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blugu64 posted:C-17? I have no idea, I was going to post it in the pilots thread to see if someone could tell me.
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Dec 4, 2009 10:07
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TomR posted:It's not near as sharp as the stacked photos. It is really worth getting as many shots as you can and pumping them into registax. With the moon, even if you don't have tracking registax has motion prediction so it should be able to handle it. If not you can manually align a stack, though that is time consuming when you're dealing with large images. But the stacking and wavelets filters do amazing things to your images, and the software is free so definitely try it some time. Vaporware posted:I'm pretty sure it's a C5 It was heading towards London so I was guessing commercial. A US C5 would be a pretty rare bird to be flying round here, though not totally unheard of as I'm right in the middle of a network of military routes.
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Dec 4, 2009 18:22
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Autoguiding test from last night, this is a single 5 minute exposure of the Orion Nebula with my new Astronomik CLS CCD filter in place. It's badly flooded out by the bright moon but I'm really happy with the guiding. This is also one of my favourite visual objects and is worth hunting down even if you only have a small scope due to it's size and brightness.  Now I just need a good clear night so I can get a proper imaging session completed.
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Dec 7, 2009 10:35
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the posted:I need recommendations for a good lens for a Canon Rebel XTi. You'd probably be better off asking that in the equipment or Canon thread in the Dorkroom, unless you want to put a telescope on instead of a lens, in which case give us some more information on what you are trying to achieve. vega Lots of questions, I'll put in my thoughts and advice for what they are worth after work this evening. Though if you can give me some thoughts on your astrophotography aims that would help, I assume you want to do deep sky work, where you use the telescope itself as the camera lens, as well as being able to piggy back the camera and it's own lens onto the scope? Basically the mount is the single most important factor in deep space work, but I'll go into more detail later. Jekub fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Dec 18, 2009 |
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Dec 18, 2009 13:10
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Vega It's late and I've been to busy watching TV, stupid weather said snow and full cloud cover tonight so I promised the wife I'd have a night in front of the TV, every time I've looked out the door it's been clear! This does mean however that I've not got round to a decent reply, so to make things short I'm going to post a site which should answer just about every question regarding astrophotography with a DSLR anyone might have from deep space through lunar and planetary to widefield and everything you might need to know about the equipment : http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/TOC_AP.HTM There is a huge amount of useful material to be had there, have a read and come back with any questions, there are a bunch of very knowledgeable people here so I'm sure we can help you make an informed choice. I will just give some quick answers to your more specific questions : Mount: You won't go wrong with an EQ6, the majority of scopes these days come with a dovetail which will fit the clamp on the EQ6 which uses the standard Vixen style dovetail clamp. If your aim is to photograph deep space objects (galaxies, nebulas, etc) then it is the best start you could go for. Telescope : Newtonian reflectors give the most bang for the buck and for photography they will be more than fine for the beginner, you will need to learn to maintain one as well. Refractors are lovely for visual work but for photography you really need apochromatic optics which gets expensive. By the time you outgrow your telescope you will have enough experience to know what you really want. Able to take photographs with : Your standard camera lens is mostly irrelevant if you want to image through the telescope. You would instead get a t-ring to fit your camera and an adapter to screw into that so you can slot it into the telescopes focuser, thereby using the telescope as the lens. So my recommendation for getting started in deep space astrophotography is get the best drat mount you can, get a reasonable telescope to go on top of it to get you started and the adapters to attach your camera. With that in place you can start taking pictures, then the real hard work begins. Some time after you start taking images you'll run into things like periodic error correction, backlash compensation, autoguiding, the joy of focussing and many other fun topics. Many of which your EQ6 can manage but by which time you will hopefully have regained some budget for all the other kit you need. Just remember that the mount is the foundation, get that right from the start and you'll suffer a lot less frustration further down the line. Astrophotography is a deeply technical, time consuming and often expensive hobby, but it is a fantastic challenge and massively rewarding.
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Dec 19, 2009 02:08
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the posted:I want to take cool pictures of space? I'll expand. There are three main forms of astrophotography and each requires different equipment to achieve the required result. Typically with standard lenses on a DSLR you will be limited to widefield imaging of star fields, constellations and conjunctions of interesting objects. With regards to using standard camera lenses you'll want to read this. The reason I pointed you to asking in the dorkroom is that photography buffs will be able to give you much better advice of what current lenses are hot or not for your platform and which will give the best performance. Lenses are very different beasts to telescopes and typically are not designed with astronomy in mind. But really just read that site, it's the best guide for the beginner I have found and covers every topic of importance for all aspects of astrophotography with a DSLR, you'll come away with a much better understanding of the topic and hopefully a clear picture of what you can expect to achieve.
