M13 Second attempt, bit of an improvement but not as much as I hoped.

[Grant93]

Hello all,

Now the sunny weather has passed in this part of the midlands and we're back to the usual rainy cloudy british summer, I am getting much less cloud free nights. But thankfully on Saturday it was nice and clear all upto just after 1am, which let me get 40 mins worth of data on M13 Globular. This was the first DSO I attempted with my rig, and because I spent most of my night trying to polar allign, then find the object and frame it as best as possible, I guess the biggest improvement on the picture is the fact I can be out, polar alligned, object framed and imaging within 10-15 minutes now, rather than the previous 30-40 when I first got my rig 😅. My target for the Saturday was to be able to truly capture the thousands of stars that are contained within this magnificent globular, but sadly I have captured far from that!

Just here to ask what could be the issue, too long or too short exposures?

Not enough data?

Simply too small for the ZS61?

Anyhow here it is, I will also post my first so you can see the slight improvements Which I think is, simply a sharper picture, less noise, the first one for some reason also has a lot of double stars which arent actually doubles, god knows how that happened 😅 Hopefully you can tell which one is the newer and which is the older one 😅

Details of capture (Newer image only):

EOS 800d at 800 Iso

ZS61

iOptron Skyguider Pro

40x60s Lights

20 Darks

20 Bias

Thanks in advance for everyones advice and input

Grant

[The Lazy Astronomer]

Nice image, great improvement on the first one 👍

I think your short focal length will probably limit you on this target. M13 is around 16 - 17 arc minutes diameter, so with your setup you're it'll cover just a little below 500 pixels on the sensor (or, to put it another way, about 1% of available sensor area).

[Grant93]

13 hours ago, The Lazy Astronomer said:

Nice image, great improvement on the first one 👍

I think your short focal length will probably limit you on this target. M13 is around 16 - 17 arc minutes diameter, so with your setup you're it'll cover just a little below 500 pixels on the sensor (or, to put it another way, about 1% of available sensor area).

Thank you

Looks like I will have to hunt for some bigger targets then Having a north west facing back garden and my house facing the south east, feels like its blocking all the good stuff! I am reluctant to set up on the driveway 😅

Grant

[wimvb]

Very nice catch.

To improve this image, you should really take more exposures. The cluster is bright enough, so you probably don't need to use longer exposures, but do take more of them.

Dark frames don't always help if you have a dslr, only experimentation will tell. But flat frames are a must, especially if you want to try larger targets.

There are quite a few targets that fit your setup very nicely: the Andromeda galaxy (M31), the Pleiades (M45), the Beehive cluster (M44), the Orion nebula (M42), the Leo triplet of galaxies (M65, M66), etc.

The simplest way is to check with a field of view calculator, such as this one

https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/

[Grant93]

16 hours ago, wimvb said:

Very nice catch.

To improve this image, you should really take more exposures. The cluster is bright enough, so you probably don't need to use longer exposures, but do take more of them.

Dark frames don't always help if you have a dslr, only experimentation will tell. But flat frames are a must, especially if you want to try larger targets.

There are quite a few targets that fit your setup very nicely: the Andromeda galaxy (M31), the Pleiades (M45), the Beehive cluster (M44), the Orion nebula (M42), the Leo triplet of galaxies (M65, M66), etc.

The simplest way is to check with a field of view calculator, such as this one

https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/

Thank you

I do want to take flat frames, just havent got round to getting the equipment for it, I could use my fiances tablet, just need one of them handy socks I see some people using.

I am really looking forward to shooting some of them targets you mentioned, just hope we have enough clear skies during the winter.

Just looked at the link you sent me, very handy tool, I will use this in future thank you

Grant

[nephilim]

As above, more exposures. Great improvement though & much sharper on the second.

At first I noticed something wasn't quite right but couldn't put my finger on it but then realised that the second frame is rotated 180 degrees 😂

[nephilim]

@Grant93  I  also highly recommend this.  https://telescopius.com/

It's a very handy free piece of software that's a telescope simulator & much much more, it's absolutely  packed with countless astronomy  information.

