Grant93

Awesome pictures!

The only filter I own is a UHC filter, so will try it myself on the next clear night. How much of this is effected by having a unmodified DSLR, is it just the reds that will be faded?

Cheers 😃

Grant

13 hours ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

Nice image, great improvement on the first one 👍

I think your short focal length will probably limit you on this target. M13 is around 16 - 17 arc minutes diameter, so with your setup you're it'll cover just a little below 500 pixels on the sensor (or, to put it another way, about 1% of available sensor area).

Thank you

Looks like I will have to hunt for some bigger targets then Having a north west facing back garden and my house facing the south east, feels like its blocking all the good stuff! I am reluctant to set up on the driveway 😅

Grant

Hi Richard,

Interesting read that was 😃 As far as sleep deprivation goes, I cant answer as working rotating shifts means I am always tired anyway 😪

But for other suggestions, as we don't get proper night time back until late July, splitting doubles is a great thing to do in the summer time, but also look for some brighter DSOs which are at optimal elevations above the horizon right now, M13, M92, M57 are a few off the top of my head 😃

Clear skies!

Grant

Hello all,

Now the sunny weather has passed in this part of the midlands and we're back to the usual rainy cloudy british summer, I am getting much less cloud free nights. But thankfully on Saturday it was nice and clear all upto just after 1am, which let me get 40 mins worth of data on M13 Globular. This was the first DSO I attempted with my rig, and because I spent most of my night trying to polar allign, then find the object and frame it as best as possible, I guess the biggest improvement on the picture is the fact I can be out, polar alligned, object framed and imaging within 10-15 minutes now, rather than the previous 30-40 when I first got my rig 😅. My target for the Saturday was to be able to truly capture the thousands of stars that are contained within this magnificent globular, but sadly I have captured far from that!

Just here to ask what could be the issue, too long or too short exposures?

Not enough data?

Simply too small for the ZS61?

Anyhow here it is, I will also post my first so you can see the slight improvements Which I think is, simply a sharper picture, less noise, the first one for some reason also has a lot of double stars which arent actually doubles, god knows how that happened 😅 Hopefully you can tell which one is the newer and which is the older one 😅

Details of capture (Newer image only):

EOS 800d at 800 Iso

ZS61

iOptron Skyguider Pro

40x60s Lights

20 Darks

20 Bias

Thanks in advance for everyones advice and input

Grant

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

It's a nice thought but since I started this hobby a few years ago the most opportunities occur between April and August. Winter sadly just seems to bring Forever Cloud.

Thats the truth, but sadly also due to it not getting dark until like 11:50Pm atm, more of these clear nights are missed out due to my shift rotation than the few we get in winter 😪

Sadly, it's my 4:30AM get ups for mornings and night shifts that stop me from imaging on these short nights, been lucky recently on afternoons and weekends! When winter comes the 4:30AM get ups won't effect imaging when it gets dark at 6 🤓

Sadly, it's my 4:30AM get ups for mornings and night shifts that stop me from imaging on these short nights, been lucky recently on afternoons and weekends! When winter comes the 4:30AM get ups won't effect imaging when it gets dark at 6 🤓

13 hours ago, powerlord said:

it's not gonna make a lot of difference for stars imho. Usually modified just removes the IR filter, which has the side effect that we want of letting in the h-alpha more.

So - you need to point it at something thats got lots of h-alpha.

At the moment that means something like North America nebula which you'l see in the same forum myself and another op have posted pics of.

What you should then see is a lot of of the nebulosity vs non modifed camera. If it was earlier in the year M42 is the best target to demostrate the difference.

As it's full spectrum though I believe you should be putting an UV/IR filter on for astro use otherwise you get star bloat - which I think there is some of in your image ?

Just reading this and thought "oh it must be me"

Yes if you compare the two also, it's a good comparison of the difference of H-alpha picked up between modified and unmodified. (spoiler alert - his is better ).

