I've been itching to use my modded 1000D for a while, but we have had terrible weather for astronomy in Perth for ages.... until 3 days ago....a beatiful still night with quarter moon. So here is my first ever post of images to join the astrophoto on IIS club. I haven't quite mastered drift alignment but am getting there. Here are 5 lights of lagoon and dumbell with matching darks stacked in DSS. Scope is WO FLT98CF, mount EQ6 non-guided 60-90sec exposures ISO 800. Levels adjusted in Canon DPP.
Last edited by Gallifreyboy; 30-08-2009 at 12:18 PM.
Welcome to IIS. It seems to me that maybe your stacking technique may need some attention. Your central image is fairly well crisp, but as you extend outward you are getting rotation blur. This happended tp me a lot until I realised that I needed to choose my alignment stars more carfully during stacking. So, it may be guiding causing some elongation of the stars, however possibly stacking may be adding to it as well. Apart from that I like the lagoon - good colours!
Last edited by CoolhandJo; 30-08-2009 at 05:16 AM.
Reason: spelling
Very good start Peter. You'll get there in no time. You might want to dive straight into auto-guiding though. It will save you a lot of pain and open the doors to a whole new world (of added pain? )
Hey there Peter! Top effort for your first public exhibition! As Marc says, if you go straight to autoguiding you'll easily correct for what is already good basic alignment. Your processing is very good for your first time out - a little purple in M8 maybe, but that's subjective and open to individual interpretation. No doubt you've discovered how difficult it is to present your best work inside the 200kb limit imposed here. Do you have a link to the full resolution version?
They are a couple of good first images Peter. The other thing I believe you will benefit from is stacking more subs as the will help to average out the background graininess. What ISO setting are you using?
nice start peter i don't know if you are using any image processing software other than canon,but some non-linea curves adjustment and n/r in photoshop or similar,might be helpful. good work!
Thankyou all for your kind words and encouragement. I was so excited to have a good nights viewing I imaged many DSO's that night and stuck to 5 images of each to really see what was possible with the modded 1000D. 90 sec was the maximum that I found I could image with my alignment. I have the QHY5 sitting on my desk as the next step and look forward to the challenge of guiding. I have an old version of photoshop that doesn't like the TIFFs that DSS kicks out hence the use of DPP initially although I can get them back to JPEG in DPP. I will definitely look at the DSS program closer too (maybe even do the unmasculine thing of reading the instructions )
The dumbell image is a bit out of focus. I used to use Images Plus and a laptop which downloads focus images with a graph showing you your progress on focussing which was nice.
I don't use DeepSkyStacker, but, I think if you output your TIFFs as 16-bit files, rather than 32-bit, then Photoshop should have no problem opening them.
You might want to dive straight into auto-guiding though. It will save you a lot of pain and open the doors to a whole new world (of added pain? 
)
Top effort for your first public exhibition! As Marc says, if you go straight to autoguiding you'll easily correct for what is already good basic alignment. Your processing is very good for your first time out - a little purple in M8 maybe, but that's subjective and open to individual interpretation. No doubt you've discovered how difficult it is to present your best work inside the 200kb limit imposed here. Do you have a link to the full resolution version?
)
