First attempts at the Dumbell Nebula

[Quatermass]

Spent ages going ga ga trying to find it tonight almost gave up and then hoora there it was wow. First time I had seen this one tonight so had to have a go at it. Took 45 shots at 800 iso 25 seconds each then 15 darks. I had been a lazy bones and not bothered with doing some flats but tonight I had a brain wave.. use your fishing umbrella! I had it behind me to blot out the neighbors kitchen lights so when I had done my dark's just moved the scope at the inside of it and held up an led torch on it and took 10 flats. By now I was feeling excited.. what would I get.. quick indoors and bung it all in deep sky stacker. Wait for ages then ohhhh wow core blimy mate..etc. Took the stacked image in to photoshop cs5 and several owl hoots later here is what I came up with. Such a cool looking nebula should have looked at this one ages ago.

[solarwallace]

I can't comment technically as I'm just a planetary spc kind of guy but that's a cool looking space jellyfish you've got there Might just be my desktop background next week methinks.

Steve

[Quatermass]

Space Jelly fish are cool wonder if theres a space sponge up there I know we have the crab nebula ;-)

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[mikinio]

nice pic,can you see this visualy?

[drumsolo]

Wow that's an impressive amount of detail for only 25 second exposures, very cool! Do u have very dark skies where you live? I haven't taken any flats yet, do they make much difference? Not quite sure what a flat is and how to take one.

[Quatermass]

Yes you can see it very clearly once you find it lol I dont have a go to set up so it took a while. But you wont see what a camera picks out ie the colours wont be there. Still a cool target to find and obsserve.

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[Quatermass]

Those darks and flats do indeed make a difference it seems. Most times I am pretty slap dash and cant be bothered to do flats but the ones I took last night made a big difference to the image. Darks are easy just slap a cover on the scope but to do the flats my fishing brolly was used. It has a white non reflective surface inside so I just pointed the scope at it and shone a 23 led torch at the inside of the brolly. A tshirt over your scope would do the same. I will post some pics of my set up on here for you today.

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[Quatermass]

As promised here is the set up I am using at the moment.

First we have the whole set up Skywatcher 200p on an EQ5 Mount with a single axis motor drive and the control pad. Attached is my Lumix G1 camera via an adapter into the telescope. I run an electric a cable to my Axis drive controls so I dont have to keep buying batteries for it, find that helps with the tracking as well as its fully powered all the time. The gray box under the axis control pad is a home made holder for it made from cutlery holder and tied on the tripod leg with cable ties.

Next is the Bahtinov Mask I use to focus with home made from an old file folder and some tape works great though.

Then there is my camera adapters so it will fit onto my telescope...

Telescope cap left on to take the darks with...

Then point the scope with the cap off at the umbrella and use an led torch to illumate it for taking the flats...

To polar align the scope I dont take very long normally I just look through my polar scope at the bottom of the telescope and make sure the north star is in the little circle that you can see inside the polar scope that is printed on the lens as a guide. That and moving the weights down a bit so the motors grip on the axis guide seems to work well for me.

When I have the set up ready I use the mask to focus on a bright star using live view on my camera with the digital zoom on x4 to get it sharp. That done I start taking the pictures of my target.

For the Dumbell Nebula I took 45 shots ISO was 800 at 25 seconds then put the cap on and took 15 darks and 10 flats with the cap off and pointing at the brolly lit up by the led torch.

Last step was taking the photos stacking them in deep sky stacker then getting the final image from that and putting it in photoshop to finish off with levels curves and various layer modes. Check out the photoshop sticky for lots of tutorials on photo shop.

Hope that helps any one else wanting to have a go its not that hard and great fun to do.

:):)