My very first attempt at Astrophotography

[Pullock]

I know this will be far from perfect but manual settings on a stock Canon 700D on a tripod with a Takron 70-300mm F4 Lens, 8 second Exposure with ISO of 800. Also no post processing has been done either but I wanted to share my first attempt. I went for the Orion Constellation as it's easy for me to spot and I'm pleased with the result and happy to see where things go from here. This was a walk outside, point and shoot endeavour but I thoroughly enjoyed it, I'd appreciate any feedback, thanks.

 

 

[Adreneline]

A very good start.

You could try centering up on the belt, rattle off 20 or 30 5s exposures and have a go at stacking them in DeepSkyStacker (free to downlaod); it won't mind that there are no calibration frames - it will integrate them anyway (set it to output a tif file). Then put the stacked image into something like PS and play around with levels and curves to see if you can reveal any more detail and surpress the noise a little.

You do realise that this could be the start of a very slippery and expensive slope.

Good luck and enjoy!

[Pullock]

Oh I realise that haha, a few downsides at the moment of using an old SD card, my tripods legs need to be taped to keep them in place so not ideal. I did just mess around editing It on my phone actually and came up with this, I can't wait to see the difference when I do it on PC!

[Adreneline]

7 minutes ago, Pullock said:

I did just mess around editing It on my phone

All good stuff! Don't be tempted to make the surrounding sky to black - I use a background reference of R:G:B = 20:20:20 as a starting point in PS levels; too much and you risk losing some detail.

Experimentation is the name of the game.

P.S. If you've not already done so everyone will advise you to buy a copy of this book:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html

 

[Pullock]

3 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

All good stuff! Don't be tempted to make the surrounding sky to black - I use a background reference of R:G:B = 20:20:20 as a starting point in PS levels; too much and you risk losing some detail.

Experimentation is the name of the game.

P.S. If you've not already done so everyone will advise you to buy a copy of this book:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/books/making-every-photon-count-steve-richards.html

 

Ooh ok thanks, I'll have a better look tomorrow into post processing, I've seen the book mentioned but haven't checked it out so I will do, thanks.

[Demonperformer]

First requirement of any image ... being able to see what it is. Tick!

There are many on this forum (myself included) whose first image was not as good as yours, so be encouraged.

Well done.

[Pullock]

4 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

First requirement of any image ... being able to see what it is. Tick!

There are many on this forum (myself included) whose first image was not as good as yours, so be encouraged.

Well done.

Thank you that means a lot, I done a lot of research prior to this, the majority from astrobackyard.com a very helpful resource.

If I can do this with a stock DSLR and a wobbly tripod I can only imagine what future images could look like. Roll on a week of cloud now ?

[happy-kat]

Hi. Great start a good image.

Use a remote release or self timer

Stop the lens down a little will help reduce the chromatic aberration on the lens.

Budgetastro.net covers getting started and I found helpful.

[Pullock]

5 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Hi. Great start a good image.

Use a remote release or self timer

Stop the lens down a little will help reduce the chromatic aberration on the lens.

Budgetastro.net covers getting started and I found helpful.

I've been using a 2 second self timer to avoid the vibration, not sure what you mean by stop down the lens?

I did attempt some shots with my telescopes but my reflector wouldn't come to focus and with my Mak I got a few faint stars, but my biggest problem was 3 times I tried to align and besides the mount aiming at a completely different area of sky to what I'd selected, the power kept tripping out like someone turned it off and on again. At which point I gave up and resorted to just using the lens and a tripod.

[happy-kat]

Stop down, close the aperture down a stop or two from wide open.

[happy-kat]

It's a balance as you'll cut light too, enjoy experimenting.

[Pullock]

Just wanted to pop in a quick update of what I've managed, this was a mostly unplanned shot as the light in the house was still on which kind of washed a lot out but I was surprised at the amount of light pollution removal I managed from within Photoshop, the other noticeable thing is the star trails and this is only at 8 seconds, but I feel like it's improving as I experiment with different techniques. This was also with 6 stacked 8 second exposures at ISO 1600. Also added the same amount of darks to combat the noise, makes a big difference.

Original: 

 

Processed in Photoshop:

[Demonperformer]

Just goes to show how much improvement a little processing can do.