Sterrenland

Yes, the noise levels seem to have gone up with my decrease in ISO. I'm going to try going back up to 1600 ISO tonight to see if it's just my imagination.

My first ever attempt at the Pelican last night...apart from the noise, framing and post-processing I'm quite pleased with it! Just short of 2 hour's worth of 105s subs. I recently have been taking subs with my Canon 650D at 800 ISO to see if there would be any reduction in noise compared to the usual 1600 ISO I was using before. To be honest, I think the noise seems slightly worse than before so will probably go back to 1600.

I used Pixinsight for the initial processing, then...cropped, ABE, background neutralisation, MultiScaleLinearTransformation, HistogramTransformation, Curves to increase saturation. I then adjusted colours and levels/curves further in Photoshop. I'm still learning the basic of Pixinsight...Deconvolution is the next thing I need to learn 🤔

Beautiful night under the stars last night. My first attempt at M13. Amazed at the beautful colours of the stars. I know you should take different lengths of exposures to blend and try to stop the centre burning out, but quite pleased for my first effort. 90 x 70s Lights 50 x 70s Darks 20 x Flats/50 Bias Taken with Canon 650D on a SW ED80/HEQ5.

Having recently bought a SW ED80 and a SW HEQ5 Pro mount I now want to get my autoguiding set up. For autoguiding I'll be using the original Zwo Asiair with a Zwo ASI120MM Mini attached to a Zwo Miniscope finderscope. The main camera I'll be using is a Canon 650D. I'm sure that once I've been through the procedure a few times it will seem like second nature, but just have a few questions: 1. Am I right that at the start of the session I just set up the mount and scope as usual and PA it roughly by eye using the built in polar scope? From reading various threads, etc. there seems no point doing a Synscan star alignment as the Asiair will be doing its own plate solving/PA. 2. Once the mount/scope are polar aligned and all the cables from the DSLR, autoguiding scope and mount are plugged in to the Asiair I can go ahead and switch everything on? After entering the scope/camera details into the relevant sections of the software I can then follow the instructions for PA and plate solving? 3. Do people tend to do away with the HEQ5 hand controller for their Asiair guided sessions? I've heard it complicates everything. What is the procedure for keeping the handset in the hardware chain? 4. Is it possible to select targets from within the Asiair software (albeit a reduced selection, say, compared with those offered through the handset) or do you definitely have to have Sky Safari installed? 5. To extend wi-fi range into the garden I'll probably have to use an electrical socket plug-in wi-fi extender. Are there any issues using these with an Asiair module? Any help or advise for autoguiding for the first time would be very welcome. If anyone has a run down of the procedure they use that would be amazingly helpful. Thanks in advance.

Managed a bit of time under the stars last night and got about 90 mins on the Iris Nebula. Always exciting to see something you've never seen before...even if the end result isn't techically brilliant. 45 x 120s Lights/25 x 120s Darks - SW ED80/Canon 650D on HEQ5 unguided.

Stunning work...that scope is an awesome light-bucket! 😀 Affinity rings a bell...is it a PS alternative? I seem to recall a recent series in one of the monthly astronomy magazines where Nik Szymanek used it to good effect?? I recall its noise reduction, etc being praised.

Thanks for everyone's input...I was just in a kind of wondering frame of mind. What people have said makes sense.

I assumed the 'noise' in darks was pretty consistent between frames which is why it removes dust motes, etc. But isn't that the case with every extra light you add to an evening's stack? Choosing to duplicate one or two of your best lights that have captured excellent seeing, etc. must surely be a good thing? 🤔 Just wondering.

Stunning work...amazing detail and colour.

As I tried to get to sleep after an evening of high cloud and no astronomy, I began to wonder about various things. One nagging question was why don't we take a handful of darks, maybe 5 or 6, and then just duplicate them to create a batch of however many you need, rather than spending maybe hours taking them outside when we could be gathering more lights? And dreaming of lights...what would be wrong with picking out one or two outstanding shots as determined in SubFrameSelector in PI, for example, and then duplicating a few of these? Would these not add to the quality of the stack? Having thought these thoughts, I finally fell asleep.

Having just upgraded to a small refractor and a decent mount I've been discovering new DSOs myself the past couple of weeks. Check out M101, M51 and M81 - all stunning galaxies. Brilliant seeing them for myself having only previously seen them in books, etc. Worth a look!

Amazing image...something to aspire to!

Never having seen these galaxies myself I thought I'd have a go last night. Apart from the odd drifty cloud it turned out to be beautifully clear. Managed just over an hour of lights through my SW ED80/HEQ5 and twenty-odd darks. For the short length of capture I'm quite pleased with seeing both M81 and M82. I've also been learning some more about Pixinsight...it's a steep learning curve! I'm still looking forward to the SW flattener coming back into stock in the UK and hoping it will tighten up the stars and make the scope just a tad 'faster'. Thoroughly enjoying seeing what has been an 'invisible' world up to now.

PA seems pretty spot on in this one and the stars are lovely and round. Good effort! I'm on the learning curve too

Despite the forecast not being too encouraging I decided to set up and managed this effort on M51. The sky stayed pretty clear and I only dropped a couple of shots due to some light cloud drifting over. Quite pleased with the result as it's only my second night out with my new kit, a HEQ5 and SW ED80. I know there's much room for improvement, but it's a start. I find the dust lanes/clouds of M51 quite mesmerising and 3-D.

Stunning! Amazing capture.

I've only been doing astrophotography for about 6 months from my semi-rural garden a few miles from Dover. I started with just a DSLR and lens, then got a Skywatcher Star Adventurer to use with the camera and have just this week scraped the pennies together and received my HEQ5 Pro and Skywatcher ED80 refractor. I'm currently using an unmodified Canon 650D. Last night was a perfect night for first light...no cloud, the wind had dropped and the seeing was pretty good. All I can say is wow! What a difference the mount and scope have made. I tried M101 some months ago (see below) and the result was not too brilliant...though I was still amazed to have captured it. Last night's effort was a vast improvement...stars were generally rounder and no longer the shape of Star Wars Tie fighters ( I still have to get the FF for the ED80, but everywhere is currently awaiting supplies ), the spiral arms are much clearer and well-defined, many fainter magnitude stars visible and the mount held M101 dead centre in the image. As everything was a bit of a new learning curve with the HEQ5 and scope I'm pretty chuffed to get what I did. Software-wise I did the basic tweeking (stacking, etc.) in Pixinsight and further adjustments in Photoshop. It's pretty rough and ready, but getting into Pixinsight is another learning curve! Lights 45 x 120sec Darks 30 x 120sec No flats.

I was born in Belgium, but I'm British and live in the UK! I was struggling to think of a name!

Thanks for the kind welcomes!

Long time lurker who has finally joined properly! Have been doing basic astrophotography since autumn 2019 using DSLRs, camera lenses and a SW Star Adventurer. Am now desparate to upgrade to a SkyWatcher HEQ5 Pro and a SkyWatcher 80ED refractor - but have chosen probably the worst time in recent years to think of upgrading as none of the retailers in the UK seem to have any stock of what I want. I'm looking forward to things picking up just enough for stock to start arriving again, but realise things may not be 'normal' for a very long time. So, for the time being it's carry on with the DSLR and a certain level of frustration!