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Dec 22, 2009 19:10
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A quick and dirty M42 from a couple of nights ago, it was nice to finally get out and do something! 11x3 minute exposures on the 250mm reflector, stacked in Deep Sky and processed in Pixinsight. I'll need a lot more data to improve the noise, it's a bit grainy. Jekub fucked around with this message at 15:11 on Jan 13, 2010 |
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Dec 31, 2009 17:30
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glitch77 posted:I really liked your pic so I messed with the contrast and am using it as my cellphones background. Glad you liked it, but scroll up three posts for the much nicer version, that first one was just a single unprocessed frame. The newer one is a processed stack and shows a lot more detail. You can clip the black point some more for wallpaper purposes and bump the contrast and saturation a bit. Normally the aim for astrophotograpahy is to retain as much detail as possible so we tend to be highly cautious about any kind of clipping. If anyone wants to have a go at processing themselves I'll put up some some .tiff files for you to play with. If your thinking of doing astrophotography yourself it's a good idea to start learning processing as soon as you can.
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Jan 1, 2010 10:53
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I normally use K3CCD Tools, version 1 is free and if you like it then the latest version isn't expensive. It has a few useful options but will depend on what webcam you are using. My latest effort is M81 and M82, a nice pair of galaxies which present a real challenge for guiding. This is 24 x 5 minute exposures and would be better if the moon wasn't out. Click for big! 
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Jan 7, 2010 11:22
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You should be set to start trying your hand at lunar and planetary imaging with that. You'll find out on your first night out if you need anything else, it depends first of all on whether your focuser racks in or out far enough to achieve focus on the webcam. After that you may find that the field of view is to wide or to small in which case you'll need to look at barlows or focal reducers. Let us know how you get on though!
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Jan 7, 2010 18:59
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I managed to get some more data for m42, the fainter nebulosity is starting to come out now with reasonable control of the noise.
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Jan 13, 2010 15:14
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octane2 posted:Anyways, thought I'd share a few images. If you'd like to see some more, or have specific gear-related questions, just ask. As I mentioned elswhere, your images are all amazing, I've got several astrophotographers who's images push me to learn more and do better, I'll have to add you to that list. What software do you use for calibration and post processing? Are you using a dedicated astronomy camera or a modified DSLR or do you use both? Which mount do you use and how do you manage guiding?
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Jan 13, 2010 16:08
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G-11 is what I have next years bonus ear marked for, I think by then I will have reached the limits of my already overloaded Vixen Sphinx. We have astrofest coming up in the UK next month and I'll be looking for a deal on a dual mount bar for widefield imaging with the ZS66SD and a new guiding/planetary/lunar camera to replace the modified webcam. I'll also be looking to modify my EOS1000D.
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Jan 13, 2010 17:26
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Octane2 how do you get on with having your guidescope mounted in rigid rings rather than adjustable? Do you ever have issues locating a guide star with that configuration? I tested a similar setup for mine over the weekend but had great difficulty locating a suitable guide star (imaging Leo triplet) whilst keeping the object in frame. I imagine having a better guide camera than a modified webcam would help with this.
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Jan 20, 2010 13:13
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INTJ Mastermind posted:I have a Telrad finder The Telrad is cleverer than you give it credit for, each of the rings accurately projects 4 degress, 2 degrees and half degree on the night sky which can be used to assist star hopping. Or, even better, take a telrad chart with you. A telrad chart is a chart with the telrad circles printed on it showing you where to place the finder. You can buy books of these for the various deep space catalogs, or you can find plenty of them online to print out. These will make your life much easier. Also yes, get a nice big FOV eyepiece, life is much improved when your trying to find things. I picked up a new Celestron CGEM mount on the weekend to replace my badly overloaded Sphinx, I mounted it in the shed on the weekend and hopefully tonight will be my first night using it. I choose it over the EQ6 for it's better software, improved bearings and motors and the fact that it comes with a losmandy style mounting. But I would probably have been happy with either. Jekub fucked around with this message at 13:03 on Feb 10, 2010 |
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Feb 10, 2010 12:57
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micron posted:Also is the goto and tracking on the meade enough that I could take some simple photos of just the moon or planets? Moon and planet photography is normally done using a high speed camera, either a webcam or a dedicated astronomy camera. You capture a lot of frames, depending on the quality of the camera and then stack them all together to bring out the detail. With planets this can be done with an untracked scope, I've managed it. The stacking software such as registacks has a 'centre of gravity' mode for stacking where it aligns the images based of the brightest object, which is always going to be the planet. It's the same method I use for stacking manually tracked ISS images. With basic tracking both lunar and planetary photography is much easier as you can take more frames. But yeah, big dobs are not very child or wife friendly, go-to makes life much easier in that respect though you do get less scope for your money. A friend of my wife's wanted a telescope so her husband went out and spent a couple of grand on a big Meade scope, it's been sitting in her loft ever since as she has no idea how to use it and it's to big for her to manage. I don't know how much the new Meade Lightswitch scopes are in your part of the world but they look like an absolute dream for quickly and easily getting started. Just plug it in and turn it on, the onboard GPS works out where it is, and a small camera takes basic pictures of the sky to work out it's alignment based on the stars it captures. After that you have a full audio guide to tell you what you're looking at.
