First pics in ages....

Eggmoon (Geoff) · #1 10-05-2013, 08:03 PM

Well, finally managed to get my telescope back out and being useful... it has been MONTHS... as in February my 7 year old daughter developed Type 1 (The insulin dependant auto-immune type... not lifestyle related) diabetes... and then also was diagnosed as having coeliac disease as well! Been a roller coaster few months getting her insulin injections sorted to stabilise her blood sugar levels, changing to gluten free diet at the same time... but as things have settled down a bit now... and the last few nights here in Melbourne were just lovely... I got Sally (my scopes name) out into the backyard for some viewing.

On Wednesday night I tried out my Orion Short Tube 80, that is really there for autoguiding, for some wider field stuff. Eta Carinae, this is a single shot, no stacking, 120sec at 1600ISO, un-guided, through a UHC filter, onto my Canon 60D. I took a few more, and will have a go at stacking, but never had a real lot of joy with Deep Sky Stacker. So, for now, just posting the single shot that I really quite like.

Then on Thursday night I turned my attention to Saturn. This picture is the result of 3,000 frames in movie crop mode on the Canon 60D at 1600ISO and 1/100sec each, through my Meade LX90 8", with a Powermate 2.5X, un-guided, captured in Backyard EOS, and processed in AVIStack2. Really pleased with the result, never thought I'd get such a distant planet looking so good in an 8" scope.

Glad to be looking skywards again... have missed it....

Eggmoon (Geoff) · #2 11-05-2013, 12:04 PM

OK, so adding in my other images I now have a total of 18min 15sec of exposure on the nebula... AT 1600, 3200 AND 1000 ISO speeds... still not sure I am using Deep Sky Stacker at all well, any suggestions will be gratefully accepted!!!!

rcheshire (Rowland) · #3 11-05-2013, 10:04 PM

Geoff. I prefer your first one. The bright bits are blown out on the second.

Nice and sharp. Don't worry too much about the Ha just a bit more data.

Here's a quick repro of the first. Got rid of the green. Hope you don't mind. A little too red in the arms, though.

Eggmoon (Geoff) · #4 12-05-2013, 04:04 PM

I don't mind at all.... and not long after I posted that second one, had another go myself, and came up with this, which I much prefer to my other effort.

Any comments are welcome... I am still learning at this, so I thank you for the tips...

Woffy (John) · #5 13-05-2013, 12:54 AM

Hi Geoff, that's hard about your daughter. The photos are great. I have recently started with an ED 100 and Canon 60da. I have taken some eta carinae, but not as crisp as yours. I am on an iPad so can't upload now. I may just keep photographing eta carinae for a while. It is big, very beautiful and probably complex enough to keep getting new detail and ways of processing to show it differently. You guys have shown that already. Thanks.
John

rustigsmed (Russell) · #6 18-05-2013, 08:52 PM

nice photo Geoff.
especially for a single shot.

In Deep Sky Stacker if you're having trouble with the frames stacking, try and lower the star threshold to a lower percentage. it should register more stars and then be able to stack for you.

I've attached my go at your eta carina shot (hope you don't mind!).

I adjusted the picture in photoshop. I adjusted the 'levels' to make the black blacker, lowered the contrast, then desaturated the colour a bit.

nice capture