Widefield Milkyway 1st attempt with 1000d Sept 21st.

[Space Cowboy]

Planets being thin on the ground at the moment I've decided to "diversify" and got myself a 2nd hand Canon 1000d off ebay which i've mounted on my alt/az auto tracking mount.  I'm not sure if the tracking is any good with the camera as its set up for my 5" mak and obviously not an eq mount but figured any tracking is better than none.

This was taken from my light polluted back garden pointing north east 60-70 degrees alt after 10pm.

1 min exposure with 18-55mm lens set at 18. Not sure about the focus, really struggled to see on my laptop.

Below is a single shot and 3 in sequence showing the vignetting action.

Honest hard hitting comments welcome. Tweaked contrast in image analyser and pulled back red.

Here is another with less hazyness :

Forgot to mention ISO was 1600.

What the heck here is the 3rd image too :

[Knight of Clear Skies]

That's pretty good, you've picked up Andromeda through the haze at lower right I believe.

I'm not sure you've quite nailed the focus. If you're finding it tricky on liveview APT has a focus aid although I haven't used it, I think it calculates and displays FWHM values. There is a little bit of coma but that's hard to avoid with the kit lens, stopping down to f4.5 or f5 reduces it if you haven't already tried that.

If you stack a few subs using 'intersection' mode in DSS you should get a pretty good result. The Cygnus region is a bit brighter and is overhead at the moment, but it's further from North so you'd get more field rotation on the alt-az mount.

Might be worth asking a mod to move the thread to the 'Getting Started With Imaging' forum, you might get more responses there. Good luck, definitely worth experimenting a bit more.

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks for the advice!

[Space Cowboy]

Tried stacking the 3 captures in ISS but as I suspected the field rotation caused the outer stars to be distorted so I've given the 3rd capture another tweak using the latest version of image analyser which has some new contrast and noise controls.

[dave_galera]

For this type of image I don't bother with Astro imaging packages I just use Photoshop as it seems to do a good job. Try using 'Tools>Photoshop>Load files Into Photoshop Layers' in Camera RAW then in PS 'Edit>Auto-Align Layers'. Once you have done this convert them all to smart objects and do a median stack. This will re-rotate your stars and combine all the three images into one.  There are many video tutorials in YouTube on how to to put these types of images together using PS.

Hope this helps.

Dave

[dave_galera]

Sorry, meant DE-rotate your stars.

(Can never find out how to Edit a post on this forum, anybody know?)

Dave

[dave_galera]

Have a look at this video

Dave

[happy-kat]

You need 250 posts to edit (I think) and then the edit window is open for a period of time

[happy-kat]

These images have captured more that I have managed yet :-) can see the milky way

[dave_galera]

You need 250 posts to edit (I think) and then the edit window is open for a period of time

Aaaah, OK thanks for that, it explains all,  can't see why it isn't 50 like other forums.

Dave

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Steve that is a very interesting tutorial but alas I only have CS2 which does not appear to have the same options.

[theo]

Is this the first step on the ladder to your deep sky imaging voyage Stuart??    

It's great when there's not much planetary stuff to be done as you say and many of the processing techniques used for deep sky images are also very useful for planets as i'm sure you know. A very good start though. A decent LP filter would probably help quite a bit too.

Pete 

[Space Cowboy]

Cheers Pete! Tentatively stepping on the bottom rung lol  I was quite pleased with the detail despite the light pollution and did not realize at the time that there was some haze too. As you say a LP filter would help but I can get to darker sites easily.

You will know I'm getting serious when I acquire an eq mount but at the moment I'm gonna see what can be achieved from my current setup. I've seen some pretty decent images using alt/az.