New camera old telescope.

[DWHealing (Daryl)]

Hi IIS peoples!

My first post to IIS forum.

I recently purchased a ZWO 2600 MCP from Martin Pugh on IIS (thanks Martin - it is amazing). I have had so much fun with this camera over the past couple of weeks now that we have had some clear skies in Brisbane.

I purchased an 8" Meade LX200R almost 10 years ago from a member of IIS. I didn't know much about astronomy or astrophotography - and didn't really have time to join a club as I started this hobby when I had a newborn baby. Though I have been thinking of joining a club in Brisbane now that the kids are growing up. Recommendations? I'm based near Indooroopilly and don't really want to travel too far (yes that's a real place).

In those first few months just looking at Saturn and Jupiter was so exciting. Upon seeing Saturn for the first time through this telescope, I squealed with excitement and ran inside to get my wife and show her.

One night I used the "Tonight's Best" Guided tour feature on the Meade and it took me to the Orion Nebula... what's with these dark clouds I could see? Looked up, it's a clear night... that's weird.. had another look through the telescope before it dawned on me that I was looking at a nebula... WOW!. Then I saw 47 Tucane... a view of velvety diamonds in the sky (still one of my favourite things to look at visually).

Over the years I've played around with taking photos here and there and processing with all the different kinds of software. I have some great shots of solar system objects:
Jupiter - https://www.dropbox.com/s/pj8nw5j1ox...mpose.tif?dl=0
Saturn - https://www.dropbox.com/s/e8gto6wf2o...mpose.tif?dl=0
Moon - https://www.dropbox.com/s/vk54d6eif4...close.tif?dl=0

Pretty happy with these. One of my favourite sites is to see a moon transiting across Jupiter, leaving a shadow and then popping out the side of Jupiter like a growing pimple.

And then I look at all the amazing photos of deep space that everyone posts. AMAZING. But Daryl, you have an old Meade on a fork mount. The one thing I have taken onboard reading these forums and other sources is don't go down that rabbit hole of trying to make a fork mount take good deep space photos... it will always be a compromise. Buy a wedge, buy a reducer, buy a guide scope, buy a guide camera, polar align it, and somehow balance all of that on clutches that aren't strong enough to hold it. Then, if you do get all of these things you couldn't point the scope at the celestial pole because it won't fit between the fork mount.

Solution - yes, buy a decent equatorial mount and a telescope with a shorter focal length... and I will... probably next year.

But until then what can I do for fun and not spend too much time outside freezing my butt off? And without spending too much money on equipment or software. Well now that I have the ZWO 2600 MPC and spent a few days playing with SIRIL.

The following images were taken on the 8" LX200 at F10, in alt-az. They are 10 second subs and between 50 and 150 images (so between 10 and 25 minutes integrated).


• Lagoon Nebula https://www.dropbox.com/s/1shn48x7h0...ebula.jpg?dl=0
• Keyhole Nebula https://www.dropbox.com/s/tdczrayhn9...yHole.jpg?dl=0
• Southern Pinwheel Galaxy https://www.dropbox.com/s/kl44zi8d3k...izzle.jpg?dl=0
• Eagle Nebula with Pillars https://www.dropbox.com/s/o0ilno24xj..._v1.1.jpg?dl=0
• Omega Nebula https://www.dropbox.com/s/jbepo2k2a1...l_out.jpg?dl=0
• Omega Centauri https://www.dropbox.com/s/w0t1rspwqm...tauri.jpg?dl=0


Next? I think I need to add a light pollution filter such as the L-Enhance to my 2600 MCP. It might make the background gradients easier to clean up - though SIRIL did a fairly good job of cleaning up my messy pictures.

Then - grab some more images and learn more about processing. Star masking might be a good idea so I don't blow out the stars and cores of nebulas. Just need a good tutorial to follow for GIMP.

Lots of fun taking really bad photos of beautiful things.


Thanks for reading!

Daryl

[AstroViking (Steve)]

Hi Daryl,

Welcome to IIS.

Reading your post made me smile, and remember what it was like to see all those amazing things in the night sky for the first time. :-)

Your images look really good. With more integration time and more practise at processing, they will only get better.

Now, how about sending some of that Queensland warmth and sunshine down south, eh? :-P

Cheers,
V

[DWHealing (Daryl)]

it feels pretty cold up here still! I think we were under 9 degrees last night.

[LonelySpoon (Neville)]

Very nice images!

Under 9 degrees?

Looxury!

That's our current maximum!

Neville

[PKay (Peter)]

Hi Daryl and welcome to the forum!

IIS is one of the best places to learn about astrophotography,
and it is a never ending journey.

Posting your efforts is a valuable way to get advice, especially when first starting out.

Your Moon shot is very good, crisp detail and contrast.
Saturn and Jupiter are way better than I have ever done.
The guys n girls down in 'Solar System' can help you if you ask nicely.

