Dobsonian Astrophotography

[thin marten]

Planetary Nerd

5super

5uper

Jupiter21

SaturnLover22

Magellanic_AP

andy_r0meda

[fickle shore]

U suck

[thin marten]

You founded us

[meager hare]

NebulousChap

Or like replace chap with your real name

Like NebulousBob for example

[mossy glen]

NebulousRaphael 💀

The idea is good but my name isn't

[meager hare]

NebulousRaph or NebulousRafa

or change your legal name to bob

[mossy glen]

Lol

[meager hare]

AstroRaph

like astrograph

Thats a good name

[subtle garden]

NebulousRA?

[dapper plover]

Nah bruh, this name right here deserves a gold medal

It's so good

[meager hare]

@mossy glen fr I think you should consider this one its god tier

[raven relic]

If anyone have some real view pictures of dobsonian 8" Jupiter and Saturn ? But not magnify photo. Just a raw eye view ?

[meager hare]

Wym?

[rough river]

You cant match up“raw“ video to your eye

it will allways look better in real life

go to a local astro club or something

[raven relic]

There are no such things like that near me

But thanks anyway😉

[meager hare]

Do you mean like an image that shows about what you would see through an 8"?

[raven relic]

Yes 😁 I'm thinking to buy dob 8" skywatcher and has a thought that someone could showe me before I buy

All those telescope SIM are ok but can you trust them ?

[stark gorge]

Looks heaps better in real life but that’s my live view

[thin marten]

In real life theres no pixels

It's just way more clear

and sharp

theres also no such thing as noise

[cinder flower]

Insane data

[raven relic]

@stark gorge thanks for that 🙂

[thin fern]

when i walk outside i see like live noise it weird

like little rgb things looks exactly like real time noise

[raven relic]

@stark gorge What eyepiece did you use? If I may ask

[stark gorge]

No eyepiece just 3.5x barlow

Normally for planetary I use my Saxon 8 element 68 degree 8mm

If I’m doing planetary visual

[raven relic]

And you're happy with the view, wouldn't be 6mm or 5mm better for smaller planets ?

[stark gorge]

It’s enough yes. Smaller eyepiece would be better but they are harder to use

[raven relic]

AHH, understood. Thank you for your help:) have a great Sky tonight 😉

[stark gorge]

No problem. Clear skies.

That’s kindaaaa what I see with the 8mm

[raven relic]

Cooooolll

Like that

[stark gorge]

It looks a lot better in person because no noise and it’s not overexposed

[wraith adder]

that is my name

[mossy glen]

Lol

Btw how it's going @wraith adder ?

[wraith adder]

Exams

not much AP goin on

[mossy glen]

And your dad, is he fine?

[fickle shore]

@wraith adder

[wraith adder]

yeah I think

[mossy glen]

OK, that's reassuring

[royal badger]

just got my first new scope, an 8" dob:)

mount has not arrived yet

hopefully I will be able to take some pics after the rain clears up (it's raining all week, of course)

I tested a webcam on my old 76/700 reflector, it seems to work quite well

[mossy glen]

Cool!

Hope youll have clear skies soon

[royal badger]

thx

the sky cleared for a bit in the evening, enough for me to try out my new 5mm eyepiece on jupiter using the old scope

works nicely but the scope is built for 1" eyepieces so I had some trouble getting it to stop shaking. It was also nearly at the magnification limit so the views were not great

[red light]

I’ve got an 8” dob and a player one ceres-c (1.25” IMX224) and I’ve tried using the camera with sharpcap several times to get Jupiter but every time I point it at Jupiter, or let alone anything, nothing shows up on sharpcap

Any idea whats happening?

[wraith adder]

@willow mason You liking the new 585?

[willow mason]

No, i tried it for a week and sent it back. The biggest issue was the slow frame rate. It was far slower than my other cameras, so I replaced it with the Uranus-C. That was a great decision.

[wraith adder]

Interesting…thanks for sharing feedback on it!

[willow mason]

No problem! I liked the image quality and color balance, but it was just too slow.

[dapper plover]

Have you checked your gain settings? Could be your data is too dark to see anything.