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Apr 7, 2010 09:47
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Some new stuff from me, though nothing amazing as I've been mostly getting to grips with my new mount over the last couple of months. M106 & NGC4217 in the constellation Canes Venatici  The western veil nebula (ngc6960), not enough data yet for anything really good, but it's a start.  Click here for the full 1000x611 image.
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May 17, 2010 00:04
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Thanks for the comments, I'll be out for my second night of imaging on the North American nebula tonight, it's an object that I was never able to observe visually but photographically it's coming out really well. Fun imaging in the plane of the milky way to, my stacking software was reporting around 10,000 stars in the image. I did a late spring messier marathon a couple of weeks back, a whole night of actually looking through my scope with no camera to be seen. I think the total was 97 objects confirmed in the end, not a bad tally for our location. It's real easy to get tired of looking at faint fuzzy blobs though. Funkysauce Sorry, I've never used a remote telescope, though a friend of mine has to good effect and it's something I would definitely like to try, so if you do it please let us know how it works out? Crusty_mabiba Nice picture, that drat Moon is causing me all kinds of issues, to bright for those of us who don't get to image in narrowband. What's your setup and is that a single frame or a stack?
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May 22, 2010 22:14
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Don't worry, it's something to do on long cold rainy weekends during the winter, or in my case when I'm trying to avoid the inlaws, like so : The North American Nebula  an emission nebula in cygnus and my focus for the last couple of nights, I'm pretty happy with the results. Imaging Kit : William Optics ZS66SD Refractor / Canon EOS1000D (unmodified) / Astronomik CLS CCD Filter 285 minutes total exposure time (57x5 minutes)
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May 23, 2010 21:23
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Mortanis posted:Can someone enlighten me to some finer details of Astrophotography? Have a look here, I've found it covers most of the questions anyone wanting to get started will have. But to give you some quick answers : How important is automated tracking in something like this? A mount tracks by by being aligned with the earths rotation, the better aligned, the more accurate it will track. However a mount is also mechanical and will never be perfect and neither will most peoples alignment. If your doing very widefield imaging, say with a standard DSLR lens then a good polar alignment on a tracking mount will let you do reasonable length exposures, but the more you zoom in the more your mechanical and alignment errors creep in. We overcome these errors in two ways. First we use mounts that support periodic error correction, where we can record the mechanical error in the mount and adjust the tracking to compensate for it. What we are doing is recording the error in the drive, which repeats over a fixed period (hopefully). Second we use autoguiding, where a second image is recorded, either by using a second scope and camera or using a device to take some of the light from the main scope. This second image looks at a bright star and software corrects the mounts tracking to ensure it remains perfect. Basically if you want to take good pictures of deep space objects your going to want to expose for reasonable lengths of time, anything over a couple of minutes at the image scale of my large scope, then we need to use the above techniques, which means we need a mount that supports permanent PEC and autoguiding. I've seen some pictures of rigs with a lot of wiring plugged into a laptop that I'm assuming is controlling this Yep, I have on my setup : Mount - Power, computer connection, autoguider DSLR - Power, USB Guide camera - USB, exposure control Scope - Fan So eight cables in all for me to take a picture. Other people make have more for such things as computer controller focuser and filter wheels, but that's getting way advanced. The laptop runs the camera control, the autoguiding and stellarium which I normally turn off once I have the scope where I want it. I want to make sure whatever I buy will lead to that after I've gotten some good old fashioned visual scoping done. If your just doing visual to start with then don't worry about imaging stuff, get a nice dob and start saving! Jekub fucked around with this message at 10:10 on May 24, 2010 |
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May 24, 2010 09:31
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micron posted:I'm interested in taking some simple photos and wondering if something like a meade webcam would be worth while. Or should I instead get the adapter for a cannon xti DSLR that I own now. Its about the same cost at around 50 bucks and wonder which would provide better and easier results. Webcams are useful for getting started with planetary or lunar imaging, your DSLR is handy for long exposure wide field or deep space work provided your have adequate tracking. The link I posted further up the page should help your get a better understanding of what each discipline entails and requires.
