The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!

[happy-kat]

Well done what a great start and using what you already own. Your little ed could be a right cracker, @The Admiral uses a little ED on the same mount. Saving a copy of the image you want to share works very well if you use PNG format.

[DarkD]

Hello all.

I'm back in DSO imaging after a cloudy and rainny winter

Here are some images of this month made in south of France, always with my 16'' altaz dob by SkyVision and the sony A7S.

The results are not as good as I would like but I'm still learning, and have not enough time to practise.

Try to do better next time.

 

Edited March 31, 2018 by DarkD

[DarkD]

some more pictures of these 2 nights (13-14 march)

[DarkD]

and a final one with some classic objects.

Have a good week-end.

[DarkD]

as the weather is bad again.. and again... I've reprocessed M51 taken last year (sorry for that...)

This time I've done it with "Siril" (I've just started to use this soft instead of DSS, and I think the colors are better)

 

[Manners2020]

39 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Well done what a great start and using what you already own. Your little ed could be a right cracker, @The Admiral uses a little ED on the same mount. Saving a copy of the image you want to share works very well if you use PNG format.

Thanks. I've just had a look at the admirals pictures... brilliant. My goal is to get a few images good enough to print and stick on one of my walls. This thread makes me think it's achievable.. it took me a long time to stumble on to this.

[happy-kat]

So many new images, well done it is great to see.

@DarkD Siril looks to lso be an option for MAC users which I think to date has been a little thin.

[Manners2020]

On 2016-04-06 at 00:19, Filroden said:

So after two failed nights of getting subs of M51 that DSS would process I managed 9x30s last night before clouds came over. Very noisy but at least I know I can keep going.

Celestron Evolution 9.25 with Canon 60D

Ken

Hello Ken.  Is this pic taken with a focal reducer on the 9.25 or as is?  Also what kind of adaptor would I need to attach a camera to the visual back without a reducer? I can't seem to find anything that looks right. Thx.

[The Admiral]

14 hours ago, happy-kat said:

@The Admiral uses a little ED on the same mount.

I think you are probably thinking of Filroden who used his Esprit 80 on an Evo mount, before he went over to the dark side . I use a 102mm APO on the earlier, and inferior, Nexstar mount, or at least I did when I was actively pursuing imaging.

Ian

[Gavin1234]

These are the first two and the only dso pictures I’ve taken. I haven’t been able to find anything else with my scope as yet although I haven’t had much time with it. Any suggestions on easy but impressive targets in Australia? I have a Celestron NexStar 5SE and a EOS 80D. 

The first one is a single exposure taken the night that I got the scope. The second is 10 x 13 sec exposures a few weeks later and my first attempt at processing an image. I used 20 darks, 20 bias and no flats (messsed up the flats), adobe bridge, dss and photoshop.

[Filroden]

On 3/31/2018 at 20:55, Manners2020 said:

Hello Ken.  Is this pic taken with a focal reducer on the 9.25 or as is?  Also what kind of adaptor would I need to attach a camera to the visual back without a reducer? I can't seem to find anything that looks right. Thx.

Sorry for the slow reply. I believe the image was taken "as is" though I cropped the image as I didn't know how to take flats back in those days and the vignetting was severe. That said, my files all say this was created from 30 second images. Unless I was *really* lucky, I don't know how I've achieved such long exposures at such a long focal length. That suggests maybe I did use the reducer after all.

I used a T ring and adaptor for the camera. Something like these:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/flo-125-inch-t-mount-camera-adapter.html

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/adapters/t-rings.html

So the camera attached to where you'd normally drop in the eyepiece. Without the reducer there was no need to worry about spacing, etc.

A 9.25" f10 scope with a DSLR on an AltAz mount is probably the very last place I'd start out imaging DSOs if I knew then what I know today. It's a great visual scope and I did get some really nice lunar and Jovian images but it's not a starter scope for DSO imaging. Although I have recently been thinking of dusting it off for galaxy season this year. Though now I would probably invest first in a new focuser for the visual back so I could lock the mirror and control fine focus, and I would now be mounting it on an AVX so it would be polar aligned and I would be using off axis guiding to help with the long focal length. if the weather was ever going to be nice...

[Manners2020]

Thanks Ken. I have an adapter which slots into the 2 inch opening on my refractor. I haven't tried it on the sct,  I just assumed it was a different piece but it looks like the pic on the link. I still be using the refractor for most of my imaging I was just surprised to see the quality of that pic of yours with the sct. It's really good and I'm going to try it anyway just to see the difference.

On 2016-04-06 at 00:19, Filroden said:

So after two failed nights of getting subs of M51 that DSS would process I managed 9x30s last night before clouds came over. Very noisy but at least I know I can keep going.

Celestron Evolution 9.25 with Canon 60D

Ken

Hello Ken.  Is this pic taken with a focal reducer on the 9.25 or as is?  Also what kind of adaptor would I need to attach a camera to the visual back without a reducer? I can't seem to find anything that looks right. Thx.

[smisy]

Very cold outside o.O Not important, I have some new pic and I want to show the M51, how my Huawei P10 sees that over Nexstar 8" SE with 25mm eyepiece. ISO 3200, 30sec exposure in monochrome mode, cut and contrast with Lightroom mobile app. 

[The Admiral]

That's come out rather well for just a single frame. You could try taking a lot more and stacking them in an external application.

