C/2012 F6 Lemmon Timelapse from Light polluted skies

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Hi all,

Slightly poorly aligned and a little wind also effected this timelapse. I roughly polar aligned my HEQ5Pro Mount and setup my 80mm scope on it... I managed to shoot off 120 frames at 30seconds each. Still waiting to build another Bulb cable for my Canon 400D, so was limited on time exposure. All shot with Backyard EOS. During the little timelaps I noticed many frames that had star streaks mainly due to mirror slap or wind. Still quite happy with it even though the alignment was out...

Forgot to mention all the frames are straight from the camera, no processing or editing has been done to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcTBgoKIH_0

Pinky skies due to light pollution from Adelaide.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Nice one!

You could neutralise the background by using the Click White Balance tool in Digital Photo Professional and click on a non-saturated star. It should tend the sky to a very, very deep, dark grey, if not black.

Then, apply that recipe to all images and recombine for the timelapse.

Only if you wanted to!

H

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Yep know of that method, but due to losing a hard drive not long ago, I lost all my Processing programs, so havent put Photoshop back on my computer yet. Thanks for the info though, think I might do that... I can feel a batch process coming on...

[tilbrook@rbe.ne (Justin Tilbrook)]

Originally Posted by Astroman

Yep know of that method, but due to losing a hard drive not long ago, I lost all my Processing programs, so havent put Photoshop back on my computer yet. Thanks for the info though, think I might do that... I can feel a batch process coming on...

Hi Andrew,

Nice to see your up and running, what a pain you lost your hard drive!

Sooo many hours to reinstall everything.

Cheers,

Justin.

[Octane (Humayun)]

Haha, I know the pain. I have an old, 2005 vintage Dell Inspiron 9200 that has all my astrophotography software on it. I updated everything on Saturday. It took a good 3-4 hours. Drivers for this, updates for planetarium, Maxim DL, and so on. I know your pain!

H

[MrB (Simon)]

Nice work Andrew.
Is BYE not able to control the 400D shutter thru USB?
If it does you should be able to use BYE's intervalometer function to go longer than 30s without a bulb cable.
I'd try it myself as I have a 400D here, but my trial version of BYE has expired (went with APT)

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

No if you want to use BYE for longer than 30s you have to have the bulb cable, same as if you want to use Mirror Lockup. I had some optoisolators here somewhere, but do you think I can find them now.....

[Jon (Jonathan)]

Originally Posted by Astroman

No if you want to use BYE for longer than 30s you have to have the bulb cable, same as if you want to use Mirror Lockup. I had some optoisolators here somewhere, but do you think I can find them now.....

Are you sure? I use BYE with my EOS 60Da and if you want to expose longer than 30" you set the camera to bulb, but you don't actually have to have a bulb cable ... BYE will trigger the exposure via USB. Same deal with the native Canon EOS software. But maybe the 60Da is different ...

[multiweb (Marc)]

Nice one. I'm trying to put something like that together with my subs.

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Originally Posted by Jon

Are you sure? I use BYE with my EOS 60Da and if you want to expose longer than 30" you set the camera to bulb, but you don't actually have to have a bulb cable ... BYE will trigger the exposure via USB. Same deal with the native Canon EOS software. But maybe the 60Da is different ...

The newer cameras such as the 60Da etc.... only use USB, old cameras such as the canon 300, 350 and 400D need the cable to operate the shutter. It's a PITA but necessary for it to work... I may end up getting a cheap 2nd hand Canon 1100D body only which would work as well as the 400D