m81

[alacant]

Hi everyone

TBH, for nearly 5 hours, I'd expected better. An earlier attempt from the same session of around half the number of frames wasn't much different. Still thinking...

Cheers and thanks for looking. 

eos700d on gso203

Edited February 4, 2022 by alacant

[jacko61]

That's a great image and one I soon hope to capture myself.  What scope were you using?

Graeme

edit. never mind, spotted GSO203. 

Edited February 4, 2022 by jacko61

[alacant]

On 04/02/2022 at 14:02, jacko61 said:

soon hope to capture myself

Good luck and do please post your image. We're particularly interested in dslr stuff with beginner/affordable/unusual imaging equipment.

It's not the gso you may think, rather their most basic offering. Useless out of the box, but a small investment -mainly in time- soon brings it up to imaging standard.

Cheers

Edited February 6, 2022 by alacant

[Elp]

It's a nice image.

I think through experience we learn how long to spend on an object, the reveal after stacking and level adjustment never gets old.

[Erling G-P]

Sorry about the late reply. Weather has been so abysmal here that I haven't made any photos since September!  So have gone all dormant, including with the forum.  Here's my similar effort, including M82.  Total 6.5 hours over two consecutive nights.  Equipment as per signature, using the 200 PDS here

[JonCarleton]

Brilliant shots as always, both of you!

Alacant:  An EQ mount, I suppose, for the reflector?  I have a 10" Dob, but the Alt/Az mount is worthless for guiding.  Unguided, I can only count on 10 second exposures.

Of course, I only shoot 60 second exposures on the wide field EQ rig.  I get so many jet trails and satellite trails that long exposures are just begging for a throw-away.  Probably due to the current political situation, but the other evening I had one 2 minute image with 13 jet trails in it.  one low altitude commercial airliner and the rest probably military.

Alas, I live directly under one of the approach paths to Atlanta and there is also a military air route on the charts that goes right over my farm.  

[alacant]

On 22/02/2022 at 14:40, JonCarleton said:

jet trails and satellite trails that long exposures

Hi

Yes, an eq mount would be better. I'd be inclined to include ALL the images, trails or not. Dither between each frame and stack using a clipping algorithm. There's a choice of them in Siril. You'll find that the trails will be removed.

HTH

[alacant]

On 20/02/2022 at 20:26, Erling G-P said:

including M82

Thanks for the heads up. A bit of a waste not to include both, so finally remembered to turn the camera ~90º.

Looking at the field of view, there are two other quite large galaxies, but it's going to need a wider field.

This is kstars' viewpoint: +90º rotation gso203 and -45º rotation with a 130pds @ 585mm respectively. Looks promising.

Cheers

700d + gso203 36 x 5 min @ ISO800   siril 1.0.0 StarTools 1.8.585

 

Edited February 24, 2022 by alacant

[Stefan73]

Not remotely as good as everyone else's pictures but here is my first galaxy picture ever (up to now I've been practicing on the Orion nebula but that's behind a tree now).  About 45 1 minute exposures with a EOS 550D through an Explorer 130PDS and some colour stretching in gimp.   My OAG is still on order...

I'm guessing the elongated stars away from the centre are due to coma?

[teoria_del_big_bang]

That's pretty good and much better than my first galaxy.

If you do not have a coma corrector then yes you will get those elongated stars in corners.

Steve

[alacant]

58 minutes ago, Stefan73 said:

elongated stars away from the centre are due to coma

Hi

Yes, but lovely shot.

You can correct the stars easily in software. Sorry, not much we can do with a.jpg, we lost a few stars, but you'll get the idea:

Cheers