The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!

[Slynxx]

Guess Star Adventurers (unguided) are out of the question?

 

[Filroden]

Well, 430 images and probably close to 5 hours of data on four targets. Not a bad haul! I pity my internet connection though as the raw and calibrated images all have to be backed up to the cloud! I think I'm going to be processing these for a few days!

[The Admiral]

9 hours ago, Filroden said:

My sky is willing, my body is not!

Very seldom is my body willing when it comes to very late nights. That's what is nice about winter time, you can get a decent number of subs under your belt and come in at a reasonable hour!

Ian

Edited November 26, 2016 by The Admiral

[The Admiral]

8 hours ago, Filroden said:

I pity my internet connection though as the raw and calibrated images all have to be backed up to the cloud!

Good grief! I wouldn't entertain that with my 4 megs download speed, never mind upload

Ian

[The Admiral]

9 hours ago, happy-kat said:

 

Well yes because I am only using it in tracking mode and following the mounts instructions. I haven't even got the synscan handset out of it's bag it came in, mainly because I don't see that much sky to pick good stars and I have had the mount track before so it it is my setup failing really.

Nope, you've still got me confused! What do you mean by 'tracking mode', and how can you set up tracking without using the handset?

Ian

[happy-kat]

The mount is able to track straight out of the box, you tailor it to your latitude by using polaris in the northern hemisphere. I wanted to see what it could do with the basic setup. This is no different to setting up a basic EQ mount of leg to north and dialing on the latitude plus just an ra motor. So theoretically I should be able to get the mount tracking and I have once. I'm picking a western target around 40 - 50 degrees.

The mount doesn't come with a handset that's an optional extra. The mount has a small panel board of buttons.

Edited November 26, 2016 by happy-kat

[Stub Mandrel]

10 hours ago, Slynxx said:

Guess Star Adventurers (unguided) are out of the question?

 

I think plenty of the images on this thread were taken with Star Adventurer.

[happy-kat]

Star adventure is equatorial so is not for this thread. This thread is for none equatorial mounts.

Edited November 26, 2016 by happy-kat

[Filroden]

Well, I've just discovered my next big alt/az hurdle - bandwidth and storage.

Having captured 460 lights last night (each 32Mb) and 160 flats and darks this morning, I now have to:

1) Transfer them from the laptop to the PC via USB3 memory stick taking multiple trips as I only have 3.5Gb free (a new 64Gb stick is arriving later today)

2) Save the raw fits files and back them up to cloud storage (looking at 13Gb of data for the lights)

3) Calibrate and intergrate the flats and darks and save the masters to my secondary drive and replicate them in the cloud

4) Calibrate the lights which pushes their file sizes up to 64Mb and back them up to cloud storage (looking at another 26Gb of data to upload)

All in all, I will probably be tying up my Internet backing up the files for days!

You could question whether I should be using cloud storage but I'd rather have an offsite backup. This data is hard to capture so I'd never want to lose it. I'm also saving calibrated files which could be recreated from the raw files and masters but I figure it saves me time whenever I add subs to the project.

Edited November 26, 2016 by Filroden

[Filroden]

Well, I've done my first rough processing of one of the four targets I went for last night. It's weak in contrast and high in noise because I have so few subs. This is only the start of projects for these targets so I just wanted something quick and dirty to see the framing, etc.

Usual set up - Evo mount, the 80 refractor and the ZWO 1600MM-C

45sec x 30 L, 10 R, 10 G and 10 B

Processed in Pixinsight with a final tweak in Photoshop

I think I still have a gradient and I over masked the stars leaving their overexposed cores a little too sharp.

[happy-kat]

There's lots of that red dust stuff in that image, will be interesting to see it grow.

[Filroden]

Here's my second target. Much brighter than the Flaming Star Nebula even though it has slightly fewer subs in total. I'm much happier with this one though I need to work on my focus. I also probably need to dial back on the gain (ISO) and get more dynamic range. I'm burning out almost every star core at 45s. Alternatively, I could stay at a higher gain for the low read noise and reduce my exposure length.

Anyway, usual kit and 45s subs at -20C, 300 gain and 50 offset: 28 x L, 9 x R, 8 x G, 10 x B

And annotated

Edited November 26, 2016 by Filroden

[Nigel G]

5 minutes ago, Filroden said:

Here's my second target. Much brighter than the Flaming Star Nebula even though it has slightly fewer subs in total. I'm much happier with this one though I need to work on my focus. I also probably need to dial back on the gain (ISO) and get more dynamic range. I'm burning out almost every star core at 45s. Alternatively, I could stay at a higher gain for the low read noise and reduce my exposure length.

Anyway, usual kit and 45s subs at -20C, 300 gain and 50 offset: 28 x L, 9 x R, 8 x G, 10 x B

Awesome, great detail and colours, stars are pretty much perfect. I love it.

Well done.

Nige.

[jimbo747]

On 10/10/2016 at 20:40, parallaxerr said:

 

Edited November 26, 2016 by jimbo747
Can't delete

[jimbo747]

8 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

Awesome, great detail and colours, stars are pretty much perfect. I love it.

