Mark1489

Jupiter, 20th September from Pontarddulais, South Wales (51.7 degrees latitude).

Celestron C8, ZWO ADC, 2x Barlow, Altair 224c 

Best 12% of 20k frames stacked 

Hi everyone, haven’t posted here in a while as I’ve had a small break from astrophotography but Jupiter has got my motivation back! The ease of setting up and imaging quite quickly in comparison to deep sky definitely helps. 
 

Very much liking the view of the small storms and interesting atmospheric colours that I couldn’t get with my old 5inch Maksutov. 

Celestron C8, ZWO ADC, 2x Barlow, Altair 224c (about 4000mm fl)

Best 12% of 20,000 frames 

Hope you enjoy the view! 

16 minutes ago, Elp said:

Excellent detail. You probably don't need so many frames, depends on seeing. I don't normally go more than 5000, more recently around 500-1000.

Thanks,I tried to balance the sharpening with the increased noise, seems to be one of the main aspects of processing these! I may have gone a bit overboard with the frames, I wasn’t really too sure at the time if the seeing was that good, so went for it just in case! 😂 

I’ve been patiently waiting for Saturn to move into a spot where I can image it from my garden…early hours this morning with some good seeing conditions was the time! First light with the C8 too, looking forward to getting Jupiter next! 🙂 Constructive criticism welcome, I’m new to planetary imaging so looking forward to learning more! 
 

Celestron C8, zwo ADC, 2x Barlow, Altair 224c, best 40% of 21,000 frames 

8 hours ago, neil phillips said:

Excellent work. one of the best 5" mak shots ive seen this year. Very impressive especially saturn

Thanks Neil! Hopefully many more nights to come with the seeing as good as the night I captured Saturn! 

Mark

24 minutes ago, callisto said:

What mount/camera did you use Mark and what were your exposure times?

 

Mark

Hi Mark 🙂

I used a Altair GPCAM3 224c with a 2x Barlow and ZWO ADC, I think it was around 10ms per frame, 13,000 frames for Saturn and about 10,000 for Jupiter, with the best 15% stacked for both

I've got it all mounted on a Ioptron GEM28

Still learning a lot about it all, wasn't entirely sure if I could have made longer imaging runs without details smearing but I shall be experimenting in future!

Mark

Hi all, after having acquired a Skywatcher Mak 127 at the end of last year, this summer I decided to try planetary imaging and I have to say, I really enjoyed it, even more so than deep sky! I found the processing less stressful and more enjoyable, along with a greater compatibility with the Welsh weather since we don’t get clear skies often or for long timescales per night.

Anyway, here’s my take on Saturn and Jupiter, both near opposition taken under good seeing conditions. Starting to feel a case of aperture fever may be coming on…..

Mark 

22 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Very nice image, natural and clean. I have to say that I thought the stars pretty small for a telescope of such modest aperture. As vlaiv says, seen at a reduced size the image looks excellent. You also have a good, flat, neutral background sky and that's so important.

Olly

Thanks Olly! There's quite a bit of local light pollution here so sometimes it's a challenge getting that flat neutral background!

21 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Nice natural-looing unforced rendition, good work. The colours, with subtle blues in the arms, are probably a good representation of M31, which isn't a starburst galaxy.

Very kind words, I try not to push it too hard! 😀 Thanks

20 hours ago, tomato said:

Great M31, FOV adds to the image, galaxy is not too small but just enough space around it to put it into proportion. The colours look very similar to those put out by APP, what processing software did you use?

Thanks! Part of me wishes I had more reach but I like having some surrounding area on show too. Just pixinsight for DBE and Histogram transformation, the rest in PS. I actually imaged a grey card in sunlight (I know most people don't bother and balance manually) since it's a modified camera but I just find it gives me something close to a good balance to start with, then just a few tweaks to the balance if its needed 🙂

26 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

This is very very good image.

