Hi all,
I still haven't even picked up my telescope but trying to learn as much as I can before I do.
I've watched some YouTube tutorials on Auto2takkert 2 and Registax and feel I have a good enough understanding of them to start.
For the next step I see a lot about Photoshop. Does anyone know if Corel PaintShop Pro can do what's needed, as Photoshop is a bit expensive (unless I breakout the old bittorrent client I haven't used since Stan and Netflix became available).
You can start with Photoshop CC, the high end version, for just $9.95 a month as a subscriber. Full featured, quit when you want. It is a good way to try it out.
Registax and Autostakkert are mainly used for stacking planetary, Lunar, or Solar images. Once you've stacked in these programs you would do some final colour tweaks etc. in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. For this kind of work Paint Shop Pro will do the job, but if you're not going to use Photoshop you may as well pay nothing and use Gimp.
For deep sky imaging you'd use different software to stack. The most popular free one is DeepSkyStacker. After you've stacked you will want to do things to your image to make it look better and make it look the way you want. You can do these things in Photoshop/PSP/Gimp or you can use a more specialised astro specific program, like Startools, Pixinsight, and many others.
Personally I stack and process my images in Pixinsight and do final colour tweaking in Lightroom, or sometimes Photoshop.
You can start with Photoshop CC, the high end version, for just $9.95 a month as a subscriber. Full featured, quit when you want. It is a good way to try it out.
Thanks Glen. I had forgotten about Adobe offering the subscription model.
Registax and Autostakkert are mainly used for stacking planetary, Lunar, or Solar images. Once you've stacked in these programs you would do some final colour tweaks etc. in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. For this kind of work Paint Shop Pro will do the job, but if you're not going to use Photoshop you may as well pay nothing and use Gimp.
For deep sky imaging you'd use different software to stack. The most popular free one is DeepSkyStacker. After you've stacked you will want to do things to your image to make it look better and make it look the way you want. You can do these things in Photoshop/PSP/Gimp or you can use a more specialised astro specific program, like Startools, Pixinsight, and many others.
Personally I stack and process my images in Pixinsight and do final colour tweaking in Lightroom, or sometimes Photoshop.
Thanks Hugh. I plan to start with simple stuff like the moon, then some solar, some planets, and eventually would like to try some DSO stuff. From there I guess I'll see what I like the most and continue with it.
If you have an Adobe account (its free to get one) you can still download a copy of photoshop cs a functional but no longer supported older version. It takes a bit of hunting through the archives but its still there.
Mick,
I think you may be asking the wrong question....
When you consider astrophotography there are many (I mean MANY!) things to consider....
The combination of telescope (and mounting) and camera...
Before you can process any images you have to acquire the image from your system.
The "best" acquisition software depends on your camera - Webcams/ fast frame imagers, say for planetary, lunar and solar use something like FireCapture whereas for longer DSO exposures with CCD cameras many use packages like AstroArt, Maxim etc. which allow for darks/ flats/ stacking and all the necessary pre (and most of the post) processing. These serious packages can also assist in telescope control and guiding....
Turning the images into "pretty pictures" is a black art and nothing to do with the "science" of astronomy - the usual suspect for this image manipulation and enhancement is PS -why?? Well, because it was one of the first serious photographic programs to offer the features (layers/ histograms etc.) and run 3rd party plug modules to assist the AP guys.
Those days have changed... PaintShopPro now offers a very competitive package which does everything PS does (for the amateur) at a significant cost saving.
I'm committed to spectroscopy so I don't apply any "enhancements" to my raw data, but I can't help but be impressed with the capabilities of PaintShopPro......
Just my 2c
If you have an Adobe account (its free to get one) you can still download a copy of photoshop cs a functional but no longer supported older version. It takes a bit of hunting through the archives but its still there.
Thanks Rick. I do have an Adobe account from using Acrobat at work. I'll have a poke around the archives.
Mick,
I think you may be asking the wrong question....
