Woohoo - Making Progress - M42 and pleiades

[powerlord]

First night last night with the AZ GTI setup properly in EQ mode. What a difference!! Must be something wrong with my alt axis. In az/alt mode i couldn't even get 10 second explosures - big jerks randomly, etc - and I'd taken it apart and rebuilt it with no improvement.

Now getting 30 seconds easy - didn't try and longer but hopefully can. 100 subs with no duds is a first for me.

Yes, these are terrible compared to the amazing pics on here, but it's a steep hill!

Canon 1200d modified, with a 300mm F4 L on the AZ GTI EQ mode.

First time I've manage to get any of the nebulosity in Pleiades at all - and that was just 50 subs.

Anyway, pleased with the progress. Need to try longer exposures, and more time. prob stop the lens down a stop too.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice images with some great detail coming through. In the M42 image it looks like the background has been clipped to black, especially around the Running Man. Maybe brightening the background a bit will prevent this

[powerlord]

24 minutes ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

Nice images with some great detail coming through. In the M42 image it looks like the background has been clipped to black, especially around the Running Man. Maybe brightening the background a bit will prevent this

thanks yeh - duff editing. I used affinity photo to remove background, then boosted up around running man, but did a crap job of masking it and fethering.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

6 minutes ago, powerlord said:

thanks yeh - duff editing. I used affinity photo to remove background, then boosted up around running man, but did a crap job of masking it and fethering.

I much prefer removing backgrounds in Astro Pixel Processor. That seems less heavy handed. Below is the result of about 3 hours on M42 with a modded EOS 550D and an APM 80mm F/6 with 0.8x focal reducer. A lot more data, which of course helps, but the main difference is in the background processing

[powerlord]

ill try that - it was app i used for the stacking.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

4 minutes ago, powerlord said:

ill try that - it was app i used for the stacking.

Just use the "remove light pollution" tool. Works well, I find

 

 

[rickwayne]

And,  as Charlie Bracken points out in the APP quick start, it helps to use it iteratively --  don't try to get it perfect in one go.