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The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!


JGM1971

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2 hours ago, LeeHore7 said:

Thanks Stu, what was the issues with usdung the az gti in EQ mode you were suffering from. I can reliably get 30 sec dubs with mine in az mode which is great I think. My M51 image was quite pleasing to see it emerge in processing, I'm loving my 72ed it's an amazing scope and so proud to own it, produces fantastic images and so portable, clear skies 

Hi Lee , well as you know it’s basically an alt az mount which has EQ overtones . Don’t get me wrong , it works ok but polar aligning isn’t as precise . To be fair I haven’t used sharp cap to polar alignment which I’m sure would help . I just think , having to add a weight and bar and the wedge makes this lovely little portable tracker a bit clumsy and takes away some of the grab  and go that the mount excels in and as you have found it’s great for photography 

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2 hours ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Hi Lee , well as you know it’s basically an alt az mount which has EQ overtones . Don’t get me wrong , it works ok but polar aligning isn’t as precise . To be fair I haven’t used sharp cap to polar alignment which I’m sure would help . I just think , having to add a weight and bar and the wedge makes this lovely little portable tracker a bit clumsy and takes away some of the grab  and go that the mount excels in and as you have found it’s great for photography 

Yes totally understand what your saying with the polar alignment side of things, I'm wondering when my star adventurer arrives and use the wedge on AzGti that mh polar aligner Pro app may help with polar alignment using the daytime polar align, to save chugging my laptop out as I prefer the goto set ip of az gti. Lazy I know but when short on time quick set up and finding targets are paramount 

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2 hours ago, LeeHore7 said:

Yes totally understand what your saying with the polar alignment side of things, I'm wondering when my star adventurer arrives and use the wedge on AzGti that mh polar aligner Pro app may help with polar alignment using the daytime polar align, to save chugging my laptop out as I prefer the goto set ip of az gti. Lazy I know but when short on time quick set up and finding targets are paramount 

And that’s the beauty of the mount .. quick set up .. and brilliant imaging . 

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My latest offerings from galaxy season. I managed to image M101 on Tuesday night and finally imaged Markarian's chain last night, both processed tonight using dss an ps with astro tools. Both with my sw 72ed AzGti and Canon 600D, M101 is 100 x30sec 1600iso and Markarian's chain is 114x30secs 1600iso. So happy to get the chain with my portable set up. 

Clear skies 

M101-13-4-21-_497501116287628.jpg

Markarians-Chain-15-4-21_497501240274607.jpg

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21 hours ago, LeeHore7 said:

My latest offerings from galaxy season. I managed to image M101 on Tuesday night and finally imaged Markarian's chain last night, both processed tonight using dss an ps with astro tools. Both with my sw 72ed AzGti and Canon 600D, M101 is 100 x30sec 1600iso and Markarian's chain is 114x30secs 1600iso. So happy to get the chain with my portable set up. 

Clear skies 

M101-13-4-21-_497501116287628.jpg

Markarians-Chain-15-4-21_497501240274607.jpg

Brilliant Lee ... and to think that the purists say only an HeQ 5 minimum will do !!

Edited by Stu1smartcookie
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11 hours ago, LeeHore7 said:

My latest offerings from galaxy season. I managed to image M101 on Tuesday night and finally imaged Markarian's chain last night, both processed tonight using dss an ps with astro tools. Both with my sw 72ed AzGti and Canon 600D, M101 is 100 x30sec 1600iso and Markarian's chain is 114x30secs 1600iso. So happy to get the chain with my portable set up. 

Clear skies 

M101-13-4-21-_497501116287628.jpg

Markarians-Chain-15-4-21_497501240274607.jpg

Lovely images. The chain is a fascinating target.

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10 hours ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

Brilliant Lee ... and to think that the purists say only an HeQ 5 minimum will !!!

Thank you Stu that's very kind of you. It just goes to show as you say you can do deep sky on alt az mounts quite easily, I know I'm pushing my mount to the limits but so worth it, since processing these I've learnt a new way to process so will give them another go and repost. Here ia a re process of M51 The whirlpool galaxy from earlier in the week 

M51-11-4-21--Daydream-Astro-style.jpg

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10 hours ago, Mr Thingy said:

Lovely images. The chain is a fascinating target.

Thank you, I wasn't sure how good the Chain would show with my set up but how wrong I was, its really a beautiful dso, going to re process this one and M101 moro, clear skies 

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On 14/04/2021 at 15:07, breakstuff said:

This is my set up  @LeeHore7

I'm using Gimp for processing. Look forward to seeing your images of M101. 

