Thread: M31 pic
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Old 18-08-2011, 12:09 PM
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renormalised (Carl)
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It's a good start, but if you want to take good shots of galaxies etc, you need to invest in a good scope and, more importantly, a mount.

The whole idea of taking a number of exposures and stacking them is to raise the S/N ratio of your resulting image so that more detail becomes apparent and the noise becomes less so. Running your camera at 3200 ISO is not the best way of recording a faint object like a galaxy. It introduces too much background and electronic noise into the frames. So long as you have your polar alignment down pat and a mount that can carry the load, you should reduce the ISO down to 800 or even lower (400 or 200) and extend the exposures out to a minute or more...preferably 5 minutes. Take 20-30 frames and then take the same number of dark frames of the same exp length, ISO and such. When you import these into DSS, it will subtract the dark frames from the light frames as you tell it to, or will run the default setup. Bias frames are those frames which account for the bias that is inherent in all CCD chips. The bias is the background electronic noise within the chip even when it's not being illuminated and recording a signal. To negate the bias, you just take quick snapshot frames with a cover on your lens/telescope. Take the same number of bias frames as you do with the others. DSS will also handle these in the same way as it does the other frames you've taken. To do median processing in DSS, you go into the advanced options menu and make your choice for median combine, or whatever parameters you choose.
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