[tender dust]

Isn’t the Uranus C an imx585 also?

[viscid pagoda]

Uranus-C is faster than asi585 when at same roi?

interesting...

[red light]

I’ll check those, thanks

That’s probably the case since I’m bortle 7

[willow mason]

Way faster. I’m getting 500 fps on Mars with the Uranus-C.

[viscid pagoda]

and with 585? 100fps?

[tender dust]

Huh. I wonder if that's just the drivers or if there's something different on the board.

[mossy glen]

Hm that would surprise me

Light pollution doesn't affect planets...

[red light]

oh

[mossy glen]

Probably because you don't point in the right direction, your exposition is too low or you're super defocused

[red light]

ive tried basically every single focus possible on my telescope

[mossy glen]

To find jupiter at f 15, I usually set to 50ms and gain 300/400

Once you're focused 20ms and gain 200 should be enough

[red light]

ill try that out when i get back home, thanks

[mossy glen]

Do you also have this issue with dso and stars?

And what focal lenght are you at?

[red light]

ive only ever imaged planets, and only with my phone, so not sure

ill send focal length 1 sec

when i do visual everything is fine but obviously thats completely different

1200mm

[mossy glen]

That's probably a pointing issue, even if the finder is almost perfectly aligned it can be very hard to find the planets, +with such a small sensor

[red light]

any tips on how to fix that?

[mossy glen]

When I'm at 2000mm it can take several minutes to find the planets, but you'll get used to it and you should find them pretty quickly

[red light]

pointing is very annoying so if i could improve it for AP and visual thatd be great

[red light]

alright and they should just show up in sharpcap right?

[mossy glen]

If you feel like you're finder isn't perfectly aligned, try to align it with the highest magnification in visual. When the moon is here, point at it (so you can focus easily)

[red light]

i honestly think i just need to take 1 night out and spend a couple of hours just finding stuff with high mag

[mossy glen]

Probably not instantly but after a bit of "random" pointing yes

[red light]

for my finder i usually take my lowest mag, align it, then switch to higher

[mossy glen]

Yes it's what you should do

[mossy glen]

Good idea, it's probably what you need

[red light]

oh, then why do it with the highest mag

for perfect alignment?

[mossy glen]

Start with low magn, align, the higher magnification to adjust alignement etc...

[red light]

ohhhh alright that makes more sense

thank you for the help!

[hollow ether]

Old photos. 8” dob and an iPhone

[mossy glen]

Nice!

[red light]

Those are amazing! What bortle class were you in?

That ring nebula is especially good

[hollow ether]

B6 ish (5-6)

[red light]

Damn nice

[topaz token]

lemme guess. That's an skywatcher 200p classic 8" dob (I have one) Im guessing because of the design and that little handle on the bottom

[royal badger]

Yeah

[marsh fossil]

this is my goofy ahh shit setup: 22 1s exposures, stacked, untracked, with my phone, with an out of collimation tabletop 5" dob (i am very proud of this one)

[wraith adder]

mount hasn't arrived??

How are you using it without a mount?

Unless you mean an EQ mount.

[royal badger]

mount arrived last week

I didn't use it until then

[meager hare]

Turbulence from nearby plane passing

[stuck willow]

Fellow iracing user

[meager hare]

Nah thats that wheel calibration thing

[wraith adder]

Woah

[royal badger]

I'm planning on motorizing my 8" dobsonian, and installing a small guidescope on it using a raspberry pi. Would this work for astrophotography, or would the alt-azimuth mount result in too much field rotation?

[meager hare]

you need equatorial tracking, unless you plan on doing exposures of at most a few seconds.

[royal badger]

hm

I imagine an eq platform is not cheap for an 8"

[mossy glen]

It's way cheaper than a german mount

But not cheap... Depends on what you call cheap

[meager hare]

I use my 8 inch with an eq platfrom but I do planetary, the tracking of comercial eq-platforms isn't precise enough for serious deepsky.

[hollow summit]

its clear tonight and I have a new 8" f/4 dob, any tips for jupiter?

