First widefield

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Here is my first attempt at a widefield shot. Area covers Crux, Coalsack, Beta Cent and Musca.

15x30sec lights, 4x 30 sec darks, unguided with 400d and Canon 50mm 1.8 lense piggybacked on scope on eq2 mount. Stacked in DSS with some tweking in PS Elements.
Main purpose of tweaking was to see if I could get the Dark Doodad in Musca to become visible, and there it is just above Gamma Mus

Yes you're right, better have another go!
Try again, I think I hit wrong button somewhere.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Think you might want to check the image you uploaded. Looks extremely pixelated here. Might have resized it for web incorrectly?

[dugnsuz (Doug)]

Originally Posted by troypiggo

Think you might want to check the image you uploaded. Looks extremely pixelated here. Might have resized it for web incorrectly?

Looks "as" (but not too bad) as expected" from an EQ2 mount. All my advice involves spending money so I'll try to not go down that path too much...

1. For unguided widefields - get your polar alignment as tight as possible - 30secs will stretch out to 60sec when properly aligned.

2. Stop down the lens from 1.8 to around f4 - stars will become a lot tighter/sharper.

3. Once you get polar alignment sorted out - push your number of exposures - 20-30 x 30-60sec exposues!! Push it man!!!!

Good luck - hope any of this helps - Keep On Keepin' On!!!!!!!!!!!!

[troypiggo (Troy)]

Sorry. Must've been some sort of glitch or something when my browser loaded it the first time. It's loading much less pixelated now.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Troy
It was my fault I had saved a very compressed version by accident, and then went and uploaded that.

Thanks for the comments Doug. I have some shots at F4 that I haven't processed yet, but I am not really happy with them yet.

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Nice first choice work. Flats are your next task to get a handle on, this will reduce the dark edges, bright centre.

I am only a step ahead of you.

T
ETX125 piggybacking a 1000d.

[barx1963 (Malcolm)]

Had another play, redid the process in DSS with some flats. Think it helped a bit. Played around a bit more in PS to try to improve contrast. Might have worked, I'll leave that judgement to others