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It's been clear for a few nights in a row! flaming star 2 by Phanatic, on Flickr
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Feb 6, 2024 19:21
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 20:30 |
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Baby's first astrophoto, compliments of pumped up for schools Star Adventurer. It took me an agonizingly long time to get to this point. I'm definitely going to spring for a zoom lens- the 70mm I have just doesn't cut it, clearly.
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Feb 12, 2024 00:17
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^^^^^^^^^^^^ Now that's a wide field photo! Interesting shot and keep it up. This last week there's been actually some night with clear skies. I've played more with the ZWO Seestar50. Horsehead and Flame Nebula after 33 minutes (some editing in GIMP)  28 minutes on M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy - no edits except crop  22 minutes on the Monkey Head Nebula - no edits except crop 
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Feb 12, 2024 05:02
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Would love to see those images after a bit of processing. My photo had an incredible amount of blue chromatic aberration and extreme vignetting, which I gather is the result of using a zoom lens, and without any reduction in f-stop (I was at 4.0). I shot about 60 30-second subs, but I'm not sure if trying for longer exposures is going to make any difference with this less-than-ideal hardware. I am curious though: in terms of light gathering, is the ratio of exposure time to number of shots interchangeable? In other words, are 5 one-minute exposures going to be nearly the same as one 5-minute exposure, or is there an exponential function to exposure times? My guess is that due to the complexity of the optical chain, you can't simplify it quite that neatly, but I'm just curious.
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Feb 12, 2024 17:58
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It is pretty much the same. The big number you are mainly concerned about is total integration, how you get it is up to you. Shorter exposures can help with tracking errors, satellites, wind gusts and stuff that can ruin a single exposure, just need to make sure the data is enough to overcome any noise. Longer exposures main benefit to me really is the number of images taken and processing time, I would much rather stack 200 2min images than 2400 10sec images. There is a bit of noise added on each shot but with dithering it should average out. Also at some point with long exposures you can over saturate some parts, particularly stars, and stuff like orions core.
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Feb 14, 2024 05:19
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Interesting, thanks, I wasn't sure if the sensor heating up during the course of a long exposure would have a marked adverse effect compared to a exposure that's half as long (not necessarily in that ratio, just an example). I can feel pretty good about buying a Rokinon 135 mm f/2.0 as my first lens, right? I'm using a 30-70mm zoom right now. I'm trying to exercise some restraint and not buy some fancy prime lens with a long focal length in the 200mm range since I'm still very new to my star tracker and haven't acquired a ton of confidence yet with getting polar aligned/avoiding star trails etc.
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Feb 20, 2024 00:54
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Jewmanji posted:
That's an amazing lens for the price.
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Feb 20, 2024 00:59
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I finally sprang for a Celestron NexGo DX Kit. I can barely get it onto my 30mm eyepiece because it's so massive. I blasted Jupiter with the Manual Camera app on my smartphone at several different exposures. This seems to be the best frame I could get. I need to meet one of the other astronomy club people one of these days that knows more about smartphone astrophotography and find out how to make this less worse. If I can manage to eke out any pictures of double stars like Mizar or Castor, or get Jupiter with the bands and the moons, I'll consider it a success.
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Mar 4, 2024 06:18
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My second ever photo is here. Thanks once again to Pumped Up For School for the Star Adventurer 2i to speed me on my way. Two questions: 1. I took 80 light frames (60-second exposures at f/2.8, ISO640 with a Rokinon 135mm). I was out all night watching the intervalometer count down, and hearing the shutter every minute and yet... when I got back inside I only had 40 images. This was true of my darks as well (10 shots instead of 20). How the hell did that happen? My only guess is that the intervalometer is out of sync with the camera and when the LCD screen on the camera is reading "Processing..." it's getting a bit behind while it works on the photo I just took. Is that likely? I can't fathom how else I ended up with half as many frames. Having to space out each image by an additional 30-45 seconds will be a real pain. 2. I was really excited to get a faint hint of the horsehead nebula in this shot (and a decent look at the flame nebula). I was going to spring for an Optolong filter but was gob smacked at the price. I wouldn't have imagined that it would be the same price of cheaper to get my camera astro modified. Is there any reason not to get my camera astro-modified if I'm eager to capture some more reddish nebulas like the horsehead or rosette?
