Untracked Astrophotography

[little prism]

idk which version I like more

this was the result

damn discord ruins that quality so much

[dusty gull]

Everyone here is leaving lol

I'm gonna be the last one standing

[upper pasture]

im good thanks

[dusty gull]

Unless LMC don't plan on getting tracked

But good for you @little prism !

[little prism]

Thank you

[upper pasture]

I dunno what to shoot, I don't know if I want to continue collecting M45 data, Widefield Orion, M31. Or start a new target

[little prism]

I still want to get an untracked shot of andromeda since my first one was out of focus. Idc if I have the tracker. It was my dream to have a good picture of andromeda (untracked)

[upper pasture]

I have 10 minutes of m31 data atm, I wanna collect more but i just cba imaging lmao

[little prism]

Out of focus .exe

[upper pasture]

still looks good

how much time is that?

[little prism]

only 15min. I just wanted to shoot smth since clouds where about to roll in

[upper pasture]

damn gives my 10 minutes some hope lol

I really need to get myself a new laptop

[little prism]

@dusty gull Is it smart to restack my orion since I used a bad sample frame and it was not centered correctly

[hybrid basin]

I'm leaving too. Probably in 5-10 days.

I re-edited my last image. What do you think? Is it better than the version before?

[calm hearth]

gonna be a while before I can track with my 8" dob that weighs like 11kgs

[dusty gull]

If you have no issue with star alignement then bad sample frame is probably not a problem

Unless it's is VERY bad

And if it's not centered as you want you can

As you want

[midnight flower]

yes

its way more noisy

but the nebulosity is there

[hybrid basin]

Ok thanks. I re-edited the stars now and now they look more natural.

[tidal tide]

ya sure about that?

[dusty gull]

I won't be tracked for at least 6 months

So probably not the last one

[gentle cipher]

Sorry I'm leaving

I have to fight my way out

It's been an honor serving with you soldier

Don't worry I'm sure more untracked members will join

It's just this generation is going tracked

[tidal tide]

🫡

[upper pasture]

I probably won't be leaving for a while.

[dusty gull]

Nooo

[gentle cipher]

Onstep build is soon

[dusty gull]

Good for you

[gentle cipher]

Good luck to all the untracked folks

[upper pasture]

Goodluck to you

[paper valley]

Good luck

[calm hearth]

this is with a 5" dob and 224mc?

[dusty gull]

Yes

[calm hearth]

ah

thx

[little prism]

It was an honour to have you to have you in this wonderful community

I hate the fact that some people are alr imaging the comet and I might not even see it once because the weather over here in Germany is awful

[gleaming walrus]

Wow

[static cape]

My first try at M42, shot with a Nikon D5300. About 200 pictures stacked. What do you guys think?:)

[hallow tapir]

fonna try a galaxy untracked

[dusty gull]

Which one?

[hallow tapir]

scultpro

sculptor

it easy apparently

[dusty gull]

Oh yes very bright

[crimson fractal]

M83

[dusty gull]

Looks fun to capture

I'll probably try it

But it's really low at my latitude and only visible in summer...

[calm hearth]

only managed to get 83 of these before clouds ruined the night

not sure if they are even useable

and every software that I've tried is completely unable to stack it

[tidal tide]

what object?

[short galleon]

Can u pls explain post processing comets in Siril?

[calm hearth]

M81

[tidal tide]

tried DSS yet?

[calm hearth]

yeah

it creates star trails for some reason

I have no idea why nothing works

the stars are clearly visible in every shot

even if they are all pretty awful

[tidal tide]

what stacking settings do you have?

[tidal tide]

in DSS i meant

i haven't been using siril for stacking

[calm hearth]

one sec

oh yeah dss always gives me an error

it still works but I don't know if it's making it worse

[tidal tide]

never seen that error, but if it still stacks i'd let it be

[calm hearth]

never used dss before

[upper pasture]

First time shooting a galaxy, 10 minutes of data.

[calm hearth]

maybe now it'll work

[tidal tide]

did you crop some of them or?

[calm hearth]

nope

trying it again now

I think before it was detecting noise as stars

no

doesn't work

they are all almost the same

[tidal tide]

you could try checking the reduce noise by using a median filter option

[calm hearth]

tried it, only wanted to stack one frame

[tidal tide]

hmm

have you tried with ASTAP yet?

[calm hearth]

ASTAP?

[tidal tide]

yeah, another program that can stack images

[calm hearth]

ok

i'll give it a try

still, not sure why it wouldn't detect these

[tidal tide]

stars arent too round, could be the reason

[calm hearth]

maybe

sadly I can't take shorter exposures

[tidal tide]

do you have a screenshot of the full image?

[short galleon]

Hmm possible

[dusty gull]

Post processing or stacking?

[short galleon]

Post processing

I do stacking in DSS and I'm comfortable with it

[tidal tide]

hmm, should still be able to stack

[short galleon]

What's the exposure?

And fl

[calm hearth]

1s

1200mm f/6

[dusty gull]

So I do background extraction in siril (selecting all the areas except where there is the comet tail) and then it's some simple histogram stretch and noise reduction

[calm hearth]

maybe I should use different capture software

[short galleon]

What about colour calibration

[dusty gull]

Siril's be autocalibrate

[tidal tide]

mm, i've had that error but don't remember the fix

[dusty gull]

And I do white balance on the comet core

Works pretty well

[short galleon]

Kk

Thx

[tidal tide]

could you upload all the files? i could try stacking them

[dusty gull]

@calm hearth i suggest you try siril, it always worked way better for me

[calm hearth]

didn't work for me

doesn't align the images properly

[short galleon]

U could try to convert all those images from fit to fits

There are some softwares for that i believe

[calm hearth]

yeah I think siril does that

[dusty gull]

What happens exactly?

[calm hearth]

this

this is the closest I've gotten to a stacked image

[dusty gull]

Which one do you use?
For me Sharcap is really good and I capture in ser

[calm hearth]

ASIStudio

maybe I should change

it also doesn't let you preview the image

so it's quite a pain to use

[short galleon]

Have u tried DSS? So far it has worked pretty well for me

[calm hearth]

isn't that for stacking?

[short galleon]

yes

[calm hearth]

yeah I tried it but it doesn't detect stars in more than one image

despite them all being almost identical

[dusty gull]

What I do to align (tell me if you do that too) :
I choose the reference frame to be one sub where the galaxy is roughly at the center
I set the star pair number down to 4
I open the psf setting and adjust threshold and roundness setting to select all the stars visible in autostretch view

[calm hearth]

I'll give it a try

[dusty gull]

Yeah you should change lol

[short galleon]

lol true

[calm hearth]

yeah the preview is one image every 2 seconds

so not great for a dob at high fl

[short galleon]

yea

[calm hearth]

I got this

which is a slight improvement

but now it looks really odd

[calm hearth]

I also tried yours

only one single image registered

[dusty gull]

If you have a way to share at least some of your subs I can try something

[calm hearth]

I mean

due to clouds I didn't get more than 83

so I can share them all

[calm hearth]

https://file.io/lF65BJncaCBT

in case anyone wants to have a go

[dusty gull]

Thanks! I'll try later

[calm hearth]

I think i'll just stick to planetary for now...

[dusty gull]

Tbf your high fl make it hard

[calm hearth]

yeah

even with a focal reducer I can't get a decent size

might as well just attach a camera lens to it and put it on a basic tracking mount

or a small refractor

[gentle cipher]

wh

huh\

i have no words

[midnight flower]

that shit looks like acid trip

[gentle cipher]

this man

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1027241274174078988/1061376938830221472/caption.gif

[midnight flower]

omg im gonna get nerd 😮 real

or the other guy

either way I should also get it 😮

https://tenor.com/view/begging-gif-19140051

[crimson fractal]

... what is that ? m42??

its impressive how fuked up it is

[hallow tapir]

hm

[calm hearth]

Yeah I have no idea how siril can mess that up

[crimson fractal]

Astrosurface also stacks little amounts of stars rlly well

[gentle cipher]

If you tweak the settings you can make it work. I had the same issue

Stacking settings

Make sure to use sigma clipping

[gleaming walrus]

what is this?

This looks so weird

Hope u find an method soon

How many subs? @calm hearth

[muted jay]

WIP 2k 1second subs with my old dslr

[dusty gull]

Wow... As always

[tidal tide]

Where colour

[calm hearth]

Didn't manage to get many, only around 100

But should still be enough for the core

[muted jay]

I just did a quick stretch... was too lazy to remove the color gradients. I'll do that when I have some more free time

[tidal tide]

fair enough

[muted jay]

(also the color mottle is quite annoying)

[tidal tide]

DSS is slowly gonna drive me to insanity

im just not gonna bother with the stars and have it just make it so the comet is sharp

[strange seal]

you combine them separately

dss comet stacking sucks if you set it to combine

[void condor]

In general, I suck at using dss

[tidal tide]

is it good enough if it's just on the comet mode?

