Prathab

Captured on Sunday night. Integration time on both - 47x180sec.

Setup 1 - AA 533c, tamron 150-600, L-Extreme

Setup 2 - 500D, Tamron 70-200, AA triband

Thank you for looking, C&C welcome.

10 minutes ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

I had a quick play in Startools; I won't post the result, because frankly what you've got here already is better. So I would say, in terms of pulling out detail, this probably not too far off as good as you'll get from the data.

What I will say though, is I think you have slightly missed focus - what method are you using to focus?

Thank you for your feedback.  I suspect haze, but I can't remember the last time I had perfect seeing here. This was captured using a C8. Manually focused with a bhatinov mask at the start of the session. But it might have shifted on slewing. I have since added a focus motor, hopefully will help with focus accuracy.

I've been watching lots of tutorials and learning various processing techniques. I go through a lot of trial and error and see what works with the data. But I would like to know what other experienced folks can pull out of my data to see if I'm getting the most out of it. Please feel free to process the data and post the results here.

This is 47x180 sec lights + darks, flats and bias from a OSC camera & L-extreme filter. HA and Oiii extracted using Siril. Thank you for taking a look.

WizardHa_result.fit wizardOIII_result.fit

Quick 51 min integration on pacman nebula. 17x180 sec lights + calibration frames. Ha and Oiii extracted in Siril and processed as HOO.

On 17/10/2021 at 16:16, DougQuaidHauser said:

I have a Canon 1000D DSLR but bought it used just the body so would need to buy a lens, but zero clue at this point which lens would be compatible as never been a camera person. Once researched I could buy a used lens and give it a go.

Any EF or EF-S mount lens are compatible with your camera. If you are looking to buy used, a 70-300mm F/4-5.6 lens can be found around £100. In the £300-£400 range you can get a Rokinon/Samyang 135mm F/2 which is a no brainer or a 70-200mm F/2.8. The additional money will get you bigger aperture and cuts down on the required exposure time. There are 3rd party manufacturers (like Tamron, Sigma, Tokina) that make some great lenses and are cheaper than Canon made. Look in mpb and you'll have plenty to choose from.  Read some reviews online to make sure the specific model you are considering is not a dud.

As people have already suggested an Alt/az mount will be a limiting factor as DSO imaging is based on the premise of long exposures. A used star tracker is not a bad way to start and are not too much money.

On 17/10/2021 at 20:15, tooth_dr said:

Nice close up of the Crescent 👍

Thank you

I was in the same boat as you in January. I upgraded everything except my lens. I had to do a few mods to make the lens work, but it works great. If you want to change just one thing in your setup and see the most difference in your deep sky imaging results, it would be your camera. Unmodified DSLRs, in my experience are frustratingly ineffecient for capturing sky fog. A modded DSLR to start with is a great option or if you don't want to do it twice the 533 is a great camera. Invest in a broadband LPF and a multiband narrowband filter. First time I used a triband filter was like turning the lights on. If you are still smitten down the road and have some cash to burn, a goto eq mount will make your life infinitely better.

But capturing data is only the half of it. I'm still a struggling beginer at image processing. But we are blessed with many cloudy days to learn. There are many free resources and software to start producing some results. Play around with publicly available image data on some of your processing tools to see what you can produce.

Good luck and have fun!

Got a small clear window to get some data on the Crescent nebula. Stacked and processed as HOO image in Siril. 20 x 180 sec light + calibration frames.

Image train - C8 + 0.63FR , Lextreme, AA 533c

Surprised that I got no response. My C8 is probably older than 2006. The back of the scope is flat and focus knob cover plate was black (instead of the orange in newer models). The screw slots in the orange cover plate that came with focus motor matched perfectly. 

Took a screw to a few local stores with no luck identifying the size. So decided to throw money at the problem and ordered all the UNC sizes between 2&3mm in various lengths from accu. Screws arrived today.  The size that I needed was 4-40 at 1/2 inch length.

Installation went smooth and was able to calibrate it on first attempt. Was able to test focus on a distant tree. Hope it works ok on the stars.

Hope this helps anyone with a similar C8 model to install celestron focus motor. Image of the rear of the telescope to show the model I'm referring to.

I'm trying to install a Celestron autofocuser on an old C8 OTA. The 3 screws that hold the original cover plate are too short for the new cover plate included with the focus motor. The countersunk screws look like they are between 2-3mm thick.

It would be a great help if you can tell me the screw size, so that I can order some longer screws.

Thank you for your input.

Cheers

On 12/10/2021 at 14:57, teoria_del_big_bang said:

A very nice image, not the easiest target so that's great 🙂 

Steve

Thank you Steve, it was challenging to process. I will revisit the target in better seeing conditions.

This is my second outing with my new (to me) scope. Captured on Sunday night. There was some high clouds/haze, but shot right through it 😀. I've managed to fix most of the guiding issues I had during my last outing. I got sub second RMS error all night long.

Total exposure - 180sec x 81 + calibration files

Equipment - C8 + 0.63FR, Altair 533c, Lpro filter

Thanks for looking, C&C welcome.