When you consider astrophotography there are many (I mean MANY!) things to consider....
The combination of telescope (and mounting) and camera...
Before you can process any images you have to acquire the image from your system.
The "best" acquisition software depends on your camera - Webcams/ fast frame imagers, say for planetary, lunar and solar use something like FireCapture whereas for longer DSO exposures with CCD cameras many use packages like AstroArt, Maxim etc. which allow for darks/ flats/ stacking and all the necessary pre (and most of the post) processing. These serious packages can also assist in telescope control and guiding....
Thanks Ken.
At this point it is going to be a Skywatcher Black Diamond Newtonian, either 8" or 10". I'll be working with a Canon 60D. I understand the limitations of the camera but it has the movie crop mode, which is supposed to be great for lunar and planetary work. I plan to start with moon, sun, and then planets (I've just found out Jupiter isn't around much until next year so maybe Saturn to start with). I won't even attempt DSO until I have learned how to drift align.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Merlin66
Turning the images into "pretty pictures" is a black art and nothing to do with the "science" of astronomy - the usual suspect for this image manipulation and enhancement is PS
I am beginning to think astronomy itself part black art . It's something that has always interested me but it's not until now I have had the money for it. Well money for an 8" to 10" with an NEQ6 anyway + some filters and other bits and pieces.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Merlin66
I'm committed to spectroscopy so I don't apply any "enhancements" to my raw data, but I can't help but be impressed with the capabilities of PaintShopPro......
Just my 2c
With spectroscopy are looking at stars, nebulae, etc and then looking what they're made of or what they're burning, the temperature, etc? Are you also looking for Doppler shifts?
Sounds quite interesting.
Overall, I can be a bit obsessive, which I am told is a good thing for astronomy. I'm doing my best to have the knowledge and equipment I'll need to get started once I pick the scope up sometime next month. I want to get it home and not realise the next day I need X, Y, and Z to do anything. I hope that made sense.
I'd suggest you get the scope home and do some visual time with it first before worrying about photography. You have a bit of a learning curve getting used to setting it up, aligning it for best use and finding your way around the sky. Adding imaging into that too early can make for a very frustrating mixup of issues.
Mick,
I have a four year old C11 on a NEQ6 and to be absolutely honest I think I've "looked through it" maybe four times!!
Spectroscopy is a passion...the telescope/ spectroscope combo are designed as one unit with the sole purpose of obtaining usable spectra - that's its job.
A little more complex than AP but very satisfying.
I'd suggest you get the scope home and do some visual time with it first before worrying about photography. You have a bit of a learning curve getting used to setting it up, aligning it for best use and finding your way around the sky. Adding imaging into that too early can make for a very frustrating mixup of issues.
Thanks, that's the plan. I want to learn how to find things first.
Mick,
I have a four year old C11 on a NEQ6 and to be absolutely honest I think I've "looked through it" maybe four times!!
Spectroscopy is a passion...the telescope/ spectroscope combo are designed as one unit with the sole purpose of obtaining usable spectra - that's its job.
A little more complex than AP but very satisfying.
Hi Ken,
Out of interest, were you doing spectroscopy before you got the C11? Or was the C11 an upgrade from a previous interest in visual/AP and then spectroscopy took over as your passion?
Mick,
I've been building telescopes since 1960.....
Everything from a 2" refractor to an 18" f5... In 1975 I built the Canopus 320, a 12 1/2" f5 on a heavy fork mount. This was my workhorse for many years. I did primarily visual (contributed to the Thompson&Bryant's Supernovae Charts)
I sold it to Peter Nelson in the early eighties and became involved with the AP section of the ASV - was director for many years.....
After moving around the world (a few times!) I ended up with a Meade 12" LX200 - HD cut-down tripod/ re-built wedge. This was at the serious start of my spectroscopy (I had built my first spectroscope back in 1990's) I soon became "hooked". I designed and built the Spectra-L200 spectroscope as a kit for amateurs. A few hundred have been sold around the world.
