Prathab

Just got 56 mins on this target yesterday. Shot wide open at f/2.8. 

Tamron 70-200 lens at 200mm, SXV-H9C, altair triband filter.

Processing: DSS, Siril, PS

This week has been non stop clear nights, high pressure has setup camp right on top of us. I get about 3 hours of Nautical twilight this time of the year at my latitude. Despite that the seeing was good. This is my first attempt at this target. Guiding was not great, resulting in not so round stars. But I'm still chuffed that I was able to capture some sky fog. I'm really liking this filter.

Equipment used - Tamron 70-200mm lens at 90mm, SXV-H9c, EQ5 Pro, SSAG, Altair triband filter

88 x 2min exposures.

Processing - DSS, Siril, PS

My first image of the summer. A section of the estern veil nebula. 53x120 sec lights only stacked in DSS, stretched in SIRIL and rudimentary processing in PS.

Equipment used: Eq5 Pro, SXV-H9C, Tamron 150-600 @ 400mm, Orion SSAG guide, Altair triband filter.

April was extremely good, I was able to shoot 16 nights. Not 1 clear night in May so far. Though it won't get really dark till August again, I'll still try some NB imaging if there is a clear night.

6 hours ago, mackiedlm said:

BTW @Prathab I think you mean "This was shot on Apr 21st, so moon was not up till 4:00AM" - the moon was bright that night, about 75% I think, and high in Leos head and therefore quite close to your target. This accounts, I think, for a lot of the noise and gradients in your image.  It is very difficult to capture broadband targets with that much moon in play and many imagers (myself included) will not even try. I had been planning to try the owl nebula with a L-enhance filter (narrow band) that night but as there was a high haze, the sky was very bright and the Oiii band tends to let some moonlight leak  I didnt bother.

You are right about the moon and possibly one of the reasons for the gradient and noise. This small sony sensor apparently didn't need dark files as it has very little readout noise. But I'll definitely shoot some darks on my next outing. But now that you have pointed out, I can see out of shape stars everywhere 🙂 .  I also realize that the lens racks out of focus often, especially when tracking stuff near the zenith. I probably have to bite the bullet and get a APO scope.  Thank you for your input.

1 hour ago, mackiedlm said:

Hi there,

 

first off let me say I am far from expert, not much more than a beginner myself, so take all that follows with appropriate sceptesism - hopefully the real experts will correct me.

 

I have take a go at your data and produced this

My thoughts on your data;

 

Your stars are not the best - this is a AbberationInspector  mosaic from PI and you can see they are all flared on one side- right across the image. I'm not sure if this is poor guiding or if its optical - tilt maybe? whatever, I think this is the reason we cant get much detail or structure in the galaxy.

 

Then you have some pretty funky gradients and vignetting and its pretty noisy. Can you tell us, exposure duration, did you calibrate with darks, flats, etc and what was the sky like - moon, high haze ???

On the plus side, the camera is clearly very sensitive and I think if you can resolve the above problems you have a set up that can deliver great images.

I do hope this helps a bit. And, for what its worth, I always find M101 to be a complete pig to capture and process!

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for taking a look and the feedback.  These are 3 min subs, attaching one here. This was shot on Apr 21st, so moon was not up till 4:00AM. My guiding is usually around 1-2" RMS and is usually pretty good for 2-3 min subs. No calibration files added on this stack. As a best case scenario, I'm also attaching a more recent 5 min sub of M82 and a stack of 23 lights, 40 flats and 40 bias for comparison. This was also done with exact same setup and the only difference is the calibration files added to the stack and had perfect guiding. Based on your feedback, I feel the lens might be the suspect. This is very helpful, atleast it doesn't look like this is just a PP problem.

L_2021-04-21_22-09-11_Bin1x1_180s__na.fit L_2021-04-25_22-11-36_Bin1x1_300s__na.fit Bodesstack.tif

First image I'm posting here. M101 shot over 2 nights. Total integration time 4 Hrs 27 Mins from bortle 6 skies. Equipment used: EQ5 pro, SX-H9C camera, Tamron 150-600 lens at 600mm, Orion SSAG and guidescope, no filters. Processing: stacked in DSS, processed in Pixinsight and PS.  I got into AP in Jan this year and have been trying to get decent results without dropping a ton of cash into the hobby. I've been learning post processing with SiriL and photoshop in the past few months, but I'm struggling. So signed up for PI trial and have been poking around with my data. It definitely has helped with some of the frustration I was facing with SiriL, but still not able to get fine details to show up and the colours are messed up too. I'm posting the stacked TIFF file here as well. Please feel free to run it through your processing workflow and post the result here. It will help me enormously to understand if I have to improve on data acquistion or post processing. If you can't tell yet, i'm a total noob 🙂 and open to feedback. Thank you!

M101600mmcombostack.tif

On 10/03/2021 at 14:31, R26 oldtimer said:

To be honest, I would not use aperture control, I would go for wide open. The aperture blades create bad diffraction spikes, so if you have to step your lens down, it is better to do so by using a front aperture mask (carton or 3d printed) or filter step-down rings.

I was able to get it setup. Nikon lens+fotodiox aperture control to 52mm filter ring+52mm to T2 adapter+7.5mm t2 extension tube. Aperture control works even with my kenko 2x TC attached. I leave the aperture wide open and screw in step-down rings in the front filter ring 95mm - 77mm as you suggested. Zwo 1.25" filter adapter is on its way from China, hopefully it'll take a filter as well. Now I need to start working on my post processing skills

Had a rare clear night yesterday.  I got 11 three minute subs ruined by Satellites across 3 different objects. Its getting progressively worse, and starlink satellites are the worse offenders. I'm losing 10% of my subs to satellites. With 40000 of these in orbit, I'd be lucky to get a single sub without one zipping through it. Are you folks seeing similar numbers? Is there a way to clean it up to include in the stack?

Cheers

Prathab

26 minutes ago, R26 oldtimer said:

The 46,5 mm flange distance is a bit of a hassle with this camera as 17,5mm are used up in the camera. That's why I made another 2mm thick metal plate for the filter wheel instead of modifying its own 4mm thick one and gain some focus room inside and outside.

It looks like the zwo adapter with 1.25" filter will fit though.

Thank you for your input. I will let you know how I get on.

That setup looks great! I would need aperture control (as I'm using a G lens). I've ordered one of these adapters -Fotodiox Aperture Control 52mm Filter for Nikon G/DX Lens in Reverse Mount for Macro Photography and a 52mm to 42mm Male-male coupling ring. The camera I'm considering is the OSC version of what you have. All 3 adds up to 46.5mm from sensor to flange.  

Is there enough thread room inside the starlight camera to bury one of these - https://www.firstlightoptics.com/zwo-filters/zwo-t2-to-125-filter-holder.html ?

I'm very interested in this subject. It took 4 years, but your post eventually found its audience 😀 Trying to achieve exactly this to see if I can pickup an old cooled small chip CCD camera to pair with my Nikon mount 150-600mm lens. That doughnut spacer looks like custom size and I'm not able to find it online. Could you tell me where I can source one? Thank you!