The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!

[happy-kat]

Reprocessed today and tested with without bias and master bias as dark.

Worked better with no bias or master bias as flat file on this example.

Edited May 9, 2018 by happy-kat

[Manners2020]

I've been dying to see this. I live in a heavily light polluted area so I'm surprised I got to see it from my backyard.  So it was from my 9.25 sct@ f/10. Nikon d5300 at  iso  1000 I believe.  Only one 30 second exposure.  I just wanted to see what it was actually  like taking a pic through this scope. One pic is raw he other i just auto enhanced on the photoshop phone app.

[Manners2020]

Just one with the nikon kit lense Of  orion @ 200mm. Cant remember the rest oof the settings. Tripod only.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Manners2020

[Manners2020]

Badly processed but 1 exposure at 25 secs I think. Through a 102mm lunt ed. Again a heavily light polluted backyard.

Edited May 3, 2018 by Manners2020

[Manners2020]

I've posted this before but messed with it some more. This is through the nikon kit lense @200mm piggybacked on my evolution.  Around thirty 25 sec exposures or so. A rare opportunity  to drive somewhere dark.

[rotatux]

@Manners2020 I find your Orion quite good. Comparing with unprocessed, I think you may have stripped too much of the background, hence loosing some details of the nebula you had captured. Now if this is a single sub, imagine what you will have with stacking several subs

BTW what mount was your 102 lunt on ?

Keep up trying, have good skies.

[Manners2020]

1 hour ago, rotatux said:

@Manners2020 I find your Orion quite good. Comparing with unprocessed, I think you may have stripped too much of the background, hence loosing some details of the nebula you had captured. Now if this is a single sub, imagine what you will have with stacking several subs

BTW what mount was your 102 lunt on ?

Keep up trying, have good skies.

BDamn  good point about going against what the experts say ian.  If I'd have listened to all those in the beginning  I would have not even been discussing this.?

[Manners2020]

The lunt was on the evo mount.  Clearance and balance  is a bit of a pain, I use one of those weights  that you strap around an ankle .. it kind of works. And yes the orion could be good with multiple exposures. When the skies and time next permit I'm going to have a proper attempt at something. 

[keyser187]

ive been away for a few years but i finally got my scope back out and tried to remember how to do this lol 

quick 1 of the M5 cluster.

17min total exposure time using 66 subs out of 140 at 15s

30 darks and bias, 20 flats

nexstar6 se with FR and a EOS 1100d unmodded using the timer to take 10 lots of subs at a time and thats it.

stacked and processed using DeepSkyStacker 4.1.1

(still too much green?)

 

Edited May 8, 2018 by keyser187
added text

[happy-kat]

That's come out well.

Have you thought about getting an intervalometer or if have an android device controlling your 1100d using DSLR Controller.

[keyser187]

i have but im just too lazy and money goes on other things plus i didnt know you could control it from an android device lol, im going to have a butchers at that, ive got an android phone.

[happy-kat]

Need OTG cable with canon usb lead. Check connectivity using their free dslr shutter release app also by Chainfire.

[Filroden]

19 hours ago, keyser187 said:

ive been away for a few years but i finally got my scope back out and tried to remember how to do this lol 

quick 1 of the M5 cluster.

17min total exposure time using 66 subs out of 140 at 15s

30 darks and bias, 20 flats

nexstar6 se with FR and a EOS 1100d unmodded using the timer to take 10 lots of subs at a time and thats it.

stacked and processed using DeepSkyStacker 4.1.1

(still too much green?)

 

Isn't it great to be imaging again? Looks like you got focus and only a little trailing in the 66 subs you've stacked. I'd say your main issue with the image is, as you've suggested, its green colour. DSS is great for stacking but I would never recommend using it for processing an image. It's too blunt a stick. Even a free package like Gimp will offer far more control over your stretching (small, iterative applications of either levels or curves adjustments to minimise star bloat and protect the brightest areas from over-exposing) and also for colour balancing (again, curve adjustments but in the individual RGB channels).

Give the processing another try. Use the autosave file from DSS with no processing, and try something like Gimp or a trial of StarTools, etc. You should find, with some careful stretching, that you can show good star colour across the image.

[keyser187]

thanks for the advice, i have GIMP but its just learning how to do all the stretching etc. ive been away for a while so its also trying to remember what i did learn.

also this was just a quick session, no planning involved, just had to force myself to get the scope back out to take my mind off stuff and to stop it gathering dust.

i think this topic only had 4 pages when i was last here lol its great to see people taking pics and showing people that it can be done on an alt az mount along with their techniques

this should be a sticky (mods?) 