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Mar 9, 2024 20:01
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Im guessing your camera is doing some kind of automatic dark frame. So it takes a 60 second light and then when it says “processing” it’s taking its own calibration frame. Hence half the frames. Also if you took your own darks, you’re subtracting them twice. Flip through the menu and see if you can find a setting for it. The saving to sd card or whatever you’re saving to should only take a couple of seconds.
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Mar 9, 2024 20:34
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Oh poo poo, it was probably the Long Exposure Noise Reduction feature huh? Ugh! Lesson learned.
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Mar 9, 2024 21:11
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Jewmanji posted:Is there any reason not to get my camera astro-modified if I'm eager to capture some more reddish nebulas like the horsehead or rosette? Is your Rokinon a Canon EF mount? pumped up for school fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 01:22
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No, I got a Sony E-Mount for my A7r. I was a bit torn about it because I understand that Sony isn’t the most reputable brand in this space but it was in the family so I couldn’t really justify buying a new Canon.
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Mar 10, 2024 01:54
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That’s not true. Sony makes arguably the best sensors for astrophotography. Especially in terms of price to performance.
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Mar 10, 2024 01:56
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Jewmanji posted:No, I got a Sony E-Mount for my A7r. I was a bit torn about it because I understand that Sony isn’t the most reputable brand in this space but it was in the family so I couldn’t really justify buying a new Canon. That's a great camera but aw shucks. I have a Canon T2i that is modified but I can't use it (no glass, switched to all Fuji) so I was just going to send it to you, see if you thought a mod would be worth it.
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Mar 10, 2024 02:43
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pumped up for school posted:That's a great camera but aw shucks. I have a Canon T2i that is modified but I can't use it (no glass, switched to all Fuji) so I was just going to send it to you, see if you thought a mod would be worth it. Aw jeez, that's an extremely kind offer. I assume that people avoid using lens adapters in this space whenever possible? It seems like it's not easily to anticipate what problems it'll create since it's so equipment-dependent. I wouldn't be averse to trying to combine the Rokinon lens with that body if only for experimental purposes. Has anyone tried renting from this site? https://www.lensrentals.com/? It seems like it might be a good way to explore a few additional focal lengths without having to jump in with both feet (was thinking of just renting a 200mm just for fun). simble posted:That’s not true. Sony makes arguably the best sensors for astrophotography. Especially in terms of price to performance. Oh ok hm, that's heartening. I think I was basing this off of 1) a single statement in Terence Dickinson/Alan Dyer's book which says, "In our tests of a Sony A7 III, it exhibited odd edge glows in long deep sky exposures. For the most demanding tasks, we suggest Canon or Nikon" and 2) the "star eater" issue which doesn't seem like a dealbreaker but a genuine nuisance to deal with sometimes. Jewmanji fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Mar 10, 2024 |
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Mar 10, 2024 16:58
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If you can find an E-mount to EF body adapter let me know and I'll ship this body to you. I know there's easy EF to E- adapters, but this would be the opposite, "backward" configuration. New lens to old body. Personally I'm not sure about adaptive lenses and astro. I'd think it would be ok. Sometimes you lose a stop of light, but you can take longer exposures. You have to manually focus (not a problem here). You'll get some color aberration, but if you're processing your files you'll probably be able to correct this.
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Mar 10, 2024 19:13
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NGC 4565, the Needle Galaxy from last night with the ZWO Seestar. There's at least three little smudge galaxies in pic as well.
Liquid Chicken fucked around with this message at 15:29 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 14:52
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Is everything else “””local””” stars ?
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Mar 13, 2024 14:53
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euphronius posted:Is everything else “””local””” stars ? I presume so except those few other galaxies.
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Mar 13, 2024 15:38
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In the vast majority of cases any stars you see in an image like that are going to be foreground stars in the Milky Way, with possible exceptions for the most nearby galaxies. Even then it’s usually relatively easy to tell what’s a foreground star and what isn’t, because stars associated with other galaxies are A. way fainter and 2. usually spatially close to the galaxy you’re taking a picture of. It’s not a perfect identification, sometimes low-luminosity stars in the Milky Way can be mistaken for stars in other galaxies, but that is generally only a concern for scientific work.
