First serious attempt AstroPhoto

ZeRoY

This is my first serious attempt at AP from last night/this morning. LXD75 N6AT polar aligned then drift aligned using APT, unguided. Because of drift not precise and a possible scope unbalance exposures over 60-70" had star trails so I stayed within those limits. Camera in use was Canon 1100D @ Prime Focus. Started setting up at 8pm and packed up at 3am, was about -3 by then and the Canon was not liking it, kept on shutting down. Big kudos to TzeTze for all the useful advices.

All pics stacked/processed in DSS then worked in PS/LR


M45 - Pleiades
10 Lights, 4 darks, 8 bias
DSS, PS + LR


M42 - Orion Nebula
8 Lights, 4 darks, 8 bias
DSS, PS + LR


M31 - Andromeda Galaxy
14 Lights, 4 darks, 8 bias
DSS, PS + LR

nanook5

These Are Fantastic !!

Tzetze

Nice going Zeroy. The moonlight didn't help matters last night, but these are a sure sign of good progress!
You might have a pinched mirror there, I think...

robertxxx

Wow

Kersh

Super stuff!

murrayp4

Wow, Andromeda looks particularly good.

Nerro

Super stuff.
Nice detail in images!

Tomk1

With a such wow photos like these, shows the need for an Astrophoto subforum

robertxxx

Tomk1 wrote: »

With a such wow photos like these, shows the need for an Astrophoto subforum

That's what I tried to start in another post.
Good if mods made it stick.

ThatDrGuy

Nice shots Zeroy. I like the star shaped stars. Once you are taking that kind of stuff the skies the limit. I spent 8 hours Friday trying
to polar align my scope. Very hard when its a unique set up - no one can give you much pointers. Nearly there. My autoguider has a bug in it - it crashes whenever I click on a guidestar. Took about 3 hours just to get a workaround to that. Seems to be working now. Got my star drift up from 5 seconds to about 30 seconds. Now if only I can get the second half of the drift align to work (involves seriously modding the wedge) I should have a stable guided polar set up on my 11inch OTA. Prob be summer though by the time that happens. Incidentally if anyone has a cheap refractor ( or a CGEM mount ) lying around please PM for an offer.

ZeRoY

Thanks for all the comments! Autoguiding will be down the line for me, few things im trying to fix first. One of them was pointed out by TzeTze and it is the star diffraction on the first shot, should be only 4 spikes, more with a newtonian is a sign of pinched primary mirror, something i done while cleaning the mirror I have this sorted now I hope. Another thing I have been trying is to fix the prime focus with the DSLR, Im trying to bring the primary mirror up in the OTA, lets see next clear sky night if it worked!

ThatDrGuy

ZeRoY wrote: »

Thanks for all the comments! Autoguiding will be down the line for me, few things im trying to fix first. One of them was pointed out by TzeTze and it is the star diffraction on the first shot, should be only 4 spikes, more with a newtonian is a sign of pinched primary mirror, something i done while cleaning the mirror I have this sorted now I hope. Another thing I have been trying is to fix the prime focus with the DSLR, Im trying to bring the primary mirror up in the OTA, lets see next clear sky night if it worked!

I don't know... Its the uniqueness of each set up that makes the hobby fun. We spend way too much time trying to make our photos look like hubble. I like the way your mirror shows the stars as stars. I took this guided image fri of Andromeda's galactic core. From an astrophotography point of view its a mess but I still like it, its wrong in a fun way.

ZeRoY

I agree, its all part of the fun! I must admit that processing the pictures can take a lot, lot of time! For M42 alone I must have spend at least 4h

ThatDrGuy

ZeRoY wrote: »

I agree, its all part of the fun! I must admit that processing the pictures can take a lot, lot of time! For M42 alone I must have spend at least 4h

4 hours to process 8 frames ?? What method are you using ?

ZeRoY

ThatDrGuy wrote: »

4 hours to process 8 frames ?? What method are you using ?

