My first Smartphone DSO’s tonight

[StarDuke82]

Earlier in the evening while waiting for Jupiter and Saturn to rise I decided to to dive headfirst into my night of imaging by trying out some DSO’s specifically M57 the Ring Nebulae, M27 the Dumbbell Nebulae and C22 the Blue Snowball Nebulae all shot with IPhone 13 pro and Astro Shader App, they look really rough especially M27 (it was the first one I attempted) but I plan on trying again tonight weather permitting. 

Edited July 11, 2023 by StarDuke82

[happy-kat]

They're recognisable that's a thrill, hope it goes well when you try again

[PeterStudz]

Well done. I’ve had some success with AstroShader and you do need to practice. Some settings are definitely off, so keep trying!

However, you can get more out of your images. I hope you don’t mind but I took your M57 and spent about 5 mins editing on my iPhone using the stock camera app, WaveletCam & Lightroom. Here’s the result. 
 

[StarDuke82]

53 minutes ago, PeterStudz said:

Well done. I’ve had some success with AstroShader and you do need to practice. Some settings are definitely off, so keep trying!

However, you can get more out of your images. I hope you don’t mind but I took your M57 and spent about 5 mins editing on my iPhone using the stock camera app, WaveletCam & Lightroom. Here’s the result. 
 

Thank you, and I don’t mind it helps me see what I can do with time. See I’m still getting used to wavelet and I didn’t even think about using light room to edit (slaps self in forehead) I’m used to taking exposures in daylight these fraction of a second ones are tricky to get just right, but I am going to read up on DSO Camera Settings today I was just kinda going at it blindly after reading up on Planetary Settings for Jupiter and Saturn yesterday so I was really just playing around with it. So hopefully with a bit more knowledge and taking some more time I can do better. 

Edited July 11, 2023 by StarDuke82

[PeterStudz]

@StarDuke82, there’s no one way or right way of doing this, especially with smartphones  where there’s a lot of new apps. Personally I find Lightroom (I’m just using the free version) useful for adjusting colours, colour balance, noise and colour noise. Snapseed is also useful but I find the interface annoying! Others might get on with it. And there are other apps that are just as good or maybe even better. 

You could also upload unite images to a PC and use your favourite apps there. Although I can’t do that as I don’t have a PC. Editing on a small smartphone screen, however good it is, makes life a little more difficult - it’s easier to spot issues on a larger screen. Although I find doing everything on the phone rewarding and I bit of a challenge. 

I’m still learning too. And it’s good to see what other people come up with. I’ve only used AstroShader twice and both times I was in a bit of a rush (against the rising sun) and just randomly played with settings. Need to give it another go when I get astro darkness back. 

[StarDuke82]

5 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

@StarDuke82, there’s no one way or right way of doing this, especially with smartphones  where there’s a lot of new apps. Personally I find Lightroom (I’m just using the free version) useful for adjusting colours, colour balance, noise and colour noise. Snapseed is also useful but I find the interface annoying! Others might get on with it. And there are other apps that are just as good or maybe even better. 

You could also upload unite images to a PC and use your favourite apps there. Although I can’t do that as I don’t have a PC. Editing on a small smartphone screen, however good it is, makes life a little more difficult - it’s easier to spot issues on a larger screen. Although I find doing everything on the phone rewarding and I bit of a challenge. 

I’m still learning too. And it’s good to see what other people come up with. I’ve only used AstroShader twice and both times I was in a bit of a rush (against the rising sun) and just randomly played with settings. Need to give it another go when I get astro darkness back. 

Yea I noticed how difficult it was trying to adjust the exposure timer, Iso, and White Balance on my phone bout as difficult as controlling my scope through wifi with my phone, probably be much easier with a tablet or laptop doing both, incidentally I checked out the App Store for additional photo editing apps, don’t try Starry Night though it’s supposed to use AI to automatically adjust Exposure and ISO but it is mainly for city scapes and portraits not for astrophotography.

Edited July 11, 2023 by StarDuke82

[StarDuke82]

Quote

 

 @PeterStudz I here’s my latest attempts M57, M13, and M12 used Lightroom after taking the photos with Astroshader got much better results with the post processing. 

