Small m45

[Rudeviewer]

Heres a small version of my m45.  Nebulosity barely shows up on my screen and definatly not after jpeg conversion.

[Pete Presland]

if you are struggling a little with DSO's through your Celestron 6SE, have you thought about trying a webcam in it?  with a focal length of 1500mm it would make a fine planetary imager, and you would find it so much more rewarding.

[glappkaeft]

You have given us much too little to go on. That are the exposure times, number of exposures, camera settings, have you done any processing on the images, etc.

[Rudeviewer]

Sorry, this was a single 10 and 30 and a 60 second exposure at 1600 iso stacked into registax and wavelet process along with gamma corrected.  Turned down brightness and up contrast a lil bit in photoshop. 

Sometimes I get so excited I have stuff to post I just post .

Bunnygod I have already imaged Jupiter and the moon with success on my dslr as well my webcam.  I even used a microscope cam to do eyepiece projection as it has its own focus ring on the microscope cam. 

I also know I can only expect so much out a 6" SCT, but I usually try like hell doing all it can do.

[glappkaeft]

Sorry, this was a single 10 and 30 and a 60 second exposure at 1600 iso stacked into registax and wavelet process along with gamma corrected.  Turned down brightness and up contrast a lil bit in photoshop.

I'm not don't think Registax is a very good choice when it comes to stacking deep sky images (I'd use the latest beta of Deep Sky Stacker). How does a singe 60 sec shoot look?

[Rudeviewer]

Honestly pretty much like the image above that have 3 stacked.  There isn't much difference.  That why I'm always wondering how stacking can get me more out of my pictures.  I think that Is why I am going for higher single exposure times since I have has such bad luck stacking.  Deep sky stacker seems to change the colors of everything that I stack together.  Unless I just don't understand the program enough yet.

Registax doesn't align the images good enough for me at all.  I like the wavelet settings on registax tho I finally sort of got used to using them.

[glappkaeft]

Honestly pretty much like the image above that have 3 stacked.  There isn't much difference.

If you got one image each of 15, 30 and 60 seconds the majority of the data would be in the 60 second exposure.

Like you said earlier your equipment isn't ideal, the main problem is the mount and the fact that your pixels are rather small while the focal length of the scope is large. To get the same result as most other imagers you'd have use at least 4 times the exposure time.

One further problem is that the nebulosity in M45 is rather faint (the nice pictures you see online have hours of exposure time) but I'd expect to see something in a 1 minute exposure with your equipment. Something like thirty 1 minutes exposures should net you some detail after stacking and processing with curves (brightness and gamma aren't flexible enough). A better target for your scope however would be the Orion nebula, the central parts are very bright.

That why I'm always wondering how stacking can get me more out of my pictures.  I think that Is why I am going for higher single exposure times since I have has such bad luck stacking.

Simplifying a lot if your exposures are long enough (and 1 minute should be borderline but mostly long enough with your setup) and if you get enough signal (again your 60 second exposure is probably borderline) stacking should give almost the same result as a longer exposure. By stacking shorter exposures you will also have less problem with saturation, tracking and in your case field rotation from the Alt-Az mount.

Deep sky stacker seems to change the colors of everything that I stack together.  Unless I just don't understand the program enough yet.

That is a common problem with all stacking programs that use DSLR RAW files. You can tell DSS to do "RGB Channels Background Calibration" which might help but colour balancing is a bit of an art that one has to learn to handle.

 

Registax doesn't align the images good enough for me at all. 

That isn't surprising since Registax is not designed to stack deep sky images at all.

[Rudeviewer]

Thank you for the detailed replies.  I will take your advice and try everything I can.   Nothing is easy in AP and I think that's why I am so intrigued by it.  Its not just a point and shoot.  Its an art.

[Christopher Davenport]

Just a thought, I use a celestron 0.63 focal reducer to speed up my scope. This would increase the light gathered per exposure. Ie f10 down to f6.

With slow scope you need alot more subs.

Plus you want to take some darks (lens cap on) at the same temperature as lights to reduce noise at high iso.