1 hour ago, Clarkey said:

To be honest given the lack of darkness at the moment and only an hour of exposure, this is a pretty good result. Longer integration really does make a difference to the Signal to noise ratio. Personally for most targets I will use all the time available in a night and often more than one session. If you look at some of the really good images on the forum they are more often than not long exposure times of 10 hrs or more. (Unless you have a RASA at F2!)

With regards to the walking noise - yes this needs guiding / dithering.

Ill have a look at startools!

Yeah I want to start using more than one session for my images, but as I am not using a goto, its difficult to frame exactly like the last session. I've been advised a ASIair PRO will help, and can also be used to guide (with the guidescope and camera ofcourse) and dither? Obviously quite a big investment though in comparison with my current budget setup, one I do plan on making, but not in the near future. Unless there are cheaper options available   Thank you for your help!

2 hours ago, fwm891 said:

Hi Grant - I've had a play with your image file. I've processed it in PI, theres a great deal of information in your image. There's a patch of blue in the lower right of the image I haven't tried to remove.

Can I ask if you covered the camera eyepiece during exposures as that can cause awkward patches of light on images.

Thank you for that I'm not too sure where the lights come from, Derby is about 8 miles in that direction so possibly that. I am loving seeing these different edits.

That is a very good point also, I've never even thought of it, no I haven't been covering it but I definitely will from now on!

I've given it a go at re editting myself, trying to take into account advise given here, again only in Gimp at the moment, will download some new advised software and give it a go later! But heres the new one.

Stretched, star mask applied to protect from further stretching (did it wrong last time I think). editted the 'background' with color select on one layer, lowering the blackpoint to make it darker, then on a seperate layer increased the contrast (I think thats what its called) of the nebula seperate to the background, again with color select. Then when happy with the background and nebula, I made a 'stamp' layer (photoshop term I think?), Did a star reduction, noise reduction, and sharpened it.

11 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

Hi,

I have had a very quick go at editing your image. Might be a bit over-done but I think there is a little more to get out of it. (I also do mono usually so OSC is not something I normally do).

There does seem to be some walking noise in the image, which is a bit more tricky to remove. As always more time would improve the detail. I rarely image more than on object in a night to get the most detail I can.

 

Really nice! My image seems to look a little 'soft' (Not sure on proper terms) compared to both yours and Adrians processing. You have both pulled out a lot more.

The walking noise I assume is caused by the natural drift of my guider.. Is the only way to fix that by dithering? For which I believe I need to invest in guiding?

Thanks a lot

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Nice report. M101 is relatively large but with low surface brightness. As a result it is one of the harder Messier objects and really does benefit from dark skies. I’ve never seen it from my house (Bortle 7 ish). Best views were in a large dob at Lucksall during one of the SGL star parties. It doesn’t need a large scope though, just the dark skies.

Thank you! Similar to the Triangulum galaxy then. I had a look on a light pollution map the other day coincidentally, I think my closest bortle 4 is 30mins, bortle 3 is about 1 hour 30mins! Surrounded by citys! Will definitely drive out to the bortle 4 regularly when longer nights come back. Was gobsmacked when I visited a bortle 3 in early May, would love to live closer!

59 minutes ago, Pixies said:

Yep - I've easily seen M101 with 10x50 bins in a Bortle 3 sky. I would imagine it's pretty impossible at this time of year with anything, visually.

 

Yes this lack of night time is frustrating!

1 hour ago, Adreneline said:

Hi Grant.

I'm not sure I did the best thing really.

I took the image into PixInsight and cropped off the edge effects. I then used a background extraction process to remove gradients - but not totally successfully. I then stretched the image a lttle and cloned it. With the original I removed the stars and then stretched it a lot more to reveal the nebulosity. I also used a colour saturation process to pull out the colour as best I could. The cloned image I stretched using an ArcSinh process to pull out the star colour whilst at the same time suppressing the background as much as possible. I then combined the clone with the original as a Lighten layer in PixelMath in PixInsight. Once it was combined I reset the black point a little and realigned the rgb histograms. I then ran a star reduction process in PixInsight just to tone the stars down a little. Finally I took the image out of PixInsight and did a little bit of noise reduction in an old free version of Nik Dfine2.

