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Speaking of M31, I finally got back out last night and took some subs and then tried to get an LRGB process that works. Had a huge scare during setup when my mount head fell off the tripod and smashed on the concrete (I put the counterweight on before tightening the center support bolt. Real dumb.) Luckily, everything seemed to work after this and I don't even see a scratch on it. The EQ6 is definitely a tank. I did some Ha data (about 45 minutes) and it definitely has some interesting bits, but I'm not really sure the best way to combine it yet. Like, I'm not sure if I should add it to the R channel, or the luminance channel, or both and in what proportions. Some experimenting to do there for sure. Something is certainly wrong with my process as I got some weird square artifacts on a bunch of stars. I'll have to figure that out. This really isn't much data. I do think considering this is from Bortle 8, it's not too bad. L - 90s x 28 (42 minutes) RGB- 45s x 28 (21 minutes each) 1.75 hours total I think part of my star artifact problem has something to do with the fact that I binned the RGB data at 2x2 and I didn't bin the luminance data. Then, I think I upsampled the RGB data too late in the process, but its kind of a pain to go back and reprocess at this point. I think I need more data before I try to reprocess. 
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Sep 5, 2021 07:08
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FINALLY bit the bullet and ordered a Field Flattener And now... the wait for production. Question: Are T Rings pretty standardized as far as depth, threads, and such? Looking for a 48mm one for my Nikon, as the Stellarvue ones are out of stock. Hasselblad fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Sep 5, 2021 |
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Sep 5, 2021 19:32
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Sep 6, 2021 01:39
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First bit of imaging for me in quite some time. Would love to do some of this awesome deep sky work in this thread if I ever obtain the gear.
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Sep 7, 2021 03:37
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^^^ Amazing!! Do you have a Coronado? For the long weekend, I went a looooong way to visit a friend who lives in Piseco, NY, it's about two-three hours north of Albany. Where I normally am, I usually shake my fist a lot at clouds, the full moon, obnoxious low flying helis, and the awful light pollution.. it's easily Bortle 8, and on good moonless nights, Bortle 7. gently caress, sometimes it's hard to even spot Venus. So on Sunday night, as I slept in a cabin in the woods near a lake, my friend knocked on my door and I groggily answered, she told me to get up and go look outside. My room faced a bunch of trees so I couldn't see anything, cursed her for waking me up, and tried to go back to sleep. Since I couldn't get back to sleep, I wearily dressed, cleaned my eyeholes, then snatched my CometTrons out of my gym bag, growled "I'ma going outside", and marched out the front door to see if there were any holes in the clouds (It had been raining steadily hours before) I was totally shocked, the weather had opened up the firmanent with a few ridges of clouds at the horizon, and I got a view of the sky that I'd only seen when watching the sky show at the Hayden Planetarium.. The Milky Way was totally visible and in a way I'd never seen it before live; its dust lanes were plainly visible and even more detail came out when I raised the binoculars; there were so many stars it was hard to recognize some of the constellations. It was also cool to see the reflections of the brighter stars on the lake.. Stars near the horizon were just as visible as the ones higher up; it was a revelation to not have my neck aching to see some of the better sights. As a test, I asked my friend if she could 1) see the Big Dipper and 2) tell me if there's anything odd about the stars in the handle.. she immediately said the second star from the handle looked like a double and I knew instantly she had managed to spot Alcor and Mizar. Similarly, I could actually spot Epsilon Lyrae without my binoculars.. I swear that as a kid I had only been able to spot the Little Dipper with difficulty from a darkened Coney Island beach, but here it was just like in H.A. Rey's Find the Constellations.. I think I stayed out until about 4:20 or so until clouds began to roll in again.. saw some good meteors that cast shadows! It was probably between Bortle 2 and Bortle 3 due to the clouds.. now I'm spoiled and will patiently wait for my next chance to visit someplace with Bortle 3 or better skies..
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Sep 7, 2021 13:05
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First time I set up my tracker in a class 1 area it took an extra 20 minutes to find Polaris in the polar scope because there were enough stars showing up that kinda sorta looked like Polaris in the same area and I didn't really know how to positively ID the right star. My setups closer to home in class 3/4 are way faster because it's the only star visible for a long time after sunset. Getting the chance to see darker than you ever have before is a massive treat.