Well done.

Nige.

Agree. I think that image proves beyond all doubt you no longer need an eq mount. The Ollie's of this world are now dinosaurs. Small caveat being you need a hell of a camera!

[Nigel G]

That's going to make mine look like a school boy error  

I took 245 x 30s lights but stacking them all made a mess of the image so I re stacked using 65% with a better result. Now I'm re stacking with 50% to see the result.

Quite a hard one to process.

M1 is being very hard to process for some reason.

I ended up using my 210mm lens, I think the 135mm is far better than the 210mm after the last 2 images so next try on this target will be with the 135mm.

Another thing I found out while drying the kit last night was I can use the LP filter with the manual focus lenses on. Didn't realise till after.

This is NGC 2238, Rosette Nebula. 140x30s, 70 dark, 50 bias and 20 flat. Canon 1300D 210mm lens. DSS & ST.

Nige.

[Filroden]

2 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

That's going to make mine look like a school boy error  

I took 245 x 30s lights but stacking them all made a mess of the image so I re stacked using 65% with a better result. Now I'm re stacking with 50% to see the result.

Quite a hard one to process.

M1 is being very hard to process for some reason.

I ended up using my 210mm lens, I think the 135mm is far better than the 210mm after the last 2 images so next try on this target will be with the 135mm.

Another thing I found out while drying the kit last night was I can use the LP filter with the manual focus lenses on. Didn't realise till after.

This is NGC 2238, Rosette Nebula. 140x30s, 70 dark, 50 bias and 20 flat. Canon 1300D 210mm lens. DSS & ST.

Nige.

 

If I had the stamina that was going to be my next target. I would only reduce the stars to bring out the nebula but it has lovely colour and you can see fainter surrounding areas too. 

[The Admiral]

42 minutes ago, Filroden said:

Here's my second target. Much brighter than the Flaming Star Nebula even though it has slightly fewer subs in total. I'm much happier with this one though I need to work on my focus. I also probably need to dial back on the gain (ISO) and get more dynamic range. I'm burning out almost every star core at 45s. Alternatively, I could stay at a higher gain for the low read noise and reduce my exposure length.

Anyway, usual kit and 45s subs at -20C, 300 gain and 50 offset: 28 x L, 9 x R, 8 x G, 10 x B

That's a nice wide-field rendition there Ken. Alnitak is probably a lost cause so far as burning out I should think, it is so much brighter than the nebulae.

Ian

[The Admiral]

27 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

This is NGC 2238, Rosette Nebula. 140x30s, 70 dark, 50 bias and 20 flat. Canon 1300D 210mm lens. DSS & ST.

Nige.

I think the nebula has come out pretty well, but I agree with Ken that the mass of stars are a bit of a distraction. You could do that trick to separate out the stars and then blend them back in at less than 100%.

Ian

[Filroden]

8 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

That's a nice wide-field rendition there Ken. Alnitak is probably a lost cause so far as burning out I should think, it is so much brighter than the nebulae.

Ian

There is apparantly a trick you can do with Alnitak and create a doughnut mask that reduces most of its glare. I need to see if I can get it to work. In the meantime, I've just seen how bad the gradient still is. Why is it not until it's on the forum that you can see these things?!!

Here's a quick and brutal attempt to remove it.

[Nigel G]

You wouldn't believe I have reduced the stars by a huge amount already, its such a rich star field around there.

I will see how the next stack turns out and reduce more

Cheers.

Nige.

[Filroden]

Just started calibrating M42 subs and realised that although I took some 1s luminescence lights, I didn't take equivalent RGB  I will either have no core or a B&W core!

[alacant]

1 hour ago, Nigel G said:

reduced the stars by a huge amount already

Hi. StarTools right? It looks like the blue has fattened the stars: Load the blue only in LRGB, Autodev. Decon, radius 3.0*, 1 iteration, show result. Restore to Linear Wiped Deconvolved. Save that as blue.tif. Now fire up LRGB again, load the Red and Green from the original but use your blue.tif for the blue. It concentrates whichever channel is 'fat' back to the central star. After killing tracking, Magic a pixel or two. HTH.

*That's my starting point. YMMV

[Nigel G]

50 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi. StarTools right? It looks like the blue has fattened the stars: Load the blue only in LRGB, Autodev. Decon, radius 3.0*, 1 iteration, show result. Restore to Linear Wiped Deconvolved. Save that as blue.tif. Now fire up LRGB again, load the Red and Green from the original but use your blue.tif for the blue. It concentrates whichever channel is 'fat' back to the central star. After killing tracking, Magic a pixel or two. HTH.

*That's my starting point. YMMV

Can I do that with data from a dslr? 

[Nigel G]

This is a little work with photoshop express on the original .

I have another stack to process tomorrow,  last night's 245 subs were 50 % before street lights out and 50 % after, it's just the way it worked out. 

That last stack is the latter 50 %  . Hopefully it will be better to process. 

Nige.

Edited November 26, 2016 by Nigel G