The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!

[Stub Mandrel]

49 minutes ago, therion82 said:

Less than 5 minutes total exposure time, with a skywatcher 130pds on az synscan go to mount, and a 1100d canon at iso 800.

Get an hour of data like that with slightly better framing, and you will be rewarded with a stunning image.

[Manners2020]

6 hours ago, therion82 said:

Andromeda on September 2018

Less than 5 minutes total exposure time, with a skywatcher 130pds on az synscan go to mount, and a 1100d canon at iso 800.

Location:Marathon, Athens, Greece

Brilliant 

[Manners2020]

On 13/08/2018 at 02:07, nm1213 said:

Hi, Thanks for the suggestion.  I'll certainly get the EQ wedge for when I'm travelling and able to see Polaris.  I can't polar align easily from Singapore... especially since I need to pack up after each session and can't leave the rig out.

Just looked up marathon  on the lp  map. That's a brilliant  image. Can you give us more details please.

[Stub Mandrel]

Some of the 'stars' in that M32 image are globular clusters orbiting it.

[smisy]

Once I have seen here a picture, I think, that was tha Andromeda galaxy, stacked from hundreds of 1 sec frames. Can somebody help me to find this post? Thank you !

[The Admiral]

There is a video by Forrest Tanaka where he takes a pic of Andromeda without a tracker. He uses 1.6s lights and takes 400 of them. The video is a bit tedious. Probably not the post you are thinking about though.

Ian

 

[The Admiral]

31 minutes ago, smisy said:

Once I have seen here a picture, I think, that was tha Andromeda galaxy, stacked from hundreds of 1 sec frames. Can somebody help me to find this post? Thank you !

I posted M31 comprised of about 160 x 30s fames. Any use? On page 39/40.

Ian

[smisy]

2 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

I posted M31 comprised of about 160 x 30s fames. Any use? On page 39/40.

Ian

Thanks a lot! I work also with 30 sec exposures, but because of the alt-az its not so successfull, as 5 sec or shorter. Now I want to try with thousands of 1 sec's, with my phone.

[The Admiral]

1 hour ago, smisy said:

Thanks a lot! I work also with 30 sec exposures, but because of the alt-az its not so successfull, as 5 sec or shorter. Now I want to try with thousands of 1 sec's, with my phone.

I hope you have the storage capacity and computing power :<)

Ian

[Manners2020]

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

I posted M31 comprised of about 160 x 30s fames. Any use? On page 39/40.

Ian

Google andromeda  200mm look for the one on reddit.  I think that's the one you're talking about 

[Manners2020]

Oh , just noticed it had been found already.

[Mr niall]

On 31/10/2016 at 22:39, happy-kat said:

Got a day off tomorrow and for a very rare change it is clear. (due to get cloudy soon) Was tonight sucessful... pass a beer!

Set the virtuoso up from scratch, nice and level. Re-aligned from the start and finished with Polaris right in the centre of the camera lens. Expect to be all good to go.

Tracking, absoultely no tracking occuring star trails on 30 seconds were the same length as if the mount was off. I had used a brand new set of batteries, yes batteries but we are only talking of carrying 1 kilo of weight and the camera was balanced and only uising the 40mm pancake lens and I slew by hand.

My next thought is to dig out my Astroboot synscan v3 handset I bought last year and rather than manually align to actually do a star align (wont be easy as can only see N through W to SW) and see if that is better. If that fails I will go back to my barn door until a future point where I 'might' get a battery for the mount but that defeats keeping it light.

 

Hello there! Sorry to hijack such an old post but I’ve had this exact problem twice in a row now with my virtuoso - did you manage to fix it?

[Mr niall]

On 31/10/2016 at 22:39, happy-kat said:

Got a day off tomorrow and for a very rare change it is clear. (due to get cloudy soon) Was tonight sucessful... pass a beer!

Set the virtuoso up from scratch, nice and level. Re-aligned from the start and finished with Polaris right in the centre of the camera lens. Expect to be all good to go.

Tracking, absoultely no tracking occuring star trails on 30 seconds were the same length as if the mount was off. I had used a brand new set of batteries, yes batteries but we are only talking of carrying 1 kilo of weight and the camera was balanced and only uising the 40mm pancake lens and I slew by hand.

My next thought is to dig out my Astroboot synscan v3 handset I bought last year and rather than manually align to actually do a star align (wont be easy as can only see N through W to SW) and see if that is better. If that fails I will go back to my barn door until a future point where I 'might' get a battery for the mount but that defeats keeping it light.

 

Hello there! Sorry to hijack such an old post but I’ve had this exact problem twice in a row now with my virtuoso - did you manage to fix it?

[Mr niall]

On 31/10/2016 at 22:39, happy-kat said:

Got a day off tomorrow and for a very rare change it is clear. (due to get cloudy soon) Was tonight sucessful... pass a beer!

Set the virtuoso up from scratch, nice and level. Re-aligned from the start and finished with Polaris right in the centre of the camera lens. Expect to be all good to go.

Tracking, absoultely no tracking occuring star trails on 30 seconds were the same length as if the mount was off. I had used a brand new set of batteries, yes batteries but we are only talking of carrying 1 kilo of weight and the camera was balanced and only uising the 40mm pancake lens and I slew by hand.

