carastro

First image I have done since mid April, as there has been nothing narrowband in the sky, and more recently they were behind the house until the early hours. Dual Rig ED80 and ED72 both with an Atik460EX and 0.8 FR HEQ5 Ha 84 x 600 secs (14 hours) Oiii 36 X 300 secs binned x 2 Sii 35 x 300 secs binned x 2 Total 20 hours (the most I have ever capured on one target). SE London Bortle 8.

Apologies, I got SNCR mixed up with HLVG. Carole

I don't use Pixinsight so couldn't open the files. rest of posted deleted as made a mistake.

You can also spend more time on the post-processing than the actual capture as well.

Yes you really need Sii as well to be able to do Hubble palette and get those Blues.

Very nice Tony, those Optolong filters definitely improve NB targets. I wonder they will bring out a Triband filter.

I always warm my cameras via the software as it was what l was told to do. it doesn’t take long why is it a problem to do so. I am sure you can be dismantling something else while it warms.

Thanks for the new replies. 13 of us have actually already booked in Los Cancajos as we though this would be nice and central and easier to book transport etc. We are not going until September 2024 as there was doubt whether the observatory would have re-opened after the Pandemic and single rooms were selling out fast. So we booked 18 months in advance and we needed a number of single rooms. We want to go to the observatory for a private tour and I think we have found a company to take us as we are a group, but the trouble is the observatory doesn't release it's availability for tours until about 3 months beforehand, and this means we have to book all our other things we want to do around this at the last minute which is a pain as I like to get things organised early to make sure we don;t run out of places especially us being a group. We are planning on going on a Whale and Dolphin trip (opposite side of the island), A tour of the lava caves (middle of island), and a general tour of La Palma, and do some Astronomy. I have found a company that will take us with scopes provided, but I think with the travelling time we are going to get little actual astronomy done, so we may have to resort to DIY Astronomy. I think some are planning on hiring vehicles, so we may be able to share. I also found a couple of places that will loan astro kit. Thanks for your continued advice. Carole

Agree. Add Sii when you can as it will give you more options. Carole

Wow, great find and bit of luck.

I shall now stay off this thread, the original poster can choose what advice he wants to take and what he can afford. If he wants further advice he is welcome to PM me.

Absolutely, I was just saying what would be ideal, but also what is the minimum the OP needs to improve his images. @imakebeer since you quote? I don't really think you are in a position to criticise advice given by those with years of experience. DSLRs do not work in the same way as CMOS, i.e. lots of short images but lots of of integration time will get you great images. As Funkykoval demonstrates in his excellent image examples of different length exposures but same total imaging time.

I also disagree with the comment above: You cannot get decent DSLR images with short exposures, getting lots of them will only give less noise, not increase the signal captured. Maybe you can with CMOS but the OP is using a DSLR. GOTO will certainly make life easier for you. But the main thing you need if you cannot afford a proper imaging mount is tracking in order to increase the exposure length. This will still be limited without guiding but a big step forward from where you are now. Guiding would be even better but will add to the expense.

Wow, excellent.

Even a star adventurer or ioptron Sky Tracker will give you around 2 -3 mins with a camera lens.

Photoshop, levels and curves, and a bit of gradient exterminator (Plugin). Balance colours. Carole

North America Nebula (this will be a better FOV for your camera), Hercules Globular Cluster (This will be small but doable), Andromeda galaxy when it is up. Butterfly nebula IC1319in Cygnus. The Crescent in Cygnus (NGC6888), NGC6914 if you camera is modified for Astro, Veil nebula complex maybe, Elephant's trunk nebula IC1396. But 2 secs is going to be pushing it for anything. Carole

M101 is very faint, and 2secs won't cut it, especially from a Bortle 7 - 8 location. You might be able to get some of the brighter targets but tracking, guiding and long exposure is really needed for DSOs. The good news is that your stars are nicely in focus, and you have done the right thing with calibration (especially flats) and lots of subs. A but of post processing would bring it out a bit more:

I am still using my trusty QHY5 and dread the day it packs up on me. Doubt l will be able to replace with the same.

I don’t browse particular forums either. I just click the button for unread posts and read what catches my eye. Carole

Excellent. Well done. I just finished this target from East Sussex after having got DSLR data in Spain which l used for the colour.

OK I had a play in Photoshop. I used levels and curves, balanced the colours, Used the image adjust/match colour a couple of time to increase the colour. I had to use Gradient Exterminator because the Vignetting (from not using flats) was starting to encroach. I can see a dust mote 3/4 of the way up on the right which Flats would have dealt with too. though having said that the optics must be fairly clean. I then used selective High pass filter (it should be in my videos), and adjusted selective colour with a little magenta at the end. HTH Carole

I excusively use Photoshop and have a number of video tutorials on You Tube. Many of them are for Mono imaging but a few of them will be useful to you. Before I go any further. I presume it is too late to take flats, but if your camera is still connected to the scope and not been moved I would stop and take them as these are really essential to a good result. Secondly, 2 minute exposurs are a bit short, you really need to be taking 5min exposures. Galaxies are a bit difficult to drag colour out of. But using the right processing, you should be able to get some. This is a link to my website and the various tutorials: The following may be useful to you: Levels and Curves Understanding layers Processing the RGB might have some useful stuff once you get past the bit on combining the coloured filters (I can't remember as it was a long time ago I recorded this). Star colour and star reduction may be useful. Meanwhile I will download your tiff and see what I can do with it. https://sites.google.com/view/astrophotography-carole-pope/video-tutorials?authuser=0

It's quite tricky to get the camera orientated in the same position every time, even if you can find a way of marking the position. If your FOV is much bigger than your target it won't be such a problem as you can crop out the edges if need be, but as said above, you'll have to take fresh flats every time you move your camera. I have done it but it is not my first choice of options on how to do things though, but normally because I didn't get enough data the first time due to cloud. Carole

Set up an infrared webcam and catch him red handed.