M81 and M82 with 50mm lens

[Victor Boesen]

As I mentioned in my other post in this part of the forum, I have been at my grandma and grandpas this easter. They live in a small town where there is not much light pollution.
I was lucky to get two nights of clear skies, and I ended up with two nice pictures. One of m51 and m101, and one of m81 and m82. 

Both pictures is 6sec, iso 800, f/3.2 and the first is 75 lights and no correction frames. Second is about 120 lights and no correction frames.

Any advice appreciated!

 

Clear skies!

Victor Boesen

[SteveNickolls]

Hi Victor, thanks for posting. Your images show good round stars and colour, well done. The backgrounds show you imaged somewhere dark :-) At 50mm with a static tripod you should be able to increase your exposure to 10 seconds without affecting the star's shape, that increased exposure time will improve the signal somewhat. If you can reduce the f/ratio of the lens it will allow much more light into the pictures over the short period you can currently expose for, that will help quite a lot with improving signal too. As you can't control the temperature of your camera while imaging taking dark frames will probably not improve things for you and taking enough (say x50) would just eat into imaging time. Experiment. I'd also advise taking say x50 flat frames and x 50 bias frames and include them in your stacking software. At the end of the day you are doing well from a 50mm lens. Both your subjects are not centred in your FOV, it doesn't matter much but I often find doing a test shot or two (if you have Live View) to check positioning helps with the final composition.

Getting familiar with your processing software to tease out fainter portions of a subject will also improve your final images. The great thing about imaging is you can go back time after time to rework images as your experience increases.

Wishing you many more clear, dark skies,
Steve

[Victor Boesen]

48 minutes ago, SteveNickolls said:

If you can reduce the f/ratio of the lens it will allow much more light into the pictures over the short period you can currently expose for, that will help quite a lot with improving signal too.

I have tried this before, but the stars got too purple, and it was just a pain in the ass to correct in lightroom.
But thanks for your nice words Steve, it means a lot to me!!

And I wish you dark and clear skies as well!