[keyser187]

maybe we could pick one target and everyone goes out and gets their best img and posts them up?

[Manners2020]

On 2018-05-08 at 13:35, keyser187 said:

i have but im just too lazy and money goes on other things plus i didnt know you could control it from an android device lol, im going to have a butchers at that, ive got an android phone.

There's  some pretty decent apps  for dslrs  for android. Just a few dollars too. The one I use is for a nikon which works better than good enough and I believe the canon ones are better.

[keyser187]

Thanx peeps I'll look into it, just never really had a problem with pressing the button as they are "short" exposure's on an alt az. I can't go over 20s with my tracking and setup up and even that gives me loads of trails.I have no guide scope and I just do the auto 2 star align. If I ever get to the point of over 30s exposures and an eq mount then I'll defo need one. Its the same with the laptop, I've had it all setup with that a few times but then it seems more hassle than needed if your using an alt az. 

My pics on page 2 of this topic were done this way so its not that bad 

[keyser187]

Thinking about it lol

Should we really be using PHONE apps when we are stargazing/capturing the night sky?

we are supposed to be getting away from staring at phones lol

[SteveNickolls]

23 hours ago, keyser187 said:

this should be a sticky (mods?) 

They ain't listening.

Cheers,
Steve

[happy-kat]

I have a red dot finder on top of my camera in the flash hot shoe so I use that to align on stars and see the star on my tablet using the app controlling my dslr to fine tune.

[susan-parker]

From the 7th May 2018, just before midnight so astronomical dark (except for the West London H&F light pollution haze - so it's never properly dark).

Bottom part of the constellation Virgo, the bright star to the right side of the image is Spica; see UniMap ID image.

Visible in the original 50MB TIFF image are Stars down to the magnitude 10 range.

Hand held, against a window frame (2 second Mirror Up before shot timer). Nikon D800 with Nikkor 85mm f/2.0 lens at f/2.8, 4 off 2.5 seconds exposures, ISO800; IDAS-D1 Light Pollution Suppression Filter. Processed with DxO PhotoLab, Deep Sky Stacker & Photoshop.

[The Admiral]

18 hours ago, keyser187 said:

never really had a problem with pressing the button as they are "short" exposure's on an alt az.

If you are happy pressing the button of a remote release, that's up to you, but an intervalometer of some kind makes life easy. I would not recommend just pressing the camera button though as that is likely to induce shake and give you star trails.

Incidentally, you can't guide properly on an Alt-Az mount.

Ian

[happy-kat]

You did very well Susan to get good star shapes taking those images hand held. The window doesn't appear to have had a noticeable detrimental effect.

You might like to look through the image submissions to challenge number 8 as there are quite a few in there that were taken on static mounts. This thread the images have been taken on motorised tracking mounts but which aren't EQ.

[keyser187]

3 hours ago, The Admiral said:

If you are happy pressing the button of a remote release, that's up to you, but an intervalometer of some kind makes life easy. I would not recommend just pressing the camera button though as that is likely to induce shake and give you star trails.

Incidentally, you can't guide properly on an Alt-Az mount.

Ian

I press the button on the camera but its on a timer so it has 10 secs to stabilize and then takes 10 photos. As you say the guiding isn't great, I always lose sub's when I stack so 1 or 2 photos lost at the start of a set ain't a biggie lol

[Filroden]

16 hours ago, susan-parker said:

From the 7th May 2018, just before midnight so astronomical dark (except for the West London H&F light pollution haze - so it's never properly dark).

Bottom part of the constellation Virgo, the bright star to the right side of the image is Spica; see UniMap ID image.

Visible in the original 50MB TIFF image are Stars down to the magnitude 10 range.

Hand held, against a window frame (2 second Mirror Up before shot timer). Nikon D800 with Nikkor 85mm f/2.0 lens at f/2.8, 4 off 2.5 seconds exposures, ISO800; IDAS-D1 Light Pollution Suppression Filter. Processed with DxO PhotoLab, Deep Sky Stacker & Photoshop.

What I love about this is that you've taken a really sharp widefield image with hand-held (albeit supported). There's even star colour data in the image though you really need to push the processing hard to bring it out. I hit it hard with the star colour hammer (hope you don't mind) to show it's in the image (blues have gone a little purple):

With that nice field of view you might want to try some other areas and capture some clusters.