M33 with a Nikon D5300

[Xiga]

Last Saturday (Oct 1) the forecast was for clear skies down at the usual dark sky site, so i decided it was finally time to test out the new Nikon (and SGP) so off i went to try and shoot M33. I've previously only shot 1 DSO, that was M31 last Winter, so i was excited to finally get another go!

Setup took ages (as always!) and my PHD2 guide graph was all over the shop, but thankfully not enough to ruin the image. I only had a few hrs to work with, as i was there with some other members of my local Astro society and i didn't want to stay on my own, and it really hurt having to leave while i still had battery power and clear skies overhead!

This is 19 x 6mins (1hr 54mins total), with Bias and Flats. Dithered every 3 frames in SGP. Stacked in DSS and processed in PS.  

And just for kicks, here's a centre-crop from a 200% re-size in PS, just to make the galaxy a bit bigger (worked better than i was expecting!):

ps - Found out yesterday the Local Astro Society want to use it in an exhibition next month. It'll probably be the worst one there, lol, but at least ill know it was mine 

[Yamez]

That is a stunning capture congratulations are in order. May i ask how many darks, flats and bias were used. Would be nice to know for when i upgrade my equipment and start imaging.

[Ikonnikov]

Looks excellent, keep going with more data if you can!

Paul

 

[Xiga]

1 hour ago, Yamez said:

That is a stunning capture congratulations are in order. May i ask how many darks, flats and bias were used. Would be nice to know for when i upgrade my equipment and start imaging.

Thanks Yamez! :-)

No darks (arguably not needed if you dither and have a low-noise camera, which the D5300 is). If your camera has significant amp glow then darks are a must have

MasterBias (created in DSS) from 360 Bias

15 Flats (was supposed to be 30 but i messed up the setting's in the camera's in-built intervalometer!)

[Xiga]

44 minutes ago, Ikonnikov said:

Looks excellent, keep going with more data if you can!

Paul

 

Thanks Paul!

I really should have had another 60-90 mins on the night itself, i wasted a lot of time stressing over the PHD2 graph rather than just capturing. Maybe i can add to it at some point (the joys of plate-solving!) but given the few clear nights we have here in the UK (and add in bothersome life getting in the way) then i'll probably just move on to the next one on the list (M42, M45, Barnard 33, M8, C49 i'm looking at you!)

[Maximidius]

That's a great capture from the Nikon D5300, loads better than the 20 x300sec  i got on it last night. we're using the same scope and reducers too. What are your skies like on say, the bortle scale? 

[Xiga]

45 minutes ago, Maximidius said:

That's a great capture from the Nikon D5300, loads better than the 20 x300sec  i got on it last night. we're using the same scope and reducers too. What are your skies like on say, the bortle scale? 

Thanks mate.

I've no idea what level the skies are on the Bortle scale. I think it's a Blue zone, and it's about a 25 mile journey from the city (Belfast). You can clearly see the Milky Way overhead.

Below is a screen grab of one of the Raw histograms in PS to give you an idea. As you can see, at 360s there's very little separation from the left hand side, and in fact the Blue channel didn't completely clear it (I should have checked this at the time!). I'll probably up my ISO from 200 to 400 (or risk slightly longer exposures) next time.

I do have an IDAS-D1 which I will use for those nights when I can't make it down to the dark sky site. I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

[Maximidius]

7 minutes ago, Xiga said:

Thanks mate.

I've no idea what level the skies are on the Bortle scale. I think it's a Blue zone, and it's about a 25 mile journey from the city (Belfast). You can clearly see the Milky Way overhead.

Below is a screen grab of one of the Raw histograms in PS to give you an idea. As you can see, at 360s there's very little separation from the left hand side, and in fact the Blue channel didn't completely clear it (I should have checked this at the time!). I'll probably up my ISO from 200 to 400 (or risk slightly longer exposures) next time.

I do have an IDAS-D1 which I will use for those nights when I can't make it down to the dark sky site. I haven't had a chance to use it yet.

Ah yes, then much much better skies than I have, lucky [removed word] lol. Looks like you have plenty of scope (pardon the pun) to increase the ISO and or exposure time there too. I'm up near the middle with only 300sec and an IDAS and that's my dark site lol. 

I find the IDAS MFA D1 does make the colour balancing tough. Well I find that anyway. I can't image here without it though. 

[knobby]

Lovely capture and a pleasure to see a fellow Nikonian 

[ollypenrice]

That's a very good result indeed for just a couple of hours with a DSLR. I think it's best not to resample it beyond its natural resolution but the wider framed version looks lovely. Good star colour, too, which is not always the case with DSLRs.

Olly

[Xiga]

Thanks Olly. Yeah I agree about the resampling. Family & friends seemed to like the re-sampled one better, but then they don't look at astro images the same way the rest of us do!  ;-)

Even after just one image I'm finding the Nikon to be better at picking up colour than the Canon 60D. According to sensorgen.info the D5300 has an almost unity gain level of saturation (e-) at ISO 200 (about 16k), and I think this has really helped with colours, especially the stars, but I'm far from an expert in this matter so I could be wrong!

Now if only there was somewhere here in the UK that would mod Nikons (and at a reasonable price). I definitely don't want to send it off to the States!

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, Xiga said:

Thanks Olly. Yeah I agree about the resampling. Family & friends seemed to like the re-sampled one better, but then they don't look at astro images the same way the rest of us do!  ;-)

Even after just one image I'm finding the Nikon to be better at picking up colour than the Canon 60D. According to sensorgen.info the D5300 has an almost unity gain level of saturation (e-) at ISO 200 (about 16k), and I think this has really helped with colours, especially the stars, but I'm far from an expert in this matter so I could be wrong!

Now if only there was somewhere here in the UK that would mod Nikons (and at a reasonable price). I definitely don't want to send it off to the States!

What's the Ha cutoff like on this camera? Have you tried it with an Ha filter? A good tip for standard camera images is to go to Image, Adjustments, Selective Colour in Ps and move the top slider in Reds to the left to lower the cyan in red. This pulls out Ha signal buried in the data.

Olly

[Xiga]

6 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

What's the Ha cutoff like on this camera? Have you tried it with an Ha filter? A good tip for standard camera images is to go to Image, Adjustments, Selective Colour in Ps and move the top slider in Reds to the left to lower the cyan in red. This pulls out Ha signal buried in the data.

Olly

Thanks for the tip Olly! I'll try it out later and see if it brings anything more out. Is it OK to do  near the end of processing or would I have  to go back a fair few steps ? 

I haven't tried an Ha filter in it yet, although I've heard that in stock form the Ha response is slightly better than the Canons. I was pleasantly surprised to see a few of the Ha blobs show up in my image given the camera isn't modded in any way . 

[Xiga]

 

First things first, Merry Christmas everyone! ?☃❄?

Thought I'd update this with the new re-process of my M33 image, as I wasn't happy with the last one. 

Aside from a much smaller crop and a more natural colour tone, I avoided using a high pass filter and instead used a good old smart sharpen, Billy only on a synthetic luminance,  and I think it really helped. I pushed it a bit too far though, hence the background is not quite as good, but I think overall it's still better than the last one. 

[Xiga]

 

M33 v3 by ciaranodonnell2000, on Flickr