It's best if you create a free account so your details (such as your location, equipment you'll be using etc) are always available without having to constantly type them in everytime you go on.

After you've done that, simply click top right (Head & shoulders icon) to access your profile. Here you can add your location etc. Click on the  'Equipment' tab, in the drop down menu you can add all your gear, the list is good & extensive (if you scroll down near the bottom of your profile there's a quick tour of sections) Also, if you click on 'Astrophotograpy' to the left of the Equipment tab you can upload any images you've taken & also (if you have it) import your 'Astrobin' profile. Then go back to the main screen, far left under 'Observatory settings'  (Observatory.....I wish 🤔) you can also add your location aswell as in your profile. This is the section with weather info including a 7 day hourly forecast, seeing conditions, sunset & rise times & moon rise & set times.

At the top of the main screen there's a 'Toolbox' tab, in that drop down menu there's every astronomy calculator you can think of. This Toolbox drop down is where you access the scope simulator, a planetarium & any observing/ imaging targets you might have.

Far right at the top there's the 'Go to object' box . Type in what your interested in imaging/ seeing & it will show you where it is in the sky, how long it will be visible for you & any interesting targets nearby it.

Pick your target, go onto telescope simulator & expand the screen. As you've already added your camera/ scope details there will be a outline of your sensor overlaid on the screen so you can move it around & see which targets will fit your sensor & the best rotation to frame them. It also has a very handy night mode, although not so much of an issue when your imaging.  As well as your imaging camera details you can also add more cameras (if you have them) and any eyepieces you may have if you do any observing, you can then easily switch between them all.

This is my probably favourite astronomy app & has much more than any other I've ever used (Stellarium was myost used for many years & although it's very good Telescopius just has much more) It's very well worth while spending a couple of hours going through it so you can get the best out of everything it does.

Here's a few shots to give you a rough idea of it. Excuse the  picture quality, it was just easier to take a pic straight off the laptop screen 😂.

Clear Skies & all that

Steve

 

 

Edited July 2, 2021 by nephilim

[AstroMuni]

On 29/06/2021 at 14:16, Grant93 said:

Having a north west facing back garden and my house facing the south east,

You should be able to get objects like M81, 82, 27, 57 from your back garden as they are quite high up North at the moment. You could try adding a barlow to your existing scope to get closer views of M13 too.

[ollypenrice]

Big improvement. I don't know if this was spotted at the time but the first one has a misaligned ghost image in there as well. Every bright star has a tiny star just below it and slightly left. This just a misaligned duplicate image of very short duration, which is why the ghost stars appear so small.

Olly

[Grant93]

On 01/07/2021 at 02:57, nephilim said:

@Grant93  I  also highly recommend this.  https://telescopius.com/

Wow, I can't thank you enough for all that haha! That looks brilliant, will definitely be using that to plan my nights in future 😀 and referring back to this for instructions 😅

 

[nephilim]

25 minutes ago, Grant93 said:

Wow, I can't thank you enough for all that haha! That looks brilliant, will definitely be using that to plan my nights in future 😀 and referring back to this for instructions 😅

 

@Grant93 No worries mate, it's a bit long winded 🤔 but once I'd started I felt obliged to carry on rather than leave you with half the info 😂 There's still loads more too it than all that but you'll learn all that pretty quickly, it's a great program.

[AstroMuni]

@Grant93 Over and above the above recommendation, I would also recommend Kstars tool for planning your observations as it has the sky map and the planner all in one. See this link https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kstars/kstars/tool-obsplanner.html

I use it from planning to scheduling and controlling my mount.

 

Edited July 2, 2021 by AstroMuni

[Grant93]

On 02/07/2021 at 09:54, AstroMuni said:

@Grant93 Over and above the above recommendation, I would also recommend Kstars tool for planning your observations as it has the sky map and the planner all in one. See this link https://docs.kde.org/trunk5/en/kstars/kstars/tool-obsplanner.html

I use it from planning to scheduling and controlling my mount.

 

Ill check it out thank you! 😃