8" f/5: Lots of variety in the star colour and it is always interesting the way spider vane diffraction spikes separate into colours as well.
2nd image has not only brought out the yellow orange star that is so famous but also managed to separate its small orange 'companion'.
Short exposures & low gain rule on this one.
Just reading about the Jewel Box, from the Constellation guide: 'The dominant star in the cluster is Kappa Crucis (HD 111973), a red, M-type supergiant with a visual magnitude of 5.98'.
Last edited by PKay; 05-03-2018 at 10:06 AM.
Reason: info about Kappa Crucis
Rocky, If your images need any sharpening, do it after you downsize the
image, not before. I find some images are more affected than others by
the downsizing, and have never tried to find out why.
raymo
I'm of the opposite opinion to Raymo on sharpening. Best to try both for yourself and see what you think. Its common for people to oversharpen which introduces artifacts so i've always gone with sharpening before scaling down the image as for me it hides the artifacts and softens the aggressive areas giving the whole image a more consistent and even sharpness across the frame. This is based on my photography (not astrophotography) experience mind you. Experiment for yourself and your software.
Rocky, as for your images looking worse in photoshop after saving to jpeg thats because jpeg is a lossy compression system and in high contrast areas (like the blackness of space around each bright star) the artifact "blocks" are most common. The more you compress the worse the effect. Plus you may be working with 16bit images in photoshop but jpeg only supports 8bit so you lose data there too. I always make sure to convert to 8bit depth first to see how bad the degradation to colour/contrast is. Then maybe make a final adjustment to bring it back to what I wanted before saving to jpeg. The other "gotcha" people encounter is the colourspace. If you have a good colour calibrated monitor try to work in AdobeRGB then convert to sRGB before saving your final jpeg. Again you may need to make some adjusting once in srgb and make sure to select srgb as the colourspace for saving. This way your image has a good chance of looking the same for others when you post it online as it does to your eyes at home.
Thanks for the tips guys. I will play around with the suggestions given and see how I go
I have been playing around with 16bit images before saving to jpeg, so that's one issue that can be addressed quite quickly and easily. Play around with other suggestions as time permits
Still lots more to learn!
It fell off!
That makes me sick in the stomach. ..it survived I presume.
The times I have nearly dropped the camera I often think to lay a rubber mat under the mout...in fact when I finish the cube observatory I think I will.
I had a focuser and the whole lot and camera fell out???
I caught it but oh that sinking feeling.
Anyways nice capture I can see various objects.
Alex
I might be able to get the chicken if I set up the heq5 upagainst the balcony rails but even then, if that works, I dont think can get more than 15 minutes. But I will have a go at something tonight if only a random patch of sky to get at least some stars to play with...
I have lined up a spot up on the Hawksberry River< in the car park of the boat shed where I had my old boat, and although there is a big light there at least I can see most of the sky.
Managed to get out last night for a few hours, I set up about an hour south in a forest so there was still some light pollution.
Still can not get polar alignment to be anything better than average, time to learn drift alignment. Can you drift align a SW star adventurer? Time to find out
Sony RX100m4 @70mm equiv
20 x 120sec
10 darks
stacked in DDS and edited in PS.
I might have overcooked the editing a bit but I managed to get some nice colouring in the nebular.
You have captured the colours of the sth. cross well.
Gamma Crucis being a red giant (the orange one) and the blurry bit on it's edge is the white/blue companion.
Great effort.
I now have a little scope set up with an illuminated reticle to align, used for nothing else, rather than swapping stuff on the main scope so I would think a similar approach for your rig maybe ...a small scope with cross hair illuminated makes it easy if you have a open view of the sky...but there are ways and ways..I only drift align because I cant see the Celestial South Pole.. if I can see it I do the star trail line up.
Thanks for posting your efforts, I personally find, very encouraging as to what can be done.
alex
I wasn't sure what to go for in Crux, so why not a Dark Nebula. In the centre is one with the appealing name HMSTG-299+0.
In the left-top corner A-Crux.
Towards the upper/right is the open cluster NGC4349.
This is 40x 60sec subs at unity gain on ASI071pro, with 80mm F5.9 refractor; half moon on the weekend. The mount was an EQ5 that I've motorised by adding some belt driven stepper motors and building the onstep GOTO. http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...d.php?t=133677
Really light and portable, and seems to work OK for unguided AP at short focal lengths. Should work better when I get higher resolution steppers and larger gear ratio.
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