powerlord

Well, thats the first time I've used the UHS filter in there, so I reckon that helped a bit. I'm on edge of Ipswich - but light pollution not too bad.

Not sure what I'm doing wrong really - maybe my baader 2.25 barlow just isn't up to it, and I should try my 2" SW 2x barlow ? Seeing was apparently excellent last night, and by the FWHM I was getting with my DSOs that rings true. I seemed to be not getting too much jelly seeing with planets too.. So C925, baader 2.25 barlow spaced out from the asi224 with the 42mm spacer that comes with it (12mm or so). Capturing in firecapture at 8 bit. And processing in pipp, autostakker, regex6. Mostly shot with IR blocker, but I shot a bit with an 850mm IR pass too.. But compared the the amazing pics others are getting, I'm afraid they are pretty rubbish. I did manage to get an Io transit - but it was only really clear in the IR pass caps - same with planetary detail. So I used that as a luminance layer to sharper up the best colour shot - though that was from 20 mins previous so had to shift it a bit to match up io and shadow. Saturn is just straight IR block, the IR pass had no more detail so didn't use it. I did all sorts of nasty topaz stuff on jupiter - don't judge me! 🙂 It was rubbish, so figured I might as well make it look better for family/friends who don't care/know its AI mince. Any tips for better images ?

I've never had much luck getting the milkway from my back garden, but last night was pretty much ideal conditions other than the big white blob being invited. So, yeh.. it's *decent for me.. but not great by others standards - however you can see most of the big nebula in there, and M31, etc. It's a stack of 10 25 second ISO 3200 subs taken with my astro modified 6D with clip on UHS filter and a SY 14mm lens wide open. I stacked it in Siril, then added the foreground back in and did a bit of tweaking in Affinity Photo. That's as flat as I could get the background. Quite a bit of elongations out at the edges, maybe the filter affecting back focus ? or maybe would be better stopped down, but hell - it's better than anything I've got before by an order of magnitude.

So, I noticed that tonight I could get a nice moon in the same frame as Pleiades which would look awesome. theoretically. Of course practically.. it would need composing and even then would I actually get any detail of Pleiades dust ? I'm thinking it's probably a lost cause - and if you are going to composite it, you might as well shoot the moon seperately on a night it's not right next to it, Pleiades on a night when the moon is not right next to it, and composite it up to at least 'look' like it could look if we were not at the mercy of moon light pollution in the atmosphere.. What do you reckon? I mean obviously shooting the moon bit is easy - some short exposures, job done. But I'm pretty sure that when I take 60-120 sec exposures the light pollution off the moon is just going to wash out everything else in the frame. With 2 or 3 nights forecast of clear skies and good seeing I'm trying to plan what I can to maximise them, so don't really want to be experimenting... M57, NCG6823, NGC6543, NGC7293, jupiter and saturn are all on my list - I feel a bit like a kid in a candy store after so long with crap weather...

Basic lucky imaging process: - take video - pass video through PIPP (optional, but good at stablising, getting in right format and normalising historgram) - stick output into autostakker. this will actually to the 'stack' - basically you choose the best % to stack (it shows a graph so just choose something to get you only the best - usually it's about 5% for me) - stick that output tiff into registax - and do sharpening (you'll be amazed how much it can get out) - final tweeks in the photo editor of your choice. absolute KEY to the process of 'lucky imaging' is to take MASSIVE numbers of images so that you get 'lucky' with some. the software then stacks up the lucky ones. lucky == you took it and froze the atmosphere just when some part of it was lovely and clear. So, you need to maximise your luck by buying as many lottery tickets (frames) as possible. The key thing about tiny wee planetary sensor cameras are that they can take 100s of frames per second in RAW format. So no compression - what you see is what gets recorded, 100s of times every second. Typically you capture maybe 10,000 frames. (of course its worth saying - they do not in fact do this.. not like a regular camera - you need to connect them to a computer that actually takes the pics- and that needs to be quick enough and have a quick enough SSD to actually store those 100s frames per second). This above anything else is why DSLRs are not really up to it. Now that is not to say you cannot get good results with something like the moon. Your actual exposure will still be short enough to freeze the atmosphere. It's just that in order to really have much 'luck' you need lots of images. With the moon covering the whole DSLR frame you might be some improvements with say 100 frames or so. But with planets, they are tiny. Even on wee astro camera you are choosing a small section to actually capture from - maybe 500x500 pixels or so to maximise frame rate. So the effects of the atmosphere are massive. you need those 10000s of frames to get 'lucky' basically. So I'd say, give the moon a go first, and play around with raw images - forget video from the DSLR. If you get a taste for it, next step would be maybe a cheaper astro camera - one that is a fancy webcam basically like a cheap SVBONY one for 40 quid. Or, keep your eyes open for an ZWO 120 or 224. stu

I'd consider using a mobile phone on the eyepiece instead of the 1200d frankly - with the phone shooting the highest frame rate it can - some with do 240fps 1080p.

I ordered direct from zwo before flo had em on website. Be interesting to see when mine arrives. 🤔

AI post ?

