Getting a better pic of Orion etc.

[happy-kat]

That's a super picture of your back yard with sky shot. How many frames was that one?

[happy-kat]

Could make your self a simple light shield for your lens. Use a small flower pot cut the bottom off it then cut a line through it and hold to your lens with an elastic band. I have flocked mine to cut reflections out.

[JOC]

10 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

That's a super picture of your back yard with sky shot. How many frames was that one?

I'm glowing

That was 14 frames at 20 seconds.

If I just wanted to improve it from a pretty picture perspective I could use a cloning brush to eliminate the dust bunny a bit.

As for a lens hood I might have a bone fide one somewhere, but I know sometimes you have to watch the vignetting when you use one.  It's rather a case of all the gear, enthusiasm, but no idea here!!  LOL

[SilverAstro]

Excellent !

@JOC The bad news is that you just missed the SN  red dot is a rough guess as to where it should be.

 

 

[JOC]

What a shame, oh, well it was too much to hope for.  So what start is causing the big light above the tallest tree?  NB.  I would believe an aircraft so don't waste huge amounts of time on it.

[JOC]

It's got to be worth posting a slightly different view - I got this before the tripod fell apart - it shows a view that I think is a bit more left of those I've stacked.  Does this include the red dot area?

 

[SilverAstro]

15 minutes ago, JOC said:

What a shame, oh, well it was too much to hope for.  So what start is causing the big light above the tallest tree?  NB.  I would believe an aircraft so don't waste huge amounts of time on it.

I am not understanding,, I can see a bright light to the right of the big tree and a bit behind it but not above ?

[JOC]

51 minutes ago, SilverAstro said:

Excellent !

@JOC The bad news is that you just missed the SN  red dot is a rough guess as to where it should be.

 

I meant the biggest white blob in this view more or less above the tallest tree - I assumed it was Sirius

[JOC]

NB.  I can see you will get fed up with me and this sort of view - these are the sort of photos I wanted to take - an interesting foreground and pretty stars above. 

[SilverAstro]

Ah oh yes I see,,  that is Sirius, alpha Canis major

 

[SilverAstro]

I'll have a look at your new pic shortly, looks promising,

but my GIMP is so stuffed full of versions of your pics it has slowed to a crawl !! ! and got some domestic to sort as well !

No prob, jolly interesting, back soon after a de-clog !

[SilverAstro]

 

37 minutes ago, JOC said:

NB.  I can see you will get fed up with me and this sort of view - these are the sort of photos I wanted to take - an interesting foreground and pretty stars above. 

Au contrair, it is jolly interesting and saves me going out in the cold to snap my own lol!

What I should have typed before my lockup ( which was due to a crashed Sellarium, not your pics, I didnt think they were large enough for that )  was that your new pic looks promising to show the area of the SN, but wont be deep enough to show mag13

Not sure even how many stacked would be needed ??

[JOC]

5 minutes ago, SilverAstro said:

Not sure even how many stacked would be needed ??

Not even worth considering - that's the only one prior to the tripod dismantling itself!

[SilverAstro]

2 minutes ago, JOC said:

Not even worth considering - that's the only one prior to the tripod dismantling itself!

Oh dear ! but I will annotate it anyway so you know where to point next time,,  and to take a million to stack !

and I will label some of the other prominent stars for you whilst I am about it.

by the way yes a good pic of  "an interesting foreground and pretty stars above."

 

[SilverAstro]

Two problems ! : that was taken earlier so the region we want is in the cloud and murk just above the tree at bottom left and I think 10sec ? so not enough stars showing to be exact

However, if you follow vertically down from Procyon to just above the tree, that is where it should have been !

[JOC]

1 hour ago, SilverAstro said:

However, if you follow vertically down from Procyon to just above the tree, that is where it should have been !

So close yet so far!!  LOL

Oh well maybe the light will hang around for a few days and I might get another chance at it.  Thanks for the labelling though - always useful and perhaps more memorable on my own photos. :-D

[JOC]

OK, I've been playing with the software.  I came in frozen, but after an abortive observation session where I didn't do what I wanted to on account of the moon, I decided to try taking pictures of it.  Then I remembered the stacking software and thought that I would see whether I got a different effect if I stacked them.  There are often highly detailed images of the moon in the relevant sections of SGL, but I did add, etc. here and it's my experimental pictures thread so I'll put my effort here and maybe someone would like to suggest what I could do differently - I do have a full set of RAW files for everything here.  Then I thought that as I had the focus set for the moon which is a fair distance away I'd turn it onto M42 and see if I could find the nebula.  This wasn't as successful - even at 5 sec. subs on a non tracking mount I couldn't halt the star trails and the software couldn't lose them.  In actual fact the picture is rather dire, but I am a great believer in showing what went wrong, might help me get a fix from someone.  All these were taken through the canon attached to the focus unit on the OTA.

 

[happy-kat]

Ah your telescope would be a very long lens, we covered this earlier 400/focal length of lens so 400/1200 is like a fraction of a second if you don't want star trails.

Moon that's a good single frame, I find getting exposure right tricky to balance length with ISO as it's so bright.

[JOC]

10 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Moon that's a good single frame

Except that it isn't a single frame - that's about 20 odd RAW frames stacked, but somehow I haven't pulled in the density of detail that other stacked moon images that I have seen have shown. 

10 hours ago, happy-kat said:

we covered this earlier 400/focal length of lens so 400/1200 is like a fraction of a second if you don't want star trails.

Ah, I had been thinking of this and wondered if it might be the case - I was coming back to say that I'd been hit by serendipity - it's easy to forget that the OTA is actually the camera lens in this scenario - so I want about 1/3rd of a second.  Will that be enough to 'see' all that detail that then stacks into the nebula image?

[happy-kat]

Well for no star trails is going to be short and will need lots of frames, but worth a shot :-)

[SilverAstro]

@JOC I like them well worth being frozen for !

We covered star trails on and with the scope the other day as well !

The tracking in GoTo should have eliminated the star trails  and left only field rotation trailing. This applies to the camera+lens mounted on the scope (as a tracking mount), and also to the camera through the scope (using the scope as the lens). In GoTo (Az-El tracking) and only field rotation, the 400 rule does not apply. The sky direction rule then applies - longer exposures to the east and west, shorter to the south and zenith.

Edit : Ooops my bad "subs on a non tracking mount"

 Ah sorry, ignore the above, but now we know what you should do next, align the mount and GoTo it

I ought to learn to read proper !

 

[happy-kat]

Yes but the mount was not tracking.

[SilverAstro]

Just now, happy-kat said:

Yes but the mount was not tracking.

We crossed in the post ! see my correction  ! silly me.

 

[SilverAstro]

I guess not tracking because it was 'just a quicky' 'lets see' tryout ? So, very promising indeed for when @JOC you get another chance to set it up tracking.

 

[SilverAstro]

23 hours ago, JOC said:

rather dire, but I am a great believer in showing what went wrong, might help me get a fix from someone.  All these were taken through the canon attached to the focus unit on the OTA.

Not dire ! very promising*, the fix (as I was blundering above) is to set the mount going in GoTo mode.

* I have taken the liberty (hope you dont mind) of a quick bit of fiddling in Gimp, firstly to reduce the star trails, worked a bit on the bright ones and I think has helped M42, but not so clever on the marginal stars, not sure why not

I have had a go at reducing the background gradients as well (gaussian blur high pass filter) :-