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The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!


JGM1971

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39 minutes ago, SilverAstro said:

I was about to say that there is the similar numbered cooled colour version which would be a more DSLR-like one-shot setup. But I have not seen anyone in the community using it ! :(

But Ken and Gina are producing excellent results with the mono+filters.

I will have to go google why Luminance is being shot alongside RG&B, I think once-upon-a-time colour TV cameras shot only R,G&B and the Luminance ( for B&W compatibility) was derived electronically from the RGB ?

Thanks SA, but it was more trying to avoid messing about with laptops and all the wires rather than mono vs colour. That's what I like about dslr's, you have a single package that you attach to the scope and away you go.

Ian

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24 minutes ago, Filroden said:

Here's a few explanations that I could find. My L integrated image are definitely more detailed than the combined RGB image.

http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/LRGB.html

http://astro-imaging.com/Tutorial/LRGB_I.html

Thanks I'll go check them out.

Meanwhile I had been thinking about your earlier dilemmas about a gradient in your otherwise very nice M45, I had also noticed it and that it was "warmer" red-ish than the predominant blue of the nebula and that the nebula looked like it was being buried in it so, as an experiment only ( I was hindered by only having an 8bit jpg and that my fingers and everything were xxed for Nige ! ) I decomposed it into R G and B and severely attacked the R, - with medium gaussian filter on the G and B channels,  and yes, there is quite a bit of nebula down in the bottom left and right diagonals :

First a 'gentle' :) one, I do like the pink pair in the middle   :

Fil8.jpg

and a little OTT, but I like the structure and fine filiaments you have got, deffo lots of neb going off bottom left and right :-

Fil7.jpg

Edited by SilverAstro
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9 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

Thanks SA, but it was more trying to avoid messing about with laptops and all the wires rather than mono vs colour. That's what I like about dslr's, you have a single package that you attach to the scope and away you go.

Ian

I think someone will sort out a combination including the Raspberry PI, running capture software, some attached SSD storage and a small screen. Until then, you can attach the Raspberry PI but you have to remote connect with a computer - at which point you're doing what I'm doing but with one more piece of kit!

I've just managed to wifi connect my laptop to the mount which means once aligned I think I can control the mount and goto from the laptop, removing the need to keep the iPad. I'm going to trial Nebulosity as it runs on a Mac. If I like it, then I could have simplified my own capture process (though SGPro does make taking flats a piece of cake).

One more benefit of the camera - its higher resolution made getting a sharp focus trivial. I've never seen such a clear diffraction pattern from the Bahtinov mask before.

Edited by Filroden
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18 minutes ago, SilverAstro said:

Thanks I'll go check them out.

Meanwhile I had been thinking about your earlier dilemmas about a gradient in your otherwise very nice M45, I had also noticed it and that it was "warmer" red-ish than the predominant blue of the nebula and that the nebula looked like it was being buried in it so, as an experiment only ( I was hindered by only having an 8bit jpg and that my fingers and everything were xxed for Nige ! ) I decomposed it into R G and B and severely attacked the R, - with medium gaussian filter on the G and B channels,  and yes, there is quite a bit of nebula down in the bottom left and right diagonals

Thank you for taking a look. I think you're right and there is still gradient in my image. I think I will give it another go tomorrow and really spend some time on gradient removal, particularly in the red channel. However, some of that blue could still be light pollution. I have three LED street lights around the garden and the town has LED in most streets so it will seep into all three channels.

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4 minutes ago, Filroden said:

some of that blue could still be light pollution. I have three LED street lights around the garden and the town has LED in most streets so it will seep into all three channels.

Yes indeed, that is why I still needed to use some *mild gaussian filter on the green and blue to reduce the gradient in there as well, but most seemed to be in the red ? I was thinking that most of the remaining green/predominant blue in the lower bits showed structure ? therfor neb. ( dodgy asumption perhaps :) ) whereas the gradient ( on the basis of that in the red channel where it is easy to see) was a more even band ?

* It was touch and go though, not to remove neb., so I used a large radius, and only 60%, for the filters.

