Stuf1978

Thank you, I'm still a relative newbie and still find processing a struggle. Info is hard to come by for Siril but for this image I only performed photometric colour calibration and banding reduction in Siril. The rest (curves and levels etc) was done in Photoshop Edit: Nice link Will give it a watch later

Eastern Veil 37 x 7 minute subs with darks, bias and flats from my Bortle 8 garden Sywatcher Evostar ED72 Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro Canon 450D self mod Skywatcher 50mm Guidescope ZWO ASI 120mm guide camera Optolong LeNhance Image capture in APT, guiding with PHD2, dithered, EQMOD Stacked in DSS, processed with Siril and Photoshop Critique welcome

Banding Reduction in Siril works a treat! These were stacked in dss then photometric colour calibration and banding reduction in Siril before moving back to Photoshop for usual processing 🤩

Thanks, that sounds promising. So is all the stacking done in Siril? I have Siril but never used it for stacking.

Right, so I got everything working through EQMOD with guiding and dithering in PHD2. The dithering has definitely helped with the noise situation but I'm still getting some banding in my images. I can minimise it somewhat with careful processing but it is still annoying. Here's last night's effort 😃

Thanks, yes they did. Managed to get it all up and running last night eventually and even acquired a little bit of data to have a play with (haven't processed it yet). There was few little teething problems with the mount slewing miles away from the intended area during initial alignment and my camera losing connection with APT a couple of times. Hopefully the routine will become quick and easy with a little practice

OK first problem 🤣 I've connected to the mount and can control it in EQMOD. Now trying to set up stellarium, however I don't have the telescope controlled by ASCOM option when I'm trying to add it via the plug-ins menu. These are the only options I have: EDIT: Fresh install of stellarium sorted this out

Thanks for all the info everyone. Going to download all the software today and try giving it a shot tonight as it looks like there is a small window of clear sky forecast.

👍 videos were really helpful mate, thank you

That's great thanks, I'll look into it 👍

Cool sounds pretty simple (although watch for another thread titled I can't get EQMOD to work 😂). Guessing with the plate solving you'll be able to save different different scope configurations as I'm using a variety of camera lenses along with my main scope?

Yeah just watch smr's videos linked above and it takes you through that 😁 All looks pretty straightforward so far. How do I go about setting up guiding and then image capture/dithering in APT?

Brilliant thank you, I'll check those out later 👍

Sorry, probably wasn't being that clear. Do you actually need to use Planetarium software at all as it just seems to be adding an extra level of complexity? So I can guide through EQMOD and don't need PHD2?

Hi All I'm currently using my HEQ5 Pro with the hand controller and guiding using PHD2 with images being captured on a dslr SD card using an intervalometer. I want to be able to dither the mount in order to try and combat some of the noise that is inherent with dslr astrophotography using APT and capture subs direct to the laptop. If possible I'm planning on setting up the mount to run via laptop with EQMOD. As far as I understand it I need to connect the mount to the laptop with an EQ DIR cable (which I have), guide camera to the laptop as it currently stands and retain the ST4 cable if I'm planning on using PHD2. DSLR also needs connecting to the laptop. I then need to download: ASCOM Platform and associated EQMOD driver APT The various guides I've read that I also mention connecting to stellarium with the Stellarium Scope download. Is this strictly needed or can you just choose your intended target with EQMOD/APT? I'm also assuming that there is the usual star alignment process covered in EQMOD after polar alignment? Apologies for the question as it has probably been asked a million times before but If anyone can point me in the direction of a guide to get everything up and running that would be great Thanks, Stu

Thanks Steve, appreciated. I will be going down the dithering route, I'm just waiting on my EQ DIR cable arriving from FLO........ and then figuring out how to get the mount/guide camera/imaging camera all talking to each other 😂 I must admit I've never tried the 450D at ISO 400, how does it fair?

Brilliant, that's good to know 👍

Yep it's all about the data 😄 and guiding really really helps so I'm sure you'll get some great images. Dithering is definitely my next step, I just need to figure out how to get everything working through the laptop. Then I'll probably move to a cooled OSC astro cam next year but the dslr will do for the minute.

I'm still a newbie really, been imaging about 18 months with a star adventurer. Yeah I used the L-eNhance for this, which is a dual band filter that let's H-alpha (plus H-beta and OIII) through which is most of the red sfuff you see. The image is slightly cropped, but not loads as the North America Nebula is huge and fills most of the frame anyway 😁

Yeah it's nice to get it tightly cropped in as there are some interesting shapes in the dust lanes and brighter areas of nebulosity. No problem the details are: 39 x 6minute subs with darks, bias and flat frames Skwatcher Evostar ED72 Canon 450D self modded Sywatcher HEQ5 Pro Skywatcher 50mm guidescope ZWO ASI 120mm guide camera PHD2 guiding Optolong L-eNhance filter OVL field flattener Polar aligned in sharcap Stacked in DSS and processed in photoshop. I'm in a bortle 8 zone and there was a ~97% moon.

I have a Canon 80D as well but haven't really used it for any astro, I do have plans to use it for more broadband targets but haven't had the chance yet. Cool, I have the Astronomy Tools Action set so I'll have a look for it as I can't say that I've noticed it Thanks, it's the North America Nebula in Cygnus (NGC7000)

Thank you. I'm capturing images direct to the SD card, however I'm looking into getting everything hooked up to the laptop and capturing data in APT so that may help Yeah, the DSLR is always going to be a compromise but it's all I have to work with at the minute. I will be going to down the cooled dedicated astro camera route at some point though so it's just something I'll have to live with and try to minimise for the time being.

Just checked and yeah it's there but only very very slightly, had to look at 200% to confirm. So looks like focus was out a little 👍

Thanks, there is still a small hint of banding on the lower section of the image but I reprocessed this numerous times with varying amounts of curve stretching and it all resulted in the banding 🤷‍♂️ Thanks, yeah I did notice that and tried to process it out. The odd thing is they didn't look like that in the stack straight out of DSS. I did mess about with some settings within DSS and used a different stacking algorithm with the addition of the hot pixel removal so I'm not sure if that has done something funky with the stars.

Thanks I'll check it out 👍 Managed another session last night and reduced the ISO to 800 and the noise was more manageable 👍