Milky Way / Coal Sack, Lucky Imaging

[PaulSthcoast (Paul)]

Hi everyone,

well after a few very long months of extreme conditions here on the South Coast NSW, we had two clear nights this week.

Saturday night was a great night, and though it started badly, it eventually cleared and was one of the best nights in the last 6 months ?

In fact was one of the ONLY clear nights in that time.

That aside, I did some visual and enjoyed being out, albeit in my front yard.

Last night looked sketchy, but it cleared late evening.

I had been messing about with some gear and thought it may be an opportunity to get the DSLR/Star-tracker/Asiair out for some trials.

It wasn't meant to be anything serious but just an opportunity to try things out.

I unceremoniously placed the tripod off my front deck and started up the DSLR, didn't even consider Polar Alignment or even focus for that matter,
just pointed it up to the heavens and wound the focus to near infinity, everything kind of towards South.

Anyways, after a few test shots and watching the Asiair from my mobile (inside away from the veracious mosquitos),
I realised I had somehow lucked in Polar Alignment, so I switched on the tracker on and went for it !

I started small and finished big !

Starting at 5 seconds at 800 iso, I experimented to a 1000 second single image.

Canon 500D, 18mm F2.8, (thanks Glend), 1600 iso, 1000 seconds, just because well.....why not ?

Imaged from my front door, yes,....they are power lines and my roof gutter.

Comments and such welcomed.

Paul.

[highlander2287 (Brett)]

I was looking at the same thing last night. Alas I haven't picked up a scope as yet but before I went to bed around 11:30pm I thought I would go outside and take a look at the sky just with my eyes. The sky looked nice and clear for viewing and even with the naked eye you could see a lot of stars out and looking I could clearly see the milky way. I wished I had a scope. It looked a great night to be viewing.

[Outcast (Carlton)]

G'day Paul,

For an image that was taken without doing a PA & just by 'happenstance' it's a pretty good result & quite pleasing to the eye.

You should be very happy with the result...

Now, to be picky...

If you zoom right in you will see some trailing of your stars, this will be because of your PA but, I think you probably know that already...

Also, your focus seems just a little off (again, when zoomed in & being picky)... do you use a bhatinov mask for focus or are you just doing it by eye...? If not already using one, I definitely recommend a bhatinov mask for getting focus spot on...

If you've already got that covered, have a look at any denoising you might be using, either in camera or, in post processing as this can also have an effect on how sharp your image is as, I have learned recently myself...

To limit noise, look at every function your camera has turned on & turn off the unnecessary ones... things like in camera denoising, auto focus, face recognition, tracking and shoot in raw & only in raw... you will still get an image preview but, you avoid the whole in camera processing to a jpeg image which, along with all these other functions, generates heat which equals noise....

I use an EOS70d & I have turned off pretty much every function in the camera that is just not part of the necessary functions to capture astro data... I also use a dummy battery connected to either a mains supply or through a regulated dc output of my power distribution box.. this means, less heat in the form of battery & again, reduces noise...

I battle heat up here all the time with the absolute minimum temp in the dry being at it's best 13*C.... since I don't want to go down the cooled camera route, I just turn off everything in camera that I don't need... does it make a difference... yeah, a small one but, if that gets me some image quality improvement then, it's worth it...

Cheers

Carlton

[Startrek (Martin)]

Paul,
Nice image considering you just plonked you’re mount down and “went for it”
Did you use the DSLR Astro settings I gave you last year on your Canon 500D ?? ( which I found from Jerry Lodriguss - DSLR Astrophotography)
Yes it’s been months since we have had some decent imaging time outside, especially down south
Hopefully things clear up later in March for us all
Well done !!
Cheers
Martin