cnarayan

thank you Jonny!

Thank you alacant, your video helped a lot!

I took this M101 image during my 3rd time out with a new scope in first 3 weeks of astro photography. I stacked and processed 70x180s dithered exposures with no dark but applied flat and bias frames, a total of about 3.5 hours integrated exposure time. I processed the 32 bit fit in native format using SiriL (fantastic!) with background extraction, Asinh stretch, and photometric color correction. I then used PS for levels and curves. This is also my first attempt at image processing calibration. I write these words as if I know of what I speak. - I don't! My equipment is Skywatcher 200P Newtonian mounted on a EQ6R Pro and guided using ASIAir Pro with the ASI120 MM Mini guide scope. The primary imaging camera is a Canon T6i DSLR un modified. No filters. Manual focus. I was happy with the results, and was able to impress non-astro imagers I particularly liked the "buttery" feel of it! I was able to capture 4 galaxies in this image M101, NGC5474, NGC5477, NGC 5473 all about 21 Mly away. Any comments are welcome!

alacant. I am not sure how to do the things mention in Siril. Did you develop custom scripts for those? When I tries using their step-by-step processing tabs, I have had poor results. The only thing that has worked for me is to use the OSC_processing script. Are there some pointers you can give for processing in a tailored manner? I can then try in on the canon T3i (750D).

rickwayne! very interesting ideas on using the dew shield for darks and fridging the camera for creating a dark library and using the EXIF to tag it! It seems like a lot of work, but may be worth it not to have to stay up late into the night. For now, I am just going to skip the dark to see if some aggressive dithering fixes it. Yes M51 was cropped - maybe I should try to process without the crop to see if it is any better. I might have just gotten lucky with M81/82. Good pointers on the black point having about 8 pixels in RGB. I also think that shooting at 1600 ISO is too much noise for the T3i. From everything I hear, I have had some beginners luck for this first 2 weeks of imaging. It may not hold out.

Thank you for the recommendation, I will definitely give startools a go

Thanks! yeah ISO 400 images look very clean indeed!

Creative choices! I will try startools and see how it works! Thank you for the feedback.

Hi alacant! thanks for the comments. Did you mean to say use the bias as a dark in your comments? I wasn't sure. I will try substituting the bias as my dark and see if it improves my results, especially on the Sunflower galaxy. I will post the results! Can you provide a link for the Siril linear clip algorithm? Is it on the menu? Sorry to hear about the challenges with the refractor. I did get a good recommendation about the Newtonian. However, it is quite unwieldy with contortionist viewing positions. For imaging it isn't probably much of a concern. Transporting a Newtonian to a dark sky site can also be challenging. - Chandru

Hello all.. I am a complete beginner at this and have just this week figured out how to capture my first deep sky images. While, I am starting to understand the workflow around imaging and gotten some practice with it, I am struggling with calibration frames. Most of my imaging sequences take several hours and at 3:00 AM or later. My hope is to star the imaging session and go to sleep with the ASIAir sending the scope to the home position and shutting it down. But the shooting dark frames get in the way of that. Do I need a robotic arm to cover my newtonian scope at the end of my session to start the dark frame sequence? This is a real bummer. I have however done some aggressive dithering that might have improved matters a bit. My rig consists of : EQ6R PRO, 8" Skywatcher Quattro Newtonian, Synscan WiFi adapter, ASIAIR PRO, ASI120MM Mini Guide Camera with 30F4 Scope, Canon T6i DSLR Unmodified Primary Camera, NO filters, Zwo EAF automatic focuser (not installed yet), iPad/iPhone only for imaging sessions, Skysafari 6 Plus, Mac Pro server for Image Stacking and Processing using the fantastic and free SiriL tool (https://siril.org) for macOs. I have completely ditched the hand controller that came with the eq6r replaced with Synscan Wifi. I am a high-school computer science & math teacher and purchased this telescope and accessories for a 3-week long immersive astro photography session for my students with this setup starting on May 17th. Any pointers on the dark frames conundrum and image processing improvements below will be very helpful indeed. I intend to use this information building lesson plans. In the meanwhile, this is what I have captured so far in the first 3 weeks of imaging. Clearly there are issues with calibration& processing in all of these images. The Pinwheel galaxy M101, 70x180s @400 ISO with dithering, no dark, but used flat and bias fames Whirlpool galaxy M51, 60x120s @800 ISO no dithering, dark, flat, and bias frames used Sunflower galaxy M63, 45x180s @1600 ISO, no dithering, dark, flat, and bias frames used (terrible pictures with many issues) A second attempt at Orion Nebula with Running Man Nebula M42, 200x120s 200 ISO with dithering, dark, flat, and bias frames used Bodes galaxies M81/82, 300x30s @400ISO, no dithering, dark, flat, and bias frames used in order below - chandru

