Adam1234

This is both my first image of the Milky Way and of a meteor, taken 13th Aug 2021 at Bolderwood deer sanctuary in the New Forest. This is a stack of 84 frames (42 minutes) taken with Canon 2000d and Samyang 14mm f2.8 lens at ISO1600, 30s exposure per frame. Star Adventurer 2i pro used to track (polar alignment wasn't great as I couldn't see Polaris properly due to clouds early on in the evening). Stacked in Sequator and processed in Photoshop/Adobe Camera Raw. The meteor was added into the final image using masks and blend mode lighten. There were another 4 of 5 meteors that came within the FOV in the hour that I was imaging, but they weren't as bright as the one in the image and I couldn't distinguish them from all the satellites, so they didn't make the cut (I didn't want to risk mistaking a satellite for a meteor!) I did however make a version of the image with all of the brighter satellites added. Same image with all of the brighter satellites blended in: Hope you like Adam

Nice capture!

Ok, I've just tried again, and it looks like Sequator is actually failing to output the image, but it's still providing me with a file (I guess a corrupted one), that explains why I can't open it, but why is Sequator failing to output properly in the first place? Any ideas?

I've just stacked some MilkyWay images from last night using Sequator, but I can't seem to open up the output tif. file in either Photoshop or PixInsight. Any idea if I'm missing something? I get this error message when trying to open in Photoshop... And this one if I try in PixInsight... Here is the offending file if anyone else can try to open it MilkyWay_sequator.tif Hope someone can help, Adam

Great shot!

It was! And so relaxing too. I was ecstatic to see the meteors. Not that I've not seen them before, I used to see loads when I was younger and used to go fishing at the back of the Isle of Wight where it's pitch black.

Last night was a night of firsts for me... the first time I've gone stargazing to a dark sky, first time I have gone out to see a meteor shower, first time I have imaged the Milkyway and imaged meteors, and the first time I've not had a celestial event ruined by the weather!!! This is also my first observing post. So my fiance and I decided to go to the New Forest to see if we can see/image any meteors. I can't say I was optimistic with the weather, although it was clear where we live, when we started driving out I saw a huge wall of cloud on the horizon. I was in half a mind to say let's turn back and go home. I'm so glad we didn't!!! We got to Bolderwood just before 10, clouds everywhere but decided to stay for at least to drink the flask of hot chocolate we brought. After some time a star showed an appearance through the cloud, then another, and another - the clouds were thinning. By 11pm it was pretty much totally clear, set up the star tracker and camera, got the chairs out and sat back and relaxed. We stayed until about 12, and in the space of that hour we saw about 20 meteors, one of which was a belter and lit up the sky (unfortunately that was just outside my camera view), and another overhead that left a huge trail. We can also see the Milkyway and I'm also sure I could just about make out Andromeda if I used averted vision. So all in all we had a great night seeing the meteors and was surprisingly lucky with the weather for once! Adam

Thanks vlaiv

I'm currently in the process of imaging the Western Veil Nebula in HOO, and I had a thought. Normally when I do HOO (or SHO) I normally use Ha as 'luminance' - is there any merit in stacking the Oiii and Ha subs together to increase the overall SNR and detail in the luminance? Or would the Oiii just end up diluting some of the details from the Ha?

I'm sure you will! I look forward to the final colour image

Great detail in the Bubble!

Absolutely incredible well done

DSLR ASI1600mm pro

I've not done any deep sky imaging since beginning of April (when I imaged M81 & M82). Took some lunar shots sometime in April also maybe, I can't remember. Taking this time of short nights and astrodarkness to get back into playing guitar. Bring on longer nights!

My SkyWatcher Star Adventurer 2i pro arrived yesterday - thank you so much! It looks so cute next next to the EQ6 ☺

My first 'proper' attempt at imaging the moon (93%) back in April. Normally I'd do deep sky imaging but I've not had any clear moonless nights (barely any clear nights) since beginning of April. Probably not the optimal equipment for lunar photography, but I took the images using my SkyWatcher 10-inch dob and Canon 2000d, using the planetary mode in APT (unfortunately I couldn't get any higher than about 15fps). The individual images were ran through PIPP (cropping, joined into AVI etc), stacked in AutoStakkert, wavelets in Registax then further processing in Photoshop. Best 250 images out of just over 4000 I think Best 12% out of 2,879 Best 12% out 2, 316 Adam

I'm not convinced lack of astrodarkness in summer makes much of a difference to me living in such a light polluted area! The sky can be just as bright during the middle of the winter, especially when the docks are active

+1 for Sky Safari. I use the plus version. I find the desktop Stellarium is better than the mobile version. If anything just for the ocular view

Thanks, I had a look, there didn't seem to be any such icons so I'm going to assume my laptop doesn't have these functions. Proof that faster isn't always better - I'd rather something take a bit longer and do a good job than be really quick and do a mediocre job!

Looks like an improvement using the DisplayCal software, took longer to calibrate than the <2 mins with the Spyder software (which seems like a good thing to me) and much less of an overall green tint. Much less saturated looking than uncalibrated, which may be a good thing? - I read somewhere that tech firms tend to oversaturate colours as a selling point? Not sure how well my pictures taken on my phone highlight the differences, but here's a comparison between default uncalibrated, calibrated using the Spyderx Pro software and calibrated using DisplayCal. Uncalibrated SpyderX Pro Software DisplayCal In the next few days I will re-process an image and then see how it looks when I bring it onto another display

Thanks for the reply. What is an ancillary function, and how will I know I've found it if my laptop has such a thing? Yep I made sure that I I had no auto-brightness settings on, display was warmed up for more than half hour, and tried the calibration in a darkened room.

Hi Alan, yeah I'm pretty sure they were set to default, I selected in Colour Management to load the default colour profile and I also uninstalled and reinstalled the Intel graphics card driver, unless there's something else that I've missed on that front

Thanks Tomato I'll check out DisplayCal and the tutorial you linked. I'm also going to try out the Spyderx on my girlfriends laptop tomorrow and see if I get the same or different

Thanks!

Hi, I need some help please. Is anyone else using the Datacolor Spyderx Pro for laptop screen calibration? I've been attempting to use this but the calibrated result just seems worse than my uncalibrated screen (uncalibrated actually looks better). It has a green tint, especially in the blacks and greys (as seen in the photos I took of SGL below with 'calibrated display' and default settings). I've done lots of Google searching but I can't seem to find a solution. I've used the recommended settings in the SpyderX Pro software. I've also ensured that no intense light was shining on my laptop. I've tried uninstalling the graphics card driver and re-installing, then running the colour calibration, I've also tried disabling the driver, then running the calibration - the result looked ok, then I activated the driver and the green tint came back. I'm using HP Pavilion 14-cf1599sa (5AT11EA #ABU - HP 14-cf1599 14" Laptop - Intel® Core¿ i5, 256 GB SSD, Silver - Currys PC World Business) Default colour profile 'Calibrated' Any help will be appreciated! I hope I've not made a mistake buying this haha Thanks