All good stuff whilst it is cloudy outside, thanks for something interesting to do :hello2:

Good luck, will be interesting to see what else you pull out of the originals.

 

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53 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

Thanks SA, but it was more trying to avoid messing about with laptops and all the wires rather than mono vs colour. That's what I like about dslr's, you have a single package that you attach to the scope and away you go.

Ah, I see, my mistake/missuners, sorry. There was  ofcourse that amateur astronomer who attached his whole observatory to the scope ! He used a shed with internal divider, the scope altitude axis passed through the eyepiece which then passed through the dividing wall and the whole contraption, including comfey seat in the warm half, was mounted on a car? lorry? wheel bearing for azimuth ! No-EQ eat yer heart out :D

Edited by SilverAstro
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1 hour ago, Filroden said:

I think someone will sort out a combination including the Raspberry PI, running capture software, some attached SSD storage and a small screen. Until then, you can attach the Raspberry PI but you have to remote connect with a computer - at which point you're doing what I'm doing but with one more piece of kit!

I'm sure, and there are micro-pc's which run Windows which are available for a modest sum these days. I had thought about the possibility of attaching that to the mount.

As to your new camera, it strikes me that you about to enter another league with your images!

Ian

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2 hours ago, The Admiral said:

Nige, have you seen this thread re. DSS alignment? May be pertinent to your situation?

I don't wish to rub salt into the wound, but interested to know if have you managed to get your camera back up and working?

Ian

Well, all is not lost.  It's still broken but repairable.  It looks like I miss aligned a tape wire, worst case new PCB, best case new tape wire. Wire kit £30 PCB £65.

It will work again. Could be expensive mistake but it can cost a couple of hundred to get it modified anyway 

In the meantime I bought the wife a new DSLR today with my scrap copper haul ( I'm a plumber by trade ) 

Forecast is for clear sky's tomorrow night so I'm going to try her new camera. 

Nige.

 

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Isn't it great to be imaging at 20:00? My mount played nice tonight and wifi connected. I figured how to speed up the frame/focus module in SGPro (it does capture images of less than 1 second plus binning 4x4 really helped the speed) so alignment was a breeze.

I had tried to improve the spacing on the camera to the flattener given I'd just thrown it together on Thursday. That caused the first big hiccup, with my first images showing all sorts of weird! Reverted to the original spacing which I think is too long but at least my stars are now round and point like, rather than something Monet would have been proud.

So, given it's so early I decided to give M33 a try. It's small on my sensor so it gives me a lot of latitude for cropping later. However, the forecast shows clouds could come at any time :(

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3 minutes ago, Filroden said:

Can't wait to see your results. It's just starting to attain a nice altitude.

Thanks Ken,

I'm hoping to get x90 sixty second light frames tonight and process tomorrow. I trust the M33 imaging is going well? I tried looking for M33 in my binoculars tonight but it's too light polluted here to see it. Only ever saw in the 15x70 bino's when on holiday in Cornwall three years ago.

Cheers,
Steve

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Here's how my evening started. 

Set up, aligned mount, set new camera up , eos utilities needs updating as camerais more modern.  1 hour later start taking subs through 210mm lens. 1.5 hours later find out I have the x 2 adapter on...... delete that lot, start again without x2 adapter.  First light frame saved at 22.45, two and a half hours after I started  :headbang:

Hope your evening is going better, at least the sky is very clear tonight. 

Nige 

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11 hours ago, Filroden said:

Isn't it great to be imaging at 20:00?

So, given it's so early I decided to give M33 a try. It's small on my sensor so it gives me a lot of latitude for cropping later. However, the forecast shows clouds could come at any time :(

For one who can't do late nights, very welcome!

I couldn't image last night, but M33 is on my list to do. I am looking forward to seeing what you get in 2 hours. I'm also keen to see what you can conjure up on a red emitting nebula.

By the way, if memory serves me correctly, weren't you in Somerset not long ago, or have I got that totally wrong?

Ian

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4 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

For one who can't do late nights, very welcome!

