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

Mercandria, KevS, and Mikey2000: Oh my gosh! Thank you so much for the exceptionally warm welcome! I am absolutely floored by the thoughtful and kind responses to my note from everyone. I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart to offer help. Also, my students (9-12th graders) from Bush School thank you for helping me to help them. Just brilliant! Where can I possibly see some of the pictures you have taken - Are you posting somewhere like Astrobin etc? I hope all of you are keeping healthy and safe during these extraordinary times we are in due to the coronavirus epidemc. Astronomy and sky watching especially is a godsend as it is mostly a solitary hobby - at least for now. Let me comment about what I "think" I know and have handled already with the setup. I will "grade" my own comfort level of these topics below on a 4.0 grading scale. If you see that I have erred - please call me out! My students call me out on a regular basis - I am used to it! A. CL:2.0 - I see that this is a common theme in all of your feedback so far. I have now attempted to collimate the Quattro now 3 times. I noticed that the secondary mirror was off alignment with the primary when I got the scope. I used the Hotek laser to figure this out. It seems to happen when I move the OTA back and forth on the rings to try and achieve balance. I am hopeless at balancing. See point #C below. I then have tried to star collimate. Honestly, this is a a little dubious. The instructions say that we have to see concentric diffration circles when focusing in and out. I have noticed that moving my eye back and forth on the eyepiece I can get the circles to be concentric! Also the FOV is very small with my 16 mm Televue Nagler Type 6 eye piece. I have a 25 mm plossl as well which is not much better for this scope? I think the collimation is fine. B. CL:3.0 - I have polar aligned the scope many times using the built-in polar scope and it seems to be OK. There seems to be no alignment issue of the polar scope with respect to the mount - so that is a plus. The internal reticle is off a bit from vertical - 12:00 clock seems to be at the 1:08 AM position - a minor irrtitation. I just read the clock face in my head. When the scope is loaded with weights and the Telescope it is really hard to engage the lever to move the scope higher in altitude. Any tips here can be helpful. If I keep the scope at the same place each day - this part is a cinch with only monor adjustments needed. I am using PS Align Pro and my HC to set clock time for Polaris in the outer circle. C CL:2.5 - I then lock all my Alt-Azimuth bolts and my RA/DEC cluthches as tightly as I can. I have noticed slippage here and at one time my scope had slipped all thw way down - luckily nothing was damaged. Any tips here? I do what I can with scope balancing, but it seems quite hard to get correctly especially that I have now started add and subtract devices like eye pieces and DSLR's etc. BTB. I am attempting to use my finder scope of the Quattro as a guide scope with my ASI224MC attached to it - no luck with focusing here. I have not attempted to guide at all yet. I noticed that Mikey2000 had this specific point in the signature - I am eager to get any feedback. I have attached a picture of how I did it. D. CL:3.5 - I usually do a 1-star Align with my HC first using Arcturus which comes up over the horzon at my lattitude just as I am setting up. This is a backup as I can revert back to optical viewing using the HC if my RPI setup misbehaves. I have been able to verify that the pointing accuracy is quite good and better than my NexStar 5. Aligning through Ekos module is another matter - see below. E. CL:3.8 - Setting up the PI4 - netowrking, wireless, modules installation, communication to the scope using the direct USB on mount, VNC, Camera with USB3 and the like. I built a custom PI for this purpose with Astroberry software including KStars, Indi, Ekos, OaCapture. Also communicating with KStars on a remore laptop and iPad as well. I intend to run Plate Solving (haven't really attempted this yet) and Phd2 guiding from the remote system - is this correct? Any feedback here will be helpful. F. CL:2.0 - Focusing on the camera. This is an impossible task! I would like to get a view of what I am looking at to achieve focus. I will definitely use a Bahtinov mask as KevS had suggested viusually. But how do you do it on the Camera? I figured out how to get a live view - maybe that's the key to