My next thought is to dig out my Astroboot synscan v3 handset I bought last year and rather than manually align to actually do a star align (wont be easy as can only see N through W to SW) and see if that is better. If that fails I will go back to my barn door until a future point where I 'might' get a battery for the mount but that defeats keeping it light.

 

Hello there! Sorry to hijack such an old post but I’ve had this exact problem twice in a row now with my virtuoso - did you manage to fix it?

[happy-kat]

18 minutes ago, Mr niall said:

Hello there! Sorry to hijack such an old post but I’ve had this exact problem twice in a row now with my virtuoso - did you manage to fix it?

The good news I fixed it fine. Off to get the thread and the details.

[happy-kat]

I sorted the Virtuoso tracking out by getting the right balance bias for the direction I was imaging.

Details are also here.

https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/284484-tracking-issues/

Basically if imaging to the East make the mount slightly back bias i.e. lens slightly weight bias to the rear.

If imaging to the west make the lens weight bias slightly to the front.

It doesn't need to be much just so that when the clutches are lose and you move the camera/lens the weight bias can be seen. When the clutches are lose you are not looking for such a strong bias that means the nose or rear of the lens sinks on it's own.

Then you are good to go.

Edited September 19, 2018 by happy-kat

[matt113d]

 

These were taken with a Synscan alt-az GoTo mount from my light polluted garden. 

[happy-kat]

There's some good colour in your second image. Nice blues.

How many exposures did you take?

[Manners2020]

On 13/08/2018 at 02:07, nm1213 said:

Not sure if astrotoaster  is allowed in this thread but here's the swan nebula on a 9.25 nexstar evolution  at 6.3 .97 % moon 30 25 second exposures  stacked on the fly via astrotoaster.  Nikon d5300.

 

[Peter77]

Hello,

 

Many great contributions in this thread, and it's nice to get inspiration as to what you can do with simple means, it's really uplifting to see some of the pictures, they're all amazing.

 

I have a Celestron Nexstar 102 Slt myself and have began to experiment a little with a Nikon D3100 connected to the scope. I run linux on all my home computers, and there aren't that many good stacking softwares.

There is Siril, but either I don't understand the program fully, or I don't know, but I haven't got any results that I'm happy with.

But I tried installing a VM with Win7 as a Vdi on my harddrive, and under that I can run Deep Sky stacker.

I did a stack with 31 pictures yesterday, that I shot in the evening 28 to 29:th september. I aimed the telescope at the doublecluster and plugged the camera into the back.

 

The doublecluster are one of my absolute favourite objects in the night sky. The first time I saw it, my jaw almost fell to the ground. I simply couldn't believe what my eyes were taking in. I was in such bliss that I had witnessed this true masterpiece of nature. I just stood there out in the night and whispered "Wow, wow, wow".

Yesterday I played around in Deep sky stacker and let the program digest the 20x 30 sec, 8 x 25 sec, 3 x 20 sec @ iso 800 that I shot the day before.

I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the final picture. It's not perfect, this is my first real result and the pictures were in jgp, but I'm happy with the picture nontheless.

 

Here it is. I hope it doesn't get too big on the screen, if so, let me know mod and I'll edit the post.

Thank you all for sharing your great pictures. Keep em coming. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 30, 2018 by Peter77

[alacant]

16 minutes ago, Peter77 said:

under that I can run Deep Sky stacker.

Hi. We find Siril better. Have a look at this introduction. It's easy to use and a lot faster than deep sky stacker.

HTH

[Peter77]

1 minute ago, alacant said:

Hi. We find Siril better. Have a look at this introduction. It's easy to use and a lot faster than deep sky stacker.

HTH

I'll check that. Thanks. Really happy with DSS though, very simple to use. But I will check the guide and hopefully do a picture of the same in for comparison.

[happy-kat]

Welcome Peter to the thread, that is a great image you have started with. I hope you will try using your raw files next and also if you take some flats and dark flats to add to you stack processing they should help you, take at least 20 of each. 

I too love the double cluster so sparkly.

[Peter77]

13 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

Welcome Peter to the thread, that is a great image you have started with. I hope you will try using your raw files next and also if you take some flats and dark flats to add to you stack processing they should help you, take at least 20 of each. 

I too love the double cluster so sparkly.

Hello kappy-kat,

Yes I will do that. I just gotta get a larger memorycard first. And I gotta remember to change back the camerasettings to normal settings after I have used the camera.

My fiancė was going to photograph the kids and cousins. And I had set the camera to 30 sek and 800 iso and 10 sek delayed shot. Lol.

So she called me and was like "what the f*** have you done with the camera. It starts beeping and then it takes a long shot and the picture gets all white. I'm trying to take a shot of 6 kids that won't sit still like 3 second"

 

I've been seeing that people talk about darks and flats and such. Gotta read into that 'cus it's an entirely new thing to me.

 

Yeah I think the Doublecluster is a really interesting object, and in pictures like this is interesting to observe, you can really figure out things about what's going on with the stars and their connections to eachother. 

 

And the picture got so vibrant, there's a lot of depth and energy. Next thing I want to get a good image of is Andromeda. That's going to be a challenge.

 

I really hope this thread can live on. I love to watch pictures of the universe

[happy-kat]

Same happens here but we now both remember to look and set to P mode if out and about general shooting and work from there.