[strange seal]

use stars only and comet only modes separately

[dusty gull]

I'm more and more considering to buy a commercial eq platform

It would support my 8inch when I'll upgrade and I'll don't have to worry about the precision

[upper pasture]

I might get some NAN data tonight

[dusty gull]

I'm sorry I'm on a school trip... I'll try when I'll be back (in a few days)

[gleaming walrus]

Maybe try stretching and stack after stretching

[hallow tapir]

funny untracked carina

[gleaming walrus]

it's good
What was the total exposure time?

[hallow tapir]

5 minutes

[gleaming walrus]

Maybe a bit of processing will help

[hallow tapir]

Full image

[gleaming walrus]

For 5 mins this is actually fine

Bortle?

[hallow tapir]

b5

carina is a bright target

[gleaming walrus]

Yes I have taken from southern part of india

It will be near horizon

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cb0XTMWgVkO/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Instagram

Not good though

[hallow tapir]

Nice image

can i see the full uncompresssed tho?

is this also a mosaic?

[gleaming walrus]

No I captured with 50mm

[gleaming walrus]

Will try to find, I hope it will be somewhere in my hard disk

[hallow tapir]

i wanna add more data tonight and add another bit to it to make a mosaic with coalsack in it

[gleaming walrus]

awesome, I will also try soon,
Hopefully from a good dark skies

I captured LMC too but very noisy,
I captured it directly through the light pollution 🤣

it gets upto 7 degrees high at my location

[hallow tapir]

i see tarantula

[gleaming walrus]

yes

Single sub

[hallow tapir]

this is prob my best smc pic untracked

[hallow tapir]

how long exposure?

in my single subs i see tarantula and the core very clearly

[gleaming walrus]

I think 8 secs

Will chk though

[gleaming walrus]

I am from Northern hemispere

[hallow tapir]

wait you can imaging lmc in northern?

[gleaming walrus]

But south of northern hem

[gleaming walrus]

Yes, I am at 12-13 degrees North

[hallow tapir]

nice

[gleaming walrus]

Hopefully will soon try from a good dark skies, will get even south near the end of India

Test image of some region near Carina

Captured very less data

[dusty gull]

I'm going to order and adaptater to connect my f1.8 lens to my asi 224mc

5 times brighter because of f ratio and 7 times longer subs... I can't wait!

[little prism]

Niceee

[dusty gull]

@strange seal congrats!

[hybrid basin]

The German weather is currently really bad for AP, but I got 10min data of the Comet yesterday/today. I even saw it with binos in B5.

Probably my last untracked image.

[strange seal]

Thanks

[tidal tide]

lmc meganerd

wish i got more data on this about 20mins at F4.5 and ~190mm FL

[little prism]

You should consider yourself lucky... The weather in eastern Germany is awful

I took one pic with clouds because I just wanted one pic. And its not gonna get better

[little prism]

but nice image:D

[dusty gull]

Finally processed M82!

[gleaming walrus]

Wow! You guys are killing it with untracked, I have done only widefield untracked astrophotography so far

[gleaming walrus]

Can u send the uncropped version?
So that I can see how much the comet covers in the frame

And from what bortle scale are u capturing?

[strange seal]

49 mins with dob

[dusty gull]

And your widefield untracked is awesome!

[dusty gull]

Nice! What sub lenght?

[strange seal]

80ms

37,000 frames

[dusty gull]

You captured some of its globular clusters!

[strange seal]

wait really

the great globular noise cluster?

[dusty gull]

I think so

[dusty gull]

Wdym?

[strange seal]

you sure its not just noise

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/sombrero-galaxy.jpg

[dusty gull]

Oh wait

[strange seal]

i got these

and this red shifted galaxy barely

probably got killed im my denoise

[dusty gull]

Could you share the stacked file?

[strange seal]

ya

ill align them

but ill autostretch and not denoise

@dusty gull

[gleaming walrus]

How did u stack so many frames

?

[dusty gull]

There's isn't that much data on this globular clusters so it's hard to tell

[strange seal]

with my computer

[dusty gull]

Substacks

[strange seal]

where is the cluster exactly

im getting more data tonight too

[gleaming walrus]

Oh ok

Stacking 1000 per stacks then stacking those stacked files?

[dusty gull]

Maybe you should try longer exposures to denoise?

[strange seal]

i did 5k frame substacks

[strange seal]

but then i get trailing

[gleaming walrus]

https://tenor.com/view/pedro-monkey-puppet-meme-awkward-gif-15268759

[dusty gull]

U get trailing at more than 80ms???

[strange seal]

with my pixel scale and this targets dec yeah

i can bin 2. i can get 4x as much data with my drive size, better (double?) the SNR and 160ms subs.

just not sure if ill be lacking on the small stuff then

[dusty gull]

NPF says 120ms

[strange seal]

npf is ass

i used ryans calcluator

[dusty gull]

AH-

I didnt knew about that

[dusty gull]

Where can I find it?

[strange seal]

pinned in #🤓-ask-a-nerd

i think i can live with 50% image size

[dusty gull]

Ty!

[strange seal]

ehhh idk about bin 2

[crimson fractal]

I have been taken over very easily with dob imaging :v

[dusty gull]

how many pixels of trailing should I choose?

[strange seal]

2 ish

[dusty gull]

Do you take darks?

[strange seal]

ya

[crimson fractal]

@strange seal I assume u used astrosurface to stack ?

[strange seal]

yea

[crimson fractal]

So u stacked in 5k sub stacks then stacked those stacks together ?

[strange seal]

yea

got roughly 5-6k captures

so 4 per night

[crimson fractal]

Alr may try a couple new targets with the moon atm

[strange seal]

im barlowing up for eta carina hopefully

[dusty gull]

good luck
I tried to barlow Orion and it was a pain, and i tied ngc 2392 but gave up really quickly

Main issues are reframing and alignement

[strange seal]

i did orion but couldnt get any stars to stack. Likely had to dial in settings more

[dusty gull]

Oh you got some clusters!

Definitively

I'm gonna do a map for you

But you have at least a dozen @strange seal

[strange seal]

cool ty

clusters in sombrero yea?

dumb question nvm

[dusty gull]

Yep

Around sombrero actually

[strange seal]

i saw some bright blobs with no diffraction spikes in the hubble pic

[dusty gull]

I only selected the "most obvious" ones and they perfectly match the reference pic so it's probably not noise

[strange seal]

how do you know they are clusters?

[dusty gull]

https://secure2.pbase.com/rolfolsen/image/143968106/original

[strange seal]

i can get this same detail with more data

almost

[dusty gull]

Almost

6k camera instead

[strange seal]

the pixels are like 2x as big

[dusty gull]

Idk about the fl though

[strange seal]

10" vs 8" newt

[strange seal]

im guessing you overlayed some of the other data?

[dusty gull]

Wdym by overlayed?

[strange seal]

it looks sharper than my data

[dusty gull]

It's only your data but I BlurXed it

[strange seal]

holy blurx is too op

[paper valley]

That looks awesome

[dusty gull]

Yep but you can achieve similar results with other methods

To me the only big improvement over other "classic" methods is that it only sharpens the objects and do not add star artefacts or noise on the bckg

[strange seal]

manual decon

bit more

would work much better with more data

[dusty gull]

Yep untracked is hard

But sombrero is a kinda hard target for everyone

I mean it's details are hard to get right

[strange seal]

tbf this is only one night of good data and one night of data with bad walking noise, i can shoot it for a long time when its properly in season

i love siril .png

[dusty gull]

And here's my process!

[strange seal]

nice

shows what data is there that i cant get out lol

[tidal tide]

from B4

[dusty gull]

@strange seal 25! and yet some got deleted by denoise

[strange seal]

very cool

[dusty gull]

Wow Exaxe got a lot of them too

[gleaming walrus]

Ok, I don't need to crop much then 😅

[calm hearth]

Incredible shots

Just curious, what does one single sub look like?

[strange seal]

I don’t have any subs but I have the live view

[calm hearth]

oh nice

that's actually not too different to what I get

unfortunately my stacks are all terrible

[jolly robin]

which galaxy is this?

[burnt bay]

Sombrero

[strange seal]

@dusty gull went through on the autostretch and masked through all the ones i could see to keep them from the denoise.

