Impossibly Faint.

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Hi,

As my EQ5 is peaking ridiculously so I cant guide with my 130PDS, I decided to do some crazy imaging the other night. I stuck my (modded) 1000d with a 55-200mm zoom lens onto a dovetail bar beside a finder shoe so I could slap on the guidescope, like so:

Then I stuck on a whole pile of cables and some diy dew/light shields, which looked awful but worked well:

I then made my first big mistake by deciding to be smart and do a Heart, Soul, and Double Cluster widefield. This required the lens to be set at around 110mm, so lots of parcel tape came into action to hold it there!  

At this point I guess I should add that the lens is very cheap, I set it to f7 to reduce abberations. I was also using the 2" SW LP filter, blue-tacked to the front of the lens.

Well, the result wasn't very pleasant. I hadn't realised quite how impossibly faint the nebulae are, they only juuust showed up with 4 min subs at ISO400. However, with a few years worth of extra data, this might turn into something quite nice. ? I'm hoping to upgrade to a HEQ5 pretty soon so I may use this for autoguiding tests. 

1hr 52min (240sec subs at ISO400) Processed in GIMP, StarTools. 

Has anyone else tried imaging these targets with sub-standard equipment? Did you capture them?

John

[Ludd]

I use the same camera as you, usually on an astrotrac.   I find it shows up reasonably with exposures of 3 to 4 minutes. Here is a single sub of 213s.  I guess if I had time to take a whole load of these and stacked them, it might look OK.

[Mr niall]

Don’t know what you’re moaning about, I managed to get 6 mins unguided with an old Polaroid sitting on top of an empty muller rice pot with a live hamster as a counter weight.

? looks great John, I think it’s always more pleasing to get a result through adversity! 

[tooth_dr]

It looks pretty great actually!  Well done!

[Knight of Clear Skies]

These targets came out quite nicely when I imaged then with an old 135mm Super-Takumar M42 mount lens (1960s vintage).

This is 38 minutes of data in 2 minute subs. Shooting at f3.5 helps improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Some of these vintage lenses make good budget options. This is a what a single exposure looks like, with a quick process:

[Demonperformer]

I would be well-chuffed if I got something like that with the gear you were using. In fact I quite like the way it is understated. Some images give the impression that nebulae are really bright and obvious, which (by and large) they ain't.

[Stub Mandrel]

Well done John,

They are surprisingly faint.

I took load of 5-minute subs on Tuesday night and they came out almost white - I now realise I left my LP filter off, but the transparency was terrible, I could barely see M57 in my 10"dob, I've seen it more clearly in my C90 mak! The only sign of nebulosity. Add to that they were in a relatively Light-polluted part of the sky.

The only sign of nebulosity was the 'blob' at the end of the heart.

Lesson learned, believe what you see on the preview screen! Also, I'm getting a second LP filter.

This is a past attempt that worked much better using a Carl Zeiss 135mm that does have a bit of CA but nice sharp stars. Deserves a reprocess, I think.

[reezeh]

Pretty inspirational I'd say. Living proof you don't need to spend thousands to get results.

[ollypenrice]

It's good. If you have Photoshop you might try this: Go to Image, Adjustments, Selective Colour, Reds and drop the cyans in the red by moving the top slider left. This will make Ha components pop out somewhat. It worked even on a screen grab JPEG for me though I did have to bring in the black point in reds afterwards.

A few years ago a comet cruised through this field.

Olly