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Sep 7, 2021 14:36
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Binary Badger posted:^^^ Amazing!! Do you have a Coronado? I have a Lunt 100Tha, double stacked. Light pollution sucks where I am at and I generally need to sleep at night, so working with the Sun just happens to be the most convenient. As for your Milky Way glimpse, I had a similar experience when I traveled out west for the 2017 eclipse. I pulled off the road somewhere in the Great Basin in Nevada on a clear night. It was DARK. I could make out the hills silhouetted against the stars. The Milky Way was much like you described. Sort of looked like what one typically sees in those long exposures, but without the color. There was amazing amounts of structure and various density of stars. I had difficulty making out recognizable constellations. I've been to Bryce Canyon on a starless night and the view from the Great Basin easily bested that. What I'd really hope to do some day is get to a location just as dark but in the southern hemisphere. I've seen the Magellanic Clouds and the southern Milky Way from some decently dark locations, but nothing where it's truly remote and dark.
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Sep 7, 2021 15:24
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I guess I'm kinda lucky in that even having grown up in heavily light polluted areas, I was never more than an hour away from being able to see the milky way, and my parents liked to camp in dark sky areas and make our camping trips coincide with meteor showers and total lunar eclipses. Even before I got heavily into astronomy I knew a decent number of the constellations just from watching "Jack Horkheimer's Star Hustler," so I've never been "lost" under dark skies. If anything, more stars just made star-hopping easier. I'm beginning to realize I was an amateur astronomer YEARS before I was cognizant of the fact that I was an amateur astronomer. So I guess I started this poo poo when I was five.
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Sep 7, 2021 16:48
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I'm lucky enough to live in rural Arkansas, with a lot of wide open fields in Bortle 2/3 areas maybe 20 minutes from my house. I don't have as much viewing area as someone in, say, the desert because 90% of my surroundings are dense forest, but the ones I do have are awesome  Rip Testes posted:First bit of imaging for me in quite some time. Would love to do some of this awesome deep sky work in this thread if I ever obtain the gear. Speaking of awesome, these are both incredible!
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Sep 7, 2021 17:08
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Rip Testes posted:First bit of imaging for me in quite some time. Would love to do some of this awesome deep sky work in this thread if I ever obtain the gear. I refuse to believe this is a picture you took with a ground-based telescope, let alone an amateur astrophotography set up. Simply fantastic!
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Sep 7, 2021 19:01
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I visited a country house (Lacock Abbey) the other day which by chance claimed to have been the place photography was invented. They also had an astronomy photography competition exhibition, this was the winning photo: He did the tilt shift effect by manually modifying the camera attachment.
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Sep 7, 2021 22:07
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Tilt-shift astrophotography is something I never knew I needed until now.
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Sep 7, 2021 23:12
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Rip Testes posted:First bit of imaging for me in quite some time. Would love to do some of this awesome deep sky work in this thread if I ever obtain the gear. Holy poo poo.
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Sep 8, 2021 00:26
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That breaks my brain. I don't even want to think about how that works. Getting out of the city for a bit this weekend. New moon and I haven't shot in a bit. I hope I don't get smoked out. 
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Sep 8, 2021 01:49
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pointsofdata posted:I visited a country house (Lacock Abbey) the other day which by chance claimed to have been the place photography was invented. They also had an astronomy photography competition exhibition, this was the winning photo: ho ly gently caress this page has been just jaw dropping for pics
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Sep 8, 2021 03:47
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 I know that this is absolute garbage compared to what everyone else has been posting, and I do apologize for that, but this is legitimately kind of a big deal for me because this is the closest I have gotten to actually capturing M31. It's only 45 minutes or so worth of 30 second exposures, because I ended up having to scrap a TON of shots due to my lens fogging and condensation causing me all sorts of grief, but I actually finally got more than a single 30 second shot of Andromeda and I'm somewhat proud of that! And now I want to go out and try again and try to get even longer exposures, and get multiple hours worth, and... Yeah. I'm kinda stoked 
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Sep 10, 2021 18:19
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T1g4h posted:
That's awesome dude, better than my first M31.
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Sep 10, 2021 18:22
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T1g4h posted:
This rules! I don't want to share some of my earliest attempts at anything so good for you. I am curious what your setup is. Meanwhile, I shot the heart nebula last night and I'm pretty pleased with the results. I'm trying to take better notes about what I'm doing and starting to better organize my quickly growing collection of files and masters and everything. Now that I've been doing this for about 18 months, I have a pretty good idea what my workflow looks like from acquisition all the way through processing. So, I think I'm going to try to write some asset management software to help keep things organized. I really want something to wrangle masters and automate some PixInsight repetitive preprocessing tasks that basically never change. My current setup of a couple of powershell scripts that move files around is not scaling very well and I'm worried about accidentally deleting something I didn't mean to. We'll see though.  Click for big pre:Target: Heart Nebula - IC 1805 - Sh2 190 Dates: 2021-09-09 Coordinates: RA: 2h 32m 33.893s Dec: 61d 24m 21.09s Rot: 100d Scope: WO GT81 Mount: Skywatcher EQ6R Pro Lens: WO Flat 6AIII 0.8x reducer Camera: ZWO ASI2600MM Pro Filters: Ha 3nm SII 3nm OIII 3nm Subs: Ha - 15x600s OIII - 14x600s SII - 14x600s Total - 7.1 hours 
simble fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Sep 10, 2021 |
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Sep 10, 2021 20:33
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I love the details, keep ‘em.