31 resolved

[static cape]

M42. First try on my 80/400 with a Nikon D5300. 1000 1/3 of a second pics on iso 2500. You guys have any idea what causes the v-shape on the blue stars? Really happy with it tough!

[gentle birch]

orion nebula 15 minutes untracked in bortle 8

[tidal wave]

My first attempt at 55mm with the kit lens

Learned some things going out with the 55-250mm lens tonight

[gentle birch]

the V shape is probably from going wide open on your lens. lenses generally don't perform well wide open so you might want to look into stopping down once or twice

[burnt bay]

How much data?

I wanna try with my 55mm

[tidal wave]

Just below 30 minutes

[tidal wave]

Just got a half hour at 135mm, went as long as my battery would let me

[gentle birch]

an hour integration

[paper valley]

What was it shot with? Aperture and mm, thanks!

[glossy knoll]

I have two trash telescopes it’s not really good on deep sky objects so i used my mom cameras i now use a Canon EOS 700D with Canon EF lens 50mm 1:1.8 STM ,what do i buy to upgrade with about 270$ and do i buy dwarf 2 ? ,bey the way I’m in light pollution i’m 14 so i can’t go out the city and i can’t buy too expensive things , and this is the first picture i got and stacked is about 60 photos the exposure time of every photo is 1 second and the ISO is 64000 i think

[upper pasture]

At 50mm you should be able to do a longer exposure time than 1s, Find out what exposure time you can do untracked at 50mm, with the money, I would buy a new lens maybe.

[glossy knoll]

But i don’t know why when i make the exposure longer it turned whit is that because light pollution ?

[upper pasture]

Turn down your ISO maybe, and possibly

What ISO do you use?

[hybrid basin]

For most cameras is ISO 3200 (and some 1600) the best. Then should the frames be much darker. You should be able to take maybe 2s exposures (with round stars, but that depends on different factors). Have you edited the picture? I'd recommend Siril and Gimp for it (they're free).

[hybrid basin]

You could get really good results with that lens and camera. Probably the most important upgrade for you isn't a new cam or lens but a tracker, because with it you relieve your shutter (and laptop when stacking...). Before you buy expensive stuff, you probably should learn it with your current first (you don't even need to buy a tracker), but I'm new in this hobby and 14 years old too.

[static cape]

In what bortle class are you living? What @hybrid basin says, try lowering your iso to 1600 or 3200 and try a little longer exposures. What trash scopes do you have? Also already tried M42? I think it's a good idea to start with a nice and bright target.

[glossy knoll]

I live in portal 9

The photo i captured is for andromeda

[hybrid basin]

The light pollution shouldn't be such a big problem, as long, as there's no lantern directly before your lens. Yes, it's more difficult with much light pollution, but not impossible.

[hybrid basin]

Yes, but @static cape could be right, because you can learn really good with M42.

[static cape]

@glossy knoll this was the 3d time I've tried dso. first 2 times was with a 200 mm lens at f5.6 on 2 second exposures. I shot this with a sky watcher 80/400 which is also considered a trash scope I guess(?) but it really made a difference compared to the camera lens. I'm also a beginner but I think you just have to try different things and find out what works for you:)

[glossy knoll]

No my telescope is a real trash scope even the focuser diameter is 1 inch not even 1.25 inch i can’t buy a adapter for it and bought a celestron omni 4 mm lens and a omni barlow and it doesn’t fit ,so i can’t use it

[glossy knoll]

6400

[glossy knoll]

I used siril the photo up i stacked with siril

[upper pasture]

Maybe try using 1600

or maybe 3200

[glossy knoll]

What is the best high IOS and short Exposure or low ISO and long Exposure?

[upper pasture]

Different ISO setting shouldn't change your maximum exposure time

Just find out how long of an exposure you can do at 50mm, and then just take some test shots at 1600 and 3200 ISO

what camera do you have?

[glossy knoll]

Canon EOS 700D

[upper pasture]

So, this is just a rough estimate, but at 50mm you should be able to do a 5 second exposure.

you could probably go to 6s with some very slight trailing

[glossy knoll]

I have searched in https://www.photonstophotos.net/ and found out that the best ISO of the camera is 6400

[upper pasture]

I would recommend testing different exposure times around 5s to really narrow down what you prefer

[upper pasture]

6400 iso will be best for picking up signal, But the high ISO will introduce a lot of noise. and if the image to too bright you should lower the iso

[glossy knoll]

Is this problem of exposure time from the ISO or the light pollution ?

[upper pasture]

Exposure time is how long the shutter is open while collecting light for your image. You want to use the highest exposure time you can while doing astrophotography. If your image is too bright you must turn down your ISO.

Some people shoot at ISO 800

I shoot at 1600-3200. I stopped shooting at 6400 because of how noisy my images were

[glossy knoll]

Ok thank you very much but i will return to astrophotography in Wednesday do i add more data to my andromeda photo ,? or catch photos of M45 ?

[upper pasture]

I would shoot Widefield M45, Maybe try get california nebula in there. You would need quite a lot of time, but you have a pretty fast lens with the f1.8 50mm lens.

[glossy knoll]

I want the brightest

[glossy knoll]

What is the brightest

?

[upper pasture]

Not sure, Search what their apparent magnitudes are

I would bet M45 is brighter, as its easier to see with the naked eye

[strange seal]

Higher ISOs are less noisy and better for untracked

[dusty gull]

Higher ISOs reveal the noise (thats why it looks noisier) but actually decrease it

[gentle birch]

what about ISO invariant cameras?

should I still use a higher ISO and sacrifice the DR to get more faint data off the noise floor?

[dusty gull]

Don't worry about the DR untracked, the signal that you get is too low so smaller DR won't change anything

[gentle birch]

I shoot at 3200 ISO on a nikon d750. is that good enough?

[dusty gull]

I don't really know about dslrs but that seems good to me

[strange seal]

I used 12800 when I did untracked with that camera

[gentle birch]

oh wow

i'll try stepping up to 6400

[gentle birch]

curious but what's your main rig?

[strange seal]

Swsa+Roki 135+ D750/700D

[gentle birch]

no way

bro from the images you are putting out i honestly wouldn't be surprised if you had like a full blown mount with telescopes and mono cameras

[sterile violet]

This is a take of mine from last night

I'm having this problem where the center of the image appears brighter than the corners, still tryina solve that.

[tidal wave]

Half and hour at 135mm with a 55-250mm lens and a canon T2i

[gentle birch]

take flats

[neat scroll]

question, how can i know how many pixels i've trailed?

[grave rapids]

Count them

[neat scroll]

so here i've trailed arround 3?

because i took that with 1s exposure but according to this spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tSEbji6V4rYz81COybiD5LWaekULIQReJy7kZCxQy78/edit#gid=0) i sould only be able to do that with 0.04s

[strange seal]

What camera has 0.7um pixels?

[neat scroll]

my phone's, motog60 on the main cam

[dry spade]

Your phone camera has a lens in the way (afocal) so I don’t think that rule applies.

[dry spade]

Doing the maths, your sensor is larger than the lens aperture, effectively 0.82x magnification. So i think you can multiply your focal length by 0.82, or divide your pixel size by 0.82, whatever.

Not that that helps a lot in your case.

[neat scroll]

yeah this makes no sense, it's still giving me a below 0.0s exposure time for that amount of pixel drift while i got the same amoun doing 1s

[dry spade]

Honestly I don’t use a calculator I just take a exposures of increasing length until I see trails. I am not a pro.

[tidal wave]

Same

[gentle birch]

pleiades from a full moon in bortle 8 after 25 minutes

[neat scroll]

fair enough

this is the best i've gotten so far, taken early jan. it has no calibration frames and it's only 13' of total data. tips on how to remove that weird vertical noise and that weird trailing effect on the stars at the edges are welcome

[gentle birch]

that looks like pretty intense CA

[neat scroll]

chromatic aberration?

[gentle birch]

yup

[neat scroll]

dang

that can only be fixed with another lense right?

[gentle birch]

I believe so

but the noise can be fixed with dithering I believe

[neat scroll]

what's that?

[gentle birch]

if you're using a tracker, moving very slightly in between shots is what dithering is

very slight, we're talking a couple pixels

[neat scroll]

[gentle birch]

ah ic

mbmb

then walking noise shouldn't be an issue. weird

you need to take dark frames and bias frames

they'll help

[neat scroll]

yeah

and i need to make me a shroud

[glossy knoll]

Every time i take photos with my camera after i stack it this dark spot pop’s up in it way is this from the lens of the camera ? I use only a camera and a normal camera lens and a tripod

[glossy knoll]

The dark spot is bottom left the photo, bey the way this is the comet

[tidal tide]

you take flats?