 

dbLkaMl.jpg

Is it a reducer/flattener you have there? How is it working out for you?

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1 hour ago, grjsk said:

Is it a reducer/flattener you have there? How is it working out for you?

Hi @grjsk it's just a flattener, no reducer. This one, in fact.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reducersflatteners/ovl-field-flattener.html

I bought it second hand and it's a great bit of kit. Does exactly what it's supposed to do, with the added bonus of strengthening the connection to my camera as I don't trust compression rings or grub screws to not fail if you're not paying attention. 

 

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11 minutes ago, breakstuff said:

Hi @grjsk it's just a flattener, no reducer. This one, in fact.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/reducersflatteners/ovl-field-flattener.html

I bought it second hand and it's a great bit of kit. Does exactly what it's supposed to do, with the added bonus of strengthening the connection to my camera as I don't trust compression rings or grub screws to not fail if you're not paying attention. 

 

Good to know! I also have a 600D with a 72mm refractor on the Az-gti, and has just gotten my hands on a reducer/flattener, and can’t wait to try i out. Im really surprised how well such a setup works out!

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18 minutes ago, grjsk said:

Good to know! I also have a 600D with a 72mm refractor on the Az-gti, and has just gotten my hands on a reducer/flattener, and can’t wait to try i out. Im really surprised how well such a setup works out!

It's a great grab and go set up, isn't it? I keep mine set up ready to lift into the garden in one trip. A quick level, check finderscope is lined up, and I'm ready to go. If everything works ok, I can be imaging in ten minutes. 

 

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54 minutes ago, breakstuff said:

It's a great grab and go set up, isn't it? I keep mine set up ready to lift into the garden in one trip. A quick level, check finderscope is lined up, and I'm ready to go. If everything works ok, I can be imaging in ten minutes. 

 

It truly is. I always travel with it, and I have everything I need in small backpack, + the tripod. One trip out to the car, and one trip out to the site. Setting up, leveling and lining up is done in a few minutes as you say. Love it. And the az-gti is surprisingly precise. Ive managed 60 sec exposures (unguidet) without trailing. Next season I’ll try to push it even further.

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Shooting through clouds.  Here is a pair of Needle Galaxy shots.  The color image is from the 250P and the grayscale is another guide scope image.  75 @ 20 seconds for the color, 3 @ 60 seconds for the guide camera.  There were a lot more shots but the clouds clobbered a great many of them.

GuideScopeNeedleGalaxyNGC4565.png

NeedleGalaxyNGC4565.png

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I think this is my first image on here , No calibration frames , so the image is really noisy . 50 x 30s light frames ,100d dslr . Now i understand why you SHOULD take Darks and flats ! But , as this is my first attempt , the only way is Up .  The image has been cropped ( which in hindsight is probably a mistake lol).. so , I took some darks and flats and a few bias frames and I think my image got a whole lot better . I have learnt not to excessively crop an image and that calibration frames when using a dslr are really necessary . :) 

 

20A5F3EC-00CE-4ABA-8348-EBE89040E19B.jpeg

Edited by Stu1smartcookie
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3 hours ago, Stu1smartcookie said:

I think this is my first image on here , No calibration frames , so the image is really noisy . 50 x 30s light frames ,100d dslr . Now i understand why you SHOULD take Darks and flats ! But , as this is my first attempt , the only way is Up .  The image has been cropped ( which in hindsight is probably a mistake lol)

M51.jpg

Fantastic effort that. You've made a great start there and always nice when deep sky pops out the frame at you no matter how it's taken. What mount and scope were you using, sorry you've probably said someone before. Fleets and bias don't take long to do only the darks but 20 is best for all I think and more lights. I'm only just beginning also but enjoying what can be squeezed out of a no eq mount 👍

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Thanks for the kind words of support ... i really do think the image sucks lol ( although i am pleased i even managed to get something ).. but its probably because i didn't do the calibration frames as i wrote .I am going to image this target again and this time , take darks and flats .   I have a WO ZS73 on an AZ-GTi . :) 

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On 23/04/2021 at 08:29, Stu1smartcookie said:

I have learnt not to excessively crop an image and that calibration frames when using a dslr are really necessary .

That's a good start but I would caution using darks for DSLRs. Unless the camera is cooled, your darks are unlikely to be consistent or matching to your lights and can create as many problems as they solve. Try using just bias and flats and compare to bias/dark/flat to see which gives a better starting point.