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May 31, 2010 22:08
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I was just going to say that you are probably short of in-focus. With my reflector I swapped out the focuser for a low profile model or I would never have been able to rack it in far enough to reach focus. I would try and avoid using a barlow if possible, it will only make life more difficult in the long run as your drift and tracking inaccuracy will be more of a problem. This is not a problem for video imaging but long exposures will suffer. Your options then are to replace the focuser with a low profile model, or move your primary mirror further up the tube. That would probably be my preference, check this forum post of how one guy managed it http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbarchive/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/2081585/page/6/view/collapsed/sb/7/o/all/fpart/1 The secondary it seems is still large enough with the mirror shifted to fully illuminate the chip on the camera, but you will probably notice an increase in vignetting. Also if you do that make sure you have the tools to re-collimate your telescope after, which you should have anyway. Jekub fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Jun 9, 2010 |
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Jun 9, 2010 09:21
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A laser collimator is the more modern method for collimating and will suffice for most needs, much easier than using a Cheshire eyepiece collimator in most cases. The only issue with the laser is that you have to make sure that the laser itself is also collimated. Obviously if the laser points off centre then your alignment will also be off centre. However they are adjustable, just put it in something to hold it steady, pointed at a wall 10ft away of so, rotate it and check the the red dot doesn't turn circles. It cannot really be underestimated how important good collimation is to a newtonian reflector, both for visual and imaging, it's a fundamental requirement for the design and you will never get the best from your telescope without it.
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Jun 10, 2010 09:26
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Well, it's not that far off, SBig do an adaptive optics add-on for there dedicated astronomy cameras which isn't horribly expensive, at least not when compared to the cost of the cameras it works with.
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Jun 11, 2010 09:17
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Spoot posted:I can use it I can view the moon alright but when I aim it at the stars all I see is black with both my 10mm and 20mm eyepieces. Shouldn't I at least be seeing the visable stars? You should definitely be seeing something, get you finder lined up and point the scope towards the brightest star you can see to test, there is no reason that you should not be seeing stars. If you point anywhere in the milky way you should no end of stars. upsciLLion posted:Is anybody planning on taking pictures of comet McNaught? I'd love to, please make the clouds go away 
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Jun 12, 2010 12:11
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oldmanklc posted:I just saw this thread for the first time and thought I'd brag. I just got back from Texas Star Party a few weeks ago. There, I took this: Very nice, great colours. What scope were you using for that? Those diffraction spikes are very sharp, I'm going to need a new spider once I get back to imaging with the newt, the two vane spider in mine makes horrible spikes. DSLR or dedicated astro camera? I also see you have a thread in ask / tell which I'll keep an eye on and join in with if you want, you might want to drop some of your images in it to encourage some questions.
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Jun 15, 2010 10:54
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Nice one Crusty_mabiba, it's always nice to make progress. Are you taking flat frames yet? It would do wonders for removing that vignetting. Also are you using a reflector or a refractor?
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Jun 17, 2010 09:47
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Double post, ignore that.
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Jun 17, 2010 10:25
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A widefiled of the Cygnus loop (veil nebula) from last night. You'll recognise NGC6960 on the right from my other image at the top of the page. That one was taken with my 250mm reflector, this one with my 66mm refractor. 40 x 5 minute exposures, 200 minutes total. quote:Any ideas on how many would it take to correct something like my photo above? I normally take 21 or 31 flat frames, they are only short exposures so taking lots of them isn't a hassle. Just remember that they have to be taken with the camera mounted in the telescope exactly as it was when you took your images, don't move it even a millimeter. I normally count 21 as a good number for all my calibration frames, though on the image above I took 31. The odd number is to work better with median stacks.