[marsh fossil]

i went back and took 172 0.5s subs used a 10mm eye piece instead of the 25mm and took an average of 3 times more data

[mossy glen]

What do you exactly meen by not enough?

How long subs?

[thin fern]

got a bow shock with the dobb ::D

[mossy glen]

I think I'm going to order an uranus C

[meager hare]

If you wanna do deepsky seriously you gotta be able to atleast do 60s subs. Most comercial eq platforms arent good enough to keep your target perfectly still for 60s. Eq platforms are very roughly aligned, all you do is point it north with a compass and level it. This tracking is enough to keep planets on my sensor for a while but they still move around a bit.

Its possible to do a more serious drift alignment, i’ve seen videos of it, but its a lot of trial&error and it ultimately isnt worth it

[mossy glen]

No 60 sec isn't a minimum, you can have serious resukts with lucky imaging

On bright enough targets of course

And there some polar alignements methods that works really well for eq platforms

[meager hare]

The question is how much do you wanna spend on the platform

[mossy glen]

I'm thinking of building it

[meager hare]

There are a few platforms that are capable of doing good subs, but they will prob cost more than your or my dob

[mossy glen]

And I have a 5inch dob

But I don't except long subs

30 sec would already be great for what I want to do

[meager hare]

Oh ok, good luck then I hope your diy works out

[mossy glen]

Thanks

But I'll try a simpler tracker for my dslr first

[meager hare]

Ive heard the star adventurer mounts are good for that

[mossy glen]

I don't have the money

[stark gorge]

OAT 👍

[tender dust]

It’s quite straightforward when you understand how they work, the problem is accuracy. You have to be sub-mm pretty much everywhere.

Cost me about £150 in parts. £250 if you include the tools and, uh, mistakes.

Which is the same as a commercial eq mount

[mossy glen]

Seriously? Ig the prices are not the same in Europe then

The cheapest I found are 400€

[tender dust]

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/equatorial-astronomy-mounts/asterion-ecliptica-light-tracking-platform-for-dobsonian-telescopes.html

[mossy glen]

Knowing that I'm at 650mm fl and don't intend to take long subs (10/20s max but mostly 3 sec lucky imaging)

Does it change?

[tender dust]

Oh I can manage 6s easy on a still night. Working towards 10s but I have a bug with the tracking speed I still haven’t worked out.

I can’t guide, but if I’d built the electrics with OnStep in mind I could.

[mossy glen]

Thanks but it's unavailable

As I have someone that has A LOT of material, that I want to improve my diy skills and my budget is a hand made platforms and nothing more I'll just build it

[mental schooner]

Dob users still trying to justify their purchase of a dob by converting to equatorial

[tender dust]

It still counts as a dob it’s just on a platform that moves

[static sierra]

I bought a dob with the main reason to do lucky imaging on an eq platform x)

[mossy glen]

Haha me too

[mossy glen]

And most of people don't regret it

Just don't have exceptions beyond the reality

[subtle garden]

I got newt lol

[mental schooner]

Based

I got a 130pds

[woeful flicker]

Dob di dob

[stark gorge]

Nice starsense

That’s a great telescope

[woeful flicker]

Thanks 🙂 I can’t wait to get a camera adapter for it

[stark gorge]

check these out @woeful flicker

[woeful flicker]

Do you use image stacking for those? What kinda camera do you have?

[stark gorge]

yep they are all stacked

for the planetary pics i used a SV105

for the deep space i used a Nikon D750, but you can use less.

All the deep space pics are about 2 mins of data

[woeful flicker]

Yeah I still need to learn way more lol. Looking into what kinda camera I wanna get first, ideally one that can do okay for deep field and planetary

[stark gorge]

doing both is hard

i would get the SV105 and a say, canon 60D

[woeful flicker]

I might just borrow my brothers canon dslr. The sv105 is only $60, that’s crazy you could get those pics

[stark gorge]

the SV105 is pretty nice for its price. Its JPG output so faint stuff like some moons and deep space is hard-impossible

[woeful flicker]

Well I think I know what planetary camera I’ll get now lol. Thanks for suggesting it

[stark gorge]

how much money can you spend?

the asi224 is nicer

theres also the SV305, same sensor and higher framerates and uncompressed output

[woeful flicker]

I was looking at this one Player One Uranus-C (IMX585). It was suggested to me in the ask a nerd chat. This is about as much as I’d want to send

Spend*

[stark gorge]

ah yeah thats a great choice

that camera does deep space very well

and planetary extremely well

[crystal dagger]

did you use a barlow?

