This illustrates how little skill and/or equipment you need to dip your toe
into the water. Went on a trip and forgot my tracker.
Static tripod Canon 600D 18-200mm Tamron zoom at 40mm 25x7 secs
@f/4 ISO 12800. JPEGs, in camera noise reduction and high ISO noise reduction enabled, stacked and processed in DSS. Couldn't do much about the gradient [lights of Perth.]
raymo
That looks good yet strange. Did you convert the image to mono because there isn’t even the slightest colour in M42 or any of the stars. At that ISO and f stop even 7 secs would give some colour.
Hi Astro, with the saturation set at normal level there was only the faintest hint of colour, and increasing saturation did not bring out more, just gave the whole image a disgusting mottled multicoloured overlay, so I just reduced the saturation back to zero. It surprised me too, as my recent LMC and M45 had plenty of colour, but I remembered that although they were shot at 6400 not
12800, I used much longer subs and an f/2 lens as opposed to the f/4 that
I used last night.
raymo
Great capture Raymo.
If I may point out and remind folk, unless things have changed, Raymo only does minimal processing on the final image using the tools in Deep Sky Stacked...I think that fact alone makes his work just that bit more extraordinary...
We need more of these sort of images to encourage those folk who think that one day when they have a scope and mount is the start of astro photography but here Raymo demonstrates excellent images can be obtained with a DSLR on a tripod...and really no processing to speak of past Deep Sky Stacked.
Well done Raymo.
Alex
Raymo
Please get StarTools, it is cheap, and we will guide you thru, it is not difficult as it almost does everything with no input from the driver..but honestly you would be so happy reprocessing stuff and the before and after will amaze you.
Alex
Hi Astro, with the saturation set at normal level there was only the faintest hint of colour, and increasing saturation did not bring out more, just gave the whole image a disgusting mottled multicoloured overlay, so I just reduced the saturation back to zero. It surprised me too, as my recent LMC and M45 had plenty of colour, but I remembered that although they were shot at 6400 not
12800, I used much longer subs and an f/2 lens as opposed to the f/4 that
I used last night.
raymo
Ok thanks Raymo. At first I was surprised that no pink showed in M42 but then what struck me as more odd was that stars were all white. Betelgeuse looks really strange being white rather than orange which I expected to see even with short exposures. Do you have the shot exactly as captured by the camera, (if raw then convert to JPG with no processing)? This way a beginner can see what a captured image can look like before any minor processing to achieve the final result (albeit zero saturation).
Thanks Alex, not going to bother with Startools unless I get bedridden with nothing else to do. All my images are JPEGs with no flats, bias, separate darks
etc: and almost all are subs of less 90secs duration, so not a great amount of signal. Could probably be improved, but it is hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Also, new material to process is in short supply, only three or four sessions per year in recent times.
Thanks also Leon.
Astro, my images are all JPEGS, and the image I posted is the result of stacking 25 subs, so I can post a single 7sec sub [not much to see there],
or I could stack them all again and equalise the RGB and set the final brightness of the image, but leave the other settings alone, and post the result; which would you like?
raymo
I’m curious if 7 sec straight out of the camera show any colour in the stars? I like the image but it just seems so unnatural without the star colours.
That’s great, thank you, Raymo. I can immediately see a colour difference between Betelgeuse and Bellatrix and of course Rigel. There is the (extremely) slightest hint of colour at the upper left (west) of M42 but I believe this to be the mottled appearance of the background noise, (zoom in). I think another few seconds per sub exposure is required to capture colour in M42 with all else being equal and this then may require tracking to avoid star trails but worth experimenting either way.
Before you turned the colour saturation down to zero did you notice any colour in M42 in the combined images that was part of the nebula and not any processing artefact?
I managed to take a single exposure image of this region two nights ago - with a Canon Ra camera on a tripod. 10 sec x 12800 iso at f5 and 50 mm lens.
It shows the colour in M42. Second pic is after some minor processing. Hope you don't mind me posting it on your thread Raymo. Thanks, John W.
No problem John. The Ra is optimised for Ha, no normal unmodded EOS DSLR would collect the red like your camera.
And no Astro, the colour was not visibly stronger on the stacked image.
raymo
Last edited by raymo; 11-12-2020 at 11:47 AM.
Reason: more text
Thanks Raymo and John. Camera sensor colour response no doubt makes a difference. I can see the flame nebula clearly in both of John’s shots as well as the red background nebulosity of the Horsehead in the first shot although the JPEG compression has distorted that a little.
I’ll give it a go myself over summer and see what I get with different exposures, f stops and focal lengths on both fixed and tracked platforms with a couple of different cameras. I never quite caught the astrophotography bug although I did dabble with film in the late ‘80s for a little while.
