Deep sky with a DMK

[zcapp96]

Just thought I would post these I took about ten months ago. At the time all I had was a DMK21 firewire (Have since pinched the misses 350D!). These were all taken through a 200mm skywatcher explorer and a driven, though not goto, eq5. I cannot remember exactly how long the subs were but I think they were in the region of 20s. I know that any longer used to give me star trails. There was also only about 5 minutes or so in total for each. There was also no dark frames or flats (I was a very green beginner at that stage!). I think that these are not too bad all considered. I know their not going to get me picture of the week but anyone on a tightish budget and with out the funds for a decent DSO ccd could do a lot worse than consider one of these DMK's. I would be interested to hear if anyone more experienced has got better results.

M13

M51

M57

M101

M104

[Tim]

Just goes to show what can be achieved. I am glad you posted these, I have been toying with the idea of using a smaller mono camera to capture the luminances, then add in the colour from another camera via registar. It would give me an option to get in closer on smaller targets, and your images indicate that the level of detail necessary might very well be available, thanks very much.

TJ

[qcdougn]

TJ,

These are interesting to me since I have a DMK-31 that I've only used for lunar and Saturn until now. I would like to know what settigns you used for M57 or M51? You mentioned only 20 sec. subs...that's about all I can get with my Alt/Az mount before star trailing shows up. Good job on these, thanks for posting.

Doug

[Sam]

The M57 is a real cracker!

[Ant]

This is something that I would like to do, and i think your images are great!

But I cannot for the life of me get the DMK to take a LX AVI (in the same way as a SC1 webcam would). I can get the live box in IC Capture to show me 30 second subs - but when I click record it reverts back to 60 frames a second...

Ant

[Psychobilly]

I thought you want as much detail as possible in the luminace which is why you don't "bin" the "L" it but bin the "RGB"colour as the color changes are lower res... so capturing luminace with a low res camera would be the wrong way to do things...at least thats my understanding of the "LRGB" process... but what would I know being a "hardened" OSC DSLR imager...

Nice images though ....

Billy...

[Merlin66]

Ant, as I understand it the long exposure with the DMK is an image not an AVI. If you check the camera icon and the sequence save to..

[zcapp96]

No, It is recorded as an AVI. It's just that each frame is a 20s exposure (or whatever you set it to be). This does kind of limit you to stacking in registax I think. As for settings, I cannot really remember apart from the exposure time. I think the gain was turned up a bit but only because I was limited by star trails. I would love to try it with my autoguiding set up but there is one small problem, The DMK is my guide camera!

[qcdougn]

I Love my DMK for lunar and planetary..But, I hate the fact that Imaging Sources doesn't make a user's manual . You would think someone could do that??!!

Doug

[Merlin66]

Well, I set up the DMK21 with the ST80 for some long exposure trials.

By using the "Snap Image" camera icon I could save the images at exposures up to 250sec ( could have gone more but got bored!) as .bmp files. Not an AVI.

Just remember after exposure to save the image!!

The help files included with IC capture although not perfect do give enough info on setting up the camera and establishing the file/ folders etc

[zcapp96]

I stand corrected! I should experiment with IC a bit more, just to see what it can really do!

[MartinB]

They are great images. 20s subs and just 5mins. Imaging what the DMK would produce off longer exposures. I used to have an Atik 2HS and it was a terrific performer which had some primitive cooling as well. You could certainly win POW with a DMK if you extracted every bit of juice out of it

I thought you want as much detail as possible in the luminace which is why you don't "bin" the "L" it but bin the "RGB"colour as the color changes are lower res... so capturing luminace with a low res camera would be the wrong way to do things...at least thats my understanding of the "LRGB" process... but what would I know being a "hardened" OSC DSLR imager...

Billy...

The DMK is certainly not a low resolution camera Billy. It's limitation is it's 8 bit ADU. This restricts you when stretching the faint stuff but isn't such an issue for brighter targets. A DMK would do very nicely capturing targets such as bright planetary nebs.

[zcapp96]

Have been experimenting again with the DMK, this time with RGB filters. The following was taken a few nights ago when the seeing was pretty choppy! Took 30 frames each in Red, green and blue of 30s each. split the AVI in individual frames and stacked with deep sky stacker. Quite pleased with the results!

[johnh]

That is an interesting result as the DMK's are very capable when it comes to LX with bright objects including galaxies like m64 m77 and m82 with high surface brightnesses as well as planetaries. The RGB in the above image has turned out well - on good nights DMK will show brilliant resolution with small pixel size. John.

[Dave Smith]

Fascinating topic. I must have a go.

Dave

[ncjunk]

I am very impressed with the images from that camera not bad considering...

Neil C

[rawhead]

Wow! Cracking images. The possibilities open up

I Love my DMK for lunar and planetary..But, I hate the fact that Imaging Sources doesn't make a user's manual . You would think someone could do that??!!

Doug

With you on that one Doug.

[Psychobilly]

Nice pics with the DMK...

I Have been using my DMK on the Megrez72 as a fuzzy finder whilst the 1000D has been on the 8"...

Peter...