[astral sleet]

try all you want butter boy

I have a newt mounted on an eq mount

[stark gorge]

For the planetary and moon closeups yes

[wraith adder]

☠️

dead asf channel now

[woeful flicker]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a sky tracking mount for a Celestron 8inch starsense dob? I’d rather not spend thousands of dollars, but that’s all I’ve found so far

[wraith adder]

what's your latitude?

[woeful flicker]

32.8

[wraith adder]

You'll have to make a very sturdy EQ base for it if you want DIY

@stark gorge Can explain more as he has more experience

2222

cool

[red light]

@woeful flicker I made a thread about this exact subject in the Astro-gear forum so if you would like to ask any questions there as well

#1050257028842532985

[woeful flicker]

Thank you!

[wraith adder]

i also have a newt mounted on an eq mount

[thin marten]

then its not a dob

its a newt

[tender dust]

It DREAMS of being a dob

[wraith adder]

I know

..

[thin fern]

Nahhhh really ?

[stuck willow]

Poor seeing and artifacts

[red light]

Did you build this on your own?

[gusty holly]

Nope, this is the stock SW 10" GoTo Dob

[urban fog]

Is anyone here using a asi224mc untracked? Thinking of ordering one today but would be nice hearing how it performs untracked and if any other accessories would be needed?

[mossy glen]

Hi, I have a 224 mc with my untracked 130/650 dob

You want to shoot at dso or planets?

Here's what I've done with my rig (and a 3x barlow for planet pictures)

Most of them are pretty Short total integration time so you probably can do better without much difficulty!

[urban fog]

Wow... those are absolutely amazing

Wasn't expecting that type of quality from an untracked dob

[urban fog]

Mainly planets but definitely would like to give dso a go as well

Are you running any accessories on those planetary shots? IR/UV cut filter? ZWO ADC?

Or are they taken only with a 3x barlow?

[mossy glen]

Thanks!
I also use the ir/uv cut filter for the planets

But that's all

You should check out what @thin fern did too

[urban fog]

Alright! Is the distortion okay without an ADC?

[urban fog]

Definitely will!

Also, are the DSOs without any other accessories?

Are you using a barlow for them too?

Oh and what brand barlow are you using?

Sorry for the question bombardment haha, just thought I'd get my head all clear on what I need before ordering :))

[mossy glen]

No worries, it's always a pleasure if I can help

[mossy glen]

When targets are not too low its ok
I don't have enough magnification, the atmospheric dispersion is not a real problem

However I always check "rgb align" when stacking in autostakkert

No accessories for DSOs eventough I'll probably try some planetary nebula/orion core with my Barlow

And my Barlow is the explore scientific from bresser, but you can find cheaper and still good enough

[urban fog]

Alright! Might get away without ordering a ADC then

[urban fog]

Will keep that in mind!

[urban fog]

Gotcha, will look into that

Thought of one more quick question, when you capture planetary photos, do you allign the telescope to let the planet slowly pass across the screen, or do you manually try to follow it?

Or be it DSOs for that matter, is that process any different?

[mossy glen]

For both I just align so the object is at one corner of the sensor and wait until it gets out of the frame

[mossy glen]

If you have a pretty small mirror like mine, indeed it's not the more important thing to buy

[urban fog]

Unfortunately I have a bigger one, 254/1250

So might be a problem then?

[urban fog]

Alright!

[mossy glen]

Honestly I don't know

You should ask in the planetary imaging forum

https://discord.com/channels/794642864218439681/1019937457095065731

[urban fog]

Ah thanks, will do that

Thanks again for all the help!

[mossy glen]

https://discord.com/channels/794642864218439681/1019937457095065731

You're welcome

And don't mind asking me more detailed questions about the acquisition if you buy the cam

[urban fog]

Will do!