I couldn't image last night, but M33 is on my list to do. I am looking forward to seeing what you get in 2 hours. I'm also keen to see what you can conjure up on a red emitting nebula.

By the way, if memory serves me correctly, weren't you in Somerset not long ago, or have I got that totally wrong?

Ian

If I can get another early start I will give the Soul Nebula a proper run as it's still low enough before 22:00. Tuesday is looking good on the forecast.

Yes, I lived in Somerset until August. I moved North so my skies are very different. I have a much more restricted view, only seeing from NNW to SSE with street lights to the NE. However, I think I have less light pollution now and can see the Milky Way which was impossible where I was.

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Ok, I took flats this morning and they looked far more normal than the ones I took last week. I used the sky with a lot of paper over the scope. However, for some reason, SGPro couldn't calibrate the G filter and it took me ages to find the random combination of changes that would make it work!

I've just calibrated and integrated my files and the flats seem to add dust bunnies, not remove them! So attempt two now in progress without flats to see what the difference is like.

I did learn a few more things last night. My USB cable from laptop to camera is long enough to reach the scope from the kitchen but as M33 rose higher and moved to the east I must have reached it's limit at some stage as my subs started to show double stars or trails. Thankfully I caught it quite quickly.

Also, my mount does love to slip, so I do need to visually inspect each image before accepting it into the stack (I'm "cheating" and using a batch process for calibration/integration so I no longer have PixInsight analyse each sub for quality). Combined, the effects of both these meant I lost about 10 minutes of subs (and I still accepted some subs which showed borderline trailing).

I also probably started imaging M33 too early. The first 30 mins of subs show significantly more gradient than the final hour when it was much higher. I guess my imaging sweet spot is between 40 and 60 altitude. That said, I will have to wait and see what PixInsight can do with the gradient. Given M33 occupies much less of the field than M45 or IC1848, it will be easier to identify and remove the gradient without destroying signal.

At one point I tried to increase exposure time to 60s but I think this coincided with the USB cable getting tight so I discounted the result thinking I was seeing trailing when in fact it may have just been tension from the cable. Something for me to test next time, as it will be much easier to process 100 60s images than 200 30s images (and also reduce the total file size from over 7Gb to 3.5Gb!).

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Hi Ken,

Thanks for your update of how things have gone from last night. Really looking forward to seeing your results :-) I guess any new gear is going to throw up new matters to take account of and luckily none of yours are problems that there's not a work around for.

I have been otherwise occupied this morning but did manage to take a quick look at the image coming out of DSS and the California Nebula is definitely in there. Will post ASAP though I'm again busy this afternoon with painting outdoors.

Cheers,
Steve

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Likewise, M33 is definitely there. My L subs are noisier than I would like (a by-product of the LP so I must either image later or select higher targets for the early evenings) but the RGB is looking nice. I had a very nasty dust bunny which took two iterations to remove (which probably means I've created other gradient issues in other parts of the image). I probably have another hour of processing time left this afternoon (pre-processing is pretty automated so I can leave it running in the background). I'm guessing this will be one of those images that I will never be happy with the "final" version and will become a feature of re-processing every cloudy night!

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Well, here's my first result for M33 Pinwheel Galaxy. Captured using SGPro and processed in PixInsight.

This comprises 81 x 30s L, with 34 X 30s R, 35 x 30s G and 33 x 30s B for a total imaging time of 91.5 minutes.

large.M33_20161002_v1.jpg

Here's an annotated version too, as there are lots of additional fuzzies in there!

M33_20161002_v1_annotated.jpg

P.S. Here's a slightly tweaked version having taken it into Lightroom.

M33_20161002_v1.jpg

Edited by Filroden
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Very nice Ken. I prefer the LR tweaked version, but then I'm a sucker for vibrant images! I like the very fine blue stars you've captured. If it was mine I think I would crop it down a bit so as to give the galaxy greater impact and allow the structure to be more easily seen. I think you've got ample detail to allow that.

Ian

Edited by The Admiral
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