[glossy knoll]

No

[tidal tide]

you should, it could very much be from a dust moat

[glossy knoll]

Do i have to take flats and blacks in the same day i take the photos ?

[tidal tide]

flats should be taken after or before the imaging session, so definitely same day, darks need to be the same temp so also right after

[static cape]

Some details? I got this on a 80/400, Nikon D5300. 1000+- 1/1.3 exposures. Expected a little more blue in there

[gentle birch]

you could probably take longer frames

you need a long integration time

[hybrid basin]

Lol then I need new flats, becaise my current ones are 1-2months old

[hybrid basin]

I never take darks, because I heard, that they are almost useless with DSLRs, and I'm to lazy to sacrifice energy of my battery for them, when I still could take one or two more subs...

[tidal tide]

this depends which performs better, bias or darks for you, but theres no point in taking both

[gentle birch]

i still take 25 or so darks it doesn't take long at all especially for untracked astro

[hybrid basin]

Ok, I think bias are good enough for me.

[hybrid basin]

I'm not untracked anymore, but yes, it's much easier untracked

[gentle birch]

15 minutes of data

[static cape]

Yeah but at 400mm the star trailing is already present at 1 second sadly

[hybrid basin]

You could post your data. Its difficult to get the nebula visible, but some here are much better.

[static cape]

As in the stacked .fit? Want to give it a try? DM or in here?

[orchid obsidian]

This is a noob question so please be gentle...

Right now I am starting out. I have no motorised mount I have my Nikon D200 and astroberry setup. I can remotely trigger the camera and get an image on the NAS server. I can put it on a tripod and manually point it at Orion and take some images. The calculator that @ornate spade pointed me at suggested I needed to take a 1.6 second exposure with a 200mm lens with orion at 3 deg Dec. I get that I can take 1 picture. But if I take many then orion will shift right in the frame. I am using linux so I then have to align the stars in the individual images and somehow process them. But if I am only taking 1.6 sec exposures I will only ever capture 1.6 secs of photons in each image and apart from them being shifted right the quality will be determined by the 1.6 secs right?

[ornate spade]

Not sure if you can use deep sky stacker on linux, but there is probably a way. As far as I understand you are going to capture 1.6 seconds of light in each exposure, but if you stack a bunch of pictures it can figure out what is random noise and what is faint light from the object to effectively simulate a longer exposure. As far as I understand longer exposures are still better because you are going to be limited by the read noise with shorter exposures.

[orchid obsidian]

Ok I think I get it. But my physics brain says no more photons no more detail 😦

[ornate spade]

As far as I understand its a probability thing: if one photon from one pixel worth of area on average reaches the camera every 30 seconds, then a 30s exposure has a high % of recording that photon, but 15s exposures have a 50% chance of recording the same photon. So theoretically the exposures are the same, but in reality you have readnoise and you do need several photons to hit a pixel to be detectable. I could be wrong ofc.

[orchid obsidian]

Ah ok I see where you are going. IN 1.6 secs a bunch of photons will hit the sensor randomly. Then next 1.6 secs will also hit the sensor randomly etc. So the more 1.6 sec exposures the more of the senosr pixels will be hit!

[orchid obsidian]

So can anyone advise a good beginners guide to understanding image stacking and the differences between light dark bias flat etc.

[tidal tide]

https://youtu.be/u6Zk_LQDOD8

doesnt cover stacking (i think) but lights, darks, bias and flats

[tight jewel]

anyone got any tips on how to keep orion nebula centered enough for it to be able to be processed in siril, i took 1 second subs last night but they really werent centered

[neat scroll]

you take a few, once the object moves you stop and re-frame the object

[tight jewel]

i tried but siril keeps giving error "script execution failed"

and

"Bayer pattern found in header (BGGR) is different from Bayer pattern in settings (RGGB). Overriding settings."

[neat scroll]

oh, you may either, be missing calibration frames. or should try using sequator

[tight jewel]

i use without dbf scripts in siril

it should work tho

ill try swquator

sequator**

[neat scroll]

those didn't work for me either

idk i use sequator for stacking and siril to post process

for me the option that works the best is "select best pixels", accumulation stacks turn out darker and with more noise

[tight jewel]

okay ill try

[orchid obsidian]

I have a Nikon D200 with a 18-200mm F3.5-5.6 lens. Can anyone suggest a replacement prime lens for Astrophotography my initial target is Orion, Horsehead but I would also like to capture the milky way ribbon from home. Lots of videos suggesting 35-50mm lens.

To the experts if you could only have 1 lens for the above what would it be?

[orchid obsidian]

Noob questions again apologies. My setup will live remote from my desktop. My camera lens has autofocus. I am assuming I cannot use that and would need to manually focus the camera. The software lets me do a preview picture. Is the idea to manually focus the camera using the view finder on the centered target then I can remote control the shooting session? The calculations are showing I should take 1.-2 sec exposures will teh focus go out as Orion moves across my frame? How many exposures should I target before re-centering the image? Will the stacking process take care of realigning the images?

Cheers

[tidal tide]

you use live view and a bright star to focus, zoom in on it and move focus ring until the star in the frame is as small as possible. the focus can shit during the course of shooting due to temperature so it's recommended to check focus every once in a while. recentering depends on the focal length, i usually do 50-100 exposures before recentering although i shoot using lower focal lengths so it'll vary

[orchid obsidian]

My D200 does not have 'live view' that I am aware of. Am I misunderstanding?

[tidal tide]

oh, it doesn't. that makes it more difficult

maybe it's possible to get some sort of live feed to another screen?

[orchid obsidian]

Not that I can work out. I can manually focus then take a preview picture remotely using EKOS and see the result as a FITS image. I think on my camera it will be a heuristic process to get the initial focus. I thought there might be some kind of motorised focus for the lens that I could control remotely. something that would turn the focus ring remotely. But I would have to go to the paddock anyway to set it up initially and I guess set the focus then manually either through the viewfinder (hard) or using the preview image. Then control everything remotely and watch as the image files come in.

[tidal tide]

hmm, you could maybe make a custom autofocuser with a motor, it could prob use just the images to focus, although it may be rather slow

[orchid obsidian]

I am sure I will come across someone that has the same type of issue. The D200 is old, but I set myself the challenge of working out how to get respectable astro images from my own location. I appreciate it is all a bit heath robinson! I will have the tripod and camera and external power supply for the camera and the rpi Astroberry server in the paddock and everything else is software as far as I know. Still watching lots of video on Light, Dark, Bias and Flat frames.

[tidal tide]

maybe, you could ask for help in the DIY section, lots of great DIY-ers there

[orchid obsidian]

I will thanks for responding. Very cloudy for the last couple fo nights so now sky view 😦

[sterile carbon]

untracked andromeda only 6 minutes with canon t100 might get more tomorrow

[upper pasture]

Untracked Moon Single exposure at 200mm + Crop

[upper pasture]

Nice image, You captured M33 too!

[orchid obsidian]

I should get my first chance with my new setup tonight to take my first ever AP's target is Orion. It's due south at its zenith about 20:15 should be dark enought by then. Still a bit confused on exposure settings. But the calculators all say between 1.5-2 secs exposures with my Nikon D200 and 200mm lens f.5.6 my exposure plan was to take 100 light 2secs 1600 ISO, 100 dark 2 secs 1600 ISO, 20 flat 2 secs 100 ISO, 20 bias 1/8000 ISO 100
Does that seem reasonable? Total light exposure time is only 200 seconds 3mins 20 Secs. Doesn't seem to be a lot. Am I missing something fundamental? I see lots of people stating 2hours 4 hours etc. on their images. Then I get to work through my new tutorial on Siril to process them.

[tidal tide]

Those getting over 2 hours are more than likely tracked, getting that much data untracked isnt really reasonable

on the exposure you should just experiment around until you have round stars, although a bit of preparation always helps

and on the flats you usually dont have the same exposure times, it depends how bright the light source is that youre taking the flats with, but usually you would target the exposure to be a second or more

i feel like starting at 200mm is a bit steep though, itll be rather frequent recentering and lower exposure times

I would try to start at 100-135mm so you could try to fit horsehead and flame into your orion shot as well

[grave rapids]

https://tenor.com/view/guilty-gif-5332537

[orchid obsidian]

Thank you for the advice I will set the lens at 135mm that is effective F5.6 To get a bit more sky in. I can take some preview images to heuristically find the sweet spot for exposure length I guess. Keep extending it until I can see the hopefully nice round stars start to elongate.