The size of the spectroscope was too large for the Meade forks - cutting out significant areas of the sky. I looked at removing the OTA and re-mounting it on a EQ mount, but the overall weight was tooo much.
Made the decision to sell the 12" LX200 and initially went for a C9.25 (The BEST SCT I've ever had!) then a HEQ5...all this was later upgraded to the current C11 on the NEQ6.
I've written three books on spectroscopy and currently have almost 1000 members on the Astronomical Spectroscopy Yahoo group.
Currently involved with the design and construction of spectroheliographs for solar imaging.
Sorry to bore you......but you did ask!!
Mick,
I've been building telescopes since 1960.....
Everything from a 2" refractor to an 18" f5... In 1975 I built the Canopus 320, a 12 1/2" f5 on a heavy fork mount. This was my workhorse for many years. I did primarily visual (contributed to the Thompson&Bryant's Supernovae Charts)
I sold it to Peter Nelson in the early eighties and became involved with the AP section of the ASV - was director for many years.....
After moving around the world (a few times!) I ended up with a Meade 12" LX200 - HD cut-down tripod/ re-built wedge. This was at the serious start of my spectroscopy (I had built my first spectroscope back in 1990's) I soon became "hooked". I designed and built the Spectra-L200 spectroscope as a kit for amateurs. A few hundred have been sold around the world.
The size of the spectroscope was too large for the Meade forks - cutting out significant areas of the sky. I looked at removing the OTA and re-mounting it on a EQ mount, but the overall weight was tooo much.
Made the decision to sell the 12" LX200 and initially went for a C9.25 (The BEST SCT I've ever had!) then a HEQ5...all this was later upgraded to the current C11 on the NEQ6.
I've written three books on spectroscopy and currently have almost 1000 members on the Astronomical Spectroscopy Yahoo group.
Currently involved with the design and construction of spectroheliographs for solar imaging.
Sorry to bore you......but you did ask!!
Hi Ken,
Pretty amazing and not boring at all. It's great to know that beginners like me get to pick the brains of people with so much experience and knowledge.
Cheers
Mick
There are so many aspects to "astronomy" that there many to enjoy and explore whatever your skills and interests. Its also a hobby that lasts and isn't a fad tied to current technology or age. So there are great people of all ages and experiences willing to share their wisdom. Actually sharing is a big part of astronomy, if you spot someone outside with a telescope they are more than happy to let strangers come look through the eyepiece and have a chat.
It's also a science where mere "nobodies" can make new discoveries or contribute to research. It doesn't need qualifications or special equipment, just a willingness to look, learn and be a part. We have people here who have discovered supernovas (and probably more), people who teach, as well as simply people wanting to look up.
I think patience is one of the best skills to have. We have ALL had the same setbacks and disappointments that newbies face. As well as wasted money on things we didnt need because we were impatient, we have the fun of clouded weeks following the purchase of a newtelescope (its a subclause of Murphy Law .
To address your original question, I agree with Ken its not the correct question. [edit] Actually Pluto's post is my thoughts exactly, I mostly use PixInsight and very rarely photoshop afterwards but 99% of the time its PixInsight (PI) from source raw images through to a jpg to put online. I also do photography so I use PS for that as its the best tool, but for most of my astrophotography its of no use. But grab yourself GIMP as its free and you can make use of it anyway for regular photos and star trail landscapes. If you have a camera you can do astrophotography right now, you dont need telescopes or tracking mounts, they're just a matter of reaching small targets and improving your processing options but are not a requirement. Most of mine is camera with lens from a regular tripod. Once you start trying, you start learning.
There are so many aspects to "astronomy" that there many to enjoy and explore whatever your skills and interests. Its also a hobby that lasts and isn't a fad tied to current technology or age. So there are great people of all ages and experiences willing to share their wisdom. Actually sharing is a big part of astronomy, if you spot someone outside with a telescope they are more than happy to let strangers come look through the eyepiece and have a chat.