[Richard]

Isn’t it amazing what iPhones can do! Wonder can you help me with a query? I’ve taken some casual wide-field images with my iPhone 13, and it easily captures e.g. M42 even when hand-held. I’ve bought an adapter to use on a scope, but I believe it stacks images automatically - is there any way of ‘unstacking’ the images?

Any tips welcome!

Richard

[StarDuke82]

@Richard I really just got into Astrophotography myself but most apps on Iphone do stack automatically, however the easiest way on an iPhone is to use Live Camera Mode, you can then edit the photos and go through the individual images that were stacked together to make the best image for what you’re imaging, this works in video as well and you can go through the individual frames and separate out the best and then stack those with other Apps available in the App Store, Video Stack for instance lets you take 5 second videos or frames of video no longer than 5 seconds edited together and stack them to make a single image. of course there’s apps that do this for you, the photos I took are actually not stacked but just the best images I got from several different shots I probably could have stacked them and cleaned up the images of M13 and M12 a lot better at the moment I am just happy with having images that are recognizable for what they are after trying for quite some time.

Edited July 16, 2023 by StarDuke82

[PeterStudz]

@StarDuke82, these are great and an obvious improvement. Especially the third capture of M57. You can even see the central white dwarf which I think is visual magnitude 15.75 - a tiny camera in phone picking that out is amazing! Can I ask what Bortle level were these taken at? 

[PeterStudz]

@Richard As you probably know AstroShader does live stacking. There are a few apps that attempt this but AstroShader is the only one that I know that does this well. However, there isn’t a way of ‘unstacking’ the images. The developer is active on this this thread so yo could ask there…

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/857117-astroshader-ios-ap-app-intro-beta-testers-wanted/
 

@StarDuke82 The lasted version of VideoStack is more stable. I’ve got it to process videos over 20 sec without issue. I’m certain that it can now handle more. 

[StarDuke82]

10 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

@StarDuke82, these are great and an obvious improvement. Especially the third capture of M57. You can even see the central white dwarf which I think is visual magnitude 15.75 - a tiny camera in phone picking that out is amazing! Can I ask what Bortle level were these taken at? 

I’m at a Bortle 6-7 Zone I can just barely see Polaris and a few hundred of the brightest stars from my backyard on a typical night. 

[PeterStudz]

2 hours ago, StarDuke82 said:

I’m at a Bortle 6-7 Zone I can just barely see Polaris and a few hundred of the brightest stars from my backyard on a typical night. 

OK, I’m in Bortle 7.

[Richard]

On 16/07/2023 at 08:24, StarDuke82 said:

@Richard I really just got into Astrophotography myself but most apps on Iphone do stack automatically, however the easiest way on an iPhone is to use Live Camera Mode, you can then edit the photos and go through the individual images that were stacked together to make the best image for what you’re imaging, this works in video as well and you can go through the individual frames and separate out the best and then stack those with other Apps available in the App Store, Video Stack for instance lets you take 5 second videos or frames of video no longer than 5 seconds edited together and stack them to make a single image. of course there’s apps that do this for you, the photos I took are actually not stacked but just the best images I got from several different shots I probably could have stacked them and cleaned up the images of M13 and M12 a lot better at the moment I am just happy with having images that are recognizable for what they are after trying for quite some time.

Thanks - I’ll give it a go. I generally consider ‘live’ to be a bit of a pain, and switch it off, but maybe it has its uses!

[Richard]

On 16/07/2023 at 10:14, PeterStudz said:

@Richard As you probably know AstroShader does live stacking. There are a few apps that attempt this but AstroShader is the only one that I know that does this well. However, there isn’t a way of ‘unstacking’ the images. The developer is active on this this thread so yo could ask there…

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/857117-astroshader-ios-ap-app-intro-beta-testers-wanted/
 

@StarDuke82 The lasted version of VideoStack is more stable. I’ve got it to process videos over 20 sec without issue. I’m certain that it can now handle more. 

I wasn’t aware, thanks; I’m pretty new to AP, finally succumbed after decades of visual, so my questions will probably seem a bit basic!

[PeterStudz]

On 17/07/2023 at 11:24, Richard said:

I wasn’t aware, thanks; I’m pretty new to AP, finally succumbed after decades of visual, so my questions will probably seem a bit basic!

I enjoy mostly visual. The smartphone images are a combination of recoding what I’ve seen plus I also find it interesting what the device in your pocket can do. My daughter also likes to have a record of what we’ve seen.