[kindred charm]

hi so i have a dob telescope and i was wondering how i would be able to untracked astro not like galaxies or nebulas or anything just simple but good planetary photography i.e. like good software

[calm hearth]

you could stack in autostakkert and process in registax or astrosurface, they are all free

bad orion shot from b7

[gentle birch]

1 light?

[calm hearth]

don't remember how many it was

I think about 200

but it was my first image with my camera so I had no idea how to set it properly

colour version

[dusty gull]

A few minutes of data on HVN

[strange seal]

Avoid autostakkert for stacking. Astrosurface is far better. Far sharper and cleaner.

[gentle birch]

Don't they have the same stacking and rejection algorithms? Why do they differ? compression? variations in the algorithms? I'm only 14 and started in december so still much to learn 😁

[strange seal]

Yeah autostakkert it just not great at deep sky alignment.

[neat scroll]

How good is sequator for untracked then?

[grave rapids]

worse than dss

[neat scroll]

really? dss barely works for me

[grave rapids]

well dss is objectively the better software

[orchid obsidian]

Is Siril any better than the software suggested? It seems very comprehensive.

[orchid obsidian]

Well total bust tonight. Cloudy all night then moon up. See what the weekend brings. Used the time to learn more about dark, bias, flat images and work out a methodology and process to achieve each. Who knew an old Boss white T shirt and elastic band would be useful in AP square eyes from the last week of reading and watching tutorial and instrucitonal videos. So much contradictory and opinion driven stuff. The PixInsight PDF was a lot more scientific but heavy going! So impressed with the performance of one of my old Rpi3 B+ I have repurposed to run AstroBerry. A bit of overclocking and memory tuning and it runs the INDI drivers Kstars, Ekos really well for the capture part. Cable tied to the camera tripod.

[sterile carbon]

untracked m33 and m31 about 10 minutes exposure time i stacked in deep sky stacker

[orchid obsidian]

Can you share your settings? Focal Length, f stop, ISO, number of subs and exposure time. Did you use any darks, bias, flats?

[tight jewel]

untracked m42 taken from phone

[dusty gull]

Imo it's the best software for untracked

Among dss, sequator, autostakkertand pix

[crimson fractal]

Astro surface

[dusty gull]

I was finally able to collect good data on M51 last night!

1700 subs, 350ms each

[upper pasture]

Looks nice

really cool

[orchid obsidian]

Amazing image. What lens and ISO settings did you have, did you use darks, bias and flat frames?

[orchid obsidian]

That's good to know. as I will be processing whatever subs I get using it on my 12 core Ubuntu workstation and as this will be my very first attempt I will follow this guide. step by step. https://siril.org/tutorials/tuto-scripts/

[dusty gull]

That's with my 5inch dob at 650mm and asi 224mc

I took 3minutes of darks

[dusty gull]

I think this is nice guide however scripts may not work really well untracked

The main advantage of siril imo is the possibility to easily change star detection settings and see the result

This remind me that I should write a tutorial for untracked processing....

Maybe during the holidays

[orchid obsidian]

That would be great. I am still a bit confused on the workflow but by following that guide I hope to at least understand the fundamentals. Why would the scripts not work well untracked? Is it due to the large target movement across the frame and the alignment process?

[dusty gull]

Star detection settings may not be right (->not enough stars detected->only a few frames aligned) and it will probably align on the first image, instead of the central image so your object will be on a corner

Alright I'm doing the guide during holidays

In one week

[orchid obsidian]

Brilliant I look forward to reading it. Thanks for responding and helping in my AP education.

[dusty gull]

You're welcome! I'm glad if I can help

[nimble lintel]

Has anyone here built their own EQ platform for a dob? Any good guide recommendations that also covers the wiring parts? Thinking of giving it a go myself but I'm lost in the countless guides on the internet

[dry spade]

Was just talking about that last night in another channel #1019743407037501500 message

Lots of different ways you can do wiring. Most common is using stepper motors and a microcontroller but you can also buy an EQ1 drive motor if you’re not comfortable doing that. You can ask for help in the #🔨-do-it-yourself channel.

[calm hearth]

also for planetary?

[nimble lintel]

Alright! I've also heard people use DC motors, any noticable differences between those and stepper ones?

[dry spade]

It’s the accuracy. With a stepper you know how far it rotates with each pulse you send to the motor so you can control the speed very accurately. With a DC motor you don’t have that accuracy, you have a knob that controls the speed and you turn it up or down until the stars don’t move in the eyepiece.

[nimble lintel]

Ah okay, that makes sense!

[nimble lintel]

If I were to buy an EQ platform, are there any brands to look out for and others to avoid?

Realising I might be a little too in over my head when trying to DIY one

[dusty gull]

I'm about to buy mine too

Where do you live?

TMS looks like a very good reference in Europe

[nimble lintel]

Oh sweet! Can't wait to see what you capture with it :)

I live in Sweden 57.55 latitude

[dusty gull]

The ecliptica platforms are also a good option but not everyone agrees

[nimble lintel]

Ah alright, I'll look them both up, see what's available

[nimble lintel]

I've heard about those too, seem to be out of stock everywhere unfortunately

Or extremely expensive at the websites that have it in stock

[dusty gull]

They are made in Ukraine...

Tms platforms will be back soon

[nimble lintel]

Ah, I think I remember hearing that somewhere now that you say it..

[nimble lintel]

Ah alright, that's good

[sterile carbon]

i took the exposures at 35 mm at f 4.5 about 81 8 second exposures and i was gonna take darks but got kinda lazy if i take anymore today if it’s not cloudy i’ll get some darks

and yeah i took it at iso 800

[orchid obsidian]

Thanks for the extra info. That gives me some confidence. No star trails at 8 seconds. I guess that is due to the wide field 35mm. The calculators are saying I should shoot bettween 1 and 2.5 secs depending on the calculator and methodology used using a 135mm lens. If these clouds ever go away I can see what focal length works best for my framing of Orion and the horsehead region. Uf U out 35mm f3,4 which is the fastest I have it says between 4.4 and 11.1 seconds across 3 different calculators. Probably overthinking it. I can see part of the challenge of this is until the images are processed you don't know whether they are going to yield a good result. As in life the 6 P's to the rescue!

[orchid obsidian]

If someone had told me 10 years ago that a clear night sky would be tantamount to bliss I would never have believed them 🙂

[grave rapids]

My second attempt at deep sky with my 8” dob and 224mc. My pix trial expired, and I think it shows lol

[orchid obsidian]

Soo envious of you guys. 100% cloud cover right now remote station all setup and ready to go. But, 100% cloud cover for the whole weekend clearing Monday PM. Depressing.

[atomic olive]

light pollution of the moon turned out to be too bad ,_,

I also completely forgot how to edit data

[grave rapids]

dbe should fix it

[atomic olive]

background extraction?

[grave rapids]

yes

[atomic olive]

it does a very weird thing...

weird

[tidal tide]

enable "add dither"

it should help

[atomic olive]

Thank you !

[tidal tide]

what was this taken with btw?

[atomic olive]

Oh.. what telescope did I use? Or the camera?

I used Nikon D3s

[tidal tide]

both ofc

[atomic olive]

And I used Lomo Astele 102MN

It was its last night for the mount

[tidal tide]

hmm, it may be possible for us to combine our data, i have an hour on this target untracked.

[tight jewel]

bros on the moon

[atomic olive]

Ohhh

[atomic olive]

?

[tight jewel]

nevermind

[atomic olive]

👀

[tight jewel]

[orchid obsidian]

Tomorrow is looking good for my first imaging session. I have a plan and lots of advice on darks, bias and flats, focal length I will decide when I have something to frame up but probably have time for a few sessions at different focal lengths.
When you are looking at something quite bright (my first target is Orion) which star would you use to try and perfect the focus. I do not have live view on the camera (it's old like me) and my plan was to try and focus on Rigel and take a preview then adjust etc. until I can get a decent round star. Then reframe and go from there.
Any practical advice welcome as I am sure many of you have shot this target a bunch of times.
Here's what it should look like in my frame at 70mm if I have my setting correct. Current plan is to take 100 2.5 second 1600 iso subs. Then repeat at 135mm with a 100 1.5 second 1600 iso subs.

[hybrid basin]

The exposure time sounds good for that focal length. I'd recommend to just look a bit around, what the brightest object at the sky is, because I like to focus on planets like mars, but Rigel should be good too.

[orchid obsidian]

The other question I have is about white balance settings and colour temp for the various exposure types for DSLR photography. There is a lot of conflicting info out there.

