Felias

Thank you! And yes, well spotted, I had trouble getting rid of the green background after the colour calibration. Any suggestions on how to do this in PS? I tampered a bit with the saturation after I calibrated the colours. When added to my struggles with the green, the resulting colour may not be the most realistic. 🤔

Thanks, I'll try that next time!

I can't believe that we had a window of good weather last night! 😱 I took about 3 hours of Andromeda, the first time I seriously try to image the galaxy (I did a couple of shots to test the telescope months ago, but just barely captured it). This is a stack of 340 x 30 second shots, plus darks, flats and bias. WO Z61 on a star adventurer, no guiding. Canon 77D. Processed in DSS and PS. Anyway, just my first proper processing of Andromeda, I'll keep trying and see what I can improve. Denoising, definitely. Maybe star reduction? Suggestions welcome.

Thank you. Definitely keeping this lens! 👍 Thanks! With some luck, I'll manage another night out before August 2022... 🌧️

You can always collect them from the heart of a supernova... 😁

We had a lovely, almost cloudless start to Saturday night here in Kent, so I went out to the fields to test my new lens. Just a tripod and the camera, and the joy of moving around for fast single-shots. I could easily see the Milky Way with the naked eye from my spot half way between Canterbury and Ashford, although Sagittarius was polluted by the lights from Folkstone, as usual. Anyway, I had lots of fun, and I'm quite happy with the lens. All of the following are single shots, ISO 1600 f/2. Exposure is either 13 seconds (looking South) or 15 seconds (when pointing Northwards). Andromeda and the double cluster in Perseus (I thought I had cleaned all the trails, but I guess I forgot this time): You can see the double cluster and Capella here, but I mostly took this one because I liked the foreground: Jupiter and Saturn: Clouds began to roll in around 11 pm: They soon started to cover large parts of the sky, and the moon was rising anyway, so I packed. But I liked this cloud in front of the Plough, so I took one last shot:

Thank you so much for all your replies. Yes, coma and chromatic aberration seem to fall within acceptable limits in the corners. Things improve at f/2.8, with stars looking much sharper (some diffraction spikes start to show though), so I'll probably get good results at this stop on my star adventurer. I knew this lens caused quite some vignetting before I bought it, so it's not unexpected. I have tried lens correction, it's just a barrel distortion that Lightroom fixes nicely. That doesn't affect star shapes in the corners, of course. I guess I'll be keeping this lens! 👍

At f/2 I thought that 13 seconds pointing towards the South was the most I would consider. I allowed 15 seconds when pointing towards the North. If you are not too picky with star trails, I guess you could push it a few more seconds. Here's the full-size unprocessed image (converted to JPEG in IrfanView) if you want to inspect it:

A composite can very much look like that when there's a full moon. Yes, you need two exposures, and you have to paste the moon or combine them somehow, but you don't have to wait for the clouds to roll past. Here's a shot I took in April; the whole sky is covered, but the clouds are thin enough for the moon to shine through. I promise I did not cheat (if you consider double exposures legit, that is). 😇

FWIW, I took this one with my new Samyang 16mm on Saturday (I'll post more soon). A single shot, 13 seconds, f/2 ISO 1600 on a Canon 77D. Quite happy with it so far, but still testing.

I tested my new lens on Saturday night. I thought that pointing at a random star field towards the zenith (I caught Cygnus nonetheless) would be good to detect any serious aberrations. This is a fast shot, just 3 seconds, ISO 6400 F/2, so never mind the noise, I just wanted to avoid any star trails. It seems normal to me, just what you would expect in the corners (perhaps the distorsion is slightly more noticeable in the top right corner?), but I thought I'd post it in case someone with a more trained eye could find any faults in the optics. I have not applied any lens correction. Thank you!

After a summer of bad weather and having used my telescope only a few nights, I thought I'd get a wide-angle, fast lens for Milky Way shots. At least I can set this up in a minute with only a tripod, so I can use the short spells of clear skies and drive an hour or two out of town. Also -fingers crossed- I'm spending a week in the mountains in October and I can't carry any of my gear, not even my star adventurer, so I'm setting myself the modest goal of capturing the Milky Way against a nice foreground of rugged peaks (we don't get those in Kent). It's a Samyang 16mm F2.0 (I chose it because my Canon 77D is a cropped sensor camera), and it arrived on Friday morning: I tested it in town centre on Friday afternoon, trying to catch a colourful sunset. It was a dull, rather cloudy evening though, so it wasn't brilliant, but I least I tried different subjects in different lights. Quite a nice lens, so far: I tested it on Saturday night too, but I'm still sorting out the many Milky Way photos I took...

