My first attempt at using Nightcap camera and of imaging stars!

[Shera]

Hi,

Here are my first attempts from last night at taking pictures of the stars after a few people on here helpfully recommended Nightcap camera on my iPhone 6! The first one is Arcturus, the next two self explanatory and the last one I managed to see the Space Station so used that setting and managed to get a plane and Delphinus in shot! Ok so maybe that one is a bit crappy but I was fascinated! I loved being out there and I'm really pleased with the photos as first attempts. If anyone has any tips please let me know!

 

 

 

 

[Shera]

The originals were big files so I copied them from my Facebook uploads which might make them slightly fuzzier than the originals!

[happy-kat]

The Plough has come out very well. Are you using some form of tripod or stable mount?

[billyharris72]

+1 on that image of the Plough. For a phone camera it's really nice. Once the nights get darker, and with a tripod, I reckon you'll get some really nice images.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Nicely framed Plough there. The background of the Cassiopeia shot is a little noisy, but you could try taking several frames and stack them to reduce this.

[Shera]

5 hours ago, happy-kat said:

The Plough has come out very well. Are you using some form of tripod or stable mount?

I think I held the camera and rested my elbows on my telescope!!!! It has it's uses!!!!

[Shera]

3 hours ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Nicely framed Plough there. The background of the Cassiopeia shot is a little noisy, but you could try taking several frames and stack them to reduce this.

Thanks. Is there a preferred program for stacking images? I've got Registax which I've used for videos of the planets but not sure if that can be used to stack images?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I use Deep Sky Stacker for widefields and DSOs.

[Shera]

Here's few more using stacking via PIPP and Registax and then messing about on Registax with the quality. With regards to the star image, is the contrast/brightness/gamma ok? I was hoping to get the Milky Way or see if it was possible but the moon put a stop to that! I only took 5 images of each using the star mode which is a 15 second exposure; if I took more, would I get more stars in the shots?