6 minutes ago, FaB-Bo-Peep said:

New equipment and the chance to use it straight away, that's unheard of!  Absolutely fantastic and a most promising first light. 🙂

Thank you, for a change the box did not include clouds 😀

1 hour ago, Roy Foreman said:

That's a good first result. Well done

Thank you!

Picked up an old used C8 over the weekend. This is my first telescope. I have been shooting with DSLR lenses so far. Had a clear night yesterday with good seeing. Took all of 5 mins to Collimate. But I was having tracking issues. My guiding error was twice that of my normal. My 600mm lens had no issues in 20mph gusts. But this is twice the FL and atleast 3 times the surface area. I also think I can improve on balancing by adding some additional weight and moving it up the CW shaft. Yesterday I had to stick to shorter subs and still had to throw away over 50%. I will keep tinkering with my mount and guide setup to improve performance. Anyways, I'm chuffed to get some results on a night that I wrote off for setting up and testing new gear.

1. M13 - 34 mins

2. M27 - 48 mins

Image train - C8 + 0.63 FR, Lpro Filter, Altair 533c

This is my first attempt to process bicolour image. 34x300 sec subs through l-extreme filter. Extracted Ha and Oiii to create a HOO image.

Image train - Tamron 150-600 & Altair 533c

Thank you for looking, C&C welcome.

Captured this on Sunday night. Clouds ruined a few subs. Total integration time 2hrs 50mins (34x300Sec) plus darks, flats and biases. Stacked and extracted Hii and oiii in siril. Processed in Siril and PS.

Image train - Tamron 150-600, L-extreme filter, Altair 533c

Thank you for looking, C&C most welcome.

11 hours ago, Paul M said:

I like that a lot!

It's got an "old school" film camera warmth to it. 

I was out all last night and watched Orion rising and thought about getting some subs of M42. I decided to wait until the Moon is out of the way.

Thank you Paul! The dual narrowband filters are great for nights like these. I was able to gather some nice data on couple of other targets as well in spite of the full moon. 

Orion is finally coming around. I was able to sneak in an hour just before dawn on Orion which was pretty low to SE.

18 X 180sec and 10x30Sec for the core. Altair 533c, tamron 150-600, l-extreme filter. I'm sure I can improve on this with more data.

2 hours ago, Notty said:

really nice images, especially given the bortle & moon phases. Dual harvesting is definitely the way to go and I'm investigating the same myself.

Thank you Notty. I'm getting used to the additional complexity. It balanced quiet well easily, but there are cables. A lot of them. Finally I've managed to get to a point where I have just 2 cables running down from the mount. The rest of the cables are contained above the mounting plate avoiding chance of snags. But it feels great to have 2 sets of images for every target.

I had a major revamp of my AP equipment in the past month including a GM8 mount, Altair 533c, l-extreme filter and an old beat up modified canon 500d (replacing my eq5 pro and SXV-h9c). My goal was to maximise imaging time by running a dual rig. This is my first outing with all this new (to me) equipment. I still don't own a telescope. These images were captured on Sep 17 from my bortle 6 backyard. Almost full moon and I was fighting patchy skies. I had to toss about 50% of my subs and stacked some questionable frames in order to get an output. Can't wait for a proper clear night to capture some quality data.

Rig 1 - Tamron 70-200 @ 140mm, 500d, altair triband filter - 24 x 300 sec frames

Rig 2 - Tamron 150-600 @ 500mm, altair 533c, l-extreme filter - 19 x 300 sec frames

Processing - DSS, Siril, PS. I'm still trying to improve on my PS skills. 

Thank you for looking, C&C welcome

Got a first clear night since mid July. Happy to get some real darkness back at night. 30 x 120 sec exposure of Cocoon nebula. Shot using Tamron 150-600 lens, SXV-H9C, Altair triband filter, Eq5 pro. Processed using DSS, Siril and PS.

C&C most welcome.

Crescent Nebula captured from my bortle 6 backyard. 76 x 120 sec light frames. Capture on Jul 21st and 26th. Stacked in DSS, stretched in Siril and processed in PS.

Tamron 150-600 lens @ 600mm, SXV-H9C, Altair triband filter.

C&C most welcome.

6 hours ago, Lee_P said:

Wow, good shot especially given the short integration time! The background looks a bit dark on my screen -- might be worth shifting the black point along a bit to avoid clipping? 

6 hours ago, peter shah said:

nice work...black point does seem slightly clipped, good colour in 27 itself

5 hours ago, sterec said:

I know that the image is the thing, but calibration files are really worth the extra effort.  Having said that, it knocks my first image of M27 into a cocked hat.

Thank you all for the comments. I pushed the blackpoint down a little too much as there were a few patches of noise that was hard to get rid off.  I definitely need to improve my processing skills and some flats and darks should help as well. Next outing I'll be sure to grab some calibration files.

M27 captured from my bortle 6 backyard. 28 x 120 sec light frames. No calibration files. Stacked in DSS, stretched in Siril and processed in PS.

Tamron 150-600 lens @ 600mm, SXV-H9C, Altair triband filter.

C&C most welcome.

Adding the reprocessed image. Reduced drizzle to 2x and tried not to clip the black.