Newbe to Astrophotography

[MGTechDVP]

Hello,

I'm new to IceInSpace and to astrophotography in general, I got the bug but now it seems like now that I'm hanging to image the sky there are more cloudy nights then before, at-least it seems like it.

I finally had a chance to take the gear out and give long exposure astrophotography a go. I guess being surrounded my street lights didn't help but I think they look OK for a for first deep sky attempt and a 3rd or 4th outing in general where I imaged Saturn.

I thought I'd share in my first thread.

Mariusz.

[multiweb]

Very good. I like that moon. Are you auto-guiding yet?

[oosh]

Looks pretty good for a first attempt! I haven't delved into astrophotography yet, so I'm by no means very knowledgable about it but the moon images don't look too bad - some nice detail there. The first few images have some wobbly looking stars though, so probably a tracking issue.. but hey, your first time and you got something recognisable, that's awesome. Saturn looks great too :)

[Ross G]

Hi,

The moon and Saturn shots are great.


Ross.

[MGTechDVP]

Thanks for the reply's guys. I tried autoguiding using PHD, but it lost the guiding star every few minutes. I think this is due to not having the mount perfectly polar aligned.
I ended up manually guiding the scope using the GPUSB nudge utility while keeping an eye on the stars on the PHD window with the grid overlay. It drifted then got nudged back quite a number of times, resulting in the wobbly stars.
The wider moon image was the best one of a series taken with a Canon 7D, whereas the close-up was with a DMK41 Imaging source CCD cam. I think the 7D image looks way better and real then the Registax 6 stacked close up. I did go a bit too hard with the "enhancement" since the viewing conditions were better on the day I used the 7D.
The Saturn was using a Celestron NexImager, photoshop tweaked and cropped where M20, Jewel box and M104 were taken with a Canon 40D.
The "deepsky" pics were limited to 2-3 minutes per exposure due to the light pollution, then I had to adjust the levels in photoshop before stacking them manually. The blackness "milked" out quite fast.

Can't wait to give it another go...

[Saturn%5]

Very nice shots for you first try, Cant wait to get my new set up going here in tas.

[mswhin63]

Got the bug, good job.

[multiweb]

You're very close to sort out your auto-guiding then. Once you guide you can focus better and everything will fall into place. looking forward to more :thumbsup:

[MGTechDVP]

Thanks for the thumbs up, Marc. As with everything, experience and quality comes with practice.
Graeme, get your gear out, its very rewarding just looking through the eyepiece and slowly scanning the sky, but that's nothing when the camera ends its exposure, you look at the LCD screen and you actually see something nebulous in the frame.
There you go Malcolm, got the bug big time.

[MGTechDVP]

Hello Everyone,

Finally I had another chance to take the scope out, it's been a month and between work and the weather I get rare occasions to play with the glass & mirrors. I though I'd share what I managed to image.

This time I used the Celestron UHC/LPR with the IR Cut Filters on a unmodded 40D. I managed to Polar align the mount quite close to the SCP. PHD worked like a charm and I was able to get descent images after as much as a 10 minute exposure. Another point to note is that these pics were taken in my fron yard where it was quite bright from the street lights so any longer exposures the space "black" was becoming too washed out. All pictures were contrast adjusted in PS.

Mariusz

[multiweb]

Looking better already. You need to try to get your focus closer though. it will help with processing especially LP and noise. :thumbsup:

[MGTechDVP]

Hi Marc,
I thought my focus was close, but looking at your pics, your stars are much finer points of light...

Try again next time... hopefully wont be too long before I get to play again.

:lol:

[multiweb]

Try a bathinov. It's easy to make and will get you very close to start with.

[p1taylor]

Very good, definitely try a Bahtinov focus mask it dos a wonderful job of focusing.

peter

[CoolhandJo]

Great attempts. It looks like your images are clipped. I bet that there is a lot more detail hiding in them?

[jase]

Excellent start Mariusz! Far better than my first attempts (wonky mount didn't help the situation). Well on the way to producing great work. Take your time on the processing to yield better results. Looking forward to seeing more as you progress.

[MGTechDVP]

Thanks for your comments and advise everyone.

I played a bit more with the M8 pics... but I need to go out and have another go...

[MGTechDVP]

Hello Everyone,

I setup the scope for photographing the sky last thursday night/friday morning. It looks to me that my tracking/guiding was way more accurate this time since I was able to get 10 minute exposures at a lower ISO and trails were less then 5 min exposures before (on some frames the tracking was spot on) and fluked better focus this time (Bahtinov Mask is coming).

My dilema is with Jupiter. I tried to get a image of Jupiter using the Imaging Source DMK41AU CCD camera & 2X barlow, I took 2000 frames at 15 fps (1/15th & 1/8sec sec) through each of the Red+IR Cut, Green+IR Cut, Blue+IR Cut color filters and for the luminance channel captured 2000 frames through just the IR cut filter and another through IR cut and the LPR/UHC filter. All channels stacked "best 700 frames" in RegiStax 6.

After not being able to acheive spot on focus, I suspected a collamination problem, it was a little out, so I adjusted it (to me looked like the central obstruction was dead center, and focus/cloud bands were better but still no detail... surely I should be able to get more detail then what I got.

Any hints and advise??

Mariusz