First image of the sky - Help

[AstroLuke]

Yesturday i was out trying to take some images of the nightsky with my camera and heq5. Sadly my camera can only open its shutter for 1 min at a time so i have to take many pictures to get something good.

I took 5 pictures of a random spot above my house. It was hard to find a place where the sky wasnt light polluted.

Now that i have the 5 images im a bit unsure what to do with them. I know i have to stack the pictures but dont know how.

It was also my first time to polar align. Can anyone see if it was correctly aligned. I dont know how its supposed to look.

/Thanks

[oldfruit]

Hi luke, i am no imaging expert but i can make out the constelation Cassiopia and the stars look like points of light so you must be doing something right.

Also you mention that your post has received very little attention. I would immagine that might be because most of us are at work and will not have a chance to browse SGL until later but i am lucky enough to be able to do so at work also.

[Shibby]

Hi Luke,

To stack images you'll need some stacking software - I recommend DeepSkyStacker, there are loads of threads here on SGL describing how to use it. It also has a decent guide on the website.

As for your images, as oldfruit says, you've got no obvious star trailing so you must have a decent enough polar alignment. You've got great star shapes and focus! However, the sky background is quite bright, it looks like it's still illuminated by the sun below the horizon. What time were the images taken at? Unfortunately it doesn't get properly dark at all this time of the year!

The idea of stacking is to cancel out noise in the image, allowing you to stretch the levels and pull out the fainter details. But if your sky is too bright, you will find this process quite tricky, though not necessarily impossible.

I hope this has been of some use and gives you a starting point!

[JohnnyD333]

Hey Luke,

There are stars in the pic as Oldfruit has mentioned. Can you give us some more info on your camera and its settings? What kind of camera is it, what iso setting did you use? Also, were your skies pitch black or was there some light? These will all have an effect on your pictures, it can be quite a pain.

[AstroLuke]

Thanks for the anwsers. This was taken around 1:30-1:45, and taken with olympus e-420 at iso 800 with each 1 minute of exposure time.

Yes the sky was still bright at the edges of the horizon, but i thought the sky was pretty dark where i pointed the camera.

[JohnnyD333]

At ISO 800, with any light in the sky, your pics will look like daytime with a 1 minute exposure. It is very important your skies are black, and even then if there is any light pollution from a nearby town it can creep into your photos. It is a tricky process. It stinks that these factors are out of your control most of the time, I feel everything your doing is spot on, just wait and see if your skies can become a little darker.

[AstroLuke]

So it cant put the images into one? :/

Btw sorry i meant iso 400. The pictures were supposed to be taken at iso 800 but i ended up doing 400 instead.

[Digz]

So it cant put the images into one? :/

You can providing Deep Sky Stacker can find enough reference points (stars) to stack the images.

I would seriously download DSS and give it ago and see what happens.

As said above polar alignment looks fairly good as for a 60s exposure there appears to be no trails. It looks like these were taking with the camera piggy backing the scope? It looks like a wide focal length which will be more forgiving with inaccuracies in alignment so it can be difficult to tell.

All in all it looks like your making a good start.

[AstroLuke]

Alright i tryed Deep Sky Stacker. But when changing the RGB the bottom of the picture becomes all white Seems like there is too much light.

Sad :/

[Digz]

It just needs some tweaking once the images have been stacked.

Have a read through this:

DeepSkyStacker - User's Manual

[Sp@ce_d]

Hope you don't mind I had a very quick play to see what you've got.

Stacked in DSS and a quick over tweek in PS. I haven't corrected the star shapes so you can see how much movement they show for the exposure time.

[AstroLuke]

Wow, that looks great! Still havent found out how to do it :/ Mine looks totaly wierd each time i put it trhough DSS, even when tweeking, RGB

[Sp@ce_d]

This is how it came out of DSS..

I then loaded it into photoshop did a quick levels adjustment, got rid of the gradient (bit overdone as it's really too black but hides the house roof) and brightened the stars up a bit.

If you don't have PS try the Gimp also you can start out with the default settings in DSS and get decent results.