I tried various stacking with DSS but the bulk work is in Photoshop really, redone several times using various method, in the end I used some of those tips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBQQ_Gs6YHM

On first go, say about 30minutes process, I couldnt see half of the nebulosity I got in final result! It does pay off to process the images correctly

ThatDrGuy

Well its a good skill to learn. I must say I just point shoot, stack and adjust levels/curves afterwards. As soon as Im getting long enough exposures I'll start with the hard core processing. Every shot for the last year has kind of been a "test" shot :rolleyes:

ZeRoY

Fix my prime focus problem now by highering up the primary mirror with the collimation screws. Probably some more tweaking to do but anyway, results from earlier are good so far:

- Prime focus, straight from Canon 1100D:



- Using the 2X Barlow, tweaked in CS5 after mosaic of 8 pictures using fitswork:

nanook5

That second moon pic is great !!

ZeRoY

nanook5 wrote: »

That second moon pic is great !!

Thanks, its the same as first one but with a lot of processing!

nanook5

Ya I thought so !

ThatDrGuy

Was just out looking at the full moon. Filled the whole of my 40mm possel. Looked absolutely amazing, really beautiful every crater was crisp. Photography really cant do it justice.

Tzetze

Looks like we got a sticky.
Here's one from last night. A tad overprocessed I think..

(Click image for large version)


I also used APT to capture 500 frames of Jupiter from 10x liveview.
Registax 5.1 stacked the best 95%. Not bad for a DSLR at 1200mm.


Jupiter 27/11/12 by .Tzetze., on Flickr

ZeRoY

The amount of details you captured on the full moon is just amazing! And I know how difficult this can be with little shadows on the surface. Jupiter is looking sweet as well, gonna have to try this as well!!

Iancar29

View from my brother's place in Stepaside last night .



Orion , Jupiter and the Pleiades

Landscapeaddict on Flickr

ZeRoY

Iancar29 wrote: »

View from my brother's place in Stepaside last night .

Orion , Jupiter and the Pleiades

Landscapeaddict on Flickr

Very nice! What lens / gear you used?

Iancar29

ZeRoY wrote: »

Very nice! What lens / gear you used?

D7000
10-20 mm
F4
30 " at a scary 6400 ISO but noise reduction on helped alot.

Contrast and clarity increased on CS6

keane2097

ZeRoY wrote: »

This is my first serious attempt at AP from last night/this morning. LXD75 N6AT polar aligned then drift aligned using APT, unguided. Because of drift not precise and a possible scope unbalance exposures over 60-70" had star trails so I stayed within those limits. Camera in use was Canon 1100D @ Prime Focus. Started setting up at 8pm and packed up at 3am, was about -3 by then and the Canon was not liking it, kept on shutting down. Big kudos to TzeTze for all the useful advices.

All pics stacked/processed in DSS then worked in PS/LR

Is the scope you used for these pics one of these?

ZeRoY

keane2097 wrote: »

Is the scope you used for these pics one of these?

Its exactly that Model thats on the page but Out of Stock (its not sold new in many places these days) :

Meade LXD75 N-6AT Newtonian Reflector Telescope with AutoStar

keane2097

Thanks, was just trying to gauge a price to get that sort of view of deep space objects. Gorgeous photos, fair play.

ZeRoY

keane2097 wrote: »

Thanks, was just trying to gauge a price to get that sort of view of deep space objects. Gorgeous photos, fair play.

To be honest better results are possible on this setup with proper guiding and longer exposure, see this example for instance taken with same gear but proper guiding.

keane2097

ZeRoY wrote: »

To be honest better results are possible on this setup with proper guiding and longer exposure, see this example for instance taken with same gear but proper guiding.

Christ almighty, that's incredible.

I was going to go with a Skyliner 200P Parabolic Dobsonian starting off, but tempted to hold fire and splash out more after seeing your pics!

ZeRoY

keane2097 wrote: »

Christ almighty, that's incredible.

I was going to go with a Skyliner 200P Parabolic Dobsonian starting off, but tempted to hold fire and splash out more after seeing your pics!

Note that example is not my pic! I hope to be able to do this soon however!