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Mar 13, 2024 16:59
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pumped up for school posted:If you can find an E-mount to EF body adapter let me know and I'll ship this body to you. This is, unfortunately, not easily possible. The back focal distance on E Mount is 18mm and EF is 44mm, to mount an E Mount lens on and EF body you'd need to have the rear element of the lens physically inside the mirror assembly. You can mount it anyway, but you lose the ability to focus on distant objects (similar to using an extension tube). There have been adapters with optics in them to solve this problem for other mounts, but I'm not aware of any for E mount, and the ones I have seen have been for less extreme differences than that and they still resulted in image quality degradation. If it exists, expect it to be several hundred USD. Jewmanji posted:Has anyone tried renting from this site? https://www.lensrentals.com/? It seems like it might be a good way to explore a few additional focal lengths without having to jump in with both feet (was thinking of just renting a 200mm just for fun). They're extremely legit, I've rented from them personally several times in the past and it's always been extremely smooth. With their recent purchase of BorrowLenses they've pretty much monopolized camera/lens rental in the US outside of Cinema rental houses.
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Mar 15, 2024 22:32
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fralbjabar posted:This is, unfortunately, not easily possible. The back focal distance on E Mount is 18mm and EF is 44mm, to mount an E Mount lens on and EF body you'd need to have the rear element of the lens physically inside the mirror assembly. You can mount it anyway, but you lose the ability to focus on distant objects (similar to using an extension tube). There have been adapters with optics in them to solve this problem for other mounts, but I'm not aware of any for E mount, and the ones I have seen have been for less extreme differences than that and they still resulted in image quality degradation. If it exists, expect it to be several hundred USD. Yeah, a B&H sales rep agreed that the flange lens distance is the problem and there's no adapter for it, unfortunately. Golden-i posted:It's been one step at a time for me since 2015. Started with an unmodified DSLR on a cheap 8" reflector and a celestron goto mount. It evolved over time as I didn't have the money to drop on all this and, honestly, this whole process has been "fix/improve one issue, move on to the next." Circling back to this, as it was a helpful post. I'm obviously trying to actually get practice with the equipment I own rather than just furiously spending cash, but I'm curious in particular about the jump from the non-astromodified DSLR directly to the ZWO camera. I image that would be quite a leap (and would also imagine that you'd have to pair it with a guide camera/scope from the get-go)? My spending map is to astro-modify my DSLR and buy either/or a narrowband clip-in or h-alpha clip-in, then maybe getting an apo refractor (Redcat?), and thenjumping to a ZWO camera and the ASIAIR and all that fun stuff. Jewmanji fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Mar 16, 2024 |
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Mar 16, 2024 15:27
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Well, unexpectedly, we’re going to the eclipse. I have a Celestron PowerSeeker 127 EQ telescope, should I get some accessories and attempt to use this during the eclipse or should I just skip it because I know nearly nothing about the telescope, astronomy, and just enjoy the totality?
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Mar 19, 2024 00:09
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some_admin posted:Well, unexpectedly, we’re going to the eclipse. Just bring some eclipse glasses and maybe a colander.
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Mar 19, 2024 01:04
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Thx Duodenum! I was thinking it would probably be very much not worth the effort to drag the telescope to Texas. Spouse will be skeptical of the colander trick, she’ll have to read it before she believes me. Unrelated to eclipse, is there a decent cell phone mount or some other way to image from this telescope? (Or is like, “get a colander” again?) I am completely aware that this is a very meager telescope, and that I live in dense urban area, so prospects of actual “Celestial Photography” are pretty slim. I did shoot picture of Moon, while I was standing on a stool (yeah, I get it now, I can just lower the legs on the tripod), while inside my house (it was cold!), while holding the phone against the eyepiece mount.
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Mar 19, 2024 14:07
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i dont know anything about the power seeker specifically, but seeing the last eclipse through my telescope was cool. if you're driving, i'd probably bring the telescope. if you're flying, probably not. unless it's super small and easily fits in a checked bag i guess, but even then i'd expect it to get all messed up from handling and the hassle not to be worth it
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Mar 19, 2024 20:01
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I impulsively upgraded, so anyone looking for a goon deal on a lightly used Star Adventurer GTI mount and tripod?
