Astrotrac antares from astrofest

[h0ughy (David)]

this was taken on wednesday night at astrofest - totalling 1h34min worth of 1 minute unguided imaging using the cooled 40D and 135mm L lens f3.2 using the astrotrac at Astrofest. like my crux shot it suffers a bit of rotation but better than nothing. actually i think the rotation could also be due to the lens or sensor not completely square on to the light path in the focal plane?

stacked in DSS and processed in pixinsight

[LucasB (Lucas)]

That is very enjoyable to look at Love the dark lanes in this region which have been captured nicely!
Lucas

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by AstroAussie

That is very enjoyable to look at Love the dark lanes in this region which have been captured nicely!
Lucas

thank you Lucus

[tornado33]

Nicely done and processed.
Scott

[Dennis]

Very nice Dave, a lovely portrait of this richly populated region.

Cheers

Dennis

[allan gould]

Nice one Dave, really like that Astrotrak

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Nice result...what is your technique for polar aligning the astrotrac?I find it quite difficult myself

I don't believe sigma Octans actually exists

[Davros (Lauren)]

Thats beautiful, very well done. That one deserves framing.

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by tornado33

Nicely done and processed.
Scott

thanks SCott - see you tonight at the society's meeting

Originally Posted by Dennis

Very nice Dave, a lovely portrait of this richly populated region.

Cheers

Dennis

thanks Dennis - i have several other shots of the area to process yet and stitch up so i hope it works

Originally Posted by allan gould

Nice one Dave, really like that Astrotrak

well Allan - you have seen it in action so you know it works whens yours coming

Originally Posted by seeker372011

Nice result...what is your technique for polar aligning the astrotrac?I find it quite difficult myself

I don't believe sigma Octans actually exists

well that was a bit of a trick to use the polar scope but you line up the crux with the real one then look for the sigma thingy - in the city you would be stuffed by light pollution - it was hard enough in the dark skies at duckadang but the wedge on the pier is brilliant to use to adjust the direction

Originally Posted by Davros

Thats beautiful, very well done. That one deserves framing.

thanks - think about it after processing the other stuff

[DavidU (Dave)]

That is one very nice image Dave.

[Ross G]

A great photo David.

Detailed and sharp.

I love the smooth colours.

Is the astrotrac as amazing as the reports I have read?


Thanks.

Ross.

[bokglob (Darrell)]

Another cracker david You really nailed that dust!

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by DavidU

That is one very nice image Dave.

thanks David

Originally Posted by Ross G

A great photo David.

Detailed and sharp.

I love the smooth colours.

Is the astrotrac as amazing as the reports I have read?


Thanks.

Ross.

that they are Ross - i have two but only used one up there

Originally Posted by bokglob

Another cracker david You really nailed that dust!

dont know about that - more data is needed i think, but thank you

[RB (Andrew)]

Wow great result for 1 min subs Dave.
I can't wait to see the Astrotrac in action at Lostock.

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by RB

Wow great result for 1 min subs Dave.
I can't wait to see the Astrotrac in action at Lostock.

soon RB - only a month or so

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

David. Was that with the CLS-CCD filter? And did you do a LRGB combination with the extracted L* channel for saturation. Just curious because, it was very difficult on a similar image to retain the nice grey/blue around Rho oph without over saturating, while trying to lift the reds. Still the balance is great. I really like it.

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by rcheshire

David. Was that with the CLS-CCD filter? And did you do a LRGB combination with the extracted L* channel for saturation. Just curious because, it was very difficult on a similar image to retain the nice grey/blue around Rho oph without over saturating, while trying to lift the reds. Still the balance is great. I really like it.

no filter except the original modded one, shot without L just processed in PI with histogram and sat in colorsaturation and ACDNR

[Phil Hart]

nice houghy!

i doubt your issues are lens/sensor tilt. i think you can for sure rule out sensor tilt in DSLRs.. they're made to work with f1.4 lenses and i've never seen any evidence of issues in that regard.

i've had a lens element in a 50mm f1.8 get out of alignment before which is why i now use the 50mm f1.4. but i'd be surprised if that was the case with your tele lens.

it looks more like an alignment/stacking issue to me. do you see any issue in the individual subs? if you stack the first and last frames what do you get? can you try alignment/stacking with something other than dss and see if you get same result?

cheers
Phil

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by philiphart

nice houghy!

i doubt your issues are lens/sensor tilt. i think you can for sure rule out sensor tilt in DSLRs.. they're made to work with f1.4 lenses and i've never seen any evidence of issues in that regard.

i've had a lens element in a 50mm f1.8 get out of alignment before which is why i now use the 50mm f1.4. but i'd be surprised if that was the case with your tele lens.

it looks more like an alignment/stacking issue to me. do you see any issue in the individual subs? if you stack the first and last frames what do you get? can you try alignment/stacking with something other than dss and see if you get same result?

cheers
Phil

the lens is the 135mm L glass with a modded and cooled 40D. here are the first anf last shots. one thing to note is that the camera was totally rebuilt for the mod. if you look at that corner its in both shots

[Phil Hart]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

the lens is the 135mm L glass with a modded and cooled 40D. here are the first anf last shots. one thing to note is that the camera was totally rebuilt for the mod. if you look at that corner its in both shots

hmm.. then can you try taking separate frames after doing liveview focus on each of those two corners. maybe something is tilted. try a different lens too..