Your Nebula images show you can find and frame them, & that is half the battle!
Steve's advice is spot on.

Keep a logbook and take heaps of notes (esp. when processing).

Wish you all the best.

And no bragging about how warm it is up there

[AdamJL]

Your pictures are excellent
Welcome to IIS

[xelasnave]

Welcome.
Great Images.
You should consider an Asiair plus..control from Inside your home, no lap top left outside, show family live stacking on your lounge.

Here is a Gimp tutorial.

https://youtu.be/fSxdHrO0zfU

Alex

[DWHealing (Daryl)]

Thanks Alex! Exactly what I needed to know!

And thank you to everyone else. I am thinking to concentrate on one object and capture a few hours of images and see what I can see.

Then follow the GIMP tutorial.

[Dave882 (David)]

Seriously nice pics! A great collection. Welcome!
Loved the write-up, and yes will always remember those special moments too. I can remember exactly where and when I first viewed saturns rings, 47Tuc, Orion etc. these memories etch in your mind!! The great things is there’s always more to see

Sooo, maybe a few things that might help…

I second Peter/Alex’s advice. I have an ASIAIR and it is great to help with live stacking and eaa photography. It’ll also grow with you when you eventually want to get an equatorial mount and need to polar align etc. if that’s out of your budget, sharpcap can do it too and you just need to hook up to a pc.

your Saturn and moon shots are great. How did you stack/process them? Are you using the 2600mcp for these shots? Go for smallest fov and fastest frame rates possible.
If the seeing is good (clear and steady) you can use a Barlow to the mix to get your scope f-value to approx 5x your pixel size. Try fire- capture on pc/Mac to do captures. I use registax to stack and autostekkert to process. All are free programs.

Looking forward to having you around the forums!

[xelasnave]

Originally Posted by DWHealing

Thanks Alex! Exactly what I needed to know!

And thank you to everyone else. I am thinking to concentrate on one object and capture a few hours of images and see what I can see.

Then follow the GIMP tutorial.

You could consider getting Startools it is rather cheap and worth every cent..I would run stuff thru Startools then Gimp or Photo shop.

It is a case of ,generally, accept Startools settings and it does the rest ..it seems as nothing is happening but at the end you notice thats for sure..

They offer a free trial but to be honest I did not get it until I had bought it and used it quiet a few times.
AND the developer is an Australian guy who often drops in here to help.

The more subs you get the better ( so you can throw out more!!!!) ....but you need to go thru them and anything that is not a master piece throw it out ..Once I started with over 1000 but ended up with under 500 having gone thru three times..the approach one has is to use it if at all possible but I think the idea should be unless it is perfect it dont get in the stack...the final image is much much better I think you may find..blow each sub up and ask if you would hang it on the wall if not throw it out.

You could even experiment with the data you currently have ..go thru and stack only the perfect and see the difference.
Because of my system I like short exposures as somehow it is much easier to throw out the not perfect ones...

Folk say it is a waste of time but I use the 3x drizzle feature which is in Deep Sky Stacker..if your computer can manage it certainly try it..the final image is huge so you bin it in Startools ... actually try a throw out and stack with 3x drizzle if you are bored

But dont take any of my recent images as decent ..the RASA ones cause I am still sorting that unit out and it has problems so the perfect ones I stack are really far from perfect...

Also probably considered cheating but learn to use the dige and burn tool in GIMP as you can brighten or darken selected areas so if you want to bring a little more nebulosity out you use the dodge tool or say to darken a dush area a little use the burn tool..just dont overdo it...
Alex

[DWHealing (Daryl)]

Thanks Alex, Peter and David.

I'm going to brush off my old version 1 ASI Air. I tried it before and didn't like using it from my phone as it was to hard to see what was going on... but that was before I decided I needed glasses! So I am going to give this another go as you have suggested. Though I think I will plug my Android phone into a monitor and use the DEX app to display it on a bigger screen anyway.

I will have a look at Star tools as well. I watched the GIMP tutorial earlier today and that was really helpful.

David - It was a while ago took the Jupiter, Saturn pics with a zwo 290mm at about 160 fps and stacked I'm pretty sure I stacked those with Registax as these were before I started playing with Autostakkert. The moon shot may have been with my Canon 450d. I'm not sure it was a while back.

Appreciate everyone's time and help. I am already being pointed into directions of trying things that I may not have done without your comments.

[gb44 (Glenn)]

Welcome Darryl

Another thing to consider regarding eq mounts is that with Losmandy mounts you can start off with a smaller one and add on to it later with RA parts for higher loads.

Another post capture free program is SIRIL and its very fast and easy.

I use an ethernet cable and TightVNC so I can sit inside and monitor the rig and laptop. That avoids the mosi and smoke from firepits locally.

GlennB