It's also a science where mere "nobodies" can make new discoveries or contribute to research. It doesn't need qualifications or special equipment, just a willingness to look, learn and be a part. We have people here who have discovered supernovas (and probably more), people who teach, as well as simply people wanting to look up.
I think patience is one of the best skills to have. We have ALL had the same setbacks and disappointments that newbies face. As well as wasted money on things we didnt need because we were impatient, we have the fun of clouded weeks following the purchase of a newtelescope (its a subclause of Murphy Law .
To address your original question, I agree with Ken its not the correct question. [edit] Actually Pluto's post is my thoughts exactly, I mostly use PixInsight and very rarely photoshop afterwards but 99% of the time its PixInsight (PI) from source raw images through to a jpg to put online. I also do photography so I use PS for that as its the best tool, but for most of my astrophotography its of no use. But grab yourself GIMP as its free and you can make use of it anyway for regular photos and star trail landscapes. If you have a camera you can do astrophotography right now, you dont need telescopes or tracking mounts, they're just a matter of reaching small targets and improving your processing options but are not a requirement. Most of mine is camera with lens from a regular tripod. Once you start trying, you start learning.
Thanks Sil. Each time I have asked a question I get some great advice from everyone. It also teaches me I have underestimated the learning required and difficulty of getting results anywhere near what I see on these forums.
To be honest, I think that is a good thing for me. I've always been someone who loves to learn things, some of which can be a quite challenging, but once I can do it I often get bored - I suppose I love the thrill of the chase and then bored once I'm there.
It's looking more and more likely that I could live to be 100 and never really master any of this stuff; it's going to be a life long learning process.
Hi Ken,
Pretty amazing and not boring at all. It's great to know that beginners like me get to pick the brains of people with so much experience and knowledge.
Cheers
Mick
Mick,
While I've had a life-long interest in astronomy, and I've always owned a pair of binoculars which spend at least as much time looking up at the night sky as they do daytime use, it's only recently that I've managed to acquire a decent telescope. When your telescope arrives, you'll want to spend a fair bit of time using it for visual, but the bug to try astro-photography is sure to bite.
When you do get the urge to try expanding your horizons, give some serious thought to spectroscopy. The "cost of entry" is surprisingly modest - all you need to get started is something like a Star Analyser SA100 grating, and a camera (which you'll probably have anyway), and I find it to be immensely rewarding. (And if you become seriously addicted, you can always upgrade to better equipment like Merlin66!)
Thanks Sil. Each time I have asked a question I get some great advice from everyone. It also teaches me I have underestimated the learning required and difficulty of getting results anywhere near what I see on these forums.
This too is common, as a photographer I expected astrophotography to be much easier and photoshop to be essential. Its humbling to have to go back to square one and start from stratch.
This is perhaps an over generalisation, some astrophotography uses traditional skills and tools, such as night landscapes or startrails. The moon can be easily shot hand held with any telephoto lens. Planets, nebula, galaxies are more tricky and benefit from other tools and processing aproaches, still there is much that a camera with good manual controls can do from a simple tripod.
Like any industry the tools (hardware and software) are constantly improving and unfortunately like any hobby there is no "final" setup. No matter how good your gear you will always want for more and an infinite budget would help
Also there is no single way to do astrophotography, it depends what you are trying to capture you might use different tools and techniques depending on what you have and know, there isn't any real right way to proceed. I suffered a stroke a few years back losing the use of an arm so I had to readapt to the gear I actually could use and settle for that for now even though I have some much better stuff going unused. Where there's a will theres a way!
PS. Just some advice from my own early regrets. Keep every frame or movie you shoot no matter how bad you think it is. It's all data and as your experience grows you will install new software and learn new processing techniques so you can always reprocess your existing data in new ways to tease out a better image. I have always taken photos of the night sky and been able to work with those later when I really got into astrophotography. When I got my first webcam attached to a scope I got a heap of videos of saturn and jupiter. Because of their size and my disappointment (incorrect expectations) I deleted the source videos, then later when I discovered registax and wavelets I was kicking myself I'd deleted those videos because I realised the seeing was better in those and I could have had some good pictures from them, certainly my personal best at the time.
