Very First Imaging session yesterday night. Help please!

[oymd]

Good morning everyone

Yesterday night was my very first trial at deep sky imaging.

I would be very grateful if someone can advise me what to do next?

My equipment was: ED80, without the reducer, ZWO ASI 294MC Pro, AZ-EQ6 Pro mount. No bhatinov mask yet. No LP filters yet.

I have not bought a guide cam yet, so was doing unguided 15-20 second subs.

Obviously NO flats, Bias or Black frames, as I do not even know yet how to do those?

I was using Astrophotography tool, and the setup was hard

First problem was achieving focus.

I used Live VIEW and SHOOT options till I manually fine focused, and stars appeared more or less round

Then used  the Mount and slewed to various targets, did LIVE VIEW, nothing would show up, but on SHOOT at 8 seconds I would see the target.

I would then do 3-5 runs, 20 seconds each, but did not touch any settings. the GAIN was at auto. The only setting I did was cool the camera down to -20C.

I took some subs of M3, M13, NGC 7000, NGC 6888, Ring Nebula, Cocoon Nebula, North America Nebula and some stars.

Now, all the files are in a FIT format.

I had requested a trial licence from Pixinsight back in January, and yesterday I tried to DOWNLOAD the software, but it seems there was a time limit to download? How bizzare? Its expired now.

Is there a software I can use to have a look and possibly process the images I took yesterday?

I can see them in the preview window of APT, but seems I cannot do anything with them?

Many thanks

Edited March 23, 2020 by oymd

[MarkAR]

You will need to stack them and convert to tiff, Deep Sky Stacker is free or Siril, ASTAP and a few others. 

 

[oymd]

1 hour ago, MarkAR said:

You will need to stack them and convert to tiff, Deep Sky Stacker is free or Siril, ASTAP and a few others. 

 

Thanks for that

I just downloaded Deep Sky Stacker.

I stacked 4 20second subs of the Ring Nebula. It seems there is a VERY steep learning curve, as I have no idea what I am doing. Had a look at the setting, and was hoping for a BIG BUTTON that would say: COLOR....

Anyways, here's the TIFF file of the stacked images. Did not do anything to the settings.

How can I give it some color? The 294MC Pro is a OSC?

Thanks

Ring Nebula.TIF

Edited March 23, 2020 by oymd

[oymd]

1 minute ago, oymd said:

Thanks for that

I just downloaded Deep Sky Stacker.

I stacked 4 20second subs of the Ring Nebula. It seems here is a VERY steep learning curve, as I have no idea what I am doing. Had a look at the setting, and was hoping for a BIG BUTTON that would say: COLOUR....

Anyways, here's the TIFF file of the stacked images. Did not do anything to the settings.

How can I give it some color? The 294MC Pro is a OSC?

Thanks

Ring Nebula.TIF 22.31 MB · 0 downloads

and saved as a JPEG as well:

 

[oymd]

2 hours ago, oymd said:

and saved as a JPEG as well:

 

Pixinsight team offered me a trial licence, and I downloaded Pixinsight...

Now that also looks like it will need a lot of learning!

Any FIT file I open, shows up as GRAY in the top of the preview box

Does that mean I was imaging yesterday all night in GRAY, and not in color?

In APT, I could not find yesterday any settings for choosing what resolution, RGB, etc...The only options available to me in APT were the Duration of exposure, cooling, binning. I must have been doing something wrong?

And the camera was recognisedcorrectly as ASI 290MC Pro

Shame, it was a very very clear night.

[Rocket Stars]

I am pretty much in the same shoes as you.  

You can find the cool/RGB settings, under stacking settings in DSS.  I did also ponder about that yesterday... Agreed to the lerningcurve.  Sharpcap is more straight forward to set up, I think. Quite intuitive. 

[wornish]

You need to debayer one shot colour images before stacking.  Otherwise you get a greyscale image.

 

Here is a good tutorial.

 

http://www.astropix.com/html/j_digit/using_deepskystacker.html

[Rocket Stars]

13 hours ago, wornish said:

You need to debayer one shot colour images before stacking.  Otherwise you get a greyscale image.

 

Here is a good tutorial.

 

http://www.astropix.com/html/j_digit/using_deepskystacker.html

Thank you! Very good link!! 👌