First attempt at M51

[Nordberg]

Hi all

Thought I'd one of my first DSO images, captured on Thursday night. I've seen some amazing images in the "getting started" forum so I thought posting something more mediocre might encourage others to share their images too

I took 20x90s lights at ISO1600 (unguided) and 5 darks. Unfortunately there was a fair amount of wispy cloud around and I was only able to use 4 of the lights. I used Backyard EOS combined with a serial shutter cable for the captures, and stacked with DeepSkyStacker. I then made a few tweaks with GIMP based on some helpful forum posts on the matter.

Here's a crop of the image:

I'm looking forward to some clearer nights, as I'm hopeful that I can improve upon this!

[Scott]

6 minutes of data... i'd say that's pretty darn good mate. clearer, longer nights will make it better for us all

keep posting these images, it's great to see how people progress

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Love seeing the structure in there. Its a bit fuzzy but I'm not sure what that's down too. Really good image though.

[Nordberg]

Thanks for the kind comments. I think the fuzziness is down to using ISO1600 (which is probably a bit much for my camera) and only being able to use 4 of the lights.

[Matt Scunthorpe]

For Canon i think the 'sweet spot' is ISO 800. I guess it does depend on what you are imaging. I used 800 for M51 (see gallary) but there is nowhere near as much detail as in yours, they are the same exposure time but made up of different timed subs, ot sure how much of a difference that makes.

[lensman57]

Hi all

Thought I'd one of my first DSO images, captured on Thursday night. I've seen some amazing images in the "getting started" forum so I thought posting something more mediocre might encourage others to share their images too

I took 20x90s lights at ISO1600 (unguided) and 5 darks. Unfortunately there was a fair amount of wispy cloud around and I was only able to use 4 of the lights. I used Backyard EOS combined with a serial shutter cable for the captures, and stacked with DeepSkyStacker. I then made a few tweaks with GIMP based on some helpful forum posts on the matter.

Here's a crop of the image:

I'm looking forward to some clearer nights, as I'm hopeful that I can improve upon this!

Hi,

I have a Canon 1000d, and I used it to image M51 on a clear night in May using an 80 mm ED scope, the subs were 300s each at iso 800. I found that iso 1600 is way too noisy no matter many darks you stack. I think that 300s is about as much as the poor 1000d can cope with without some sort of cooling. Given that the last week or so been quite warm in the evening I think that you have done well, perhaps next time go for a lot more subs to build up S/N ratio and use more darks.I post the capture and I hope that you don't mind as I too am a relative newbie.

Regards,

A.G