First attempt at astrophotography

[MillHey Nebula]

This is my first go at astrophotography, imaging Bode's galaxy.  It was last night so probably too much moonlight.

I used an Orion Starblast 4.5 mounted on an Ioptron CEM26

The camera was an Altair GPCAM 290c.

50  x 60s lights were recorded using Sharpcap - Just the mount's tracking, I have no guider

Corresponding dark and bias frames were recorded

Affinity Photo was used to do the stacking and  then to play around with the image  (I have been using this for a while for general photography after abandoning Photoshop due to the high cost of the subscription model)

 

For a first attempt, I am pretty pleased, but now I want to start improving.  Any advice would be more than welcome.  Particularly if you think there is still ample room to improve my technique or whether the main limitation now is the Orion scope.

Thanks in advance for any comments

[Robp]

Lovely first image. It really is something when you stack an image run together and the details of your target start to emerge.

One thing you should be able to do is get rid of the purple background of the sky.  I have a method I use in Photoshop but I'm not sure how that would work in Affinity but it would be worth learning as you will use it a lot!

[teoria_del_big_bang]

That's a really good first image, just think what you have done there, capturing some photons that set off travelling some 12 million years ago, it always amazes me 🙂 

Steve

[MillHey Nebula]

Thanks for the kind comments.  I think I am definitely hooked now!

RobP: there is a specific astrophotography filter in Affinity to remove background casts, but I have not really got the hang of it; I find it easier and more intuitive to use levels adjustment to match the width and position of the shadows peak in the three different colour channels.