M13

[DAT]

M13 at 2:00am from bortle 9 with a morpheus 12.5, IPhone SE and AstroShader app. 0.3 sec exposure x 50. Got a long way to go as I know little about observing and nothing about photography but much better than my first few attempts 😬. No tracking.

[DAT]

It was difficult to process as the original image as it was very dim due to the low exposure time, the app creator advised this might be necessary to avoid the star trails which I could not get rid of initially . Any comments on how to improve would be appreciated 

[PeterStudz]

Ahhh.. I see what’s happening now. My Dob is on an EQ platform which is giving me longer exposure times! Mind, I think you should be able to get better.

Have you got the original image that came out of AstroShader? Not sure if you can DM it to me, or just post it here. I could take a quick look.

[DAT]

8 minutes ago, PeterStudz said:

Ahhh.. I see what’s happening now. My Dob is on an EQ platform which is giving me longer exposure times! Mind, I think you should be able to get better.

Have you got the original image that came out of AstroShader? Not sure if you can DM it to me, or just post it here. I could take a quick look.

I was wandering about adding tracking to the dob but it really doesn’t seem worth it, plus I like it for visual. A good eq platform seems too expensive at this stage so I was wandering if I managed to pick up a cheap table top with goto whether that would allow me to significantly extend the exposure time to get better images (still with a phone).

Anyway, below is the original image plus another two of the ring nebula ( processed an unprocessed), it would be interesting to see if if processing out of the app would help). Thanks for taking a look .

 

[PeterStudz]

Yes, they are a bit dark! Have you played with the ISO setting in AstroShader? I’ve circled it below. The camera lens on my iPhone 14 will be wider than yours, so let in more light. But I would have thought that the difference would be small. 

I’ll have a play with your images. Thanks for posting.

[DAT]

1 hour ago, PeterStudz said:

Yes, they are a bit dark! Have you played with the ISO setting in AstroShader? I’ve circled it below. The camera lens on my iPhone 14 will be wider than yours, so let in more light. But I would have thought that the difference would be small. 

I’ll have a play with your images. Thanks for posting.

The iso has to be set almost to the max, otherwise I can't even see the target! I will quote from the app creator's reply, (who seemed very willing to help, he seemed to insinuate I may struggle because of the phone:

"Making a few assumptions... FL 1200mm (8" Dob), 12.5mm eyepiece, 1.22 μm pixel pitch (iPhone SE). Then using the NPF rule calculator (https://sahavre.fr/wp/regle-npf-rule/) the estimates are in the 0.2-0.3s range"

"A challenge with the SE will be reducing the exposure time down enough to remove star trailing but also capture enough light. I would try setting the exposure time to 0.333s. I think you will get a max of around 50 exposure before M13 drifts out of the FOV, but this will depend on your exact setup.

Then try to recover some of the detail in editing. Specifically stretching histo/curves and try out some light sharpening (e.g. radius 0.5 or 1.0 and amount ~5.0)."

 

Apparently there is also an astroshader facebook group which may provide some pointers....

[peanutcol]

Love the image you took. I have only managed the moon really so far on my dob and phone.

[DAT]

9 hours ago, peanutcol said:

Love the image you took. I have only managed the moon really so far on my dob and phone.

Thank you, the person to watch is @PeterStudz, absolutely amazing pictures taken with a phone and a dob

[DAT]

Same image as above, processed differently (still with the AS app). Colour is a bit more natural and the core’s glow is a bit more visible. Please do not zoom in otherwise you will see the worms 😬