More Untracked DSO's

[KernowBeard]

With a lovely clear night just gone I decided to jump out and get more images.

I went with M106, M27 and NGC 2403. Due to my limited setup (Camera, 200mm lens, no tracking capabilities) I am fairly limited to what I can capture and so, I try to go for the brighter and bigger things. So far that's worked out and I can get results that are recognisable, at least; albeit nothing compared to what you could get with a basic tracking system. Nevertheless I still enjoy it and will continue to pursue it!

Anyhow, enough blabbering, on with the hubble-esque images:  

M106:

A few other galaxies can be seen on here too which is a bonus.

NGC 2403:

Probably the better image of the night. Better focus and better detail.

M27:

Image looks better when smaller ?. I think the focus may have nudged a tad during this

one, there was a bit of wind at this point too and my make-shift card dew shield probably

didn't help with that. Still, very pleased with the colour that was captured.

For me this was a decent night although was bleddy windy and cold so some gloves wouldn't have been a bad option. Making progress on getting the bits and bobs for a barn door tracker so hopefully I'll have that built by the end of the week and can give it a test drive.

Cheers!

[David Smith]

I'm not an imager but these look pretty darn good to me. No tracking at all

[Guest]

Impressive!

[happy-kat]

These are great too and show what's possible.

Enjoy your barn door build, there's a link to mine in my signature. When you test your build out it will make it easier on you if you use a shorter focal length lens as less demanding on tracking accuracy.

[Advait Mehla]

Hey, I know its been a while since you took these, but could you by any chance tell me some of the EXIF details, namely ISO, shutter speed and number of images stacked for these images? Also, what was the bortle of the skies, and was this on a prime lens? Would you recommend going beyond 200mm for these at the expense of aperture and shutter speed(I have 70-300 Nikon kit lens).

Thanks

[KernowBeard]

8 hours ago, Advait Mehla said:

Hey, I know its been a while since you took these, but could you by any chance tell me some of the EXIF details, namely ISO, shutter speed and number of images stacked for these images? Also, what was the bortle of the skies, and was this on a prime lens? Would you recommend going beyond 200mm for these at the expense of aperture and shutter speed(I have 70-300 Nikon kit lens).

Thanks

Hi Advait,

The lens used was a 70-200mm Tamron f/2.8. I would for sure recommend a prime over a zoom just because you'll get better quality however you will then lose that use of different focal lengths. I'm pretty sure these were all shot at 12800iso, F/2.8 and I took around 300 for each. Increasing your focal length will mean less exposure times as the trailing will become apparent quicker, if the lens has an f-stop of 2.8 (or even less) then that'll help counter it; as well as your camera's iso limit. It's not often you'll get nice sharpness with a wide open aperture though so I'd recommend looking up lenses that are known to be sharp at those f-stops. The skies I shot under were Bortle 4 I believe.

Hope this helps!

[Bobby1970]

I really like your images. Good to see a different wider perspective. Just shows how vast it is out/up there. 

[Advait Mehla]

On 17/05/2020 at 22:48, KernowBeard said:

Hi Advait,

The lens used was a 70-200mm Tamron f/2.8. I would for sure recommend a prime over a zoom just because you'll get better quality however you will then lose that use of different focal lengths. I'm pretty sure these were all shot at 12800iso, F/2.8 and I took around 300 for each. Increasing your focal length will mean less exposure times as the trailing will become apparent quicker, if the lens has an f-stop of 2.8 (or even less) then that'll help counter it; as well as your camera's iso limit. It's not often you'll get nice sharpness with a wide open aperture though so I'd recommend looking up lenses that are known to be sharp at those f-stops. The skies I shot under were Bortle 4 I believe.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for the help! Unfortunately, my lens is a 70-300mm f/4.5 - 6.3 which sucks. I should probably avoid 300mm in that case because that would mean a lot less light entering. To top it off I live in bortle 8 haha. That adds another issue, because increasing the ISO too much immediately overexposes the sky like crazy. I have a combination of multiple crappy conditions, I suppose I will leave tiny and dark(relatively) targets like these for darker skies and not mess with them right now.

[Shibby]

Very impressive results for completely untracked capture! What was the actual exposure length of each sub? Must have been very short!

[KernowBeard]

On 20/05/2020 at 06:35, Advait Mehla said:

Thank you for the help! Unfortunately, my lens is a 70-300mm f/4.5 - 6.3 which sucks. I should probably avoid 300mm in that case because that would mean a lot less light entering. To top it off I live in bortle 8 haha. That adds another issue, because increasing the ISO too much immediately overexposes the sky like crazy. I have a combination of multiple crappy conditions, I suppose I will leave tiny and dark(relatively) targets like these for darker skies and not mess with them right now.

It might indeed be tricky then but may be worth a go; at least you'll know once you've tried.

 

On 20/05/2020 at 11:55, Shibby said:

Very impressive results for completely untracked capture! What was the actual exposure length of each sub? Must have been very short!

M106 was 15mins worth, NGC2403 was 10mins worth and M27 was also 10mins. I have now acquired a Skywatcher Adventurer so have been using that and getting used to all the new problems that comes with tracking!