Plan For The Next Clear Night - Comments Please......

[Mikey0368]

I'm relatively new to this so rather than waste a night trying things out I thought I'd bounce my plan off the experts. Please let me know if I'm on the right lines here or if I should be making any changes. I'm not sure how long to make the exposure or which ISO setting would be best for instance.

Target - NGC 6960, Witches Broom.

Equipment - SW HEQ5 Pro with Rowan Belt mod, SW Esprit 100ED Triplet, Flattener and astro modified Canon 600D. Camera software is APT.

120 x 30s or 60s Lights at ISO400 or ISO800 (I'm very close to the southern edge of Edinburgh so light pollution is a bit of an issue).

20 Bias, 20 Darks and 20 Flats.

Stacking will be with DSS and processing with StarTools.

Thanks.

[david_taurus83]

Are you guiding? Have you got a light pollution filter?

[Mikey0368]

No to both!

[carastro]

You're on the right track.  I would say 800 iso and subs as long as you can get away with without guiding.  Once guiding 5 min exposures. I would definitely be adding guiding as soon as you can or you will be severely limited, and a LP filter in Edinburgh will be a great asset.

Never used Startools, don't know how easy/difficult processing will be.

Carole 

[david_taurus83]

With careful polar alignment you should easily be able to take 60s subs. Depending on your local circumstances, LP might be the more limiting factor before guiding. I couldn't take a 30s sub where I am before adding a filter.

[Mikey0368]

Thanks for the replies. On that basis I'm now thinking of 200 x 30s Lights at ISO800 with 40 Bias, 40 Darks and 40 Flats.

Saturday night is looking promising weather wise. Fingers crossed!

[Space Hopper]

My light pollution is so bad from home, i recently took a 30s sub with my old Sony A7iii and 40mm F1.2 lens wide open, iso 1600

and all i got was a pure white image. No sign of any stars at all, just massive over-exposure.

[Mikey0368]

On 22/08/2019 at 12:54, Mikey07 said:

Thanks for the replies. On that basis I'm now thinking of 200 x 30s Lights at ISO800 with 40 Bias, 40 Darks and 40 Flats.

I managed to get out last night and imaged the Witch's Broom as above. I lost 14 Lights to satellite and plane trails and stacked 90% of the remaining images (as they all looked pretty good), plus the Bias, Darks and Flats in DSS.

AutoDev in StarTools suggests that I've got something to work with but the final image doesn't show it. That'll give me something to play with today!