[dry spade]

It doesn't hugely matter because you will colour correct in the processing stage. Your flats will probably throw the white balance out anyway, unless you have a flat panel that emits a perfectly even spectrum. Turn auto white balance off and keep it fixed at the same level for everything.

[orchid obsidian]

So set it to daylight for instance? I am using an app on my samsung tablet for the white source and a white t shirt over the lens for the flats.

[dry spade]

Yeah, setting it to daylight should be OK. If you're shooting in raw format then I don't think it matters what mode you use. You just don't want it to change between subs for whatever reason (even then I'm not sure it matters).

[strange seal]

Yeah white balance is meaningless for raw

[orchid obsidian]

So I can ignore it. The manual seems to suggest that it will mangle the image. there is no 'none' option I can find. I can set a custom colour temp. Also RTFM says that Adobe RGB is better than sRGB if images are to be processed as it has wider capability and information. Capturing raw unmolested images with this DSLR seems very difficult as it seems determined to mangle the image in some way.

[orchid obsidian]

I'll just set it to Auto for now. I have tried to turn everything else off, image optimisation, Hue Adjustment, Tone Compensation, Colour Mode (II to match AdobeRGB), High ISO NR off etc. Where there is no 'none' I have set Auto. Do you believe that setting RAW mode igonores all these options?

[orchid obsidian]

Would anyone be willing to process this very first attempt once it completes. It might be totally useless data. It is 135mm f5.6 iso1600 50 x 1.5 second exposures plus the same darks and I will take bias and flats also.

[gentle birch]

1 minute is not nearly enough for most objects. if you're doing deep space astro start thinking of integration in terms of hours

[orchid obsidian]

Yeah I know but I don't have a mount yet and I just have my camera! Are you saying that what I have is of no use?

[gentle birch]

no you can always pull out detail

but you can always just take more photos

i don't have a tracker so i shoot hundreds if not thousands of shots of the same thing

[orchid obsidian]

So you constantly move the framing?

[gentle birch]

nope. only every few minutes

[orchid obsidian]

Yep that's what I meant. I am capturing remotely from the camera which is about 200m away to be clear of obstructions. It takes approx. 10 secs or so to capture and then download the image. So the 50 images took approx. 500 seconds. Orion had moved considerably across in that time. I am just learning the dynamics of this. I could cut the time down by probably just using an intervalometer at the camera no uploading of the image just locally stored on the camera card and downloaded manually later. Is that what you do?

Sorry that is with the 1.5 sec exposure time.

I see amazing pictures with 135mm lenses being shown. The stars are tiny at that focal length when I setup.

In total it is 1.8GB of data zipped up.

[tidal tide]

welp, got done shooting, another almost 40gb of data to add to my collection

[orchid obsidian]

I am now a bit confused, All of the exposure calculators said that 1.5 seconds was correct for 135mm F5.6 lens pointing at Orion for my camera sensor pixel sizes etc. I took 50 exposures light dark etc. Siril has produced a result.fit file but has excluded 34 of the 50 Light images it looks like due to registration issues with the script.

23:14:14: Sequence processing partially succeeded, with 34 images that failed and that were temporarily excluded from the sequence.
23:14:14: Execution time: 1 min 38 s.
23:14:14: Registration finished.
23:14:14: 50 images processed.
23:14:14: Total: 34 failed, 16 registered.

I have manually skipped through all 50 images and the same stars are always in the frame albeit moving across the frame left to right. So I guess 68% of the light data I have is excluded from the final result.fit file.

How can I improve this?

Cheers

[tidal tide]

have you tried using deepskystacker?

[orchid obsidian]

I don't use windows and don't have a windows machine.

Maybe manually processing the images in Siril and then doing manual registration of the images if that is possible.

[strange seal]

That’s probably a better idea yeah

[tidal tide]

ah ok, i dont have a lot of experience with siril, ive mostly used astap and dss

[orchid obsidian]

Ok thanks. More reading I think.

[orchid obsidian]

Do you use Siril?

[strange seal]

I do yes

[orchid obsidian]

This is what I currently see in Siril after the script is finished.

That is with 34 out of 50 lights thrown away.

The only bright star I think we lose out of frame is Rigel towards the end of the run.

So to manually do this. Close Siril, delete the result.fit delete the process directory and start again.

Is the sequence?

Conversion of the Raw to a fit sequence then pre process then register manually.

[gleaming walrus]

The worst thing I done possibly 🤣

Used a Kit lens to shoot from a B7
Didn't stack the comet

1hr5mins of data
45+ mins of images were deleted due to focus

[dusty gull]

Yeah don't use scripts

Are you the one I told that I'll make a tutorial soon?

[static cape]

D5300 + 200mm kitlens. About 20 mins and a 3 min edit in siril this morning before work. Will try a better job tonight!

Any tips on processing Andromeda? First time doing this one. I guess using starnet ++ wil also help

[orchid obsidian]

Yes. It was the first clear night in about a week super cold. This is all new to me concepts, dynamics, processes. In the time I had I shot 50 1.5 sec 1600 iso images of Orion. 135mm lens f5 darks, bias, flats. What came out was worse than I could see with my 7x50 binoculars! I think the exposure calculators were saying 1.5 secs per shot but in reality that was nowhere near enough. In total 75 seconds of exposure. I followed this guide (https://siril.org/tutorials/tuto-manual/) to manually process the DBFL files and now have biases_stacked.fit darks_stacked.fit pp_flats_stacked.fit pp_lights_stacked.fit files. I think I could see a lot more with my naked eyes!

This has not discouraged me, just made me more determined to understand how to get the kind of images even if not at the same level of detail as you guys. I am keen to learn.

I take my hat off to you guys that are producing amazing shots untracked with unbelievable detail. I am pretty sure its not my D200 that is the issue 😉 Like the one above of Andromeda D5300 + 200mm kitlens. About 20 mins and a 3 min edit in siril. I was processing in Siril for a good couple of hours. BTW what is a 'kitlens'?

Questions:
Do you all capture just at the camera and then transfer files later or do you capture remotely?
On my 18-200mm lens when set at 135mm the point between being in or out of focus is an unbelievably small amount of movement on the focus ring. Do you all focus manually?

[dusty gull]

It's completely normal, you're learning as we all did...
I'll mention you when the guide will be done!

A kitlens is the lens that comes with cameras and is always.... Shtty

I have an astrocam so I capture with my pc

And manual focus is the only good way in astro (except with a dedicated autofocuser but you don't have that)

[orchid obsidian]

Thanks. Also my 'kitlens' is a 18-200mm f3.5-f5.6 lens so is quite slow. I think I need to do a lot more trial and error on the exposure lengths. 1.5 secs was clearly nowhere near enough at 135mm f5.6 following the logic then a minimum of 6 secs compared to a f2.8 lens.

[dusty gull]

I got decent results at f6.3 with similar exposures if I remember well

Also the difference between 1.5s and 6s isn't huge

If you have the opportunity to buy a fix focal lenght fast lens, do it

You can probably find a second hand one for ~200€ that will be a LOT better than your kit lens

[orchid obsidian]

Just trying to use what I have to start off and get the absolute best out of it before spending money.

[dusty gull]

Of course of course! That's the right way to do it

[orchid obsidian]

'Persistance is omnipotent'

[dusty gull]

I've just received my roki lens

F1.2

[orchid obsidian]

What Focal Length?

[dusty gull]

50mm

[orchid obsidian]

This https://rokinon.com/collections/manual-focus/products/50mm-f1-2-high-speed

[dusty gull]

Yep

[tidal tide]

that's some gathering power, damn

[orchid obsidian]

YOu guys must have the eye of a hawk to focus sharp at 50mm

[dusty gull]

Yeah I can't wait to test it with my 224 mc

I'll probably have to stop it down to f2 though

[orchid obsidian]

Dare I ask how much?

[dusty gull]

How much what?

Money?

[orchid obsidian]

Yes.

[dusty gull]

Oh ok

300€

It was on sales

[orchid obsidian]

Looks like this would be the only lens they have for Nikon F for my D200. https://rokinon.com/collections/manual-focus/products/135mm-f2-0-full-frame-telephoto

Thats 3 full stops faster than my 18-200mm at 135mm!

Maybe try and find one of these https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/135mm-f2.htm

[dusty gull]

It's a really well reputated lens

[tidal tide]

QC though

[dusty gull]

Qc?

What does it means

[tidal tide]

quality control

[dusty gull]

Yeah...

You can return it no?

[tidal tide]

yes but people have had to return like 3 times to get a good copy

it's not great

[dusty gull]

Oh sht

Indeed

It's the same for all rokinon lenses?

