Quote:
Originally Posted by sil
Some form of powered eq mount will open the possibilities for improvement but you can get good results with camera on tripod. I do as I can't use my eq anymore. You need to comprehend what your gear limitations means in terms of what you can get in your post processing. Step one is find your exposure limit before stars streak an unacceptable amount. Test f-stop values that give roundest stars with least distortion (this is all up to you to decide what you're happy with). Then bump up ISO to allow milky way and faint fuzzies a chance to get recorded. Then take lots of shots to process to suppress the noise and give you room to stretch the signal. That last step is not a single step, my workflow has dozens of steps for example and can take me a week or longer to work through.
My camera lets me take 100 shots at a time. So I start with a single test shot and try to pick a bright star I can see in live view to help me frame my subject. Understanding which way the stars "rotate" lets me position my target so it will pass through center of frame where distortion is least. And after each batch of 100 i check the framing and where needed I reposition the camera again.
Registration of all the shots compensates for lack of tracking mount. Then integration boosts SNR giving me a good integration frame to work with. Chuck in darks and flats too certainly helps but not essential.
I do recommend you seriously consider PixInsight to process with. Yes you can get good results with other packages and PI is not easy for newbies to get into but there is nothing as comprehensive for pure processing. No camera control though so if you want other features also check out AstroArt and Nebulosity etc as they can do awesome processing to, but dont forget YOU have to work the software so processing success depends on how capable and patient you are to learn and work at it. Astro Pixel Processor might be the program you want at this stage but its new and I can't recommend buying it due to the stabillity and lack of documentation though it does show promise and works reasonably well for newbies to get a good image out of. Many of these packages have trial periods so I recommend grabbing them all and running through tutorials and see what might suit you best.
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I just got back from a tour of your astrobin. Impressive work. I noticed that you use a Sigma 150 - 500. Tamron makes a 150 - 600 I'm looking at. Pity Sigma doesn't still make the Sony A mount version.
I'll look into the programs.
A few day back I was cleaning out my files and not used programs and managed to delete some important stuff as well. I often have these annoying whoops moments. One of the reasons for not going tracking and guiding. I'd be forever screwing things up.
Nevertheless this will all come together in time.
