Nathan593

I am completely clueless on how to use the dithering option on the SAM console app. There is an option to dither with a dithering range in arcmins, but I'm not sure how much I should input. Any recommendations on what arcmins I should use for a 70-300mm lens?

Cheers

I've currently been shooting untracked for some time now, and thinking of getting a tracker.

Any ideas on how accurate the Star Adventurer Mini is with high focal lengths (70-300mm)? 

I have already seen the Star Adventurer Pro but there are no dithering capabilities, I would have to do it manually, so I'm leaning towards the Mini atm, any help and advice would be appreciated :)) 

With the IR filter removed, do you need any other filters to take good photos of nebulae and galaxies or is the modified DSLR good by itself. 

If anyone could give example photos I would appreciate it a lot :).

1 minute ago, CloudMagnet said:

Gimp is a good option for just free software that will give you access to a lot of the basic adjustments that you need for astro images. The image above I used Gimp for starters and then Pixinsight as well to take care of the background light polution. I wouldn't recommed Pixinsight for a beginner though- a very steep learning curve. Youtube has plenty of tutorials for processing so watch some of them to get an idea of how people process and then find your own style

Thanks, this helps a lot!!

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I just quoted @CloudMagnet and pointed out what can be seen in that particular processing. I downloaded image and tried to see if I can locate anything - but my best effort did not produce anything worthwhile compared to this image.

ohhhh, my bad, Im pretty new to this site so. Thanks anyway!

44 minutes ago, CloudMagnet said:

After some levels, trying to fix the background and some curves:

 

Thanks man!! Much better than my attempt, could you recommend where I could get help with processing stacked images?

4 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

This is as good as it will get

It shows both Heart and Soul nebulae and double cluster.

Thanks so much! What software did you use?

8 minutes ago, CloudMagnet said:

I can only JUST get them to show but there are others that can process it better than me. I would be more looking at why the edges of the image seem to be out of focus and producing double stars. Did you stack it with flats?

It was a while back so I didn't even know what calibration frames were, so no

Thanks for the reply!!

I have an old capture of the Heart Nebula that i took with a kit lens, it totalled out to be a 30 min exposure, someone else stretched the image and was able to see the nebula well. I just cant bring the nebula out when stretching the image. Could anyone help??

Tiff filed from DSS below

Heart Nebula 2.TIF

I have currently been using a 300mm lens untracked and it has been good. I was thinking of getting the Omegon Mini Track lx2 but I dont know how good this is for a 300mm lens, should I get this. If not can you recommend some budget star trackers for a DSLR

Im currently thinking of getting a Nikon D3400, just the body, and need a lens. Is there any versatile lenses for wide field photos and deep sky photos?

I am not sure how to actually take dark and flat images to put them into DeepSkyStacker with my camera.