that represents mapping of angular sizes in the sky to pixel. It depends on focal length and actual physical pixel size on sensor. This metric is important when you view image on 1:1 zoom - or often referred as 100% zoom setting. In this case one pixel of image is mapped to one pixel on screen - you can usually pan around images that are larger than screen in pixel size.

Back to the imaging. It is important to understand that in most cases either sky or mount is the limit in how high sampling rate you can get. With modern pixel sizes and 800mm focal length - you will probably be at sky limit. This means that you need mount good enough to support this.

Aim at about 1.2"-1.4" per pixel to be safe (or just use camera that you have with scope that you have), but make sure your mount can guide at half that in RMS.

Hvala na odgovoru,kamera je canon 1300d,krop faktor na senzoru je 1.4,to objašnjava što je na prijateljevoj kameri field of view znatno veći

-David

Great shot Mick,everything is on point

Thanks Adam,this is exactly what i was looking for,great shots,i don't really mind galaxies being smaller in wide shots,i was just wondering if you can pull out the detail from them,since that limits the number of pixels you are working with

-David

You can't really go that wrong with binoculars,just make sure the quality of optics is good.Also if you are not planning on buying a monopod or tripod,chose some that have smaller focal lenghts and show wider field of view,so it will seem like the picture is more steady and that is crucial when viewing objects in space.Just keep that in mind,larger is not always better.If you didn't already,download some apps,starmaps on your phone,so you can find objects easier.Dark sky is the most important factor,so go to the darkest place you can,and bring someone with you,so they keep you company,it can get scary.I hope you enjoy it,the beginning is one of the most magial parts of this hobby,and buying expensive equipment doesn't necessarily make it more fun.

-Clear skies,David

5 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Thanks David

I am really enjoying have a longer focal length to image with, and agree galaxies are incredible in every way!

When it came to processing, I used software called Astro Pixel Processor.  It will register different sized and scaled images to a reference image.  In this case I wanted to keep the scale of the bigger scope.  I loaded all my subs into the program, along with calibration data.  I chose to register my RGB subs (taken with the ED) to the best LUM sub.  So that LUM sub became the 'reference image' and so every other sub from both scopes was aligned to the stars in it.  It took a few runs of the stacking software, with a few adjustments of the settings, and in the end omitting darks from the QHY9 as these added black speckles everywhere, I was able to register the data, and produce four aligned stacks: L R G B.  It then all went downhill when I imported it to PS

 

HTH.

Adam

Thanks for explaining it to me,i cannot believe i haven't heard about that program until now,guess i'll have to try this technique when the first chance apears

Hi everyone,

I was just looking up some images of galaxies taken by amateurs,and they all seem to be taken with large telesopes.I mean,i know why that is.Except for andromeda and triangulum,galaxies are really small,so we are better off taking frames of close ups with large focal lengths.But since i don't have equipment like that,and i am getting my old SA tracker back in the middle of the galaxy season,i would like to see some of your results and opinions about this.Till this day i only captured pinwheel and andromeda galaxy,but i also had one failed attempt to capture whirlpool galaxy,but because of bad wheather,pollution and poor tracking it was very disappointing.

That's it from me,i would like to hear anything you think about this,any sort of advice,picture,thoughts... is welcome

Especially for imaging m51 with such a small rig,since it is my favourite dso and it always bugs me i haven't capture it yet

-Clear skies,David

That is a tremendous image Adam!

Galaxies are my favourite objects indeed,and close up shots like these never fail to amaze me!Just looking at this image makes me wondering about all the  secrets this galaxy holds.

I also had this idea of combining frames from diffrent setups,but i never actually was sure if it would work.Did dss itself crop the frames and stacked them or you had diffrent stacking process because of the diffrence in focal lengths.

-Clear skies,David

i agree with your opinion 

the first one looks way more natural,but i like the second one more as it seems less noisy and it makes andromeda pop out more from stars 

thats just my opinion,someobody else might not agree

both are still really great images

my first andromeda image and a second deep sky image overall

i remember being really excited imaging this from my backyard in bortle 5 zone

i used old tair 300mm lens,star adventurer and canon 1300d umodified

edited in lightroom,i was actually really happy with this result

next image was shot with same equipment but from even more light polluted skies and from balcony,so my polar allignment was pretty much off 

i edited this one in pixinsight after i learned the program

this is the newest one

still same equipment 

skies were little darker

exposures and frames almost the same but the final result is much better

Guess you can say that experience is as much as important as equipment,or even more so!
feel free to say your thoughts about this