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Mar 20, 2024 02:16
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I know some hardcore hobbyists are looking down on the new smart-scopes, and I won't bore you all with yet another Orion pic, but I had my first chance to use my Seestar S50 and got a nice shot with just a few minutes of exposures and no post-processing despite a Bortle 7 sky. Mission accomplished, "toy" scope, I'm hooked. My wife will probably look back on this night sometime in the future as the beginning of a horrible drain on our bank account. I don't think I'll be the only one for whom this little black box will be a gateway drug.
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Mar 22, 2024 04:12
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Post Orion, gently caress the haters. FWIW I think the Seestar is neat as hell, and anyone who tries to gatekeep would probably just find something else to complain about anyway.
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Mar 22, 2024 07:41
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Yep, go ahead and post your Orion. Post yours and I'll post mine (also Seestar). Here's my M101 - Pinwheel Galaxy for now. 
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Mar 22, 2024 12:17
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I didn't care for "Smart Telescopes" before the Seestar came out because the Unistellar and Vaonis are too expensive and too limited, but Seestar is AWESOME! Legit Reasonable price and built around the ZWO ecosystem which is robust as hell to begin with. I think it's a banger bit of kit. I'm also really impressed by the Celestron Origin as a higher-end smart telescope. I think a lot of those are gonna get wedge-mounted in small observatories since it's going to be a fairly serious intermediate imaging setup that's ready to go out of the box with minimal fuckery, and components like the camera can be upgraded down the line. Since there's a filter drawer built in, it'd be interesting to see if they'll release a monochrome camera for it...
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Mar 22, 2024 17:13
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 What got me was how ZWO priced the Seestar50. They had the manufacturing pipeline, and probably re-used a lot of parts and certainly software. Only real competitor was the Dwarf, who didn't have the established userbase. I very much took the ZWO and Dwarf pricing as a middle-finger to the more-expensive options. I admit not being a fan of the sensor size/shape with that FL. And I expect a "Seestar 80" or such to be demoed this year with a less-constrictive sensor. Probably mosaics. But the (relatively) inexpensive little thing is a just a treat to use. For now it is pretty dark in my backyard and I'm running in a couple of minutes with literally zero fuss. It isn't perfect but for that price it punches way above its weight. I'm going to play with some moon raw videos next time I have a chance. It certainly seems to do well for "cellphone screen" lunar shots.
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Mar 22, 2024 17:50
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Liquid Chicken posted:Yep, go ahead and post your Orion. Post yours and I'll post mine (also Seestar). Ok, here it is. Again, no post and Bortle 7 with less than ten minutes of exposures. I'm pretty damned happy. 
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Mar 23, 2024 01:47
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:Ok, here it is. Again, no post and Bortle 7 with less than ten minutes of exposures. I'm pretty damned happy. Very nice. I'm around Bortle 4 and 17 minutes on it. It really doesn't take much time to get a good shot of M42. 
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Mar 23, 2024 01:53
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Liquid Chicken posted:Very nice. I'm around Bortle 4 and 17 minutes on it. It really doesn't take much time to get a good shot of M42. That's beautiful.
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Mar 23, 2024 01:56
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Man, if I hadn't already sunk a bunch of money into this iEXOS setup i'd be all over one of those, the results are incredible considering just how compact that thing seems!
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Mar 23, 2024 06:21
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 I worked on this during a conference call. I could use a lunar refresher, been a while. But this is from the Seestar - > PiPP-> Autostakkert -> Registax -> Photoshop. Somewhere in there (PiPP) there was a rotation that I didn't catch and it carried through. This was the thumbnail of the Seestar processed image:  And the thumbnail of the corresponding RAW file: 
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Mar 23, 2024 18:23
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Seeing as we are looking at orion, here is my wide angle shot from about a month ago
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Mar 24, 2024 01:32
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Raikyn posted:Seeing as we are looking at orion, here is my wide angle shot from about a month ago Remind me - you're down in the Hawke's Bay somewhere aren't you?
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Mar 24, 2024 01:48
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