Wednesday night I had a go with Jupiter, but loads of high clouds, plus rubbish seeing - it was wobbling about like a jelly. This was the best I managed - a composite with the moons, and a wee animation - which at least caught the shadow of ganymede coming over jupiter - which is first time I've seen that. I've left the kit set up, and maybe I'll get another chance this month - I rigged up a daylight aligned cheapo 400mm scope and asi120 as the main camera in asiair, stuck on top of my C925 with a baader 2.2x barlow. I then used the asiair to platesolve and centre jupiter in that scope to get me in the rough area for the big un. But I still had to remove the barlow and try with just my asi224 to centre, then refit barlow. I used firecapture on my macbook air to then capture about 10k frames at 200fps 5 or 6 times. The best set (5% of those) is in the composite shot. But I took the pipp/autostak/reg6 output from each session and strung em together in a wee gif for kicks. So.. not great but glad I got up at 2.30am to give it a go.

yup, as I say, I've got the UHS one already. 👍

High hopes for jupiter tonight..but seeing terrible, and loads of high clouds. Called it quits at 3.30am. Ive got some video, but it's not great. Took a few consolation super moon shots.

very nice. my only comment would be, you've got some wierd blending going on with the stars. Not sure how you've done it in PI, but something like an overlay mode works well usually. see here:

as I said, I've got an optolong UHS FF clip in. Im gonna use that basically. I'll make a 3d mount based on it for the UHS one, but use the optolong frame with the new one. And use the UHS filter for the sizing. I think easiest way to cut is to wrap in blue masking tape, then mark out the cuts on there, then cut. then - experiment - as you say - one option might be a dremel cutter. another, a sharp diamond tile cutter thing then snapping once marked. diamond scribe is suggested here: https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/576628-very-thin-glass-cutting-techniques/ I've bought 150 microscope slides to practice on (if I need them all I think I should know when to quit) for 8 quid. and a 4 scribes for a fiver...

well, if nothing else it sounds like a good experiment to stop anyone else doing it 🙂

yeh I've tried that - it doesn't work well imho - you get massive amounts of vignetting which doesn't seem to be removed properly with flats. Plus I noticed with the 135mm at least, it seemed to do weird things to the back focus - whereas without filter I could get pin sharp stars edge to edge, with the filter on end of lens, all my stars at the outsides became horrible streaks. Plus it exposes the sensitive filter to dust,etc - I did think on the last bit to cover the filter with a UV one, but then that's more hassle and not really easy to stack filters. Plus of course, the hassle of needing a precise set of stepdowns for every lens. I also wondered if putting it near the sensor might work better with wide angle lenses anyway re: angle of light incidence having to be perpendicular for NB filters to work. Seemed to me, after the initial pain, it'd be much easier to use without all the faffing and should stop all the weird vignetting issues. The elephant is - can it be cut really. I'll get a cheap IR blocker and give it a go.

I was wondering how easy it would be ? It'd be great to have a dual band filter I could easily use with my modified 6d and lenses. I have UHS FF filter which I don't use, but could use that as a basis to make a 3d printed holder for a new filter, and use the size of it as a template for the new one. I was then thinking I could try first with some cheap 2" IR filters, etc cutting out rectangles with a sharp cutter and snapping the glass. and then once I've got the hang of it, get myself a 2nd hand 2" L-extreme say, and cut a rectangle out it. voila - nice FF dual band. anyone done this ? is it in fact far far more difficult to cut a round but of glass into a rectangle than I am expecting ? stu

Something I designed for my parents - based on a photo of me doing a handstand, and skye, my jack Russell playing with a rugby ball. I used 4 different kinds of wood to make it.

just regular ones - - nothing contentious. question about this or that, sometimes pointing our a feature he'd missed or something.. it happened again and again so in the end I just lost respect for him. Obviously you expect rude comments, etc to be deleted but not ones simply giving another point of view, etc. hey ho - lots of alternative youtubers out there.

I stopped watching his videos as he kept deleting my comments. I'll wait for another reviewer, much as I'd like to view.

IC63 - My other target from last night (see RGB elephant for the other one). Again, no filters, just the IR on the asi2600. This time shot with my Stellamira 90ED. Again, I think I prefer this to my NB attempts, though in fairness I've never shot this target close up before I don't think - just with the redcat and 135mm. Again, about 4 hours of 3 min subs once the cloudy ones deleted. It could definitely have done with more to bring out the dark stuff.

Tried something a bit different with last nights hen's teeth rare clear sky - as the big white thing wasn't out I decided to shoot with no filters (other than asi2600 IR) of some nebula. Here's the centre of the Elephant Trunk Nebula shot with my SW 200pds and asi2600. Once all the cloudy frames deleted, I was left with about 4 hours of 3 min subs. Processed in Siril and Affinity Photo. I must admit, I think I prefer it to my NB attempts. stu

Well, I liked @Minhlead wolf rayet 134 so much I had a go myself - a bit of a different framing, and SHO(ish). This was only 5 hours however - the first clear night we've had in donkey's years. I had taken my scopes out of the observatory for the summer, and somehow managed to screw up the back focus on my Stelamira 90ED with FF - but it wasn't too bad in the end. Certainly one where more integration would help a lot - but with the summer this year I'm trying to shoot new targets each night, since those nights are so few. I think this is my first new image in over 2 months! Shot with asi2600, L-ultimate and processed in affinity photo and Sirl. stu

Got a bit of a bargain on ebay. Canon L f2.8 70-200 IS Usm fer 400 nicker since it was a bit scruffy. Arrived today.optics and functionality faultless. And a got a wee tin of canon l matched paint which will have it looking as good as new. I plan to try it at around 135mm alongside my sy135.. Have the sy135 and asi2600,L-ultimate shootp nb, and the canon on either the other asi2600 or the 6d shooting rgb. I mean in addition to it being amazing for wildlife.

not at all. I suppose this is on the 'other' forum across the pond ? one of the reasons I chose to join here rather than there. 😁 Indeed - I imagine you are right for most APer in terms of it not being for them, but I agree in it being ideal for beginners. I suppose for some, it's seen as a dead end, but tbh I think that's an illusion. IF you outgrow it, sell it and move on. Often times that far easiers and financially sensible than buying things that can be 'upgraded' imho but it's not seen that way.