Crackabarrel

Orion Rising over Classiebawn Castle in Co. Sligo, Ireland, Benbulben can be seen looming in the background.

Night of March 7th

Nikon Z7ii + Z50mm f1.8

Sky: 24x30sec @iso800 @f2.2 Tracked

Foreground: 2x1min, 2x2min, 2x4min, 1x8min @f5.6, HDR Merge

Calibration and Stacking in Pixinsight

Foreground HDR Merge in Lightroom

Sky & Foreground Merge and finishing touches in Photoshop

9 hours ago, Albir phil said:

Brilliant wonderful images yo must be well chuffed.👏👍

6 hours ago, Sunshine said:

My gosh these are ethereal beautiful! amazing work!

Thanks guys, pretty happy with them but still room for improvement on the second.

12 hours ago, FenlandPaul said:

Fantastic images to see and you should be proud of those.
 

The top one is a favourite, with a lovely simple composition and nice blend.  The detail in the MW is lovely.

I like the intriguing quality of the foreground glow in the second image - I just want to know what’s round the corner!  But for my taste the blend is a little abrupt (unless the sky is really that dark, in which case I’m going there tomorrow!!) - something I’m often guilty of - and my head can’t quite compute the star trails in the reflection with the non-trailing sky; I wonder if you cloned out the trails and maybe even simulated a reflection with layers, it might be an interesting look. 
 

But both are superb. 👍

Cheers thank you, 

I am much happier with the first than the second to be fair, I feel it was executed much better.

While the sky up at glendalough is quite dark the transition is a little more abrupt than I'd like, and the star trails on the lake are jsut a result of not having the time at the computer to properly blend in a reflection of the MW, on the upside this leaves me a good excuse to come back and make a stab at improving it in the future.

Thanks for the constructive criticism, looking forward to getting back out a bit more this autumn/winter.

And the next...

Glendalough Upper Lake

Nikon z7ii w/24-70 f4

Foreground 1x240sec, 1x180sec, 1x120sec @iso400

Sky 47x60sec @iso400

Stacked in Sequator, blended and processed in Photoshop

Been a long time since I've posted, not been able to get out much this past while but things seem to be improving.

So with that in mind I have 2 images to share of the Milky Way in Ireland's Wicklow Mountains.

Lough Tay

Nikon z7ii w/24-70 f4

Foregound: 3x30sec @ ISO400

Sky: 47x60sec @ ISO200

Stacked in Sequator, blended and Processed in Photoshop.

This was just after the Perseids Peak.

Topaz Denoise is good, however I tend to only run it on starless images then recombine.

10 hours ago, Paul M said:

They are all spectacular but the last one seems to show connection between the Pleiades and the surrounding dust.

I don't think I've seen an image like that before. The blue/white nebulosity associated with the Pleiades seems to trail off either side and then there is void in the dust below the cluster. It just looks to me as though the cluster has moved (upwards in this view) through the surrounding dust leaving a wake! 

Looks like a glowing jellyfish!

Maybe I need to do some research

 

Edit: I'm partly right, it's the dust that's run into the cluster: https://science.nasa.gov/pleiades-deep-and-dusty

Thank you, much appreciated, I was surprised to see the amount of dust picked up, initially I thought there may have been an issue with the lens given the central concentration, I had to go look at similar widefield images to confirm.

Very interesting to see the motion of the dust cloud past the Pleiades, lends a nice sense of movement.

4 hours ago, 900SL said:

Neat! I like the California and Pleiades image. And I'm amazed you pulled out the witch head nebula by Rigel

Were you using a tracker or shooting from a fixed tripod? 

I'm several hundred kilometres south of you. The skies are something else in this part of the world, aren't they. 

Thank you, they both came out better than expected I feel.

I was very happy to see the Witch Head popping up during the stretching process, did not think just over an hour would be enough to reveal it, but goes to show how nicely fast optics and dark skies pair.

All these shots were tracked with a Skywatcher Star Adventurer.

The skies in that part of the world are indeed something to remember, unfortunately we were only on holidays for a week in Jordan, 3 nights of which were spent in Wadi Rum, coming from Ireland I am very envious of the consistency of the clear sky over there.

Thank you, initially I stacked them in DSS and thought the data was worthless, Pix really came to the rescue however.

They were very nice yeh and won't be forgotten anytime soon, some of the darkest I've been under, being constantly cloud free during our stay was also a nice change of pace.

A few widefield images taken from a recent trip to Wadi Rum in Jordan

Milky Way: 30 x 60sec

The Orion Nebula: 74 x 60sec (Stacking in Sequator, Processing in Photoshop)

Pleiades and California Nebula: 129 x 60sec (Stacking and Initial processing in Pixinsight, finishing touches in Photoshop)

All shot with Nikon D5300 + Sigma 18-35 f1.8 , ISO400 (Stacking and Initial processing in Pixinsight, finishing touches in Photoshop)

I could get used to imaging at F2.0 in Bortle 2/3, any suggestions or criticisms let me know, probably went a bit hard on the processing.

