M42 - Camera test

[En1gma]

So sat night was not the best as I did not have all my gear :mad2:. But it was a great chance to test out my ed100 with meade 6.3 reducer. As I was limited to 30 second subs, I decided to see if my D5000 can do well at high ISO

what do you think?

ISO 3200 (hi-1)
30 seconds
Dark subtracted, Levels adjusted in CS4, Cropped.

http://users.tpg.com.au/en1gma83/m42_30s_crop30pc_filtered.jpg

[dpastern]

How many subs? Can you link to a full sized version so we can see noise etc (it's harder to see on a smaller cropped image as you can probably appreciate). Any noise reduction software used? That's nice detail for ISO 3200 and such short subs.

Dave

[En1gma]

Heya,

The crop above is just a single 30 second shot.

Here is a resize of the original straight from the memory card.

After my darks, levels and crop. I just did a light filtering with Neat.

http://users.tpg.com.au/en1gma83/_DSC0081.jpg

Rob

[dpastern]

That's pretty good for a single 30 second shot, and @ ISO 3200. Quite clean on the noise. Are you guiding? Stars look pretty tight. At the moment I'm struggling to get 10 sec subs due to poor alignment. You could probably do a bunch of 30 second shots and stack them to improve the S/N ratio.

Dave

[En1gma]

no guiding that night.. Left my laptop at home. And to top it all off, I left my timer remote for the camera at home too :thumbsup:

So I was just doing 30 second happy snaps and using it as my eyepiece :lol:

got ngc4070, 47tuc, m31, helix, m45. All reasonably resolved in each 30 second shot.

Rob

[dpastern]

That's pretty impressive. I wish my crappy mark IIn could do that...

Dave

[jjjnettie]

It's great fun pushing the envelope on your gear. Just to see what they can do.
For 30 seconds, that's awesome.

[dpastern]

Darn tootin' Jeanette - for 30 seconds that is AMAZING! That's more detail than I can get out of 13 stacked (and stretched) 15 second shots @ ISO 800, which is about all I've managed to push my setup so far...

Dave