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SGL 2021 Challenge 5 - 30 second exposures


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The theme for the fifth Challenge - June 2021 - is 30 Second Exposures!

Start Date: 1st June 2021
End Date: 31st August 2021

Any image that fits the theme ‘30 Second Exposures’ will be accepted. We are not looking for anything specific. It might be an artistic single frame, a ‘lucky shot’ or a highly planned, multi-night epic! The winning image will be whichever one the judges like best! Feel free to use whatever equipment you like and stack as much data as you like but each single frame can be no more than 30 seconds!

Prestigious prize winners mugs for the top 3 entries

--

RULES

All data must be captured and processed by you (no collaborative entries). 
Data must be captured during the challenge start & end dates. 
Multiple entries are allowed but each entry must be posted separately.
Multiple submissions of the same image, processed differently, will not be accepted.

Good luck and enjoy!

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here's my latest effort. This is my first shot without Astronomical darkness - my first summer season as I only took up the hobby about 9 months ago, you certainly don't get much in the way of darkness these days.

All my shots would qualify for this challenge as I've been shooting unguided and so I default to 30 second subs. Progressing to guided soon.

This is M63, The Sunflower Galaxy.

Shot on 13/06/2021 under Bortle 6 (according to ClearOutside), 196x30sec subs giving 1hour 38mins total. SkyWatcher N200 (the old blue one), EQ5 modified with Onstep goto system, Full spectrum modified Olympus E-PL5, Baader UV/IR filter, Baader MPCC. Stacked with flats and darks in Siril, processed in StarTools.

M63 Sunflower.png

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Here's the first image I took with my brand new William optics ZS73 with 0.8 reducer.  50 x 30 second subs at iso 320 using my canon 70d. Collected in APT with PHD2 guiding. Stacked in DSS and faffed around a bit in Gimp. 30 seconds was the longest exposure I could get without the sky washing out (55 north - gets slightly dark around midnight then full daylight by 3am) so there's not an awful lot of detail but M51 is in there...

 

Graeme

second m51.jpg

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I'm still having difficulties with stars trailing in long exposures, so I have never done more than 30 s frames. This is my best effort to date I think, the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae, which fit exactly in the FOV of my setup.

It is stack of 170 frames, 30 s each (so 85 minutes in total), 400 ISO. Flats, darks and bias, stacked in DSS, processed in PS. Taken from somewhere in the hills between Canterbury and Ashford on June 12th, with a WO Z61 on a Star Adventurer. Camera was a Canon 77D, unmodified. Lots of light pollution and dew, so not much I could do to sharpen the image, but at least I think I got the colours right.

 

410276714_Lagoonandtrifid-small.thumb.jpg.07ff19ecfdfaf5d76abbf11734c57baa.jpg

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thought i'd give this a bash. Here is M51 taken with 210 30 second exposures taken at the start of april and calibrated with darks, flats, bias and darkflats. Equipment used was a Skywtcher Star travel 102 as main imaging scope (hence the chromatic abberation), mount was a Skywtacher star discovery goto alt az mount (that's gone now) and imaging camera is an unmodified canon EOS 4000D dslr and the image eas unfiltered. It's nowhere near as good as any  of the other images here but im happy with at and there's no harm in trying.

Thanks all and clear skies!
Euan :)
1163424627_M5111042021.thumb.png.cec521acbb7abe6f56e1c47b2e613d86.png

Edited by EuanR
uploaded tif instead of png image which didn't automatically imbedd itself in the reply.
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Here's my entry - M57

Taken 16th July 2021

Single 800 ISO exposure taken with a modified Canon D400.  Explorer 200P / Heq5.  Taken from town location (Stevenage).  The image is straight out of the camera, unprocessed.

Single__0016_ISO800_30s__NA.thumb.JPG.75d0cdcc1b6251003675ee0c39f3278b.JPG

 

 

 

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I don't usually enter competitions, no room for any more trophy cabinets...🙊

Anyway, I saw the title and it suits my current modus operandi. So here is asteroid Juno passing M10 in the early hours of June 18th.

113 x 30 sec. Celestron Mak  127 and ASI178 camera. It's not going to win any beauty contests but I like imaging asteroids and this was a very nice chance encounter. It was a rush job under a poor sky. No time to frame the glob better. 933383757_JunoM10.thumb.jpg.ea805dffaf2347b57a05944b5eb6be9b.jpg

 

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The sky is not completely dark yet and there was quite a heavy gradient to contend with but a had a crack anyhow, as I have clear nights.😊

40 x 30 second subs of The Great Rift, 20 Darks

Modified Canon 600D, Sigma  24mm F1.4  @ f2 mounted Star adventurer. ISO400 captured from the back garden. Battery ran out, I was hoping for an hours worth.

 

Just glad to be imaging after months and months of cloud.

 

 

Rift1.png

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I haven't entered one of these challenges before and I may have gone a little overboard in the capturing of this target but I was intrigued about what is possible with 30 second exposures.  Turns out it is quite a lot.  

All lights captured are 30 seconds in length and captured between 10th and 15th July 2021.  It is made up of 90 red, 88 green and 83 blue (each binned 2x2), 260 luminance and 100 H-Alpha.  

It does make me smile that the time I used to dither was double that of the lights captured.  