I would also say crop crop crop! You need to make sure you've cropped out all rotation from the image. I can see you have some areas around your image border where not all images have overlapped. These create massive post-processing problems when you try to colour calibrate, remove gradients, etc. So, make sure to crop inside before processing. You can always really stretch the image first to get an idea of where you need to crop, then undo the stretch and then apply the crop.

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4 hours ago, Filroden said:

That's a good start but I would caution using darks for DSLRs. Unless the camera is cooled, your darks are unlikely to be consistent or matching to your lights and can create as many problems as they solve. Try using just bias and flats and compare to bias/dark/flat to see which gives a better starting point.

I would also say crop crop crop! You need to make sure you've cropped out all rotation from the image. I can see you have some areas around your image border where not all images have overlapped. These create massive post-processing problems when you try to colour calibrate, remove gradients, etc. So, make sure to crop inside before processing. You can always really stretch the image first to get an idea of where you need to crop, then undo the stretch and then apply the crop.

Thank you for the advice :), its very useful to me .  To be honest i am going to buy an astro cam , when i can . Interesting about the dark frames , and something i didn't know about . When i bought my scope i swore that i wouldn't get hooked on photography ... zzz, by the way i haven't got a field flattener either so will probably invest in one of those too... hell !! what am i saying ... i only wanted to go visual lol

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On 17/04/2021 at 20:40, AstroNebulee said:

Thank you Stu that's very kind of you. It just goes to show as you say you can do deep sky on alt az mounts quite easily, I know I'm pushing my mount to the limits but so worth it, since processing these I've learnt a new way to process so will give them another go and repost. Here ia a re process of M51 The whirlpool galaxy from earlier in the week 

M51-11-4-21--Daydream-Astro-style.jpg

that really is excellent. And that is unguided ?

I didn't even try to attempt it with my az gti in eq mode - just didn't think it could do it - went for it last week with my 6d, SW 72ED and EQ5 mount, guided, but didn't get anthing like as good as you got. I was shooting 90 second lights, and forgot to shoot any calibration frames.  result below 😞 I shot it 2 nights later with my mak 102, which maybe approaches your result, but that was at 300 seconds. I think I DEFINATELY need to try my AZ GTI on it (though will be in EQ mode ! (boo hiss i hear - can't post to this thread).

so hope following images allowed even though with EQ - it's as a comparison to show why skill and talent and an AZ mount beats a monkey in charge of an EQ mount.

SW 72ED (heavily cropped):

m51-RGB-session_1-St_bin2.jpg.507db707a92a4d118f09a31c7df52fbb.jpg

MAK 102 (heavily cropped):

21_04_24_m51.imac27-RGB-session_1-NoSt-St_bin2.jpg.f6a11ab70b5c3966671b22ade1768cb7.jpg

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6 minutes ago, powerlord said:

that really is excellent. And that is unguided ?

I didn't even try to attempt it with my az gti in eq mode - just didn't think it could do it - went for it last week with my 6d, SW 72ED and EQ5 mount, guided, but didn't get anthing like as good as you got. I was shooting 90 second lights, and forgot to shoot any calibration frames.  result below 😞 I shot it 2 nights later with my mak 102, which maybe approaches your result, but that was at 300 seconds. I think I DEFINATELY need to try my AZ GTI on it (though will be in EQ mode ! (boo hiss i hear - can't post to this thread).

so hope following images allowed even though with EQ - it's as a comparison to show why skill and talent and an AZ mount beats a monkey in charge of an EQ mount.

SW 72ED (heavily cropped):

m51-RGB-session_1-St_bin2.jpg.507db707a92a4d118f09a31c7df52fbb.jpg

MAK 102 (heavily cropped):

21_04_24_m51.imac27-RGB-session_1-NoSt-St_bin2.jpg.f6a11ab70b5c3966671b22ade1768cb7.jpg

Hi power lord

Yes this was unguided and in normal az mode. Around 100x 30 sec lights I think and a set of dark, bias and flats. Your mak M51 is excellent, I wouldn't be able to get that with my Skymax 127 with the focal length to long.  That's why I love my sw 72ed. I'm going to try and mod a polar scope on the az gti when I fit the wedge to try eq mode. But just in az mode you can get brilliant results. I didn't crop mine to much and can reliably get 30 sec subs, may even be able to squeeze a few more seconds out if it. As long as the bubble on my mount are perfect in the circle shouldn't be an issue. Clear skies. 

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