Only thing that I would personally see as improvement - scaling it to 50% of original size. This is rather personal preference. Most people don't view image at 100% zoom level. If you zoom to 100% in your image, then stars look just tiny bit out of focus (might not be focus issue - it could be down to seeing or guiding performance or something else entirely), more like "balls" or "circles" rather than points:

and background is just a tad more grainy. But if you "limit" max zoom level to 50% (by down sizing image to 50% of current size) - all of that changes:

Now stars look point like and background is smoother (not entirely smooth - that is bad, but rather "right amount of grain"). Detail in dust lanes also remains sharp:

Fact that I'm nitpicking means that everything else is just spot on !

Thanks Vlaiv! You're right they do look a little bloated...I've been experimenting using different methods of focusing. Tried the bahtinov mask that came with the scope but I found it tricky and I'd end up with elongated stars in some corners after focus, I believe on this image I used the lowest HFD value I could get on Backyard Nikon so it could very well be missed focus! I appreciate the critique and kind words! 🙂

Edit - I just remembered there was a fair amount of high cloud drifting in and out...could that contribute to bloated stars?

Mark

I've always used my trusty Samyang 135mm for deep sky imaging in the past, but I've always wanted a little more reach and resolution! By no means is this a close up of Andromeda but I'm halving my previous pixel scale by now using the Redcat 51.

Had an issue with overcorrecting flats...a few nasty dust motes were appearing brighter in the calibrated image but I think I've manged to contain them. Upon checking my sensor (for the first time) I saw the dust and managed to blow it off with an air blower - thankfully didn't have to go down the "wet" cleaning route....yet!!!

So here it is, first deep sky image through a telescope and not a lens!

Info:

69 x 90 seconds about 1hr 45 total integration

30 flats

D5600a, Redcat 51, ISO 400

Autoguided, GEM28

Bortle 4 - 5

17 minutes ago, blameTECHIE said:

Early start from the postie - and an exciting day for me with another (and possibly final for this year) two items:

Can now mount my PoleMaster onto the EQ6-R:

and, thanks to a darn fine deal from @Mark1489, I've a new camera as well:

these things really are bigger than you expect (and it came with the PSU for the Thermo Electric Cooling)

Glad it’s there in one piece! Looking forward to the images you take using the camera! 
 

Mark

3 hours ago, astrochumak said:

Hi Mark, 
thanks for your reply! Can you recommend any relatively cheap and portable mount/tracker that can cope with 72ED? 

Hi, As mentioned above I think the AZ-GTi may be a better option, another may be the Fornax light track II as that mount has a very low level of periodic error but framing may be more difficult. A lot of people go with the Heq5 pro it seems, that’s leaving trackers behind though and moving onto full eq mount territory.

Autoguiding would give you better results definitely on both the star adventurer or Az-GTi, I’d probably go with the latter as you can guide in both axis and have go-to capabilities.

Mark 

Hi

I think you may be pushing the star adventurer to the limit/beyond with that scope - how much will depend on your pixel scale so dependant on the pixel size of your dslr. It will also depend on your tolerance for round stars; you might get short exposures which look fine but no doubt you’ll want longer exposures in time and you may end up frustrated! Another thing to take account is the periodic error of each particular star adventurer - they seem to vary. It’s a good star tracker for shorter focal lengths though! 
 

Mark

Hi everyone,

Does anyone have any experience running the Altair HyperCam 183c pro tec with the samyang? I’m looking to get this camera for a lower pixel scale. Obviously cooling another added benefit! Apologies if I’ve missed any posts on this thread who has this setup! 
 

Mark

12 hours ago, Chefgage said:

Very nice image. There was a few targets I was determined to get this winter. I managed the others but not the Pleiades. Whenever it was clear skies there was always a fullish moon. Coupled with my bortle 8 skies makes this difficult. I did however have a session on it regardless of the full moon. Processing wise I managed to tease out some nebula but the overall image came out poor. Never mind I will try again

Thank you! I can relate with those clear skies and full moons! Keep at it and get as many photons as you can, you’ll get the image you want if you just go flat out with the total integration time I’m sure! 