I am sure expert osc imagers would do far better than me but your data is good and there is plenty there to work on with nice stars. More data and darker skies and you'd be onto a winner!

HTH

Adrian

 

Thanks a lot Going to refer to this next time I process!

2 hours ago, Adreneline said:

Hi Grant.

Great start on a tricky target - especially recognising the lack of astro darkness.

I've had a go at your image and done the best I can - I'm sure someone with more skill at osc processing could do far better.

NAN and the Pelican are clearly visible.

I'm struggling to get rid of the light pollution in the bottom right without losing more of the target nebulosity; probably my inept use of PI.

I think if you could take some Flats to go with your other calibration frames that might help as well.

Adrian

 

Woah, I like that! A much more natural looking picture.

Shows I have a long way to go yet

Thanks a lot for that

Any tips on the editting?

Hello everyone!

In my area of the midlands, the weather was absolutely clear last night, so I got both rigs out, time for observing and imaging! I got set up at about 23:20 PM. To allow time for the scope to reach ambient temperature. After collimation and alligning the spotting scope I left it sitting on M13 whilst it got darker. Whilst waiting I set up the imaging rig, Once I set that off on the NA Nebula I began my night! Even though I viewed similar things as my last report, I used a different eyepiece and same barlow. Although didnt plan on using the barlow much, only for a couple of my planned targets.

7-21mm Orion Zoom

2x Celestron Barlow

10" Skywatcher Flextube

Bortle 5 Back garden.

M13 - As mentioned above, I left it hanging on M13. When coming back to the eyepiece I thought it couldn't of moved too much, so without using my spotting scope I moved it around a bit on 21mm to see if I could find it again. I thought I found it (little did I know at the time it was M92). So I viewed it in 21mm, down to 7mm. I was satisfied with it, but not as good as I thought it would be. So I went to move onto M92. When looking through the spotting scope I realised I was way off M13, I was infact on M92. So I moved my scope back towards M13. I was shocked, this truly brought out the quality of this zoom lens for the price, as I've read before on reviews. 21mm it looked its usual sparkily self. 7mm Zoom was better. When I added the barlow, this was when it blew my mind away. I had to back off the zoom ever so slightly very carefully adjust the focuser, and when it reached focus it was about as breathtaking as DSO's go. When I see things like this during astronomical twilight, It makes me even more eager for night time to come back!

M51 - Nothing much to report here, two galactic cores, no signs of outter spirals.

M101 - Even less to report here, never been able to find this, and last night was no different! (Advice on this one is welcome )

Bodes and Cigar - A nice couple of easy galaxys to find, the cigar was easy to resolve, no averted vision needed. Bodes had a bright core, no spirals visible again, but a outter halo with averted vision.

M57 - Another mind blower! As I said in my last report, I've only ever managed to view this lower on the horizon, and didn't manage to last time due to clouds. All I thought when I saw it, was holy smokes (since it was relevant ). Clear difference between the inner circle and the outter ring. Put the barlow on and used the zoom, Not too sure what I went down to, but just so it wasn't covering my full FOV. Didnt take any detail away, so I decided to try averted vision. I can't say whether I saw the centre star for sure or not, so I won't claim I did, just maybe!

I planned on viewing the new nova also, but that was also way behind my house! Going to get the binos out tonight to view it if its clear .

I know they are similar targets to my last report, but I wanted to compare with different eyepieces, and also be able to view M57 this time . All in all happy with the night, the imaging wasn't too disappointing either! Posted that onto the starting with imaging section!

Thank you for reading!

Grant

Hello all!

Last night was an absolute bliss night here for imagers and observers alike around here, not a cloud in the sky! Was excited to get my new 135mm Samyang out for a whirl, my god was I shocked! The quality of this lens is bang on!

