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Anything special up there tonight?


trekker308

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After a spell of enforced inactivity, I was dying to get out for a spot of observing, but a planned meet with my Astro club had fallen through – What to do? Jan had nicked my car as hers was out of service, so I was stuck at home. Home is a flat over a shop up a small lane close to Ringwood’s Market Square, so it’s dead quiet after the shops shut (plenty of LP though) – the only passers-by are folk walking from the municipal car park to the pubs and restaurants in the High Street.

I carried the Orion Mak-Cass downstairs to just inside the front door where it was bl**dy freezing, and left it there for 45 minutes. Wrapped up to the nines, I set up outside in a small square outside the shop, put in a 32mm Plossl and turned to the Moon.

The eyepiece, an Antares is not too bad at all for a cheapie, particularly in the centre of the FOV – certainly good enough at 48x to get a general overall idea of which features are really standing out. The Eastern edge of Mare Tranquillitatis, and Mare Crisium and Fecunditatis looked interesting and plenty of small features were as clear as crystal. This was the first opportunity I’d had to give The Orion which I purchased as a ‘grab ‘n’ go’ ‘scope a decent workout, and it was exceeding my expectations.

Rosenberger, Metius, Reichenbach, Santbech, Goclenius, Macrobius, Franklin and Atlas were all outstanding and begging for attention, but it was the features in and around Mare Crisium which really took my attention. Time for the secret weapon! A much treasured 19mm Panoptic took the place of the 32mm Plossl, a sip of coffee, settle into my chair and off we go ……

Cleomedes F, Swift, Pierce, Picard, Yerkes, Lick and Greaves were delivered as crisp as I could ever hope for, and I must of spent a good 25-30 minutes just tracking along the various Dorsa and taking in the view. Switching to a Teleskope-Service 16mm wideangle cranked up the magnification a tad, but it couldn’t hold its own up against the Panoptic so I went back to it (not surprising really!)

Another swig of coffee from the insulated mug (D**n- it’s cold!) and I drifted around the highlands surrounding the Mare, utterly amazed at the detail this ‘scope was delivering – after I had done the full circuit I looked at my watch – Jeez! I had put my dinner in the oven before I came out and it must have almost reached ‘cremation’ stage by now!

I was feeling well chuffed both with the Mak-Cass and what I had observed this session, and as I got up from my chair to pack up a passer-by stopped and said “Anything special up there tonight?” “The Moon” I replied. “Oh, is that all …” he said, turning his collar up and trudging off to the car park.

My friend, you don’t know what you’re missing!

…… and yes, the dinner was burnt, but Hell, it was worth it. :laugh:

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........ and next time I promise (myself) to hang the Nikon on the Orion - I'm sure the combination can deliver some good lunar images, so I will have a'play' and see if I can get the exposure side sorted. Focussing could be nightmare territory, but I'm determined to get something useful. It's a good job I've got a couple of spare CF cards and a spare set of batteries or two - could be that I'll need CC's wisdom and experience using a Nikon DSLR .......

All this will be virgin territory so don't expect miracles! Any decent results could be more by accident than design :laugh:

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Great report Allen.

Here I am worried about my scopes,in a private garden 120 feet long,a rotty/boxer keeping an eye on them for me.& your doing your observing from a car park...Fair play to you man.....clear sky's to you soon. :laugh: :laugh:

Mick.G.

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CC

Dumb stuff really mate:-

1) Do you leave the Nikon on Auto exposure, Manual, B or what..?

2) Do you set any exposure compensation in-camera or sort it all out in the processing stage?

I apologise for the inane questions - I've been using SLRs for about 30 years but NOT for astro stuff!

How are you getting on sorting out the HEQ5??

Cheers! 8)

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Always manual. Anyway I don't have an option with non-CPU lenses (and non-CPU 'scopes) so M mode always.

Exposure compensation - well you don't get any option in manual.

I go for (camera lenses f/8, or with teleconverter f/16) iso1600 for at least 30 seconds on star things like Orion's sword, 5 ish seconds for Saturn, Moon etc.

These are guessed as I check the LCD after each shot. If it starts to turn red, its too long. If you can't see anything, leave it if you have the space and try Photoshop later. Photoshop brings black frames to life sometimes.

Deep space stuff, you need to go to B and do a minute or so, unless you have a fast telescope (f/5 or f/6)

These should get you started off.

Anybody know about Photoshop and can chip in here?

To preview in Photoshop (to see if you got anything) I go into levels and drag the slider on the right towards the left. That brightens things up no end and lets you know if there actually is anything there.

Curves lets you play even more, then you can adjust the levels and curves for each colour channel, then I find that the whole thing is nasty and lumpy looking. DO NOT go over your original. You will want to go back to it when you have learnt something new in Photoshop. Leave the original JPG or NEF or both alone. There is some reason why NEFs are better than JPGs but so far it has eluded me. I can't seem to get a lot more from a NEF, maybe somebody here will know what I'm doing wrong.

Finally, do lots of images and stack them to reduce the noise. The noise should be random and stacking and setting the layers to "screen" adds them up. Hopefully the stars line up and get brighter while the noise doesn't line up and gets cancelled out. I use "difference" on the individual layers to help line them up one at a time, then change them all to screen.

HTH

Captain Chaos

PS the best way to learn is to just do it. Now that you have the kit, the pictures come free, if you don't like any, then hit delete. Trust me, you will like them, you should see the carp that got me hooked.

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Nice one - a complete primer in one response!

Thanks very much CC - I'll have a dabble with the easiest target first - the Moon, and I don't expect too many problems there - single exposure and I can rescue any exposure/contrast problems in Capture and/or Photoshop, but obviously nebulae and star clusters etc. are going to be a different kettle of fish!

One of the problems is my unfamiliarity with the software:- Registax is loaded on the PC but I haven't even played with it yet(!), and Photoshop CS2 is still fairly new to me - I was a Paint Shop Pro fan, but I have bought a book on 'CS2 for Photographers' and if you ignore the cheesy USA writing style, it's pretty good (think I'm on page 32!).

You're right, I've really got to get out there and do it - starting tonight ......

BTW - I reckon that your response deserves a place in the Learning Zone - it's a gem!!

Cheers!

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wait 'till you try it, then you might think its a load of tosh. TBH I am not at all sure that I'm doing it the "right" way. I still need to find out if in-camera noise reduction is a good thing, it takes much longer to take each picture, it might get rid of what it thinks are stray pixels (stars) and it may do other bad things that I aint even heard of. Then again it might be good.

You might want to check if your D200 does dark subtraction noise reduction, i think the bigger D2 series do now, that would really help. My D50 doesn't specify what it is that it does.

Have fun, and let us know how you get on.

Oh and good luck.

Captain Chaos

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CC - I'll be back later on - I'm just going out to do a couple of daylight moon shots to get the gear sorted! I believe the D200 does have the facility for dark subtraction noise reduction, but I'm leaving that for Lesson No. 2!

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Hi guys, I,have been messing about with the noise reduction on the D70, so far with the noise reduction on, I think that it is getting rid of some of the fainter stars in the process. Can not confirm this yet, until I get a driven mount. I did see a piece somewhere on the net about the nikon noise reduction and ways of useing it.

Will have alook around and post link when I find it.

Nabban

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