Hello all. Here are my newest (beginner) attempts at using my imaging setup. I have more details if you are interested in my first attempt at astro imaging! The Pinwheel galaxy M101, 70x180s @400 ISO with dithering, no dark, but used flat and bias fames Whirlpool galaxy M51, 60x120s @800ISO no dithering, dark, flat, and bias frames used Sunflower galaxy M63, 45x180s @1600 ISO, no dithering, dark, flat, and bias frames used (terrible pictures with many issues) and a second attempt at Orion Nebula with Ruuning Man Nebula M42 in order below. -dru

Hi Mike, Welcome to the star gazers lounge! I did not recognize you with the hat ! The meridian flip was completely automated by the ASI air. My first attempt to do all of this in my own homegrown raspberry pi was not very successful and took a lot of effort on my part to figure out the software rather than focusing on Astrophotography. The ASIAIR made it easy in comparison. We can talk on zoom if you like and I can give you more details! small correction, not my rig. It belongs to Bush School!

No, not needed at all for ASIAIR PRO. You connect the mount to the ASIAIR PRO using the EQMOD cable. But the SynScan Wifi is very helpful as you can connect to the mount directly. I use it for visual Astronomy along with Skysafari when I am out with my high school students. One really nice advantage it provides is to build specific lists of targets for observation and use your phone to go to each object - nothing to do with ASIAIR.

This is Chandru after a very long hiatus away from everything during the pandemic, I got my first vaccine shot yesterday! I mustered enough courage to pick up where I left off in the long road to astrophotography. After all of this time I have added to my astrophotographers gear, the full set: EQ6R PRO, 8" Skywatcher Quattro Newtonian, Synscan WiFi adapter, ASIAIR PRO, Skysafari 6 Plus, ASI120MM Mini Guide Camera with 30F4 Scope, Canon T6i DSLR Unmodified Primary Camera, NO filters, Zwo EAF automatic focuser (not installed yet), iPad/iPhone only for imaging sessions, Mac Pro server for Image Stacking and Processing using the fantastic and free SiriL tool (https://siril.org) for macOs. Completely ditched the hand controller that came with the eq6r replaced with Synscan Wifi. Phew .. That is the current setup. I am a high-school computer science & math teacher and purchased this telescope for a 3-week long immersive cascade session for my students with this setup starting on May 17th this year. First light with this setup was on Tuesday of last week (the ONLY clear night in a month) from my house balcony in light-polluted Seattle. My goal was to image M42 and then M81/82 with a meridian flip added in so that I can everything through its paces. For the very first time, I succeeded in imaging. You can judge the (poor beginner) quality of my first time images below. Alignment and Guiding: I first setup, balanced, and leveled the telescope with all gear installed roughly pointing north. Fired up the SysnScan app on the iPad to connect to the scope wirelessly just to have the mount record date, time attitude, longitude from my iPad and to make sure everything was working as expected. This step is really no t necessary, but it gives me an alternative and direct way to control the mount without going via the ASIAIR. Then I fired up the ASIAIR PRO and connected to the mount, primary camera, guide camera. No EAF yet, but coming later. I then went into Preview - Focus on Polaris with bahtinov mask for the primary camera and visually for the guide camera. I then did the Polar Alignment PA with the plate-solving, 60-deg automated slewing and plate solving again as instructed. Never had to look through the polar scope on mount! I then carefully adjusted the Altitude and Azimuth bolts to get withthin a 4 arc-second precision. Then I selected M42 target from the ASIAIR to go to. It put it smack on the center of the primary camera image! Note that I had not done any alignment at all. I then fired up Skysafari Plus on my iPad to see all of this visually and for future go to slewing and saw the cross hairs on M42 precisely. All of this worked perfectly without any glitches. In ASIAIR I setup the light imaging sequence as described below - a very short sequence indeed as M42 was setting fast! (see below). When that was finished I slewed to M81 using Skysafar goto. I setup a longer 2-hour iimaging sequence (see below) in the ASIAIR with a meridian flip (exciting!). I asked the mount to go to Home after the imaging was done and power down. I then retired to my living room with a warm fire going watching the scope do its magic from afar! I observed the meridian flip an hour or so later in my iPad and visually to the balcony from the comfort of my living room and see ASIAIR obtain the guide star once again and result imaging. What a kick! It reminded me of my days in the GM tech center labs where I programmed dynamometers to test new engines through its paces operating for days on end with several changes in RPM and Torques etc! M42: Each exposure was just 5 seconds long, at 400 ISO. I took a paltry 12 such images as Orion was very low in the Western horizon and setting fast! I then stacked and processed the images (in SiriL) with dark, bias, and flat calibration frames I took the following day. The total integrated exposure time was just 1 minute! Not great I did not have enough time before Orion disappeared! M81/82: Each exposure was 30 seconds long at 400 ISO. 300 images were obtained The total integrated exposure time was 2 hours and 10 minutes. No dithering. The guiding was OK (not great) with about 1.5 arc-sec average RMS error. I took down the RA and DEC aggressiveness to 50% or so. A lot of guess work! Post processing in SiriL involved, Stacking with Calibration, Cropping, Stretching, and Color Correction specifically applied for M42 and M81 respectively using photometry data from Simbad database. Further final processing was done using Photoshop. My images are below. Additional pics of my gear can be seen at the link here https://photos.app.goo.gl/pTJXCcFNYs4KMTmY9

