bloodhound31
12-08-2013, 11:01 AM
I've been out of the astrophotography game for so long now while building this observatory that I've become quite rusty with the equipment and it's software. I've done a little bit here or there, but not enough to really develop my astrophotography skills.
So, I thought I would start a thread that I can post photos in along the way, to show improvements as I learn, become more experienced, take the advice of people that are better at it than me and also as I upgrade the equipment.
I've been building my skills in the daytime photography with weddings, portraits, wildlife, macro and lots of other general photography so hopefully there's a lot I have learned that I can apply to astro work - especially when it comes to understanding the processing software.
Currently I am running an Orion Starshoot one-shot colour CCD camera on the end of a Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120mm refracting telescope. After using it last night already I can see a few things I have let myself down with. Focus was fine, but I forgot to clean the sensor and I can see dust-bunnies all over the resulting photos. I know I can take flats and such, but this at least reminds me to take care of the little things first.
Anyway, for the last two nights I have been shooting five and ten minute sub-exposures (subs) on two galaxies in Sculptor for a total of a few hours on each, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and final processing in Photoshop.
Here are the results.. not terribly happy, but at least I've got a start.
NGC300
NGC55
So, I thought I would start a thread that I can post photos in along the way, to show improvements as I learn, become more experienced, take the advice of people that are better at it than me and also as I upgrade the equipment.
I've been building my skills in the daytime photography with weddings, portraits, wildlife, macro and lots of other general photography so hopefully there's a lot I have learned that I can apply to astro work - especially when it comes to understanding the processing software.
Currently I am running an Orion Starshoot one-shot colour CCD camera on the end of a Skywatcher Black Diamond ED120mm refracting telescope. After using it last night already I can see a few things I have let myself down with. Focus was fine, but I forgot to clean the sensor and I can see dust-bunnies all over the resulting photos. I know I can take flats and such, but this at least reminds me to take care of the little things first.
Anyway, for the last two nights I have been shooting five and ten minute sub-exposures (subs) on two galaxies in Sculptor for a total of a few hours on each, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and final processing in Photoshop.
Here are the results.. not terribly happy, but at least I've got a start.
NGC300
NGC55