Want a good laugh ?

[darthvader]

my first astro photo - pretty damn terrible I know !  taken with my 15x70 bins + a Nikon P80

ah well, you gotta start somewhere...things can only get better (I Hope !)

[ronin]

So it is true, it is made of cheese. :grin: :grin:

It's recognisable, what's the problem?

[voeole]

In my opinion, very good first attemp ! Keep going !

[Twisted Lip]

Yeah don't knock yourself, that's a lot better than my first effort!

Will

[JamesF]

Given the method used I don't think that's at all bad.  There's a bit of CA and I think perhaps your focus could be a little sharper, but that's nothing to be ashamed of.  Now take a few dozen the same way and stack them

James

[darthvader]

Given the method used I don't think that's at all bad.  There's a bit of CA and I think perhaps your focus could be a little sharper, but that's nothing to be ashamed of.  Now take a few dozen the same way and stack them

James

excuse my ignorance but, what is CA ? apart from California ? 

I need to read my camera's manual - I think it can take multiple continuous shots, maybe I can then try and 'stack' em - what software should I use to stack em ? (Windows 7 PC) - what will stacking do ? improve the detail?

p.s. it was minus 4 when i took it my hands were like blocks of ice !

[JamesF]

CA is "Chromatic Aberration".  Basically different wavelengths of light are refracted by different amounts when entering a lens and you can then see a colour "halo" around the image because not all the colours come to focus at the same point.  Your image has a slight hint of blue on the bottom right of the Moon.  It may actually be possible to fix that with a bit of processing.

For Moon shots I'd probably use Registax (free) for stacking.  The idea is that the stacking process reduces the amount of noise in the image which then allows higher levels of sharpening to bring out more detail.

This might help you:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/184192-full-disc-lunar-imaging-with-a-dslr/

James

[darthvader]

CA is "Chromatic Aberration".  Basically different wavelengths of light are refracted by different amounts when entering a lens and you can then see a colour "halo" around the image because not all the colours come to focus at the same point.  Your image has a slight hint of blue on the bottom right of the Moon.  It may actually be possible to fix that with a bit of processing.

For Moon shots I'd probably use Registax (free) for stacking.  The idea is that the stacking process reduces the amount of noise in the image which then allows higher levels of sharpening to bring out more detail.

This might help you:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/184192-full-disc-lunar-imaging-with-a-dslr/

James

wow that photo on your link is fantastic. thanks for the tips - i'll download that tool and have a play

[leader of the starry skys]

i do the same as you , i got a cheap Nikon Coolpix  hold it to me telescope and click away , have to delete about 8 out of ten shots, but i managed to get Jupiter and people have said you can see the bands , i haven't got the money for the add ons and good camera , but im happy with shots ive got so far  moon , Jupiter , venus , cant get Andromeda galaxy it don't throw off enough light , but carry on , i might try out that stacking as well i thought you could only do that if you was an expert  lol

[robbie c]

Don't knock it and as James said given the method used that's a great shot 

[lensman57]

It is much better than my first one, but don't get too cocky, you haven't my first one yet. Joking aside it is a pretty good capture.

A.G

[Pete Presland]

not too bad at all you can even see some craters!

[steppenwolf]

Well, no one is laughing and quite rightly so! Wrong tools but you've done a good job anyway. There is more to come out of your data too - here's a quick 'down and dirty' process of your image:-

[Velvet]

good job with bins  better than some of my first attempts with proper kit

[ollypenrice]

Good!

Olly

[Paul73]

I tried that with my DSLR. Couldn't get it aligned. Resorted to holding my iPhone to the eyepiece.

Well done for sticking with it.

Paul

[leelee970]

Good image Darthvader.

Better than the mosaic I took the other night.

spent ages setting up etc - only to forget to take off the red film off my laptop and so didn't notice I'd adjusted the setting wrong.

I now have a lovely BLUE moon.

oh well lesson learnt.

[glowingturnip]

Resorted to holding my iPhone to the eyepiece.

my wife was rather concerned when I took a picture of the sun on her phone like that (with filter of course).  Turned out not bad, could see the sunspots clearly.

leelee - should be able to adjust the colour balance, no ?

[frugal]

spent ages setting up etc - only to forget to take off the red film off my laptop and so didn't notice I'd adjusted the setting wrong.

I now have a lovely BLUE moon.

Couldn't you just convert the images to greyscale?

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

[leelee970]

Glowingturnip - going to try that first.

Frugal - my second choice.

[darthvader]

Ok, 2nd attempt (well published attempt anyway!)
 
This time without the binoculars and with just my old Nikon P80 (non DSLR) camera sat on my rickety old metal step ladder stuck in the grass in the back garden !
 
 
I used the following camera settings after much experimentation and trawling the forums for tips (i'm a complete novice photographer let alone astrophotographer so don't ask me what half these settings mean !)
 
manual -> ISO 200 / Matrix metering / 18x optical zoom (max on this camera)  / 1/125 s / f8 / Sharpness + 2 / Contrast - Normal
 
Then ran the resulting picture through Google Picasa (pretty basic I know but don't have photoshop ) - just changing it to B&W
 
I have a number of pictures like this taken tonight (I took loads in interval - 30 sec - mode) - but as my stepladder doesn't yet track across the sky they gradually move to the right of the images - I thought maybe I could try stacking them as someone suggested - am I likely to get a better result or is it not worth it and does the image have to be centered on every picture to do this?
 
thanks again ppl

[JamesF]

That's definitely an improvement

You might try GIMP as a free alternative to Photoshop.  It's quite similar.  You ideally want the version with 16-bit support in.

James

[frugal]

If you take lots of shots with your camera you can use a program called PIPP to automatically crop and centre them all, and then use Registax or AutoStacker(?sp) to stack the best bits of each photo to get an even better one.

[shedifice]

Thats no moon, its a space station!

[Astrosurf]

That's really coming on! Well done.

I know that people with DSLRs use the movie mode to take pics and stack the movie but I've not done it and wouldn't be able to advise. I belive your camera has a movie mode but I'm not sure if it would be better than taking as many shots as possible. I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to advise!

Alexxx