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Sep 10, 2021 20:40
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simble posted:If someone hates these details, lmk and I'll leave them out, otherwise I'll Details are awesome, seeing the specifics is really helpful as a newer imager. Pixinsight workflow would be great to see too.
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Sep 10, 2021 21:06
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simble posted:This rules! I don't want to share some of my earliest attempts at anything so good for you. I am curious what your setup is. My setup is nothing special right now, just the basics: Star Adventurer Pro mount, Canon T2i and either a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto for deep sky stuff like Andromeda or the 18-55mm kit lens for more wide stuff like the Milky Way. I'm trying to get an iEXOS-100 but every place I've checked is backordered so i'm just twiddling my thumbs waiting on those to come back in stock  That nebula shot is fantastic btw! Definitely inspiring me to invest more in my gear so I can hopefully one day start attempting that sort of thing!
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Sep 10, 2021 21:40
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T1g4h posted:My setup is nothing special right now, just the basics: Star Adventurer Pro mount, Canon T2i and either a Sigma 70-300mm telephoto for deep sky stuff like Andromeda or the 18-55mm kit lens for more wide stuff like the Milky Way. I'm trying to get an iEXOS-100 but every place I've checked is backordered so i'm just twiddling my thumbs waiting on those to come back in stock Canon has a 50mm lens that's F1.8, it's known as the "nifty fifty" and does really good widefield stuff. The aperture is much faster than the 18-55 kit lens and it's like $125.
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Sep 10, 2021 22:00
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Yooper posted:Canon has a 50mm lens that's F1.8, it's known as the "nifty fifty" and does really good widefield stuff. The aperture is much faster than the 18-55 kit lens and it's like $125. Oooh, noted! I actually have a 50mm f/1.4 Yashica and a 50mm f/2 Pentax that I could try, now that you mention it. They're both fully manual lenses, the Yashica from the 60s or 70s and the Pentax from the 80s. They might make for some interesting shots!
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Sep 10, 2021 22:59
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T1g4h posted:Oooh, noted! I actually have a 50mm f/1.4 Yashica and a 50mm f/2 Pentax that I could try, now that you mention it. They're both fully manual lenses, the Yashica from the 60s or 70s and the Pentax from the 80s. They might make for some interesting shots! I had an Asahi Pentax, 200mm F4 from the 60's that took some really amazing shots. Definitely give it a go.
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Sep 10, 2021 23:57
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Rip Testes posted:First bit of imaging for me in quite some time. Would love to do some of this awesome deep sky work in this thread if I ever obtain the gear. Please come back and post some details about this photo. It's so cool!
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Sep 12, 2021 04:27
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FYI, something impacted Jupiter last night. The impact site should be facing Earth from ~ 8:30 to 11:30pm mountain daylight time. I'll be reporting back if I'm able to see a "bruise." poo poo transparency but steady seeing in the forecast from where I'm temporarily staying in Arizona, and I luckily had the presence of mind to bring my 6" dob. Wish me luck!
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Sep 14, 2021 23:22
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Yeah best of luck dude, I'd give my eyeteeth to witness something like that. If anyone is interested: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/amateur-spots-possible-new-impact-flash-at-jupiter/ Article actually contains a YouTube video of the flash, looped for your enjoyment. I had thought we'd have mapped out all the asteroids that intersect Jupiter's orbit, but evidently not.. or could it have been an extrasolar visitor like that big needle that caused so much controversy recently?
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Sep 15, 2021 01:14
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Binary Badger posted:I had thought we'd have mapped out all the asteroids that intersect Jupiter's orbit, but evidently not.. or could it have been an extrasolar visitor like that big needle that caused so much controversy recently? I'm not sure how perturbations in the asteroid belt work, but I suppose given enough time an asteroid in a relatively stable orbit could be dislodged and put on an intersect course. Probably more likely to just be something from the Oort cloud, which we have basically not mapped at all.
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Sep 15, 2021 01:29
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Binary Badger posted:I had thought we'd have mapped out all the asteroids that intersect Jupiter's orbit, but evidently not.. Well, at least it wasn't an overlooked one hitting erf. (In hindsight, I'd rather not know if there was a risk of one hitting erf and causing an extinction event) Time to read Lucifer's Hammer yet again...
