First images

[ispookie666]

Just about managed to setup my rig.  

Was trying to photograph the Soul Nebula.  

Nikon d5000, ISO 400, 45sec, Tokina 105mm F2.8 No filters. Mount - CG5 with EQStar EQ5, PHD2 tracking using ZWO 120 as guide camera

The  below image is a output straight from DSS - I think 70 frames, some dark bias and flat frames

 

I thought I might be getting a lot more data after stacking -  any pointers? or what I should be doing differently? 

Edited September 5, 2021 by ispookie666
adding more info

[Adam J]

6 minutes ago, ispookie666 said:

Just about managed to setup my rig.  

Was trying to photograph the Soul Nebula.  

Nikon d5000, ISO 400, 45sec, Tokina 105mm F2.8 No filters. Mount - CG5 with EQStar EQ5, PHD2 tracking using ZWO 120 as guide camera

The  below image is a output straight from DSS - I think 70 frames, some dark bias and flat frames 712.38 kB · 0 downloads

 

I thought I might be getting a lot more data after stacking -  any pointers? or what I should be doing differently? 

Well that looks like the double cluster so I think that you are a little off target. 

[ispookie666]

3 minutes ago, Adam J said:

Well that looks like the double cluster so I think that you are a little off target. 

Lol way off mark then.  Thank you.  

[Budgie1]

6 hours ago, ispookie666 said:

Lol way off mark then.  Thank you.  

You're not that far off. I put your image through Astrometry.net and the Soul Nebula is within your FOV.

How did you process your stack of 70 x 45s images? It looks like it's either not stretched enough or you've clipped the black and made it too dark to see any nebulosity.

If you could post the unprocessed stacked image and we can have a look.  

[ispookie666]

The second image is straight out of DSS. It looked so dark, hence not looked into processing 

[Budgie1]

The DSS output file should be a .tif or .fit format file, could you upload that as the one in your post above is a .jpg.  

[alacant]

42 minutes ago, ispookie666 said:

It looked so dark, hence not looked into processing 

Ah, ok. Now I understand...

It looks dark because you haven't processed it.

[ispookie666]

Soul Process 3.TIF

Tif file from DSS

[ollypenrice]

Here's your widefield image with my rather less widefield superimposed on it.

The Heart and Soul are in there, as you can see, but you have to get them to show via processing.

Olly

[vlaiv]

Something is wrong with the data and I can't quite tell what it is.

I guess it is down to stacking process. Did you by any chance use median as stacking method (that is just wild guess - I have no idea what might cause that)?

Here is what I mean by strange data - all channels have odd histogram - here is red for example:

Normal stack should have single histogram peak near background value. This one has 6 humps - three quite prominent. Similar thing happens with other channels.

When zoomed in and linearly stretched - background shows posterization instead of normal noise:

Could it be that you shot 8bit images instead of 16bit, or used jpeg instead of RAW?

Maybe in camera noise reduction was turned on so each sub ended up being filtered?

 

 

 

 

[vlaiv]

7 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

The Heart and Soul are in there, as you can see, but you have to get them to show via processing.

I'm afraid that is not possible with this data - faint signal has been lost due to something and I can't really tell what it is.

[vlaiv]

I really gave my best and it only possibly shows hints of both Heart and Soul (in reality it only shows dark features around them than actual nebulosity - compare with Olly's image above). This has been binned x6 in order to attempt to pull out any sort of signal from the background.

[ispookie666]

Thank you for the inputs. 

I honestly have no idea about the median! What should I be using? 

I'll check my DSLR and find out more.  

I had another go tried my SW 200DPS, just could not get tracking to work, used a 250mm lens f6.3, the results were even worse. I'll stick to my tokina or give the skywatcher 200 another go. 

Thank you once again. 

[alacant]

On 05/09/2021 at 18:21, ispookie666 said:

Nikon d5000

Hi

To get the soul nebula to show, best to remove the hot mirror from the camera.

Cheers and HTH