Jem

 

2045646157_210717IC5070PelicanNebula.thumb.jpg.0256b4d32573f74f4393c0a73abfcdd2.jpg

 

 

Edited by Snoani
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M13 taken last night. A bit washed by the moon, but I had light pollution in the opposite direction, so I had to make do. I also had dew issues (ran out of battery for the dew heater). On top of that, I climbed down the grassy hill to fetch a sandwich from the car and missed the meridian flip, so I lost some subs due to the collision with the tripod and had to readjust everything including the polar alignment. Anyway, as with the image I posted before, taken with a WO Z61 on a Star Adventurer, and a Canon 77D, unmodified. 55 frames (30 s, obviously) for a total of 27.5 minutes. Not too bad for this short exposure, I think; NGC 6207 can be seen as a faint smudge near the cluster.

 

M13-SMALL.thumb.jpg.fda94889db3dcbd07c7c8adebb964885.jpg

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48 minutes ago, Felias said:

M13 taken last night. A bit washed by the moon, but I had light pollution in the opposite direction, so I had to make do. I also had dew issues (ran out of battery for the dew heater). On top of that, I climbed down the grassy hill to fetch a sandwich from the car and missed the meridian flip, so I lost some subs due to the collision with the tripod and had to readjust everything including the polar alignment. Anyway, as with the image I posted before, taken with a WO Z61 on a Star Adventurer, and a Canon 77D, unmodified. 55 frames (30 s, obviously) for a total of 27.5 minutes. Not too bad for this short exposure, I think; NGC 6207 can be seen as a faint smudge near the cluster.

 

M13-SMALL.thumb.jpg.fda94889db3dcbd07c7c8adebb964885.jpg

A nights imaging wouldn’t be nights imaging without some kind of calamity.  Nice capture. 

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As part of @rorymultistorey's BAT project, I have been trying lucky imaging of M27 with the Esprit 150/ASI 178 rig. This is the best  624 x 5 sec Lum subs of over 1000 taken, trying to capture more detail in the brighter regions than would normally be achieved with longer exposures.

BATM27_2x2_Slave_Lum_Best624x5secs-Luminance-session_1STProc.thumb.jpg.27f9dbba829e4e966c4a40af9f357222.jpg

 

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I've recently obtained a Fuji X-T2 camera and this is my first target captured with it - IC342 The Hidden Galaxy. This was captured over three nights (16th-18th July 2021) from my heavily overlooked and light polluted back garden. In total this was 560 x 30 sec subs, unguided using my SW 200 & EQ5. I messed up my polar alignment on the first night resulting in a lot of walking noise some of which is still evident in the background but managed to improve the PA for the 18th.

spacer.png

Edited by LuckieEddie
Corrected image link
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I thought I'd add another one. I took it last Friday, again using a WO Z61 on a Star Adventurer, and a Canon 77D, unmodified. 30 second lights, for a total of 91 minutes. Stacked in DSS and processed in PS. Cropped to about half the FOV; obviously it lacks detail and it's noisy (light pollution is always an issue this low, I can only use the time that Sagittarius is in the gap between Folkstone and Ashford), but I'm pretty happy that I can see the Pillars and the Spire, and that I didn't lose the star colours when stretching.

Eagle-CROP-Reduced.thumb.jpg.91ae84c0f50884830645233eb5d2524d.jpg

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16 minutes ago, Felias said:

I thought I'd add another one

That's what it's all about!

It's full of stars in all their glory.  Images like that remind me why I love astronomy. So much going on!

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3 minutes ago, Paul M said:

That's what it's all about!

It's full of stars in all their glory.  Images like that remind me why I love astronomy. So much going on!

Absolutely. Victor Hugo summed it up when he described the Milky Way as "L’hydre Univers tordant son corps écaillé d’astres"... 🤩

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here's a first attempt from me - a widefield shot of M27, the Dumbbell Nebula, taken last night.

85 x 30s taken with ASI2400MC Pro and NBZ dual narrowband filter, on a RASA 11.

A nice bright target to go for when the moon is up, and although perhaps a bit small for this resolution, I like the way it looks a bit lonely and isolated amongst a wide star field! On the downside, the moon gave me some gradients which I haven't managed to totally remove, and my stars in the corners remain a work in progress!

Dumbbell 210720 stretch.png

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Here's another one from a couple of nights back. NGC7000, North America Nebula. 85x30s - same equipment as above, but processed (in Pixinsight) using pseudo Hubble palette to try and bring out detail, particularly the Cygnus Wall.

Robin

N America 210720 SHO.png

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My first light with the Samyang 135mm F2 lens, connected to a modded EOS 1300D on a EQ5 mount. Taken on 22nd July 2021 when it was just about dark enough. Nothing spectacular but it fitted the bill for this challenge. :D

This is a total of 105 x 30s exposures at ISO400 F4, totalling 51 minutes with flats, dark-flats & bias. Stacked in DSS and processed with PI.

1203298031_SadrRegion-22072021-51m-ISO400x30s.png.430561d6c9e5fde18dff909e56c6f432.png 

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I thought I may as well enter my Second Light with the Samyang 135mm F2 as well. :D

This is 220 x 30s exposures (total of 1h 50m) of NGC 7000 at ISO 400 F4 taken with a modded Canon EOS 1300D on an unguided, unbalanced Sky Watcher EQ5 on the 25 July. Stacked in DSS with Flats, Dark-Flats & Bias calibration frames and processed with PI.

NGC7000-25072021-220fr-1h50m-ISO400.png.43282e1e1f10e47fc161e7aa31724514.png

Edited by Budgie1
Thought I'd better add the target name!
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Complete noob here!

This is my first time ever taking a picture of the Milky Way.

Taken with my first ever camera. My beloved second hand Canon 800D on a basic tripod I picked up from Argos.

It is a single shot of 30 seconds taken from the side of my house.

 

20210715004319_IMG_1361.jpg

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