it? G. CL:1.0 - Guiding - Not attempted this one yet. I think I need to confidently get my ZWO ASI 224MC installed on the 9x50 Finder Scope as a guide scope to work first. I have attached a picture of how I attached the camera to the Finder scope. Here are some specific items: Mikey - I have attached a picture I took of Mizar and Alcor with a DSLR I attached with the coma corrector to the focuser. I really could use your collective wisdom with this one! I have attached a picture of Mizar/Alcor taken with my DSLR. I focused the best I could. I do not know if this says anything about collimation. But the diffraction spikes on Mizar was cool and I was able to get some 12th mag stars on this 1-sec exposure. Thank you for workflow. That is very instructive indeed, also ominous! KevS - Thank you for all of the links! That was fantastic. Long nights of reading when the clouds are out - which is most of the time in Seattle! Mercandria - I am very happy to note that you have not one but 2 Quattros - Wow. There is a lot I could learn from you. Right now Balancing seems to be a big issue mechanically speaking. Do you have any tricks for that. I tried your ides on focusing except not outside. I fooled the mount into thinking that my wife' sewing machine was a target. I attached the ZWO to the finder scope and got it show me a live view with the exposure set to a low 0.015 seconds. I took a picture of fine threads (no quite pinpoint but a really small target) and was able to move the focus from one thread to the other by fine adjustment. I have attached it here. Thank you so much for the offer of help. I appreciate it very much! I wanted to finish this note with my goals for observing. My personal goal is to learn enough and teach Observing, Astrophotography of the Moon, Planets Galaxies and Nebulae, Spectral Analysis of Stars to students, to develop an appreciation for our ephemeral existence in the Universe and to protect our Planet so that they and future genertions can look out and wonder. I hope to establish a regular observing program at my School. We are extremely lucky to be inhabiting the Solar System at our specific location in our Milky Way. I wonder about civilizations that might exist inside a Globular Cluster for example - Will they ever get to see the sky like we do, will they learn about the atomic structure of matter, know that the calcium in their bones and iron in their blood came from a Supernove, discover other galaxies or the glow from the big bang? Thank you all very much! - dru

Hello All. This is my very first post to stargazers Lounge! Phew - it is amazing how this forum is buzzing with activity and all the the amazing work I see here. I have retired from 20+ years of corporate life at an Aerospace company and decided to teach high school here at Bush School in Seattle, WA. It is an independent school almost founded almost 100 years ago. In my first year I have taught Mathematics and Computer Science. However, the focus for teaching will be CS, with an experiential bent. My goal is to spark interest in observational astronomy at the school and maybe even start a regular observing program. I have built and used RPIs for my CS classes - in last project the students a digital spectroscope. The image on my icon is the spectrum of mercury obtained from the spectroscopes the students built! I have been observational astronomer for a very long time and have used my Celestron NexStar 5 for 2 decades! I proposed that the school purchase a Telescope for their experiential programs. The school is now a proud owner of a Skywatcher Quattro 8" Newtonian Telescope and a EQ6-R Pro mount. After much research, I built a RPI 4 system using the INDI/KSTARS/EKOS software to control the mount and for astro photography. I have obtained a ZWO ASI 224MC as a guide/planetary camera. The FOV is so small that I have not had much luck with it on the Quattro. Simple things like how to get the star image focused on the 224MC stumps me. I am also struggling with the workflow - what comes first, second etc) for setting up for a night of astro photography. I was wondering if I could get some guidance on this. Maybe there are users here of F4 newts that can give me some tips? My equipment so far - Skywatcher Quattro 8" Newt, EQ6-R Pro Mount, Skywatcher Coma Corrector, an old Rebel XT DSLR, ZWO ASI 224MC Camera for guiding and planeray photos, INDI/EKOS/KSTARS Software on RPI4. I plan to use the finder (9x50) scope of the skywatcher as a guide scope. Thank you so much! Excited to be here. - dru