[mossy glen]

Oh and in what bortle do you live in?

[urban fog]

Bortle 5, but usually drive 20 min to a Bortle 4

[mossy glen]

Good

[urban fog]

Yup! What Bortle are you in?

[mossy glen]

Bortle 4,sometimes 7

[urban fog]

Ah, gotcha

That's nice

Wish I lived closer to a darker site, closest bortle 3 is about 4 hours away

[mossy glen]

Yes me as well😄

In Europe it's really horrful

[urban fog]

Yeah man haha

[mossy glen]

No B1 in the continent

[urban fog]

Yuup, unfortunately not

I've got about a 20 hour ride to get to a bortle 1

Don't have to leave the country though :)

I live in Sweden, so a drive from the bottom to the top takes aaaages haha

[mossy glen]

Oh yes I guess

[red light]

@mossy glen I’d also like to do astrophotography (any type) with my 8” dob, I’ve already got an asi662mc and a 2x Barlow, would I need anything else given I’m also bortle 7?

Also your images are stunning for an untracked dob

[mossy glen]

If you already have the scope and the camera try and see how it goes! Unfortunately there's isn't anything that can really help about your light pollution... (lp filters are not good enough or expansive and too dark for untracked ap)

You shouldn't use the Barlow for DSOs most of the time, only for planetary

And idk if it's a stock Barlow or a better one but if it's stock it's probably gonna do more bad than good (but it costs nothing to try!)

For the capture, subs as long as possible without star trails (you can use the npf rule calculator) and gain around 5/6 of max gain

I don't know how is the amp glow of the 662 mc but youll probably need to take some darks (don't need a ton of them though)

I never do flats (small fov and dust artifacts removed by stacking)

Oh and @urban fog , I just thought about it

The asi 224 Mc may not be the best buy possible

I believe there's a better one for around the same price

Don't remember which one...

[urban fog]

Ah dang, thanks for mentioning it though

Unfortunately already ordered the 224

Hopefully I'll still do okay with it though

If I can get anywhere near your images I'm happy haha!

[red light]

It’s an Apertura 2x Barlow so I think it’ll be pretty good

[red light]

It apparently doesn’t have any amp glow

[mossy glen]

No worries, it will be fine
You just may have find a slightly better one, slightly more expansive

[red light]

How big of a difference in pictures will the 2x Barlow vs 3x Barlow make? I’m ready to get a 3x if it’s going to make a decent difference and if 4x isn’t that useful

[mossy glen]

I hope you'll have fun! And don't mind asking me anything later

[mossy glen]

What is your dob's native focal lenght?

[red light]

1200mm

[mossy glen]

I'll be back in a instant

[urban fog]

I most definitely will! Thanks again for all the help earlier today, can't wait for it to arrive

Just hoping for some clear skies during Christmas

Haven't been too lucky lately haha

[mossy glen]

Good luck! It's been 4 months since there's almost always clouds over me

[mossy glen]

So this will make a sampling almost twice higher than mine

[red light]

Sorry what does sampling mean?

[mossy glen]

Oh maybe it's bad traduction from me lol

I mean the portion of the sky each pixel sees

Smaller pixels and /or higher fl =smaller sampling =better details

I think the 2x Barlow may be a bit shirt but not that much

You're ideal Barlow would be around 2,5x

So I think you should try with the 2x Barlow and see!

I'm sorry I have to go to sleep

[red light]

No problem, thanks for the help!

[thin marten]

Ceres C?

[mossy glen]

Not what I was thinking about but it's a possibility

[urban fog]

[gusty holly]

Tried shooting Orion's core at 4200mm... 339x100ms ~34 seconds total integration

413x250ms

[thin fern]

@stark gorge

[stark gorge]

nice

[meager hare]

Got inspired by @gusty holly, 8" dob, asi462mc, 5 minute color video 100ms exposure, 4 minute luminance 685nm pass 120ms exposure. Stacked in AutoStakkert, processed in gimp.