[tidal tide]

not sure

[dusty gull]

It's weird because I saw this mentioned nowhere else

[dusty gull]

I tested my lens and it's great! Really sharp even at f 1.2

There's a bit of coma on one side though

Not a problem for what I plan to do and it disappear at f2.8

No ca visible except on the brightest stars

I'm happy

[orchid obsidian]

Single 60 sec iso1600 18mm f3.5
Pretty blurry. The Mily Way is between Procyon and Betelgeuse not that you can see it. Apart from blurry does this look over or underexposed?

[hybrid basin]

Really dark sky... This is a completely unedited 30s exposure of my Xoami Redmi Note 8 pro at ISO3200.

Andromeda is clearly visible.

[orchid obsidian]

That's amazing. A modern smartphone vs 17year old Nikon D200 I am struggling with.

[gentle birch]

untracked rosette in bortle 8

[orchid obsidian]

Can you share your imaging settings for this. Focal Length, f stop, Exp, Iso etc. As I am learning and wanting to understand.

[gentle birch]

300mm f5.6 1.6" 3200ISO

[orchid obsidian]

How many subs?

[gentle birch]

2300

[orchid obsidian]

Over an hour! How many times would you recentre the image. Is this using an intervalometer?

[gentle birch]

i recentered about 25 times

i did use an internal intervalpmeter

[gentle birch]

because this target is so dim an hour is barely enough. i might try getting more data as the skies clear up

[orchid obsidian]

Thank you for the extra info it helps. What camera are you using and are you using a EQ mount?

[gentle birch]

no tracking. just a camera and a tripod

nikon d750 and tamron 70/300 lens

with a tracker you could easily get the rosette

[orchid obsidian]

That is a long lens. f5.6 is the same as my 200mm 18-200 DX lens.

I am just finishing a wide field 18mm f3.5 session. 20 30 sec exposures iso 3200. I am hoping I can get something usable from it. I know I need longer!

[gentle birch]

we all start somewhere

[orchid obsidian]

Sorry, a few more questions. So your process would be to frame, focus using live view and a bhatinov mask? Then shoot using intervalometer. Download later?

[gentle birch]

i would frame, then focus by eye (no mask although i desperately need one) and shoot with an intervalomeyer

what do you mean by download later?

[orchid obsidian]

Download the images from the SDCARD(s) later. I am currently capturing by remote control of the camera. Each image is captured and uploaded to my network automatically. But cycle time is a little slow.. I am using Kstars/Ekos/Indi to setup the shooting session then execute it.

The camera is controlled by a raspberry pi which I have on my tripod and a usb connection.

[gentle birch]

yea i use an SD card that i just move all at once later

[orchid obsidian]

What tripod do you use. 3 way or 2 way. I need a new Photography tripod and looking for recommendations as there are so many.

[gentle birch]

i use the manfrotto 190X

[orchid obsidian]

Would you buy it again?

[gentle birch]

i didn't buy it. all my gear is just my fathers that i'm using

but definitely you can get a sturdier tripod for like 200

[orchid obsidian]

Currently looking for one of these. DR-6 Right Angle Viewfinder Attachment

[grave rapids]

my attempt at heart nebula, untracked unmodded b7. not exactly an easy target.

[gentle birch]

A for effort man

[grave rapids]

I mean im happy that i resolved the structure at all, basically everything working against me

[gentle birch]

what was your integration?

[static cape]

Looking forward to the results!

[dusty gull]

My first target will be heart nebula!

The next we hopefully

[hybrid basin]

Its possible. I already tried it, and it was really good visible, but it isn't so colourful, because I only had 40min of exposure time.

[dusty gull]

What was your camera?

[hybrid basin]

I don't think it's that important, but I have a unmodded Nikon Z50. I think more important was, that my lens is at F1.8...

[orchid obsidian]

Given this is untracked which is my current mission. How are you guys working out the exposure per sub? Given you can't really see the end result until processes. Are you using a specific formula or calculator?

[upper pasture]

I captured 40 minutes of Cygnus data last night, A friend will be stacking it later. I'll post in here when it's done.

[dusty gull]

OK thanks ! Because I have an astro cam so I think the ir sensitivity will help me quite a lot

F2 too

And your result looks nice!

[hybrid basin]

Nice, that should you help a lot.

[hybrid basin]

Thanks

[dusty gull]

The longest sub exposure you can get without trails

[upper pasture]

Should 40 minutes untracked unmodded reveal much dust?

[dusty gull]

What's your équipement ?

[upper pasture]

Canon T3i and I used an 18-55mm lens at 35mm

about f/4.5

[dusty gull]

Except if you do eyepiece projection you can use the npf rule

[dusty gull]

I'm afraid it won't show a lot of details but we'll see...
I once tried ~20min at f2 and it wasn't great

[upper pasture]

I just hope that NAN is visible and maybe a bit of dust around Sadr

[orchid obsidian]

So heuristics? Take a shot and keep extending the time until stars start elongating?

[orchid obsidian]

What is eye piece projection?

[upper pasture]

This is my first time shooting Cygnus, so this is mostly just teseting the waters

[upper pasture]

I think it's projecting whatever is in your eyepiece onto a piece of paper or something similar. I might be wrong.

[orchid obsidian]

I used the NPF rule and calculators for my first ever attempt and I think it was a bust. One of the kind processing forum members is looking at the data I posted a link to (https://discord.com/channels/794642864218439681/1074798610237116508) to see if there is any useful information at all.

[orchid obsidian]

I thought this was related to telescopes. I don't have one. Just a DSLR with a 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 zoom. I am trying to get hold of a Nikon DR-6 which is a 90 degree viewfinder with 1-2x mag to assist with focusing as I do not have a live view camera.

[dusty gull]

It's when you take a pic of your eyepiece with your phone are camera+lens

Oh but you don't have a scope

So it's not what you do

[orchid obsidian]

N olive view no scope just a 18-200mm lens. I like the idea of getting my phone camera to pretend to be my eyeball though! How might that work?

I have an idea? See post in 3d printer shortly.

[viral rivet]

guys hows this?

[static cape]

Nice:) what equipment?

[lucid badger]

I cleaned it up a bit for you

[viral rivet]

4.5 in reflector and an old android (oppo f1f)

[viral rivet]

thanks

[compact dust]

On Linux you should use Siril

[gaunt meteor]

Ummm dslr and telescope. Ye

[orchid obsidian]

Yes using Siril and following or trying to the tutorials they provided without much luck. The old adages are still as true today as ever. Garbage in Garbage out! Need to work on acquisition.

[radiant osprey]

untracked?

[dusty gull]

Yeah, it's my process of LMC's data

[radiant osprey]

can u please tell me how?

i would kill my self to get a mount if u just tell me how or is there a tutorial on youtube

[strange seal]

Just a whole lotta subs with a good camera.

[radiant osprey]

OPS

I DELETED

[strange seal]

I have a uranus c. Using a dslr will be very bad. You’ll burn through 10-25% of your cameras total lifespan per target.

[radiant osprey]

using sharpcap right ?

[strange seal]

Yup

You want a shutterless mirrorless camera. Any half decent astrocam will do

Uranus c is nice because it’s a large sensor for its price

[radiant osprey]

i have zwo224

it have small sensor

[strange seal]

I’ve seen good results from that camera

[radiant osprey]

the method of stacking using live stack right?

[strange seal]

Finding targets will be harder and it’s a little noisier but it works

[strange seal]

Nah don’t live stack. Record as a .ser file and stack after.

[radiant osprey]

raw

[radiant osprey]

and when the object start to dissapear u pause it

[strange seal]

Yup then reframe. Then start recording again. If you hand track the target as opposed to letting it drift it works better. Otherwise you get walking noise.

If you have steady enough hands you don’t notice the blurring.

[radiant osprey]

but i think when the pic stack on deepskystacker , the pic will look bad bec there are pic that will look different from the other in the body on the screen

because the body moving

[strange seal]

Use astrosurface software.

You’ll get bad edges but you normally crop them out.

[radiant osprey]

can u show me a photo for u without tracker of galaxy or nebula

[strange seal]

That’s my best work so far

[radiant osprey]

daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn

bortle what ?

how many exposure?

[strange seal]

3

About 10-20 mins on most targets. Sombrero was two nights so 50 mins.

60-130ms subs. Depending on target declination.

[radiant osprey]

how i stack a video?

[strange seal]

You record as ser. Then use astrosurface. You can also record as video but ser is faster.

[radiant osprey]

can i use deepskystacker?

[sharp heath]

wow

[strange seal]

It’s very far from ideal no.

