Astrophotography for absolute beginners

[matt]

This is probably going to sound stupid,

but has anyone seen a thread which sets out image capturing and processing for absolute beginners?

I know there's plenty of great info in this forum for people at various stages of their progession along the learning curve but I feel like it's all a few miles down the path for me, someone at the very beginning.

I'm reading these threads and they make little to no sense because they assume some degree of familiarity with the technology and the lingo.

The info's also fairly scattered through a multitude of different threads by different authors. The job of putting any of it into some form of sequential order is beyond my humble abilities.

I'm using a Celestron NexImage CCD camera and Registax 3. Or, I would be using them if I had any idea of what I was doing!!!

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

try
http://www.madpc.net/~firmament/

[davidpretorius]

try reading http://precons.com/iis/Articles/imag...otracking.aspx

I have to add a few extra details, but it is aimed at the noobie, so any lingo you don't understand i would want to change

[matt]

Thanks DP...

I'm sure there's some general handy stuff in there, but I don't own a TouCam ... and I've only get Registax 3, a NexImage CCD cam and photoshop CS.

Haven't looked too closely at your article but....

[davidpretorius]

it mainly is a registax tutorial. Neximage is meant to be a toucam anyway and all other software is free via download.

Your photoshop will be there to finish off your image.

I have just tried to cover a few different methods ie raw mods etc

Originally Posted by matt

Thanks DP...

I'm sure there's some general handy stuff in there, but I don't own a TouCam ... and I've only get Registax 3, a NexImage CCD cam and photoshop CS.

Haven't looked too closely at your article but....

[matt]

raw mods etc...

what are they? If you mean modifications to my camera, I ain't done 'em!!!!

[davidpretorius]

http://www.astrosurf.com/astrobond/ebrawe.htm

A webcam is basically set up to stream pictures over the internet, so it will generally try and compress images, we do not want that in planet pics.

So what this raw mod is, is that it turns off this compression. It is more fiddly definately and for me at the moment it made my mars pics much better, but saturn, i am thinking of trialling it without the raw mod as the colour is not right