This is Chandru after a very long hiatus away from everything during the pandemic, I got my first vaccine shot yesterday! I mustered enough courage to pick up where I left off in the long road to astrophotography. After all of this time I have added to my astrophotographers gear, the full set: EQ6R PRO, 8" Skywatcher Quattro Newtonian, Synscan WiFi adapter, ASIAIR PRO, Skysafari 6 Plus, ASI120MM Mini Guide Camera with 30F4 Scope, Canon T6i DSLR Unmodified Primary Camera, NO filters, Zwo EAF automatic focuser (not installed yet), iPad/iPhone only for imaging sessions, Mac Pro server for Image Stacking and Processing using the fantastic and free SiriL tool (https://siril.org) for macOs. Completely ditched the hand controller that came with the eq6r replaced with Synscan Wifi. Phew .. That is the current setup. I am a high-school computer science & math teacher and purchased this telescope for a 3-week long immersive cascade session for my students with this setup starting on May 17th this year. First light with this setup was on Tuesday of last week (the ONLY clear night in a month) from my house balcony in light-polluted Seattle. My goal was to image M42 and then M81/82 with a meridian flip added in so that I can everything through its paces. For the very first time, I succeeded in imaging. You can judge the (poor beginner) quality of my first time images below. Alignment and Guiding: I first setup, balanced, and leveled the telescope with all gear installed roughly pointing north. Fired up the SysnScan app on the iPad to connect to the scope wirelessly just to have the mount record date, time attitude, longitude from my iPad and to make sure everything was working as expected. This step is really no t necessary, but it gives me an alternative and direct way to control the mount without going via the ASIAIR. Then I fired up the ASIAIR PRO and connected to the mount, primary camera, guide camera. No EAF yet, but coming later. I then went into Preview - Focus on Polaris with bahtinov mask for the primary camera and visually for the guide camera. I then did the Polar Alignment PA with the plate-solving, 60-deg automated slewing and plate solving again as instructed. Never had to look through the polar scope on mount! I then carefully adjusted the Altitude and Azimuth bolts to get withthin a 4 arc-second precision. Then I selected M42 target from the ASIAIR to go to. It put it smack on the center of the primary camera image! Note that I had not done any alignment at all. I then fired up Skysafari Plus on my iPad to see all of this visually and for future go to slewing and saw the cross hairs on M42 precisely. All of this worked perfectly without any glitches. In ASIAIR I setup the light imaging sequence as described below - a very short sequence indeed as M42 was setting fast! (see below). When that was finished I slewed to M81 using Skysafar goto. I setup a longer 2-hour iimaging sequence (see below) in the ASIAIR with a meridian flip (exciting!). I asked the mount to go to Home after the imaging was done and power down. I then retired to my living room with a warm fire going watching the scope do its magic from afar! I observed the meridian flip an hour or so later in my iPad and visually to the balcony from the comfort of my living room and see ASIAIR obtain the guide star once again and result imaging. What a kick! It reminded me of my days in the GM tech center labs where I programmed dynamometers to test new engines through its paces operating for days on end with several changes in RPM and Torques etc! M42: Each exposure was just 5 seconds long, at 400 ISO. I took a paltry 12 such images as Orion was very low in the Western horizon and setting fast! I then stacked and processed the images (in SiriL) with dark, bias, and flat calibration frames I took the following day. The total integrated exposure time was just 1 minute! Not great I did not have enough time before Orion disappeared! M81/82: Each exposure was 30 seconds long at 400 ISO. 300 images were obtained The total integrated exposure time was 2 hours and 10 minutes. No dithering. The guiding was OK (not great) with about 1.5 arc-sec average RMS error. I took down the RA and DEC aggressiveness to 50% or so. A lot of guess work! Post processing in SiriL involved, Stacking with Calibration, Cropping, Stretching, and Color Correction specifically applied for M42 and M81 respectively using photometry data from Simbad database. Further final processing was done using Photoshop. Here are my images. The link below has additional pictures of my astro gear. https://photos.app.goo.gl/pTJXCcFNYs4KMTmY9