Night sky with Lumix FZ150

[Averton (P and C)]

We got up Tuesday morning at 5am to try and see the Eta Aquarids meteor shower. This was a rather unimpressive experience from our suburban location although a very clear morning. We saw 2 meteors in an hour and a half.



Whilst sitting back and waiting for the excitement to happen we had our first try at some stacked images from an ordinary camera. We have a point and shoot Lumix FZ150 which previous experiments indicated would not be particularly good for astrophotography - but what the heck, we just pointed it at the Milky Way (not where the meteors were meant to be) to see what would happen. There were 19 subs, the first 8 were ISO 200 & the rest ISO100. 15 sec exposure, F2.8, white balance daylight, manual focus to infinity. The subs were jpg files not RAW files as RAW files from the camera have been very noisy so the camera has probably done some processing, particularly noise reduction. 17 were stacked using DSS and then the histogram was adjusted with Darktable and then cropped in GIMP.


While it is not a great image it was very interesting to see just how much we could pick out in the image which is not visible to our naked eye. We live in an inner suburb of Melbourne with light pollution around Bortle 7 or 8 so all you can see in this area of the sky are the major stars, Saturn and Jupiter. The modern way to go on construction sites is to have large very bright signs on the gantries of cranes, a couple of which are just nearby ... great! However in the image you can clearly see many things that we have only been able to see in our scope.



Clare & Peter

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Fantastic effort with your point and shoot camera. You've made a start to the wonderful world of astrophotography! You did all the right things with what you had at hand and because of that you have captured some deep sky objects too . I can see open cluster M7, bright nebula M8 and M20, Jupiter and maybe by chance, you've aimed your camera right toward the centre of the Milky Way .

So I'd say that's a very successful result under difficult conditions even for the best equipment available. Don't be scared to increase the ISO to 800 or more ( if you can, as I am aware some compact cameras won't allow you to do that with exposures longer than 1 sec) and you will see even more detail come through.

I was up in NE Victoria trying to photograph the meteor shower from a dark sky on Sunday morning just past, and despite seeing a meteor every 5 mins or so at one stage, they weren't bright enough for the camera to capture at 1600 ISO. That being the case, don't feel too bad that your camera at 200iso didn't capture any from the light polluted skies of Melbourne.

[xelasnave]

Great result.
Dont underestimate the value of short exposures and lots of them.
Next time perhaps up iso and get an hours worth. Stacking takes a while but it is worth the wait.
Thanks for sharing.
Alex

[Averton (P and C)]

Thanks guys for the comments and tips. We have tried some single frames at different ISOs to see the results but the background becomes very grainy with RAW images. That was why we stuck to 100, 200 ISO and jpg for this first stacking test. We'll give it another try at higher ISO with more images and see how it goes. It might take a while to get another go as the weather continues to be uncooperative!


Clare & Peter

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Clare and Peter, Dark frames are produced for long exposures by the camera firmware when shooting in JPG format, that's why they appear to look less grainy. Add to this the data compression that the firmware also applies to the JPG, gives the illusion of a smoother result but at the expense of less detail. Have a go at shooting in RAW format and apply your own Darks to the RAW light files in Deep Sky Stacker. Start off by taking at least 20 light frames and perhaps 10 dark frames. To take Dark frames, cover the lens so no light can enter and use the same exposure and ISO while the camera is still outside on the tripod. It's important to shoot the light and dark frames at the same ambient temperature.

It will then be interesting to compare your RAW processed result with one shot in JPG. Good luck!

[Averton (P and C)]

Hi Michael, We have read up on dark frames and noticed how to use them in DSS but haven't given them a try yet. We'll make this one of our next experiments with the camera and see how it goes. We remembered after our last post another issue we encountered when we increased the ISO was we could take pictures in the backyard like it was daylight. We only need a single cloud in the sky for the light pollution to reflect off it like a giant diffused lighting system. The good news is we don't need any outside lights at our place. So it takes a while to get a time with no moon and no clouds like it happened the other morning. Thanks for your tips.
Clare & Peter