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My First Imaging!


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Hi All,

I always said that I was an astro-purist and only did observing. Astrophotography was for other people! Then I got a Star Adventurer...

Last week I was in La Palma so I took the mount along and had a play. My polar alignment was rough, but I had a go at imaging a few objects and areas. I present my first ever attempt at imaging and then stacking the images in Photoshop - ladies and gentlemen, the North America Nebula. All thoughts gratefully appreciated - I think this was before I'd worked out how to focus manually in the dark effectively!

837580119_NorthAmericaNebula-2.thumb.jpg.057a2f2c00cda7a882cf6e5db5383c39.jpg

I currently need to learn to polar align properly and I need to work on the processing but I was quite pleased with what I got!

Cheers,

Paul

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Wow great work! Yes I do agree that It's a pain to focus a camera lens effectively in the dark, but lots of detail here! With regards to polar alignment, there's a relatively easy way to do so even without the pole star being visible. Look up "DARV method" on google and there should be a Cloudy Nights article detailing it. I use it sometimes and it works well.  

Edited by Nerf_Caching
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Well that was a big surprise, great to see a post from a member who inspired the ST80 finding a home with me.

It's a great feeling that first image. Though I find it easier to stack images using deep sky stacker, and then process the output in something like Photoshop if you have it or Gimp is after a free app.

 

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Great first image, and welcome to the dark side. 😉

For focusing, your best investment is a Bahtinov mask. Either buy or diy.

I think you can get a little more out of your image with proper post processing. Just darken the background a little and play with colour balance and contrast to lift the nebula a bit. Image processing is where the real fun is. 

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Thanks for the comments everyone! I've been working on a few more and I have been very pleased with the results - I have photos of the Flame and the Horsehead nebulae (Not great but definitely there) and even managed to get some pictures of the Rosette. I can post all up in the fullness of time. Can't wait to get out there again and improve my technique so thanks for the tips - sadly it'll be about another year until I can next get out under those dark Palmeran skies!

 

On 30/11/2019 at 22:19, happy-kat said:

Well that was a big surprise, great to see a post from a member who inspired the ST80 finding a home with me.

The ST80 was out there with me - I think the highlight using it was finding the Cocoon Nebula. You have to love those dark, dark skies!

Paul

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As promised, some more fruits of my labours. I'm really quite pleased with these as first attempts - I have quite a lot of other RAW photos to get through so more might be forthcoming but please enjoy and any tips welcomed!

We have images of M31 (with M32 and M110); The Orion Nebula and the Flame and Horsehead; The Pleiades with nebulosity present and what was my favourite to image and create - the Rosette Nebula.

Quite a large amount of credit has to go to the dark skies of La Palma!

Paul

Andromeda Galaxy-2.jpg

The Orion Region-2.jpg

The Pleiades-2.jpg

Rosette Nebula-2.jpg

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That was quick.

My favourite is m42 wide field.

Is that a modified camera and which lenses are you using?

I'm not on the desktop so I can't see it the background has been clipped, this is where the sky is showing too dark and is effectively black.

If you are using a camera lens then you could try focusing on a star that is where a third intersects, it evens out focus from the centre.

IMG_20170220_154141.JPG

Edited by happy-kat
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MarsG76: Right? The "welcome to the dark side" comment was also apposite. Where "dark side" is "black hole of time and money that you will wallow in happily".

Nice work, I'm totally jealous of the NA Neb shot as your first. Heck, focus wasn't even THAT bad! I find that it's like Andromeda -- an easy "beginner" target that's nonetheless an endless chase after "I can do it better. And better. And better still."

One of the issues with it is the overwhelming richness of the star field. It is of course an artistic choice, but you could consider using starnet++ or something similar to remove the stars from your image, wonk on the nebulosity to your heart's content, then blend the (unwonked, or even toned-down) stars back in after.

And you hardly needed to characterize yourself as a visual astronomer. Only visual guys are persnickety enough to call it the "North America" Nebula instead of the "North AmericaN" nebula!

<Ducks hail of tomatoes and other kitchen scraps from other imagers, grinning>

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Thanks again for all the comments - I'm just using my D5500 DSLR and for most of these a very old, quite slow, Sigma 18 - 200mm lens. I took some other wide-field shots too, but I haven't got round to doing anything with them yet. All the processing was done using Lightroom and Photoshop - I have a Creative Cloud account so I like to get my money's worth! I'm hoping to get a copy of "Making Every Photon Count" soon which I believe in its latest edition covers Star Adventurers and other tracking mounts. I suppose eventually I'll end up with all the expensive equipment too, I just need to save up for it! My next purchase will be a much better telephoto lens, which I'll also be able to use for photographing wildlife.

Cheers,

Paul

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