Decided to try a widefield neb that my house isn't blocking (North west facing back garden), So I pointed it to the north american neb. Sadly not a good target for an unmodified camera, I am very reluctant to modify this as I use it for every day things also. I am not totally unhappy with the image, its clearly visible, but not what I expected, I am sure others have got 10x better in an unmodified camera. Ill upload it and the details of capturing, and hopefully someone can pass on advice It could be the fact its only 1 hours worth of exposure, would 3-4 hours make A LOT of difference? (Excited for longer nights). Hopefully its also in focus, I try my best, not got a batinov for this yet. It looked loads more in focus before noise reduction and such, but I kept the noise reduction in gimp as it seemed to take your eyes away from the stars and more towards the nebula with reduction.

EOS 800d

Skyguider Pro

Samyang 135mm

Lights - 38 x 90 Seconds

Darks - 30 x 90 Seconds

Bias - 23 Frames

Editted in Gimp - Stretched, Star mask, Noise reduction.

I will also upload the TIFF if anyone wants a go at editting (Would be much appreciated to see if anyone else could pull more out)

Thank you all!

Grant

NAsecondattempt.TIF

Sorry, just spotted this whilst planning some observation on this very clear night. Bit of a noob when it comes to things like this but I've never seen a nova before and it will be nice to add it into my list! How do I go about putting them Coordinates into stellarium so I can find this tonight? Thank you!

12 hours ago, SuburbanMak said:

Super report - really enjoyed reading this thank you. 
M13 & M81/2 are on my regular “greatest hits” tours at the end of a session - objects that really bring home the vastness! 
 

Thank you I can very much see why! Was I missing detail on bodes, are the spiral arms quite easy to see under real night skies?

10 hours ago, F15Rules said:

Nice report Grant, detailed and well written👍🙂.

Regarding post session care of your scope, I'd strongly recommend leaving covers off overnight to allow the natural drying off process to be completed. This is, I suspect, more important for refractors, with their objectives having air spaced elements, but it's a fact that moisture and any optics don't mix..

Regarding the next step in your eyepiece collection, at the 10mm step and an affordable price, I'd recommend the 10mm BCO (Baader Classic Ortho) - unless you need to wear glasses to observe.

They are extremely sharp across the (fairly narrow) field. Contrast is also excellent (good for your faint fuzzies😁), and your barlow should also work well with the 10mm, to give you a 5mm for very good nights (and for splitting doubles!).

If you are wanting to view extended objects that won't fit into the narrow field of view, the BST range do offer a nice 60 degree field which is a good deal wider than the Ortho.

As has already been said, don't let the light nights put you off trying higher magnification..the higher powers actually darken the sky background very noticeably, and often make fainter and diffuse targets stand out better.

Keep those reports coming!👍😊

Dave

 

Thank you!

Sounds like them eyepieces would also be good for moon nights! I'll have a look at them

Grant

14 hours ago, Zermelo said:

If you're looking around for more fixed eyepieces then the forum is full of recommendations to suit any wallet. There's a great variety of opinion as you'd expect, though many here will tell you that among the best value-for-money buys as a first step up from the stock eyepieces are these.

14 hours ago, Kon said:

As @Zermelosaid the BST EPs are pretty good for the price. I have the 15 and 8 mm for DSOs and planets and they are pretty excellent with my SK 8" Dob. The 25mm is not bad at all (I do not think i have used the box standard 10mm much, 1-2 times?) but I am looking to upgrade it and we had a good discussion here if you want to have a read (I am still getting my head around all the suggestions):

 

I think I now have some requests for my birthday! 😇 A bit to wait yet though 😕

Woah! That is some list, at first I thought "How has he managed all this with the lack of current night time", then I saw, Oz! Jealous! Looks like you had a great time!

Grant

2 minutes ago, Zermelo said:

A nice first report, Grant. It's a pleasant surprise to be able to get some good observations, even though we're within a fortnight of midyear.

I agree with the comments above - your 10" Dob in Bortle 5 skies is a very capable beast, but the SkyWatcher stock eyepieces won't really show it at its best (especially not the 10mm).