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Sep 15, 2021 03:49
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Still waiting for the impact site to be best positioned but managed to get all of the 7 day telescopic lunar features for the A.L. lunar program in the meantime. loving great seeing in the desert. Unfortunately the neighborhood where I'm staying also has BRUTAL mosquitos. I'm getting eaten alive and my thermacell isn't up to the task. AstroZamboni fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Sep 15, 2021 |
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Sep 15, 2021 04:26
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AstroZamboni posted:Unfortunately the neighborhood where I'm staying also has BRUTAL mosquitos. I'm getting eaten alive and my thermacell isn't up to the task. 100% DEET. poo poo works. A month in India and I got one bite, and that was in a hotel lobby after I’d already showered it off.
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Sep 15, 2021 13:06
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Phanatic posted:100% DEET. poo poo works. A month in India and I got one bite, and that was in a hotel lobby after I’d already showered it off. Deet also eats through optical coatings like it's a corrosive acid. I don't use the poo poo ANYWHERE NEAR my precious optics.
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Sep 15, 2021 16:39
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I read the last few pages, and it looks like a common theme for a beginner looking to getting into planetary photography with a DLSR is a good tripod, mount, and maybe something like the Orion Short 80? I'm putting together an early holiday present for my wife. Looking for (relatively) easy setup and shooting in a short amount of time. If the processing is involved she told me that can be my problem. One thing I worry about, while we have decent sky, it is windy AF here. Our camera tripods are all super lights and we've been talking about getting something beefy. I have a giant wooden survey tripod that I haven't co-opted into a camera mount, but I am close.
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Sep 15, 2021 20:01
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A giant wooden survey tripod sounds like an excellent choice. Even if everything else is perfect, windshake can ruin your pictures pretty easily. Light aluminum tripods are nice for portability, but they also transmit vibrations- you want something like wood to absorb them. It’s worse at higher magnifications, of course, but even for wide-field photos/observing I’d recommend the wooden one over an aluminum one.
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Sep 15, 2021 20:49
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pumped up for school posted:I read the last few pages, and it looks like a common theme for a beginner looking to getting into planetary photography with a DLSR is a good tripod, mount, and maybe something like the Orion Short 80? I think you're on track for a setup. You'll need an adapter from the DSLR to the scope, do a bit of research to make sure you have enough back space. Dude here talks about it : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWSvIkfTx8k One thing I tried recently was using a yard anchor and a ratchet strap to really lock the scope down. That should do a lot for the wind, as long as you don't have a ridiculous huge scope.
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Sep 15, 2021 22:17
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pumped up for school posted:I read the last few pages, and it looks like a common theme for a beginner looking to getting into planetary photography with a DLSR is a good tripod, mount, and maybe something like the Orion Short 80? There are also pretty good lenses for astrophotography if you are looking to dip your feet a bit. A star tracker, good tripod, and a lens like this can do some good work. Rokinon 135mm F2.0 ED UMC Telephoto Lens for Fuji X Interchangeable Lens Cameras https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T48CEK8
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Sep 15, 2021 22:37
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The ST80 is a short achromat, so it’ll show plenty of false color around bright objects at high magnification, which is what you’re hoping to do. You could image with narrow-ish filters, buy nicer glass like Internet Explorer suggests, or… get a lightweight Mak or C5, if they offer enough spacing to reach your DSLR sensor.
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Sep 15, 2021 22:57
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Internet Explorer posted:There are also pretty good lenses for astrophotography if you are looking to dip your feet a bit. A star tracker, good tripod, and a lens like this can do some good work. That lens takes absolutely amazing photos, dude north of me has one and it's like APOD quality poo poo. How well would a Mak or C5 handle non-guided longer subs?
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Sep 15, 2021 23:33
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Thank you all for the quick insights. The wooden tripod has a 5/8x11 thread so maybe I have to cludge something together. But it already looks like it is beat to hell so no harm there if I trash it. That particular lens I was eyeballing day before yesterday so good to hear another endorsement. Finally, on the mak / c5... I feel kind of super-stupid there. I used to have a c90 spotting scope but I never connected it to a camera. Looking for one again seems they're all backordered.
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Sep 16, 2021 00:34
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Well there wasn't any visible impact bruise in Jupiter's atmosphere last night that I could see. I bumped it to 400x under pretty decent seeing and tried a bunch of filters and nothing popped out. Great cloud belt detail visible though. Saturn was pretty stunning too. Unfortunately I'm paying the price on the mosquito bites. My entire arms are completely swollen to poo poo. My left hand is blown up like a loving balloon. Absolute loving brutality. Don't want to use high concentration deet because of its corrosive effects on optics, but the current situation isn't sustainable if I want to observe the next couple weeks.
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Sep 16, 2021 00:49
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