Tested out Startools on M83 with intense moonshine bearing down on my 8” f5 ( it was like daylight outside down here )
50 x 2 minute guided dithered subs
20 x darks
ISO 800
Canon 600D
Sensor temperature 27deg C , warmish night for mid April ( please some colder weather soon )
Stacked in DSS
Startools did a great job of removing all the rubbish
Histogram was pushed beyond 1/3 due to moon glow so I kept at 2 minutes
Thanks so much Alex
I was surprised myself of the final result, yes the 8” f5 is my galaxy hunter
I just wanted to test imaging dimmer objects under intense moonlight
Yeh I saw those little galaxies, pretty cool
If only I had a 20” f4 to resolve them but then again I’d need a small crane to lift the OTA on a huge mount, I’ll leave those for Hubble
Thanks again
I was always somewhat against them or rather could not see what the fuss was about but having started into that approach it still blows me away the huge step forward....and such that I find the 80mm is doing better than the eigth inch with the dslr...I have taken some thru the 8 inch with the zwo and I was very impressed..its just that the 80 mm is so managable and I have a big list of things to do for the eight inch...all that over the top stuff I mentioned recently like internal baffles sawdust strengthening and extended baffled dew shield.
However I notice the temperature is always on your mind and of course a zwo will remove that worry...and therefore worth the money..mmm six months of cooler conditions then back to summer...thats approx $500 a month savings needed each month if you start now or $125 a week.
If you wait you will be thinking you cant spend $3k and want to add a cooling finger to the dslr.
You know you need one...do you think on your death bed you will lay there saying...if only I had not bought that zwo cooled camera none of this would have happened...trust me I know you must start setting aside money this very week.
I’m not really grumbling about the DSLR and temperature issues , I just state it , it’s a fact of life and I deal with it the best I can.Yes I agree eventually I will jump across to a dedicated cooled Astro camera but in the meantime I want to get some imaging time and processing time under my belt first
I really enjoy my DSLR with live view and BYEOS, got to get my moneys worth out of this stuff first
Dithering has made a huge difference in my images and is my DSLR’s buddy
Guiding also gives you piece of mind
Really enjoying both visual Astro and AP at the moment !!
Cheers
Great job Martin. Good to see what 50x2mins can show. The luminosity in the arms of the galaxy is quite high. Did you use any mask and blend techniques?
I have to look into the methods for mask processing.
Thanks Glenn
I use the Wavelet sharpening and HDR module in Startools to bring out the spiral arms and background then Contrast to blend it
The Life module with less / more function distributes the detail from the star field background to the object
The Stacked raw image when stretched was full of detail but I may have overdone it a little bit
Still happy with the result under bright moon light
Tonight I’m imaging NGC 4945 the Tweezers Galaxy which is a lot dimmer at magnitude 9.7 but still using 2 minute dithered guided subs. I’m going for 60 to 70 subs if the predicted cloud doesn’t arrive later on
Thanks again
Ryan
Thanks for your kind comments
I really enjoy imaging M83 but I’ve never attempted it under a near full moon and was surprised how well it came out
There’s plenty of other Spiral galaxies I want to chase after with my new 8” f5
Cheers