On the question about cap or no cap when you bring your equipment in, all the opinions that I've seen on this forum have supported leaving them off until the equipment has returned to room temperature and any dew that did form has evaporated, otherwise you're trapping it in with the caps and increasing the chance of fungus. Just try to position items to avoid falling dust getting onto delicate surfaces. I usually leave my kit out in the lounge overnight, but prop the covers loosely against each item.

Yes I can't wait for the solstice to come and go, and watch the nights slowly get darker.

Any eyepieces you would recommend? Other than the stock ones being 25mm and 10mm, I have a 2x barlow, a 2" 32mm Orion Q70 (Love this one), 1.25" Orion zoom (above I mistakedly typed celestron (7-21mm)). The 25mm feels like it gives good views, quite clear, clearer even than the Orion zoom, but I assume that has to do with zoom lens often giving less quality views, but I like the zoom for doubles and hopefully it will be good when Jupiter and Saturn are visible at better hours. But I do see a lot less quality when it comes to the 10mm as you say.

That advice seems to be the go to, I'll do that from now on! Thank you!

3 hours ago, domstar said:

Actually, I made it out last night. Just a little session but found 3 new doubles. It was thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding.

Keep writing the reports. It's the best part of the forum for me and it often gives me the little push that I need.

Good to hear! Might have to try some doubles myself tonight whilst imaging! (If its clear, 1 weather report says clear, other says 90% clouds).

31 minutes ago, Pixies said:

I agree with @domstar. I love reading others' reports, whether they are targets I'm familiar with, or even ones I could never see unless I travel to the southern hemisphere. 

After a clear night, it's great to have a peek here and see half a dozen or so reports ready for reading during my tea-break!

I only became familiar with this part of the forum on the day before I had this observation, it was fun reading other people observations, getting ideas, see how other people work around this astronomical twilight. Then when observing I just started taking notes for my own report which made it feel productive. Its also made me even consider sketching!

15 minutes ago, Kon said:

Very enjoyable report! Well done on all these targets. I have been blessed with clouds the past week or so.😂

I tend to leave my Dob and EPs open o/n to dry (in the winter if I have frost  on the OTA or heavy dew before coming in or after, I run my dehumidifier in the same room o/n) and put the dust caps, lids etc  in the morning. It is better to let them dry thoroughly than trapping moisture inside that could potentially lead to mildew. Others might advise differently.

Thank you, haha not had a truly clear night for a week or so here, this was just making do. 😆

And thank you for the advice also. 😃

4 hours ago, John said:

According to "Clear Outside" I'm in Bortle 5. To be honest it varies quite a bit here, depending on the direction you are looking in because of the "glows" of Bristol to the East and Newport / Cardiff to the North West.

 

 

Haha I know the feeling, bortle 5 here also. Good on non football nights, not good on football nights, massive glows from the flood lights. Luckily the glow is also in the direction of the town, which is not a major park of the sky I often attempt to observe anyway.

Very interesting read, gives me a few more ideas on what to observe next. What bortle class are you in may I ask?

Grant

I understand its mostly iOptron, Sky watcher and Celestron, so sorry to be a bit of a pest - but any tiny little William optics flatteners for the ZS61 (not reducer-flatteners) sitting amongst them big boxes? 😇😇

2 hours ago, domstar said:

A very good read. Bode's and the Cigar often seem about to give up detail and I love looking at them. There's a third, dimmer galaxy right near them too, which I only saw for the first time in May. I'm always put off by the late nights and lack of darkness at this time of year, but your report has given me a bit of a push to get out again. Thanks.

It is frustrating having to wait until midnight for just astronomical twilight. But I remember sitting around in winter waiting for them dark nights, and feeling lucky if I got 1 every two weeks. So I feel obliged to take advantage of these clear nights, even if they arent perfect! Hope you get some clear skies and nice views! 😃

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Nice report Grant! Some good targets seen there. You may want to get yourself some higher power eyepieces, M13 in your scope would look good with more power when the skies get darker again.

Thank you! 😃 I do have a celestron zoom and a 10mm which the telescope came with. But as you say, I gotta wait for them proper dark nights (as dark as bortle 5 gets)!