Ian

[smisy]

2 hours ago, The Admiral said:

That's come out rather well for just a single frame. You could try taking a lot more and stacking them in an external application.

Ian

Thanks for help, but can you help me please,  how is it going? I have alt-az mount, so if I take more pics, because of the rotation they are not the same field. I have DSS on my computer, but I don't know the best settings to stack these pictures. 

[The Admiral]

It is true that over time the images will rotate, but so long as the field rotation isn't significantly visible on a single frame (i.e. each exposure duration is short enough), DSS will automatically de-rotate them and align them. To my mind the slight problem is that I guess the images that you get from your 'phone are jpegs, which is less than ideal, but it will still work. The issue is that you will still need to significantly enhance the contrast of, or 'stretch', your stacked image, and the 8-bit jpegs will not take kindly to that process. Still, you've done it with the image above, so it should be better with a stacked image. Give it a try, that's the only way to find out! It's a while since I used DSS, but I guess start off with the default settings. Have a look at the User Manual on the DSS website, or alternatively there are a number of on-line help videos and tutorials. It's not a difficult piece of software to use.

Ian

[Manners2020]

7 hours ago, The Admiral said:

That's come out rather well for just a single frame. You could try taking a lot more and stacking them in an external application.

15 hours ago, smisy said:

Very cold outside o.O Not important, I have some new pic and I want to show the M51, how my Huawei P10 sees that over Nexstar 8" SE with 25mm eyepiece. ISO 3200, 30sec exposure in monochrome mode, cut and contrast with Lightroom mobile app. 

Is that really one exposure with eyepiece projection?...... I'll  tell you what?

On 2016-04-06 at 00:19, Filroden said:

So after two failed nights of getting subs of M51 that DSS would process I managed 9x30s last night before clouds came over. Very noisy but at least I know I can keep going.

Celestron Evolution 9.25 with Canon 60D

Ken

Hello Ken.  Is this pic taken with a focal reducer on the 9.25 or as is?  Also what kind of adaptor would I need to attach a camera to the visual back without a reducer? I can't seem to find anything that looks right. Thx.

[smisy]

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

It is true that over time the images will rotate, but so long as the field rotation isn't significantly visible on a single frame (i.e. each exposure duration is short enough), DSS will automatically de-rotate them and align them. To my mind the slight problem is that I guess the images that you get from your 'phone are jpegs, which is less than ideal, but it will still work. The issue is that you will still need to significantly enhance the contrast of, or 'stretch', your stacked image, and the 8-bit jpegs will not take kindly to that process. Still, you've done it with the image above, so it should be better with a stacked image. Give it a try, that's the only way to find out! It's a while since I used DSS, but I guess start off with the default settings. Have a look at the User Manual on the DSS website, or alternatively there are a number of on-line help videos and tutorials. It's not a difficult piece of software to use.

Ian

My phone can take picture in Raw too, but only in color mode. I took almost all my pictures in monochrome mode, because it has 20Mp. About the M104 I took pics in Raw, here is one of them, sure, I see the difference:

[The Admiral]

3 hours ago, smisy said:

My phone can take picture in Raw too

Even better! So long as DSS can recognize it. And yes, that is one of the issues with Alt-Az imaging, the large number of short exposure subs required, and hence storage space and processing time. I see that there is a beta version of 64-bit DSS now available, which should speed things up a bit.

M104 has come out very well too!

Ian

Edited April 8, 2018 by The Admiral

[Stub Mandrel]

The 64 bit DSS download link for windows is https://github.com/LucCoiffier/DSS/releases/download/4.1.0/DeepSkyStacker64Installer.exe

The link on Yahoo and some other places is incomplete/broken.

[Manners2020]

Hello smisey.  What kind of adaptor are you using for your phone?  I tried and failed miserably with my phone. Well I had one lucky night.  

[Manners2020]

Can I get any thoughts on using a focal reducer for a f7 102 refractor  pls. Is it as straight forward as it's going to make things a little faster  and easier or is there anything it's going to make harder at the same time? The scope is a 102mm  lumt engineering  ed  doublet  of that's relevant. Will also be using a nexstar evolution  mount. Thx.

[The Admiral]

I use a reducer on my Atair Wave f/7 102mm. It flattens the field as well, but you will need to finely adjust the reducer-sensor distance in order to get round stars across the frame. That can be a bit fiddly, and you may need to source a mix of adapters. Otherwise, I'd go for it. You will be able to cover more DSOs in the FoV, which is useful as you will need to crop off the outer portions of the frame because of field rotation.

Ian

[Manners2020]

Thanks ian. Any recommendations  for one and adaptors?

[The Admiral]

I went for the 0.79x 4-element Photoline from TS Optics, but it isn't cheap.

https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p5965_TS-Optics-PHOTOLINE-2--0-79x-Reducer-4-element-for-Astrophotography.html

You pays your money and makes your choice. I've been satisfied with it, but I'm sure there are cheaper ones that others have found to be OK. It covers an APS sensor with little vignetting. As for adapters, each set up is different so it's hard to advise. In particular I use a mirrorless camera so the camera mount-to-reducer distance is different to when using a conventional DSLR. FLO, 365 Astronomy and TS can together provide an enormous range of fittings, though be wary of the higher postage charge from TS as it's non-UK. Do Lunt make a reducer specifically for their 'scopes?

Ian

PS.  Ah, are you in Canada? Those suppliers might not be appropriate if so.

Edited April 10, 2018 by The Admiral