First go at an astro image... Vega with SW 102T and Sony A7II

[gaz81]

Been lurking for a while, reading... trying to learn etc..

So last night had a go with my cobbled together set up at the sky... was pretty late and was pretty conscious about how much noise I was making in the garden!  So didn't do a whole lot.

I was using....

1. Startravel 102 
2. SkyWatcher Goto AZ mount (set to the lowest tripod height with a chunk of concrete on the tripod tray part to stop wobble)
3. Sony A7II Camera with the remote capture software. 

Also my first go at doing the mount alignment, wasn't as hard as I thought but still didn't properly nail it.  The noise of the motors at that time of night was putting me off having try after try... I guess it sounds much louder when you are sat right next to it!

I used Vega as it was the second alignment star... so was on it

I only took 5 x 10 second light frames.  No darks etc.  That will be next time I have a go.

I stacked them in deep sky stacker then took the tiff into Light Room for some fettling.

Anyway, hope I didn't screw it up to much, as there are some fantastic photos on this forum!

[MarkAR]

Very nice star field. Look sharp and focused but I think your back focus spacing is a little off. Slight outward radial elongation around the edges makes me think your camera is just a little too close.

[gaz81]

Thank you for the feed back, much appreciated. 

So do you mean the focus plane of the sensor wasn’t completely flat to the scope?

So making some parts in focus and others not. 

I’m using the usual T2 with a 40mm spacer and 2 inch noise piece. The noise piece though only locks in with 2 thumb screws into the focus tube.  

I know I’m not going to get APO level like stuff with this scope 🙂 and I didn’t crop at all. 

[gaz81]

This was the little setup... sat on the stones in the dark 🙂

[happy-kat]

If you didn't crop then that I think explains it, the edges and corners particularly are less likely to have perfect star shapes caused from lens aberrations which are expected. A little cropping is always good as frames won't be perfectly over layed and you will also have field rotation at the corners.

You should have a look at the No 'EQ' DSO Imaging thread.

[Chefgage]

15 hours ago, gaz81 said:

Been lurking for a while, reading... trying to learn etc..

So last night had a go with my cobbled together set up at the sky... was pretty late and was pretty conscious about how much noise I was making in the garden!  So didn't do a whole lot.

I was using....

1. Startravel 102 
2. SkyWatcher Goto AZ mount (set to the lowest tripod height with a chunk of concrete on the tripod tray part to stop wobble)
3. Sony A7II Camera with the remote capture software. 

Also my first go at doing the mount alignment, wasn't as hard as I thought but still didn't properly nail it.  The noise of the motors at that time of night was putting me off having try after try... I guess it sounds much louder when you are sat right next to it!

I used Vega as it was the second alignment star... so was on it

I only took 5 x 10 second light frames.  No darks etc.  That will be next time I have a go.

I stacked them in deep sky stacker then took the tiff into Light Room for some fettling.

Anyway, hope I didn't screw it up to much, as there are some fantastic photos on this forum!

Nice image. Out of interest what processing did you do on the individual star Vega? I ask as I do images of full constellations and I have been trying to just process the individual stars within the constellation.

[gaz81]

Sure, I’ll post the original and what I did along with the Light Room adjusting later this evening. 

[gaz81]

So the images attached should show the general changes I made in light room.   I

also did a circular edit to under expose and flatted the exposure due to the brightness of the star (you see if as the red circular area in one of the screen shots)

I also included the tiff from deep sky so you can see before I took it into light room.

Hope this helps 🙂   

5 stack vega 2.TIF

[Chefgage]

8 hours ago, gaz81 said:

So the images attached should show the general changes I made in light room.   I

also did a circular edit to under expose and flatted the exposure due to the brightness of the star (you see if as the red circular area in one of the screen shots)

I also included the tiff from deep sky so you can see before I took it into light room.

Hope this helps 🙂   

5 stack vega 2.TIF 139.81 MB · 0 downloads

Yes, thanks for that.  I will have to take a image of Vega and have a go myself (I have not imaged Lyra yet).  I am surprised at how large the star appears against the other stars.

[gaz81]

Yeah, me to!

was t sure if I made a mistake or not as I’ve not really done it before 🙂