Thanks for looking.

Nice image, the ASI2600 and Redcat is a good pairing alright.

Try using Stellarium and toggle "Hierarchical Progressive Surveys", you can also toggle which object catalogues that are displayed (NGC, M, IC, SH2 etc)

That would be the aptly named "Lobster Claw" Nebula.

Hope that helps.

I think it has something to do with the refractive properties of the glass in the filter, although don't take my word for it.

Hi,

The thickness of the filter does indeed matter, typically you should add 1/3 the filter thickness to your flattener's stated backfocus.

So in this case it will (1.85/3)+11.4 = 12.05mm (L-Enhance thickness = 1.85mm)

You just screw out the flattener until it reaches 12mm and then you should be fairly close to having a corrected field.

About 30mins of exposure owing to clouds over the Poolbeg Lighthouse in Dublin.

Constantly looked like it was going to clear up all night but never totally did.

Nikon D5300 w/ Sigma 18-35 f1.8 @5.6, 59x30sec, ISO200

Thanks for looking.

16 minutes ago, Anthonyexmouth said:

That's a doublet, already have one of those and looking to upgrade to a triplet for better colour correction

Ah my apologies, maybe check out some of the TS Optics Photoline scopes so.

William Optics ZS73 is around the same price and spec, will require a flattener though.

Been using mine for over 2 years now and can't really complain, fit and finish are good, colour correction is nice.

3 hours ago, davew said:

I'd check that 1 second is ok before you invest in an all night session ! Some slow cards may require a 2 second gap but 1 second is best if you can.

You should also be able to collect over 600 images with a fully charged battery. Do all your sorting out at home ( Exposure and intervalometer settings ), then recharge and then shoot 😎

I also forgot to say the photo was nice with good colour coming through on the stars and a nicely illuminated cross.

Dave.

The 1 second delay is fine, my card is quick enough but yeh I should have charged the battery after the days shooting and confirmed how it all worked.

Cheers thank you, the light pollution from the city was good for something for once.

7 hours ago, davew said:

Hi,

I've never heard of the D5300 intervalometer only working for 20 minutes or so. I've downloaded the manual and it doesn't mention it there. I also looked at a few other sites and they say it will take 999 consecutive shots ! Where have you got this information from or have you found it by using the intervalometer ?

If it's the latter then I think you've made some error. 

If you are doing 30 second exposures what intervals are you setting ? I take it you know that the interval isn't the gap between the shots but the start of the shots ie. if the exposure time is 30 seconds then the interval time must be longer than 30 seconds.

Dave.

I think you are right, I had the interval down as 1sec where I should have put it to 31sec if i had wanted a 1sec delay between shots.

I had forgotten that the interval is, as you say, from start of shot to start of next.

Cheers.

4 minutes ago, FenlandPaul said:

Lovely composition. 👍 I get really quite cross about the fact that so many dslrs have such dreadful intervalometers on board, if any at all!!

Thank you.

Thought I could get away with the on board as the exposures were limited to 30sec by light pollution, lesson learned I suppose, the rest of the clear nights that week were marred by high winds preventing me reshooting it any time soon.

Hi All,

Star Trails taken over the Papal Cross in Dublin's Phoenix Park, pretty happy with it but a poor time to discover the D5300's internal intervalometer will only run for 20 or so minutes at a time.

Roughly 1hr of exposure before the battery died.

Thanks for looking.

If you go the Sky and Viewing options on the right hand side of the interface you can move the sliders for "labels and hints", this will increase the amount of DSO labels you see.

You can also change the Sky Survey displayed from the default DSS Coloured one shown here, this will generally show you more nebulosity than the default.

In the DSO tab of the same window you can specify for which object catalogues to display hints for, if I remember right that particular object should be found under the Sh2 catalogue.

That object is very faint and you will most likely need narrowband and long integration time from Bortle 7 skies.

Hope thats some help.

Layout looks fine, you may need an additional spacer to account for the thickness of the filter in the drawer (if any).

Add 1/3 of the filters thickness to backspacing for correct backfocus.

Looks good, nicely done.

Have a look into the NPF rule to determine how long you can expose for with out trails, it is a stricter version of the more commonly used "Rule of 500".

You can reduce the effects of coma by stopping down the aperture.

M31 - Andromeda might be a good target to move on to, large and bright enough it will show up in a single sub.

Hi All,

This is my first attempt with trying a bicolour HOO image, must say it is alot of fun, although I probably went a little over board.

Also the first time I have managed to get more than 30min on a target with the new Antlia 5nm dual band filter, imaged over 2 nights, half during a 90% moon, the other half during the full moon, bortle 8.

57 x 180sec @ gain 100 offset 50 -5C with ASI2600MC and WO ZS73.

Only Lights and Darks, no other calibration frames, processed in PI with a dash of Topaz denoise.

Thanks for looking, if anyone has any suggestions for going forward with bicolour it would be greatly appreciated.

I found this one by Astrofarsography very useful when I was beginning: