My First Widefield

[JamesF]

Not at all happy with this, but for what it's worth, here's a heavily rescaled version of my first widefield image, of Cygnus. 30x45s subs and 10 darks taken with an unmodded 450D using the kit 18-55mm lens at f/4.5, in distinctly poor seeing last night.

On the plus side I've got Cygnus, Lyra, Sagitta and Delphinus all in shot as well as the Coathanger. On the negative side, there's very little range in the image. It's possible that the seeing is partially responsible for that, but perhaps longer subs would help. Unfortunately at 60s I start to get the tiniest amount of trailing, the stars look ever so fractionally "eggy" and DSS throws a hissy fit.

Advice on improving is always welcome.

James

[Black Knight]

Looks alright to me - you can see the milky way quite clearly . I think you're doing quite well with 45s subs to be honest - I was anticipating only trying 30s! Did you use APT in the end, or use a remote?

[JamesF]

I used APT. It took a short while to get the hang of and it crashed a couple of times when I was trying to edit capture plans, but mostly it worked pretty well. It was especially useful for getting focus and framing right (I actually improved on the framing for the 60s shots, but it's not to be

James

[Black Knight]

I couldn't go back to doing things manually after getting used to APT. It does crash every so often, but it just makes the whole thing to a large extent "fire and forget" . I'm all for a simple life

Sent from my mobile using Tapatalk, so please excuse the speeling and granma!

[JamesF]

Actually, it occurs to me that perhaps converting it to 8-bit to work on in gimp was not a good idea. I need to find an acceptably-priced version of photoshop.

James

[davew]

That looks just fine to me given your description of the night.

Was this done on a static tripod ? At 18mm I can only manage 25 seconds or so without eggs !

Have you tried taking flats ? If not, and the camera is on a tripod, then you can use a white wall and the camera on AV. Don't move the focus of course. I've used that method and it does work. Go close to the wall without casting shadows.

A bit more processing and a few more subs will work wonders. It's a nice result.

There is now a 16 bit release of Gimp I believe. Not tried it myself.

Dave.

[jgs001]

Looks pretty good to me, and I'm impressed you managed 45 seconds, I always found 30 seconds at 18mm to be pushing it just that teeny bit, not enough to throw out dss though

[JamesF]

I shall see how the sky looks tonight then and perhaps give it another go.

The camera was on my EQ3-2, so tracking-ish. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not sure how much better I can get it though. I may try nipping up the worm on the RA axis a little more this evening.

I've not tried flats yet. I'm still very much at the start of the journey

James

[jgs001]

Aha.. If you're tracking even at 45 seconds, if you shoot enough of them, you can pull out Ha with an unmodded camera.

[JamesF]

In that case I shall give it a go with lots more subs tonight if the weather holds out. It's hard to tell what's going to happen at the moment looking at sat24.

James

[Chris]

Actually, it occurs to me that perhaps converting it to 8-bit to work on in gimp was not a good idea. I need to find an acceptably-priced version of photoshop.

James

how about something like this James:)

http://www.google.co.uk/products/catalog?hl=en&cp=8&gs_id=2u&xhr=t&q=paint+shop+pro&um=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1440&bih=715&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=684838122063068814&sa=X&ei=lPQWUPbiIo_GswbqgIGQDQ&ved=0CHQQ8wIwAg

[JamesF]

Thanks. I have a copy of photoshop that should be arriving this week, but if I can't get on with it I might well give that a go.

James

[Chris]

I think you should be sorted, theres lots of primers for PS:)

Oh yeah, nice wide field shot by the way, I'd be well chuffed with any widefield shot I took that showed the milky way:)

[JamesF]

Thank you. I have to say that I think the one I did the following night, here:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/157267-another-cygnus-widefield/

is much better. Comparison of the two definitely highlights the effects of poor seeing.

James