[cinder vault]

tried some untracked AP last night, I'm convinced it's impossible - full respect to all of you people 😄

[tidal tide]

the struggles are real

[cinder vault]

I think I'll stick to my mount for now 😅

[hybrid basin]

What would you recommend then? Astropixelprocessor?

[strange seal]

Astrosurface

[hybrid basin]

Thanks, I never heard that before, but then I have to try that.

[radiant osprey]

Astrosurface is for planet

[crimson fractal]

And dso

[radiant osprey]

i put a SER files on Astrosurface its so hard to use and there is no video tutorial on youtube

idont know how to stack

[crimson fractal]

@strange seal ur better at explaining then me

[radiant osprey]

can u tell me pls how to use Astrosurface to stack

it seems u can use pipp also

[crimson fractal]

Pipp dosent stack just aligns

[radiant osprey]

does Astrosurface align ?

the deepsky object

[strange seal]

Open the ser then go to the stacking tab. Click global alignment and set the number of stars to however many you can count. Click set ref then stack.

[radiant osprey]

i cant found stacking tab

u mean register

when i click on register it show me a screen to add darks and flats and stack but i cant click on stack

i found it

thank u man !

[lucid badger]

Is all that untracked???????

[livid wing]

Yes

[viral rivet]

in untracked i have to take small exposures due to which there are less stars for stacking what do u guys do to counter this ?

[hybrid basin]

I think there are mostly still enough stars for stacking. It could get only critical, if you do really short exposures with a small aperture. I also don't think the stacker uses all stars for stacking, so it shouldn't be the problem.

[south jackal]

What do you mean with ‘ser’?

[grave rapids]

its a file ending, .ser

[south jackal]

Can’t do that with a regular camera I guess?

[grave rapids]

im not sure

[livid wing]

Untracked orion nebula 4 min exposure bortle 8

[orchid obsidian]

Can you provide capture info. Lens F stop iso etc.

[livid wing]

Actually idont know the iso but i have a 700x76 telescope with zwo 224 camera any thing else i dont know ary

Sry

[orchid obsidian]

Hey thanks. I am just starting out so collecting info on settings and results.

[strange seal]

Yes

[strange seal]

It’s astrocams only. Also don’t use a dslr for this type of photography

[tidal tide]

[strange seal]

Finna burn through 10-25% of your cameras total lifespan

[tidal tide]

gotta pluck out that mirror

[viral rivet]

ok thanks

[neat scroll]

your tarantula looks very nice!

[upper pasture]

Just under 40 minutes of data untracked and unmodded.

[upper pasture]

Any tips or advice?

[dusty gull]

@upper pasture this is pretty nice! At what Iso and f ratio were you shooting?

[upper pasture]

It was 1600 ISO, at f/4.5

I was using an 18-55 kit lens so its not the fastest

I also had to crop pretty harshly due to poor recentering

[dusty gull]

For this f ratio it's petty good

[upper pasture]

thank you!

i need to get a faster lens tho lol

[static cape]

What astro cam do you have?

[strange seal]

Uranus C. IMX 585.

[static cape]

Ah that looks great, should have invested in that instead of a dslr

[orchid obsidian]

I am amazed at this. I am struggling with my NIkon D200 and Kit 18-200 f3.5-5.6 lens to get anything useful. My next opportunity will be Monday evening. I tried various exposures. Last one just to see what I could catch with this lens was 50 x 30 sec exposures 18mm f3.5 3200 iso this is what I see when I open a single exposure in ASTAP or Siril etc.

Data:
Heres the data:
SIMPLE = T / FITS header
BITPIX = 16 / Bits per entry
NAXIS = 2 / Number of dimensions
NAXIS1 = 3899 / Length of x axis
NAXIS2 = 2616 / Length of y axis
EXPTIME = 30 / Exposure time in seconds
JD = 2459990.45452546 / [Julian Day] The start time of the exposure
DATE-OBS= '2023-02-14T22:54:31.000' / [UTC] The start time of the exposure
CCD-TEMP= 999 / Sensor or camera temperature
GAIN = 3200 / ISO speed
DATAMAX = 3827 / Max value where still linear
DATAMAX2= 3827
DATAMAX3= 3827
DATAMAX4= 3827
APERTURE= 3 / Lens aperture
FOCALLEN= 18 / Focal length lens
CAMMAKER= 'Nikon'
INSTRUME= 'D200'
TELESCOP= ''
FILT-PAT= 'GRBGGRBGGRBGGRBG' / Filter pattern
BAYERPAT= 'GRBG' / Bayer color pattern
IMG_FLIP= 0
COMMENT Raw conversion by LibRaw-with-16-bit-FITS-support. www.hnsky.org

Pretty sure I need to focus more precisely almost impossible at 18mm lens and shorter ~5secs x hundreds maybe.

What do you all think?

[radiant osprey]

some edits on topaz gigapixels this software is so amazing

[dusty gull]

Eh topaz isn't well reputeted among astrophotographs

It uses IA but it's not trained on astro pics so it creates false details (if I remember right)

You can use AstroDenoisePY instead

[radiant osprey]

topaz denoise maybe better than gigapixels

[radiant osprey]

is it free?

[dusty gull]

Yes

Let me find the link

[radiant osprey]

yes pls

[tidal tide]

i think it was pinned in some channel

[dusty gull]

https://github.com/p7ayfu77/astro-csbdeep/releases/tag/0.4.1-gui

It's not as good as NoiseX but still does the job with a bit of trial and error

And it's free

[radiant osprey]

ty

[radiant osprey]

why i cant lunch it

how to download it

?

[viral rivet]

in assets click the first one (if you are in windows), then after that run the installer and install it

[radiant osprey]

i do that

but i dont find the program

i download it but i cant found it in the desktop

[viral rivet]

search in sreach bar

[radiant osprey]

same thing

[viral rivet]

open

[radiant osprey]

is it just remove noise

like ps

[viral rivet]

i havent tried

[radiant osprey]

is Raw Therapee good

?

[radiant osprey]

AstroDenoisePY doesnt lunch for me any one have a software for noise

[viral rivet]

It worked for me by installing all the dependencies

[radiant osprey]

with me is nothing happend right

[viral rivet]

like it opens and closes right?

[radiant osprey]

no i dont find it

the software

when i click on it it start download from first

andromeda galaxy with a old lens camera with zwo224 with bortle 8

30 min untracked

[neat scroll]

now this is cool, i had no idea there was denoise ai. noiseX is paid right?

[nimble lintel]

What program works best to stabilize and stack untracked DSO targets? Got a little data on orion, but haven't stacked deep sky before

Does PIPP work for deep sky stabilizing?

[little prism]

Deep Sky Stacker or for short DSS will be your best choice

[nimble lintel]

Got it, will that stabilize too? Or just stack?

[little prism]

also stabilise. It will make your life a lot easier :D

[little prism]

i highly recommend the video I send you

[nimble lintel]

Ah great! That's really helpful!

[crimson fractal]

yeah Rawtherapy is def much better

[nimble lintel]

Unfortunately DSS didn't really seem to work, I shot Orion but need to stabilize the video before stacking. Is there any program that can easily do this?

[dusty gull]

What is it?

[crimson fractal]

editing software but has a pretty decent denoise

free

Caphe shown me

[nimble lintel]

@dusty gull Do you possibly know what stabilizing / stacking program I should use to stack DSO? I recorded the raw8 footage in .AVI

[crimson fractal]

siril or astrosurface prob

[neat scroll]

same data (different stack tho) without and with denoise. it's a very big difference!

[crimson fractal]

It didn’t even touch the noise inside m42 tho ?

[neat scroll]

they're different stacks, but it did a bit, you can see a lot more detail

although it didn't remove the red noise, i'm guessing because that's to not delete actual data, if i used calibrations that wouldn't be there

i'm still very happy

[crimson fractal]

Hm mind giving the stack ? I can run denoise

[neat scroll]

also i'm still testing denoise, this was done after stretching, i'm now trying before stretching (image stack is sending)

sure, it's pretty bad tho (don't know if i should send it any other way)

[neat scroll]

doing before doesn't seem to work as well

[dusty gull]

I personally use siril but I know some use astrosurface

[dusty gull]

Oh thanks, I'll take a look at it

[nimble lintel]

Gotcha, I tried both of them a few minutes ago and astrosurface worked best for me

[dusty gull]

I never tried it, what worked Better?

[nimble lintel]

Astrosurface stacked the files really well, but I did the processing in Siril

Seems to work really well

Here's what I managed to do so far

Little annoyed that it was slightly out of focus