Lodestar x2 C First Light

[Astrith]

Many thanks for the advice on this forum . Here are three images I have taken earlier, I managed to get the images centred ( to a degree ) after advice from here. Still work in progress .  But pleased I have got this far .

[Knighty2112]

Not bad for light polluted Hull. Well done.

[Astrith]

1 hour ago, Knighty2112 said:

Not bad for light polluted Hull. Well done.

Cheers Knighty.

[Paul81]

Hi Astrith,

Well done on first light!

It looks like you possibly didn't have the correct colour space selected - on the exposure tab make sure you select the CYGM colour space for the Lodestar-C such that Starlight Live decodes the colour.

Cheers

Paul

[RobertI]

A great start, you have done the difficult bit!   If you follow Paul's suggestion the image should pop into life. Next time out try switching 'stacking' on and stacking a few exposures of say 20 to 30 seconds, the image will look even better!

[Martin Meredith]

I agree with Rob that shorter exposures will help. I noticed your M51 is 90s and shows some evidence of trailing stars? You could try cutting back to 10 or 15s and turn live stacking on. That way the first image appears soon and subsequent images will improve the view, and meanwhile you can be adjusting the display controls. Did you use any of the brightness/contrast/black/white points with these images? If not, you've got a lot more detail to pull out still. 

Martin

[Astrith]

Many thanks for the replies  . This is what I was hoping for ...feedback.   Will choose correct colour space next time ,   stacking  and shorter exposures  .  A big Hurrah to you all!!

[DoctorD]

Hi

A great start - I'd recommend no more than 30s exposure but to be honest it's amazing what you can pull out of 10 to 15s exposures too.

Theres a lot of controls to play with - I find it useful to save my captures (FITS format) then when it's cloudy (or during the day!) you can load a file into StarlightLive and have a play with the different options including the ARCSIN and X^0.25 modes which can help bring out more detail in the images.

HTH

Paul

 

[calli]

On 16.2.2016 at 08:42, Martin Meredith said:

I agree with Rob that shorter exposures will help. I noticed your M51 is 90s and shows some evidence of trailing stars? You could try cutting back to 10 or 15s and turn live stacking on. That way the first image appears soon and subsequent images will improve the view, and meanwhile you can be adjusting the display controls. Did you use any of the brightness/contrast/black/white points with these images? If not, you've got a lot more detail to pull out still. 

Martin

I always wanted to ask: The life stacking, is it doing star registering? I mean with a wacky mount it would not help to use shorter exps but then stack without registering?

Sorry for using this thread.

Carsten

[Martin Meredith]

Hi Carsten

Yes, that's the beauty of the way StarlightLive (and some other live stacking software) works. It solves for field rotation (between subs) too so we can get away with alt-az mounts.

Martin

[calli]

8 minutes ago, Martin Meredith said:

Hi Carsten

Yes, that's the beauty of the way StarlightLive (and some other live stacking software) works. It solves for field rotation (between subs) too so we can get away with alt-az mounts.

Martin

Ohhhhhh! Thats nice.

So which bank now to "visit" (<- just a joke for all humans and machines reading this).

Carsten