Startrails and Widefield

[mswhin63]

Hi All,

Based on the advise from Brendan :thumbsup: and finding out how to change the F setting on my camera (not easy having to hold 2 buttons down at the same time) I managed to get what I feel are 2 good shots. I went to a local dark area in Jarrahdale as I used to live there although seeing was quite poor but no cloud. Massive dew problem my glasses fogging up within 15 minutes of arriving. I liked the pitta patta of Kangaroo feet around me as well.


First image is 10 shot at 2 minutes F4 ISO 400
Second image 6 Shots at 3 minutes F4 ISO 400, The timer shut down unexpectedly limiting to 6 shots.
Both look similar, I will investigate next deep sky night to try lower ISO setting with longer exposures to find a balance.

My wife came with me but without hearing it is difficult and got bored very easily so I didn't stay long. It was also getting cold and forgot to bring jumpers.

Just before we went, I manage to point the camera to the Milky Way and got a few 30 second shots F4 and ISO 400 again.


The first image shown is unprocessed basic what the camera saw
The second image was modified using Registax as I like the Histogram feature.
The Third image was procesed using GIMP as I like the "Levels" feature on that.
I really dont know if they are realistic at all and if brightening the image truely represent the colours in the image. The maybe a few hot pixels although I took a few dark frames DSS turned the whole image grey so I couldn't get the colours (still working on that).

Anyway was more a fun excercise than anything else and I suppose and education run for myself.

[leon]

Malcolm, the first two are just superb, nicely imaged mate, as are the others.

Leon

[Liz]

Great shots Malcolm .... agree with Leon, the first 2 are the best - they have come up really well, :thumbsup: though always nice to see widefield with Crux, Centaurus and Carina. :)

[mswhin63]

Thanks all, I am happy with my ability to do Startrails and will continue to do this with a few more interesting lighting effects from now and not just dark sky. I will start looking at broadening my imaging while refining old techniques cheers.

[JD2439975]

Good to see you enjoying the process Malcolm, more subs on that widefield and things would be looking brighter.
So are you on a tripod or have you got it mounted to the EQ2?

Might I recommend trying 15secs @ ISO800 or even 5secs @ ISO1600 to help keep the stars rounder, they don't look too bad at that image scale but a larger image must be showing some egging at 30 seconds.
Repositioning the tripod/mount can give you a rough & ready tracking but Registax may have trouble getting alignment...DeepSkyStacker however has no problems with it.

Looking forward to your next efforts. :thumbsup:

Justin

[mswhin63]

Hi JD thanks for the information was a really bad night for obs due to the moisture and other things so wasn't much time for me to snap these anyway. Am using a tripod ATM, although I do have an EQ3 mount which I will be modifying for the DSLR.

Thanks for the advice I will be going out again tonight to have another go, what we do to try and get a good image :D.

Anyway I had been experienceing some issue with DSS, the above images are from a single photo, whereas I had taken 5 altogether. The problem I was experiencing was grey scale issue as mentioned - http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=59762

Anyway follow some advise on the post and got the resulting image.

[mswhin63]

My third attempt on cleaning it up is here, but what really puts a downer on the image is having to convert to JPG. I have a TIFF file which far exceeds the quality of the posting but I don't know how to scale down the TIFF to retain the quality without having to post a 80MB image on the net.

Any suggestions would be nice.

[mswhin63]

Oops forgot the image.

[duncan]

Hi Malcolm,
Great shots you have there. This AstroPhoto stuff is very addictive.
Cheers,
Duncan
Ps The last one is fantastic!:thumbsup:

[mswhin63]

Extremely addictive, but now that I have a timer as well I can also sit back enjoy the view as well.

I think that is the most important thing about imaging is to be able to relax at the same time.

[Adelastro1]

Hi Malcolm,
Nice images. What program did you use to stack the star trails images? Not sure if you used it but I use 'Stratrails' which seems pretty good and easy to use and can make movies too. I'll have to start using DSS by the looks though too.

One small suggestion - what interval did you use between each shot? I notice on the longer star trails there are small gaps between each exposure's trail. You might be able to reduce this to make smoother star trails when viewed at full size or blown up.

Wayne

[mswhin63]

I use Startrails program for the Startrails found though it is still important to get the right Fstop for clearer startrails. The gaps it the fault of the camera taking RAW images, If I was to use lower res JPG the camera would operate faster and the gaps would be smaller. It takes about 4 seconds for the camera to settle ready to take the next 2 minutes exposure. I may alter the setting to JPG in the future.

I use DSS for the Milky Way. When doing milky way images I convert RAW files to TIFF for the ability to alter saturation. Having trouble with RAW files directly into DSS.

My next step is to get an old EQ3 modified and motorfied to get longer camera shots. This is the next stage of AP for me.

[duncan]

Malcolm i could not agree with you more. I've been out on two occassions with my Toucam on the scope and just sat back and watched it all on the Lappy screen. It was bloody awesome!!!!
Can't wait for all this mongrel cloud to go away.
Cheers,
Duncan:)