M57, The Ring Nebula, first attempt

[WaveSoarer]

After a first reasonably successful attempt at imaging Orion nebula I tried M57 this evening, which I expected to be the next step up as a challenge. I polar aligned and then put M57 in the centre of the field of view using my 15 mm EP. I then mounted the SLR, Mrs WaveSoarer's Nikon D50, via a 1.25" 2x Barlow screwed directly onto the T-ring. The first problem was that there was nothing sufficiently bright in the field of view to bring the camera to focus. I put the 15 mm EP back in and recentred on M57. I then slewed in RA to some nearby bright stars, when viewing through the finder scope, and practiced moving back to M57. I then remounted the SLR and focused up on the patch of bright stars before slewing back to where I expected M57 to be - as viewed through the finder.

After encouraging Mrs WaveSoarer to wrap up warm and come out into the cold to make sure the camera was all set up, we took a series of 30s exposures with the shutter remote control and the dual axis tracking running. Mrs WaveSoarer then used PhotoShop to align, stack and crop the images. She also threw out a few which had wobbles and she tweaked the RGB levels and reduced the saturation a bit.

As you'll see we were lucky to get M57 in the frame, and bear in mind this is a cropped image, but we're pretty pleased with the result. There are no darks or flats and we used 21 of the 30s exposures. There is obvious colour in M57 and the central star is even visible, as is the faint "companion" behind the nebula. Not too bad and I'm sure we can do better with practice.

[atmenterprises]

Doesn't look like a first attempt at all to me. Nice job on the photo!

[Bizibilder]

Well done!

You may find it easier to stack your images using a piece of freeware called "Deep Sky Stacker". There is a tutorial that comes with it that tells you how it works, if in doubt use the defaults or ask on the forum, there are many of us here who use it regularly.

[Aenima]

Like.

Nice colours, some red there, good stuff.

Aenima

[adamsp123]

Nice one, and I agree try deepskystacker (DSS)

[WaveSoarer]

Thanks a lot guys. We'll certainly look out for deep sky stacker. It's great fun doing this and switching the layers on, one by one, in photoshop for the final reveal. Interestingly, the central star was actually visible on a few of the individual frames.

[Aenima]

Its mad how much difference a few seconds of exposure on a camera makes, compared to the view in the ep.

Like little patches of colour jump out from the backgraound. DSS is good at aligning then curves adjustments but still a good plan to take it into your usual photoeditor software.

Nice image.

Aenima

[WaveSoarer]

Aenima,

I agree. There is long thread about the visual observation of the central star in M57. With a 30s exposure of an unmodified SLR it is actually reasonably obvious and it really shows well after stacking a few frames. I can just about make out colour visually, with my trusty 15 mm EP, and the brightness within the ring is also fairly clear. I do really like my visual astronomy. The imaging side is also fun and gives myself and Mrs WaveSoarer a chance to appreciate the beauty of the night sky together. We're hoping that the imaging will allow us to get some more detail on very faint objects and the challenge is, let's face it, great fun.

We have a, relatively, simple setup and the addition of tracking is possibly the biggest upgrade we've done. This was originally intended to let us share views and not have to nudge. It also allows us to image and squeezing the most out of what we have.

Dave

[Aenima]

Thats really cool,

I have to admit to finding stargazing irresistable, its difficult and even basic success is rewarding - and as you said the comparitive simplicity of set-ups like ours makes every result count and hard earned, well done to you both - a good team

Regards

Aenima

[Gina]

A wonderful start Good luck with this highly enjoyable hobby

[JamesF]

Well done. With some darks and fed through DSS I bet that would look even better. It's far from too late to do the darks now if you want to.

James

[sologuitarist61]

Very nice and well done on your first attempt at it

[Gina]

You're ahead of me, I haven't even attempted that one yet There's so much I want to image and very few clear nights!

[WaveSoarer]

Thanks all. We'll certainly try to do some work on darks and flats but perhaps for the next set of images - we've been in for a while now and we have our log fir going well. I've been following the discussions on some of the very beautiful images that others have been capturing where the number of darks and flats have been indicated. Is there a rule of thumb about how many are needed and how often? Also, does the temperature of the camera need to reach equilibrium?

I expect that CCD corrections will become increasingly more important with fainter objects. I will need to work out how to better frame the images though as our SLR isn't that young any more and doesn't have support for a live view via a PC. I'll download Deep Sky Stacker, as suggested, and take things from there. Mrs WaveSoarer is really good with Photo Shop and I expect that she'll appreciate DSS as PS can be fiddely for certain things.

[x6gas]

That's a mighty fine attempt...

You can always check your framing with a longer sub - you'll get star trailing, of course, but should get enough signal on bright ish objects to be able to frame it up - even with my CCD cameras I do this then pick a bright star and move that in relation to the object so that the target is properly framed.

+1 for deep sky stacker... A fantastic bit of free software. A bit slow in comparison to some of the commercial packages but it gets there in the end and will be much quicker than manually stacking layers in PS (but hats off for patience and fortitude!)

[WaveSoarer]

The camera is limited to a maximum of 30s exposures and the small screen on the back isn't really good enough to show sufficient detail on the positioning of anything fairly faint. I expext that we'd need to connect up a laptop and download test images. A bit clunky but just about doable.

[ultranova]

Remarkably all the odds were stacked against you and you still managed to produce this great image, I like your dedication

Top Stuff

Paul.

[x6gas]

No "B" (bulb) setting on the camera? That will let you take exposures longer than 30s. You can use an IR remote to trigger and close the shutter (couple of quid from fleabay...) and zoom the image on the screen if needed.

[WaveSoarer]

Thanks all again. Yes, there is indeed a bulb mode and this will certainly help frame the images. Mrs WaveSoarer looked into it this morning, in response to advice from the forum, and it does indeed work via the IR remote - one blip for open and a second blip for closed. We can try this for framing but I expect that lots of 30s exposures may be the way to go for avoiding star trails from tracking.

[Aenima]

Thanks all again. Yes, there is indeed a bulb mode and this will certainly help frame the images. Mrs WaveSoarer looked into it this morning, in response to advice from the forum, and it does indeed work via the IR remote - one blip for open and a second blip for closed. We can try this for framing but I expect that lots of 30s exposures may be the way to go for avoiding star trails from tracking.

Quartermass told me a good way to get max exposure times, as unless your using top notch gear and software permenently fixed in place, and like silly amounts of accuracy things end up being almost guesswork - and likely to differ each time you set up , again unless your set-up is permanent, so with the amount of accuracy varying a little you'll be getting some nights work better than others.

So this is for those of us with EQ3-EQ5 type mounts with 200p size scopes having to set up each session fresh.

Get polaraligned as well as possible and attach your dslr, then stick it on bulb and try 30secs - zoom in on the preview screen to check for trails. Then repeat at 40sec, if no trails try 50sec but if there are trails knock it back down to 30.

It may be 1min,15secs one night and 20-30secs another night, depending on variations in polar accuracy, and when you get the good night make the best of it with longer exposures and fainter targets.

Luck is often a big part, for me definitely.

Regards

Aenima