I’ve been waiting a long time to get my samyang out again, I finally had an opportunity last month on the Pleiades. I’ve started autoguiding my star adventurer due to so many problems with periodic error, I wish I’d decided that earlier! 
73 x 90s at f/2.8, ISO 400

Nikon D5600a

Bortle 4 sky

A couple that I’ve captured using the samyang lately - both from my garden so not ideal when it comes to light pollution and challenging gradients to remove! About half hour on Triangulum and an hour on NGC 7000 (modified d5600 on that one!) 

Mark

First light with my newly modified Nikon D5600, loving the touch screen for zooming in compared to my D5300! Anyway here it is taken in the light pollution of my back garden (About a Bortle 4/5). Needs more data! 
 

Nikon D5600a

Samyang 135mm at f2.8

SW Star Adventurer

118 x 30s lights, 50 Bias frames

I've recently purchased a modified nikon D5600 which I'm very pleased with performance wise. I have some issues regarding the white balance....

So, I first went down the grey card route, bought a grey card, took a picture of it in the noon sunlight and set that as the white balance, but in the camera live view and the subsequent raw files all images still showed this red tint from the modification.

I collected my first set of data on the north america nebula last week, just shy of an hours total integration time. When processing I balanced the colours manually using the photoshop white balance tool and some slight manual tweaking and got the colours fairly neutral. I used to be quite obsessive about getting this perfect but after seeing how monitors and screens of various computers/phones all tend to have a slight different uncalibrated colour tint to some extent I've learnt to relax and just get it looking right for my tastes 🤣

The problem I still encounter that makes this balancing harder is the fact that the RGB channels seem to constantly bias Red, even when the colour being sampled is a neutral grey? For example, If I select a grey sky background area once the image is correctly white balanced, I'll get a reading of R: 32, G: 50, B:50. If I were to set the red channel matching the green and blue channels the heavy red tint is re introduced and the image is overly red again. Any idea's as to whats going on here? I've included the final processed version in this post. Thanks!

Hi all,

Just an observation I've come across during processing after using the samyang- I've noticed my stars have different sizes in the different colour channels. Red seems to be more bloated than the blue channel, with the green channel showing the tightest, smallest stars. I think this may be contributing to some slight halos (namely red and purple) around some stars. Nothing major, but noticeable if you zoom right in. I'm imaging with a DSLR, using a bahtinov mask for focusing, any recommendations on how I could prevent the bloat? Or is it a case of the limits of the optics? Or maybe I could be improving my focusing further?

Mark

I’ve recently been getting into wide field night scape shots as something different to tracking deep sky objects, some nights it’s nice to just go out and snap away without having to polar align etc! 😃

Here’s 15 x 11s exposures stacked, the moon was just setting to the right and I was very pleased I managed to get Jupiter’s reflection on the water! 
 

I took a trip towards the black mountains early hours of the 11th, when I found not only the comet but noctilucent clouds just below it, I have to say I was pretty pleased! Here’s a few I took!

Taken with a Nikon D5300, Samyang 135mm. 

I went for an Orion wide field with the Samyang recently, it was difficult for me to get the processing right and could do with more data but here it is! 
 

Had a go at Orion’s Belt and the surrounding area with my unmodded Nikon D5300, it does make me wonder how much Ha I missed out on when I compare my image to those taken with a modded camera! Had to go with 30s subs since my star adventurer is not doing well lately at all. Happy with what’s shown up, there’s a lot more dust in there but stretching it revealed too much noise for my liking, would probably like to double the integration to 3 hours for that but the Welsh weather says no! 😂
 

Nikon D5300, Samyang 135mm @ f2.8 Iso 800

181x30s ~ 1h30m total exposure time 

Had a quick window of opportunity last night on M42, the moon was out so not ideal but I was bored of waiting 😂 I used Iso 400 and 30 sec sub frames, stacked 12 and got this!