Orion - First Ever AP Attempt

[Buzzard75]

This is my first foray into the world of astrophotography, so go easy on me. The night started out with me just wanting to capture the ISS as it streaked overhead. I managed to capture a couple of nice 15 second exposures of it. I had intended to capture it going completely across the frame, but I was afraid the image would get blown out too much as it was still early, I have a lot of lights in my neighborhood, there's generally a lot of light pollution in my area, and the moon was out. So a handful of 15 second exposures at ISO100 is what I got. I was using a Canon T4i (650D) with the EF-S 18-135mm lens at 18mm and f/3.5.

Since that went well enough, I decided to try and do some actual astrophotography just to play around with it. I've been interested, but not had the time to really mess around with it until last night. Orion's a pretty easy target so that's what I went for. I used the same gear, but zoomed the lens in a bit to frame the constellation a bit better and cut out the moon that was looming right next to Orion. I took 15x5s at ISO1600, f/5. I also took 10 darks as everything I've read here and elsewhere recommends them and they were easy enough to do. I then stacked in DSS. I didn't do any editing as I don't have a photo editing program on my PC. Yet. Not bad for a first attempt with the settings I was using and all the light pollution sources I was dealing with and no tracking. It is by no means as nice as some of the images I've seen here, but I'm happy with the result for a first attempt. I've come to the conclusion though that, if I really want to do this more regularly and not get frustrated with the results, I need a better camera. The T4i should be more than capable, but it's extremely slow. It takes almost as long to save the image as it does to take it. The sensor has a lot of noise. I also want to get a tracking mount like the iOptron Skyguider Pro to get longer exposures. So that's it for my first ever attempt at astrophotography! Thanks for reading and for any tips you want to pass my way!

[davew]

I think you've hit the ground running with them ! Excellent shots.

I also think for doing this kind of imaging the camera you've got is just fine. You may want to look at processing in the near future but don't rush it

Dave.

[Buzzard75]

1 hour ago, davew said:

I think you've hit the ground running with them ! Excellent shots.

I also think for doing this kind of imaging the camera you've got is just fine. You may want to look at processing in the near future but don't rush it

Dave.

Coming from a 2nd place contest finisher for widefield imaging, I certainly appreciate the compliment, Dave! I'll have to look at the class of SD card we've got in the camera. That could be the cause of the slower image processing speed. It's painfully slow. My wife is the one who uses it most. I don't touch the camera very often myself so I don't know as much about it as I probably should. She threw a fit last night and was worried I was going to mess something up and delete our Yellowstone family vacation pictures that she hadn't backed up yet. Sooo, maybe I just need to buy a camera for myself to do astrophotography with, right? Right?

 

EDIT: The other thing I didn't check was whether or not the noise reduction was on. That will certainly increase the write speed. That may have been the biggest cause of my slow down last night. Still think I need my own camera...:D

[davew]

I got lucky Buzzard 

I meant to say but forgot, if the write time appeared to be the same as the exposure it probably was noise reduction and not a camera fault. That camera is very good as far as I know.

Dave.

[happy-kat]

Slower processing speed is likely because you have not yet turned off in camera noise reduction. This makes the camera take your picture then another with no light to then subtract from your image... Great for single night shots bad for astro shots.

While deciding what software GIMP is free.

My last two copies of paintshoppro were £19.99 respectively and psp will run the two often mentioned plugins for ps.

[happy-kat]

Also Sequator is great when stacking images with foreground like trees.

[Buzzard75]

What a difference some editing makes, huh? I decided to give Adobe Photoshop a go since it was a free 7-day trial for their Creative Cloud. This is also my first attempt at ever using Photoshop for anything. I'm actually fairly impressed with myself. I gather this is how hobbies and credit card debt start.

EDIT: Yes, there is some obvious vignetting, but I'm not experienced enough and don't have the fancy $50 plugin to deal with that.

[Pete Presland]

Very nice collection of images.