Eagle troubles

[RyanJones]

Hi all,

I've tried capturing the Eagle nebula 3 times now and for some reason it's just not working out for me. The first session was with my old 4se setup on my 350d camera. After getting very little in the way of color ( could barely see the object ) I gave up and moved onto another target. Next round was when I got my 5d and C5 ( current setup ) clouds restricted me to about 100 subs x 22 seconds at iso1600. Again, very little in the finished product out of DSS. 2 nights ago I got another go at it. This time I captured 356 subs at 25sec at iso1600. I admit the tracking was a little off so over a 3hr period it moved about 1/3 of the frame. Still nothing :( Is this object hard to capture ? Are there any tricks ? I've seen the magnitude at 6.3 so it should be no harder than Trifid that I recently posted that turned out beautiful ( by my standards )

Any suggestions welcome ???

[cometcatcher]

Hi Ryan. Yep, the Eagle is way harder than the trifid. F10 is not the easiest focal ratio to shoot this thing at with a DSLR. Forget the suggested magnitude, this thing is faint! I took a frame with the 8" F10 SCT and said nope, ain't happening.

F4 or F5 scope on the other hand.... No problem.

[Cimitar]

Hi Ryan. Running a high ISO isn't usually ideal due to noise and loss of dynamic range etc, however, in this instance I wonder if it's worth briefly cranking up the ISO?

I'd suggest that you try capturing 30 subs at ISO 3200 (or 6400) and process those. If you can then see the Eagle, try backing off on the ISO, and increasing the subs until you're happy with the signal to noise ratio.

[raymo]

Its no wonder you're having problems with a 5" f10 scope; here's a single
30sec frame taken with my 8" f5, DSLR @ ISO 3200.
raymo

[barx1963]

My Eagle (here http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=168673 ) was all 10min exposures with an 8" running with a 0.7 reducer so at f7. Even so it took a lot of exposure and some moderately aggressive processing to the detail out.

A 5" at f10 and short exposures is going to struggle.

Malcolm

[RyanJones]

Thank you all for your insights. You've all made me feel a whole lot better that it's going to be very hard to capture with my setup and it's not my ability or lack there of :)

I may try cranking up the iso as suggested although the risk I run there is the sky glow I'll get in my area . Yes trying it at a darker site might be an option. I'll give it a go because it's just in my nature to not give up ( sometimes to my detriment )

Given the lack of clear nights at the moment, I won't be wasting a huge amount of time on it.

Thank you all again. Your help is appreciated as always :)

[Atmos]

Light pollution will definitely make it more difficult to capture this fainter region but I wouldn’t bother cranking up the ISO further personally. Cranking up over ISO1600 isn’t likely to do anything other than rob you of dynamic range.