M45 Revisited at 200mm, undriven mount.

[johnfosteruk]

Or how not to do astrophotography.

As stated in the title, this is M45 with a 200mm lens on a normal tripod captured this evening. It would have been wider but I cropped as it was such a noisy image.

50 lights @ ISO 6400, 1.6s, F4.8

50 darks

50 bias

stacked in DSS, lots and lots and lots and lots of Photoshop work to keep the noise down and try to bring out a smidgen of nebulosity.

Small image size, to hide the aforementioned noise, this was expected, obviously, at ISO 6400.

As I said, it's very noisy but it does show what can be done with limited gear and a little effort.

Did I mention the noise? I really need to start saving for a decent driven mount)

[Pompey Monkey]

Well done fore 1.6 second exposures. You've managed to differentiate the star colours well.

Also try 2 or even 2.5 s exposures, you might just get away with it

Also, as you are not guiding, don't bother with darks - you'll get a natural dither between subs that will cancel out noise nicely as long as you use some kind of statistical pixel rejection (e.g. sigma rejection in DSS).

[johnfosteruk]

Thanks Paul, I'm going to give that a try now 

[johnfosteruk]

So that's a reprocess done with sigma rejection and it seems to be an improvement, resulting in a slightly larger image and a little more colour detail where it counts I think. Also a lot less work in Photoshop after DSS to get a result.

Nowhere near good but it'll do for now.

[alacant]

Like the thru-the-eyepiece composition. Great shot. And on the contrary. I'm all for experimenting with new ways of doing stuff. Otherwise we all end up with the same results. It's a breath of fresh air to see something like this.

[alacant]

9 hours ago, johnfosteruk said:

Or how not to do astrophotography.

I think this is exactly how you should start to do astro-photography; use what you've got. It certainly beats spending 2000 coins on something you don't need because someone has told you that you must have that as a minimum!

[xtreemchaos]

great catch John, amazing shots for short exp, your going to produce some crackers when you get your tracking motors. well done.  charl.

[johnfosteruk]

Charl you're very kind. 

It shouldn't be too long before I'm driven.. The Present Mrs Foster, hither forth known as the treasurer or boss should be releasing funding for an heq5 pro soon. 

Then it'll be all down hill from there. I'll have guiding to think about, short ED for wide, planetary cams, ccd etc. I predict bankruptcy within a year. 

[StargeezerTim]

1 hour ago, johnfosteruk said:

Charl you're very kind. 

It shouldn't be too long before I'm driven.. The Present Mrs Foster, hither forth known as the treasurer or boss should be releasing funding for an heq5 pro soon. 

Then it'll be all down hill from there. I'll have guiding to think about, short ED for wide, planetary cams, ccd etc. I predict bankruptcy within a year. 

Well I hope the treasurer is generous with her donations because astrophotography is a greedy and voracious monster that is never satisfied!

Seriously though, I'm serious...

Enjoy the new mount. 

[johnfosteruk]

Double post

[johnfosteruk]

5 hours ago, StargeezerTim said:

voracious monster that is never satisfied!

Funnily enough the treasurer's been called that a few times. It's OK she's not looking

[wimvb]

That's a great image, considering the short exposure time. But at 50 frames, you're still under 2 minutes in total.

If you want to improve on this image, with your current setup, consider tripling the number of subs. You will notice a substantial decrease in noise, enabling you to enhance the nebulae that surround the stars.

[johnfosteruk]

Thank you Wim.

7 hours ago, wimvb said:

consider tripling the number of subs

That's been bothering me that has. My other recent images have all been wider, longer exposures and at least 5 mins total but the other night was an afterthought really after a vis session and I hadn't cleared the sd card down so only had room for the 50. Could have run in for another card but I don't think I'd have gone back out again.

I'll add some more data and revisit when the weather permits

[Knight of Clear Skies]

On 07/11/2016 at 06:45, alacant said:

Like the thru-the-eyepiece composition. Great shot. And on the contrary. I'm all for experimenting with new ways of doing stuff. Otherwise we all end up with the same results. It's a breath of fresh air to see something like this.

Very much this. A great deal of equipment isn't essential to get worthwhile results.

[Pete Presland]

Amazing image for an unfriendly mount, and less than 2 second exposures! 

[johnfosteruk]

Thanks Mr Presland. I'm currently waiting for DSS to do it's thing with the data from a revisit tonight. 350 lights at 2s each mounted on the EQ3, undriven but allowed me to keep the framing for all frames so I can have the wide view.

Going to be interesting to see the effect of the additional 25% exposure time and over 5x total.

[johnfosteruk]

So as I said, I've just recaptured this with 2s exposures on the EQ3 for stability and framing. 350 lights which DSS stacked 318 of. The slightly closer/larger/brighter moon didn't help much, had a lovely gradient which made it difficult to stay behind the noise limit but I think it's an improvement, there's definitely less noise around the main stars and the nebulae (such as they are) are smoother.

sticking with the EP view in presentation but a slightly wider view because I can this time

I'll be doing this at a dark site I think soon, it'll be interesting to compare.

[Victor Boesen]

i really want to see a "revisited" orion and flame nebula with 200mm if it is possible...

[johnfosteruk]

9 minutes ago, Victor Boesen said:

i really want to see a "revisited" orion and flame nebula with 200mm if it is possible...

I've been so busy in the last week Victor that the opportunity hasn't arisen (plus, UK weather, say no more) but as soon as it does I'll be giving it a go. It'll be interesting to see if the nebulae will cope with the 2s exposures at 200mm.

[Victor Boesen]

Just now, johnfosteruk said:

It'll be interesting to see if the nebulae will cope with the 2s exposures at 200mm.

it will!! However i think you are going to get more nebulosity, because if you look at the 200mm photo of m45, then you got more nebula in the image. And who knows, maybe the flame nebula will be even more crisp??