Tricky at least. If you take for instance CLEAPSS guidance for lab material in schools, they say that after pupils in the same bubble and/or technicians have touched the equipment, everything must be quarantined for 72 hours. Having people from around town touching the scopes/eyepieces is exactly the opposite of what they recommend. If it were just hands I wouldn't be so worried (transmission by surfaces is very low), but sharing eyepieces, well, I personally wouldn't do it. As others have suggested, projecting on a screen may be the best, if possible. If it's a small gathering, a laptop screen may be enough. Definitely, all must wear masks, especially if using the telescopes. You don't want saliva bits to stick to the surfaces! Alternatively, what about just drinks and a bit of guidance on finding the constellations, cardinal points, etc? A bit of astro talk about things observable with the naked eye (star colours, planets along the ecliptic, the Pleiades and other basic things), and a promise of telescopes in the future may be just nice!

Thanks, very useful. I have only worked once or twice with separate channels, it seems that I'll have to try again. I tweaked my previous attempt, trying to reduce the noise and rethinking what I did for the contrast and the star reduction. Cosmetic changes really, and I didn't bother with the gradients since it takes me long to eliminate them, but it looks a bit better. It helps when you have a picture to follow as a model.

I have the same mask in the Z61, but I have not found it very useful. Although I position the spikes as they are meant to be, the stars never seem to be in focus when I look at the live view. So I end up focusing by zooming in the live view, which so far has been reasonably good. I assume that I'm doing something wrong with the Bahtinov mask, but I haven't found out what!

Much less noisy than my processing. What software/workflow did you use, if I may ask?

Jaw-dropping!

Thanks! All considered, I would be happy with such data myself; I haven't had much experience imaging nebulae yet. Also, the sun is trailing these days too close to Cassiopeia, so it's not dark enough to give good contrast. It should be easier later in the summer.

Well, I couldn't resist, since I have never imaged the Pacman. This is just levels/curves plus some fiddling with contrast, saturation, etc. All tools that are available in Gimp, though it may be less intuitive than PS. Also did a bit of star reduction, which I wouldn't know how to do in Gimp: There are some horizontal bands, probably due to the camera sensor (I get those sometimes). Flats should help in removing them; if not, some cosmetic touches would be needed.

All done in Photoshop. I started using Gimp, but I never quite got the hang of it. Then my employer let me use a spare PS license. 😇 You have pulled the nebulosity nicely, perhaps there's too much contrast? The darkest regions are never completely black. Halpha is red, true, but you have lost star colour this way. You lose some I think when the camera is modded (correct me if I'm wrong, I have never had one), but it's not a mono picture and there's definitely a difference between the more yellowish and bluish stars in my processing (especially in the second version, https://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/monthly_2021_07/Autosave-Edit2.jpg.003fd512ed7bb76fba9446da7022f722.jpg.) Look at the top right corner, or at the pair of red/blue bright stars to the left of the head of the Pelican (the blue is 57-Cygni, with a surface temperature higher than 15,000 K). Also, you have changed the aspect ratio of the photo, it's compressed in the horizontal direction.

Not an expert about this, but I normally stack all. This can create gradients, which the flats may correct. If they don't, there are ways of addressing this, depending on the software you use.

I kept thinking about the colours that you mentioned, and I tried to enhance them a bit. I don't know if it's better or worse, but here's another slighlty modified version after tampering with the saturation:

I know. I did two in a row the past weekend and that was enough hill climbing for me this week. A three-year old at home doesn't help, of course. 😅 I did a fast one while she has been quiet. Much better, I think:

Ah, yes, this is it! Much better, I'll give it a go if my daughter lets me, but this one should be easier to pull out the nebulosity.

Yes, I don't even bother saving manually from DSS, I just go to the "lights" folder and work with the autosave.tif file in there. Iem, that screenshot seems fine, if you have not saved the image applying DSS adjusments, as Malpi says, it should be ok. 👍