All my data (source, works in progress and final images) I have on my NAS unit, so when I learn something new I can copy source file onto my machine and reprocess them with what I know now and compare to what I could do back then. Tons of drive space becomes essential.
This too is common, as a photographer I expected astrophotography to be much easier and photoshop to be essential. Its humbling to have to go back to square one and start from stratch.
This is perhaps an over generalisation, some astrophotography uses traditional skills and tools, such as night landscapes or startrails. The moon can be easily shot hand held with any telephoto lens. Planets, nebula, galaxies are more tricky and benefit from other tools and processing aproaches, still there is much that a camera with good manual controls can do from a simple tripod.
Like any industry the tools (hardware and software) are constantly improving and unfortunately like any hobby there is no "final" setup. No matter how good your gear you will always want for more and an infinite budget would help
Also there is no single way to do astrophotography, it depends what you are trying to capture you might use different tools and techniques depending on what you have and know, there isn't any real right way to proceed. I suffered a stroke a few years back losing the use of an arm so I had to readapt to the gear I actually could use and settle for that for now even though I have some much better stuff going unused. Where there's a will theres a way!
PS. Just some advice from my own early regrets. Keep every frame or movie you shoot no matter how bad you think it is. It's all data and as your experience grows you will install new software and learn new processing techniques so you can always reprocess your existing data in new ways to tease out a better image. I have always taken photos of the night sky and been able to work with those later when I really got into astrophotography. When I got my first webcam attached to a scope I got a heap of videos of saturn and jupiter. Because of their size and my disappointment (incorrect expectations) I deleted the source videos, then later when I discovered registax and wavelets I was kicking myself I'd deleted those videos because I realised the seeing was better in those and I could have had some good pictures from them, certainly my personal best at the time.
All my data (source, works in progress and final images) I have on my NAS unit, so when I learn something new I can copy source file onto my machine and reprocess them with what I know now and compare to what I could do back then. Tons of drive space becomes essential.
Thanks for the advice and encouragement Sil.
I've been quite surprised by the complexity of astrophotography too. I wouldn't call myself a photographer, as I only ever had cameras like Canon's SX30 IS and earlier iterations of the same model, but I was always enjoyed playing around and testing what I could do in manual mode. I've snagged the odd really good shot by playing with the settings.
After reading your post I looked up "wavelets astrophotography" on Google and saw a few before and after examples - quite amazing. So I won't throw anything out as you advised.
Glad to see you were able to overcome adversity and find a way to still enjoy the hobby. As you say, where there's a will there's a way. I'm 50 next Feb, and my knees are getting pretty useless already, so I may be downsizing rather than upsizing in about 5-10 years.
Yes, I too would love unlimited funds. One of the reasons I waited until now, having been interested in astronomy since school, is that I really couldn't afford anything decent. The wife has been quite supportive so far, as she said, "you work hard so you deserve it". But over the past few weeks as the extra purchases have been coming in (so I'm ready for when the scope arrives) - a few filters, an extra eyepiece, power supply for taking the scope away, a step down transformer for home use, solar filter, a 2nd hand camera, etc, etc, I think she is starting to get a bit concerned. So I may need to win lotto. Then I'll just by a property out west with pristine skies and build and observatory.
One of may favourite memories as a kid, was going out half-way between Cobar and Wilcannia to stay on a friend's family's sheep station. We would go down the shearers accommodation and pull the beds out and sleep under the open sky. It looked like there was more points of light than there was darkness in the sky - it was truly amazing.
. It's something that has always interested me but it's not until now I have had the money for it. Well money for an 8" to 10" with an NEQ6 anyway + some filters and other bits and pieces.
.
