twobleak

Some fantastic images in here; taken me a few days to get through the whole thread

I  have been thinking about picking up the Skywatcher AZ GTI mount and attempting some of these shots myself... I was wondering how I would go about attaching my DSLR and lens to the mount though? Assume some kind of L bracket would be needed?

8 minutes ago, powerlord said:

I don't think that's stacked right then, as I stetched the single sub just posted before and got more out of that.

 

 

What could I have done wrong? I did not change much in DSS, just went with the recommended settings.

Wow that was quick! Thank you. I wasn't sure if I should save that as 16bit or 32bit - only two options I can see in DSS when saving as a FITS file. Would it make much difference if I posted the 16bit output from DSS?

It wasn't that the image was dark, more that my attempts at stretching in PS were all looking rather ugly. I couldn't get anything close to what you posted above. 

I'm glad there is something in the data though and that I'm not doing too much wrong on that side of things.

edit: no flat frames - not got to grips with those yet.

I've attached the FITS file from DeepSkyStacker, if anybody wanted to take a look...I had several tries at stretching the image myself but it did not turn out very well.

sadr.FTS

Excellent, thank you. Yes, it is indeed the region around Sadr. I stacked 100 of these, 20 darks and 20 bias and like you say, I can see some faint nebulosity in there but my final image is really not all that. It wasn't even an hour of data so perhaps that isn't long enough or my post-processing is at the bottom of a very steep curve!

Hi All

I'm still rather new to imaging so I wanted to get some advice, if possible...Attached is a RAW file from my DSLR shot at ISO 640, 25 seconds and I think at f4. Is this just too bright to begin with? I'm trying to find a good starting point...No moon but under Bortle 5 skies. Thanks

L_0005_ISO640_25s__NA.CR3

Interesting topic as I've been wondering the same after recently starting out with some night sky photography. As a few other posters have mentioned, here in the UK, the more dangerous aspect is probably driving out to some locations. I managed to have three different near-misses with muntjac deer on the back roads of Essex in just one night! They just wander out into the road and then appear to have no idea in which direction to run off.

Thank you both for the replies, that gives me some peace of mind that the lens and my technique are not all that bad! 

38 minutes ago, alacant said:

No problem as it's easily corrected in software.

 Can I ask what you did to correct that in software? 

I did notice that once I had stacked all my shots (around 50 or so) in Sequator, the odd star shapes noticeably looked a lot better.

Hi All

I recently picked up a Samyang 16mm f2 for my Canon 90D and I was trying out some test shots at f2.8, iso 1600 and 10 seconds. I believe this length of exposure should be short enough to avoid star trails, but looking at one of my images closer I can see what looks like trailing or possible coma issues (or both) - I'm not quite sure really. Could someone offer a suggestion as to what I might be doing wrong or is the lens not a particularly good copy? I have attached a TIFF - just a straight export out of Lightroom. Thanks.

IMG_8930.tif

8 minutes ago, Astro Noodles said:

Do you have the camera exposure time set to match the intervalometer exposure time?

Camera is in bulb mode, so I'm only using the intervalometer to control the exposure time.

LENR is off, drive mode is single shot - no self timer.

For example, this works fine:

10 second exposure, 4 second interval, 3 shots in total

This doesn't:

10 second exposure, 3 second interval, 3 shots in total (shutter opens at the start of shot one, but does not close again until the intervalometer has finished counting down).

I have no idea why that might be. Camera setting or intervalometer problem? I seem to have ruled out most things but I'm lost now.

I did initially think that, but surely you would expect the shutter to close after the first shot still? I could understand subsequent shots then being missed but for the shutter to not close after the first shot seems odd to me. I am using a Sandisk Extreme Pro SD card and you can see the camera has finished writing to the card after about a second. 

I recently picked up a Neewer intervaolmeter for my Canon 90d and whilst it appears to work fine, I have an odd problem when setting the interval to anything below four seconds...the shutter opens but never closes until the intervalometer has counted down all the shots. Anything above four seconds and it appears to behave normally.

Im a bit confused! Am I doing something wrong or is there a minimum interval time I cannot go below? I have tried all different combinations of exposure length and interval time and the only consistent problem is with an interval shorter than four seconds.

20 hours ago, rickwayne said:

You can easily do that yourself, by the way -- just go to nova.astrometry.net and upload your image (they list supported formats). You will get back exceedingly precise information on exactly where you were pointed, how much the camera was rotated WRT the standard coordinate system, objects in the field of view, etc.

Shockingly (to me, at least) that plate-solving software can also be run on your own computer. In fact it runs on a Raspberry Pi!  Most folks using computers to drive their telescopes depend heavily on it. Sky ignoramus that I am, if plate solving tanks for some reason, I'm left literally stumbling around in the dark.

Thank you, I will take a look at that.

Thanks so much for looking. I did also import the raw files into Lightroom and some of the lights had to be rotated left to get them back into landscape orientation - I have no idea why though. I then run another stack through Astro Pixel Processor and this does look a lot better (one corner appears to suffer from clouds/light pollution the most), could the orientation of the images (and then the clouds) have a big impact on the final image? 

I was very critical about checking for dew as I had a new dew strap fitted which I wasn't sure was any good. However no dew formed on the lens or in general. This is only my Nikon 35mm 1.8 lens though, not a telescope.

Here are two raw files (lights) from that session, the first and the last. Fair bit of cloud but they seem ok I thought? 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lg8bwyc76tcvl86/LIGHT_60s_400iso_4-0_20201204-21h58m32s349ms.NEF?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4505j9qou922n3k/LIGHT_60s_400iso_4-0_20201204-22h47m08s061ms.NEF?dl=0

I've also stacked everything again in DeepSkyStacker using the defaults/recommended settings. Here is the unprocessed TIFF:-

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nlxo2o2dal6zgkb/Autosave.tif?dl=0

Ok, fits file is here https://www.dropbox.com/s/il2t6z7ia8en3va/andromeda-RGB-session_1-St.fits?dl=0

It was 45 lights, not 60. My mistake.

Hi Everyone

I'm a complete beginner with Astrophotography (fairly competent with a DSLR though) and I've just managed to get my hands on a Skyguider Pro and have a first attempt at some imaging. I only have a Nikon 35mm 1.8 lens right now so I'm just getting to grips with the basics. I've had a crude attempt at capturing Andromeda but I'm wondering what might be going on with the image after stacking in Astro Pixel Processor? Now I realise I was fighting all kinds of problems with this - a fair amount of cloud, street lamp very close to my garden and ~80% moon illumination for starters but being a complete newbie, I'm not really sure what to make of the problems in this image? It does appear to clean up better when using the light pollution removal tools but am I doing something horribly wrong?

Some info on what I grabbed: 60 x 1 minute lights (iso 400, f4), 20 dark frames, 40 bias frames and 40 flat frames. Stacked in APP with all the defaults chosen.

Dropbox link to a higher quality jpg https://www.dropbox.com/s/09883stb6wxccj8/test-RGB-session_1-St.jpg?dl=0

Thanks