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Jun 17, 2010 18:39
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The Crescent nebula in cygnus, I'm nearly running out of decent widefield targets in this region, not sure where to head to next. I'm still finding imaging with the ZS66 a lot more fun that working with my dodgy old reflector, joys of using a tool built for the job. There is an interesting nebula region around the star Deneb with a couple of bright emission nebula within the field of view for my setup, plus the gamma cygni nebula region looks like a solid target for me. DorianGravy posted:So what is good to look at this time of year? I'm disappointed that Jupiter and M42 aren't up right now, and while I do have a copy of Turn Left at Orion, it's currently 500 miles away. Tis the season for hunting globular clusters, start with the M13 the great globular cluster in hercules, loads of others around now as well, have a hunt around on stellarium. Globulars are some of my favourite objects for visual observing. Jekub fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jul 6, 2010 |
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Jul 6, 2010 17:01
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kanis posted:I'm also a bit curious about how much on average have any of the photographers here spent on equipment? Since the only person I know who does it has about a $30,000 setup I can't really use him as a baseline. Painful question that, but lets see, probably around £4k, so around $6k if I include all my gear and the shed, but I did get quite a few items second hand, and I'm rounding up on random bits and bobs which accumulate with time. I should say that if I was to just include my imaging kit without shed of other random bits the cost would be more like $2.5k My latest image, a small part of the vast IC1318 emission nebula in Cygnus known as the Butterfly, the bright star is Sadr, the central star of the constellation. The small cluster at the top is NGC6910 
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Jul 19, 2010 22:24
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kanis posted:Very nice image! Stacked or single exposure? Sorry, busy couple of days, that one was a stack of 39 x 5 minute exposures, 195 minute total. Plus all the flat, dark and bias frames for calibration.
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Jul 25, 2010 19:16
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Clear skies in my part of the world tonight, and a quick check on stellarium shows a nice conjunction of the Moon and Pleiades. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to capture this, but I have a good night to work it out. edit - Moon not to scale, looks like I had 'scale moon' on. Still a good view though! I'll try that first and then look at either the Elephants trunk or Iris nebulas for an imaging session if the neighbours horrible tree isn't getting in the way. Jekub fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Aug 31, 2010 |
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Aug 31, 2010 16:45
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Loztblaz posted:Well I'm going to take the plunge into some beginner moon and planetary shots. I ripped apart a webcam and got it working as a prime focus CCD. Of course, the clouds moved in so I probably won't get to try it for the next few months. Which webcam did you get? I've been seeing a lot of people picking up Microsoft's HD Lifecam as it can be fitted into the body of 1.25" eyepiece very easily, it looks like a good easy mod to go for. There are instructions here for how to do the mod.
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Sep 8, 2010 17:43
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My latest, the Iris Nebula in Cepheus, reprocessed with the aid of a much more experienced friend last night. Click here for the full 1200x825 image.
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Sep 17, 2010 15:01
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Looks like Wolf on Air covered all those questions, but yeah your inability to reach focus with your DSLR will likely be due to not enough focus travel, you won't be able to rack the focuser in enough being the most likely culprit. I can't find anything specific regarding that scope, though we did have some conversation earlier in the thread regarding a similar issue. For my 250mm F4.8 reflector I ended up replacing the standard focuser with a nice low profile dual speed crayford focuser which makes a massive difference both visually and for photography. Another photo of the Iris nebula, this time on my William Optics ZS66SD, I took this the night before the previous picture. It's heavily cropped as even with the field flattener the amount of distortion I get is horrible, killing about 25% around the wider edge of the image.  Click here for the full 1200x884 image.
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Sep 18, 2010 20:16
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I took my son for a day out there not so long ago, it's a great place to visit. Many of the telescopes were moved from there to herstmonceux after WW2 due the increasing light polution of London, it's also a good day out with an excellent, though slightly fake, castle.
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Sep 23, 2010 08:58
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Some Jupiter images from last night. I'm new to planetary imaging, it's a very different field to the long exposure deep space images I normally do and presents a new set of challenges. These are not very good, but they are a lot better than the ones I did on the weekend. The seeing is everything with this, magnification is so high that any atmospheric turbulence destroys video frames. These were taken on my 250mm F4.8 reflector with a philips SPC900NC webcam in a 4x Astro Engineering 'Imagemate' barlow. First image, a bit low in the sky, and the webcam settings were a bit off, but hey, Great Red Spot spotted.  Click here for the full 640x480 image. Not an hour later and I have the settings a bit better tuned, Jupiter is higer in the sky, but the spot has moved round now.  Click here for the full 640x480 image. Last one, showing more detail in the bands, but still a long way off what I'm hoping for.  Click here for the full 640x480 image.
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Sep 30, 2010 11:25
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Mucking about with my Webcam and Jupiter, I'm still learning the methods for webcam imaging, but I am at least making progress. This is a short gif of my latest efforts showing Io in transit. I'm not sure on the gif size rules, so this is optimized to keep it small and thus the image quality suffers a bit.  It's also my first ever gif, I'm very proud of myself! While I'm at it, have a greyscale moon image from the dorkroom long exposure thread :  Click here for the full 1920x1080 image.
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Oct 26, 2010 23:02
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Ohms posted:I was really proud of myself having taken these photos by holding up my iPhone 4 to my eyepiece. That first shot is excellent, I'm well impressed. Really good three dimensional feel to it and excellent detail for the equipment used.
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Oct 26, 2010 23:05
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