+1 on Deepskystacker.

+1 on image analyser for processing.

Keep at it

[glowingturnip]

strange that you're having so many problems stacking stuff - the above pic should have no problems stacking in any software.  Once you do get the stacking sussed, you will find it makes an awful lot of difference - it averages out the noice leaving much better signal, so you can stretch the data much more to show that nebulosity withough being swamped with noise.

It seems a lot of people have problems with Deep Sky Stacker, and I think there are several settings which have unforseen consequences (your colour balance being one).  I did put the settings that, by trial and error, I found worked for me in another thread, here - http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/201033-deep-sky-stacker-dss-settings/?hl=%2Bdss+%2Bsettings#entry2123997

To be honest though, I'm not a fan of DSS and don't use it if I can avoid it.

[Rudeviewer]

I definitely will.  I am using the 6.3 reducer on my scope currently.  When skies clear I am gunna get a notebook to take notes with, and take a bunch of 1 minute subs since that is about maximum for me at this point until I get better at alignment.  I will try to do the Darks this time.  I didn't have luck with darks as registax wouldn't take them.  I just signed up for pixinsight so well see how that goes.  Thanks for the link I will check it out now.

[glowingturnip]

pixinsight staralign is very good, should solve all your problems.  

Harry's video here will talk you through the other bits of preprocessing, using darks etc  http://www.harrysastroshed.com/preprocessing.html

[ollypenrice]

Do you know about stretching the image? RobH explains it here. http://www.middlehillobservatory.co.uk/articles-primers/Levels%20and%20curves.htm

An image is captured in 'linear' form so if region A in an image is twice as bright as region B it will be shown as twice as bright on the screen. In astrophotography this is no good because all the faint stuff (region B ) is really too faint to show. What happens in stretching is that Region B is boosted till it is perhaps three quarters of the brightness of  region A and becomes visible. The eyes and ears do this naturally (and also subdue overly strong signal to make it detectable.)

Olly

[majapala]

That's a great link Olly thanks for sharing.

[Rudeviewer]

Better blue in the image on this one.  This was was 1600 iso at 60 sec I believe.

[todd8137]

You need a good bit of data and longer sub length me thinks

Pat

[Rudeviewer]

Here is a single sub from just the camera and lens at 300mm F5.6 2:00 exp.  iso 1600

[todd8137]

Nice I would like to see a good run from your kits

Pat

[Rudeviewer]

I am hoping tonight is the night for a bunch of subs I ran out of battery last night and couldn't continue.  I am going to try a Ha filter in there and see what else I can get out my pics. 

[todd8137]

Great I look forward to the pics am sure they will be great good look for tonight.

Pat

[Rudeviewer]

I did take some shots the other night however shooting in raw has seemed to have its downfalls, as everything is so dark its hard to see what I have captured on the liveview.  I get a lot of red pixilation in my shots when I go for long exposures with this particular scope, its not as noticeable when I use the just camera lens.  Should I be looking for a light pollution filter or will that just make me to longer exposures thus defeating the purpose?  I did a 5 minute sub and it was so washed out. 

[todd8137]

In live view unless it's some thing very bright you will not see any thing ,sounds like a light pol filter is needed if they washed out with orange/red light it's easily removed post processing

Pat

[todd8137]

If you getting 5 min subs with no trails I say get a light pol filter and keep the ISO at 800 you will get some good images with 5 min subs trust me filter filter

Pat

[Rudeviewer]

I don't get trails but I do get bloating of stars.  So I have tried to stick with 2:00 or 3:00 min tops which does net much.  You are correct with removal of the light pollution using pixinsight.  Although I am a still a total newb at pixinsight some of the tutorials have given me a direction to start in.

[Rudeviewer]

Here is a stack from 2-26 that I am just processing on m45.  Combination of different iso and expsosure times, not sure of times.  I forgot to look when i finished with DSS.  A little bit over processed with an ugly star halo.  Hoping it was collimation as I just found out it was pretty far out, so I got it adjusted but haven't had a change to try it since.