[meager hare]

Color corrected

[royal badger]

Just got my 178mc

Tried it on a couple of distant objects, looks incredible

Can't wait to use it tonight

Not sure how far I'll be able to get without a barlow

[royal badger]

tried it on jupiter

[royal badger]

Not bad for untracked

[wraith adder]

Green Noise removal in siriL

[royal badger]

Thx

I'm new to this stuff so I have no idea what to do

[royal badger]

Jupiter, 8" dob, ASI178MC

[thin marten]

NO

the core of orion is meant to be like that

[tender dust]

How do you get Jupiter’s moons AND bands? I’ve not managed to see the moons without blowing out Jupiter itself.

[thin marten]

HDR

Take a longer exposure for the moons

[royal badger]

I used to do that with my phone but with my camera they appear in the image right away

[wraith adder]

Dude what???

THe core of orion is not green mate

[thin fern]

Photometric cc and literally everyone who images m42 will disagree with u it is gren

[wraith adder]

am I trippin

No

I'm not

[wraith adder]

It's green because of their bayer pattern, RGGB

Once correct it then it isn't green anymore

[thin fern]

once of correct it ? wdym

[thin marten]

HDR Orion makes it white

because in 99% of images its blown out

[wraith adder]

stroke

[topaz coral]

@thin marten if you hdr it you blow out the moons so you dont get detail on them i keep the same exp for jup and its moons

[topaz coral]

Orion lastnight 50sec of intg

Top processed by dylans_astro on ig

Bottom by astro_dans on ig

[stark gorge]

Nice what specs? You split the stars I’m looking to resolve.

Also you got the bowshock

[topaz coral]

14in dob eqplate+handtracking
Qhy5iii178c@stark gorge

[stark gorge]

very nice rig

and amazing details

[topaz coral]

Ty

[fickle shore]

gah damn

[surreal egret]

ANYONE HAVE A photo of the sombrero galaxy taken with a 8 inch dob

[thin fern]

@stark gorge ?

[stark gorge]

Not yet, but will have one after moon pisses off

[thin fern]

only going down by 20mins each day

[surreal egret]

what about horsehead

[stark gorge]

Not yet

[stark gorge]

I’ve only done M42, M46 NGC253, cobra and mouse galaxy, NGC 3242 and IC418

[royal badger]

Anyone has any advice for manually tracking with a dob?

My mount is skipping a lot and making it impossible to track at high magnifications

[stark gorge]

Get a oily scented candle or dry lubricant. Put that in the bearings

[royal badger]

thx

and also in the azimuth ones?

that's the worst one for me

[mossy glen]

For visual or imaging?

[royal badger]

for visual it's not too bad

imaging wasn't bad either until I got a barlow

[stark gorge]

Yep both.

[royal badger]

would WD-40 work?

[stark gorge]

Gripping the base at the bottom and turning it with both hands prevents stickiness too

No

You want a solid oil/wax

[royal badger]

ah

so something like silicone car wax then?

[stark gorge]

Ehh possibly. It wants to be something that’s oily but also solid.

Give it a test if you want. Spot test it first and make sure you can completely remove it.

[young plank]

Beautiful Saturn.... I have been trying to get a decent image of Saturn for 2 years.... I am starting to think my data is probably ok but my processing just sucks..... what are you using if you don't mind me asking? I could seriously use a couple pointers.

[young plank]

I should be able to get a better image than this....

[stark gorge]

Just looks like it needs sharpening. Did you use registax after stacking?

[young plank]

yeah. i shoot a raw video. pipp/autostackert/registax

[royal badger]

what setup do you have?

[unreal jackal]

Data from my Nikon d7200 at prime focus on a Orion Xt8 using like 0.5s subs at iso 6400. Added a bit of data from my z61 for some of the outer gases but most of the data came from my dob.

Also the z61 data was with a modded canon DSLR so there's more hydrogen that showed up.

[thin marten]

Was that with the DSLR and godsonian?

[ruby hinge]

Do PIPP, autostakkert, and registax all work on Mac?

[topaz coral]

that image looks pretty good what scope are you using

[young plank]

@topaz coral 17.5 Inch dobsonian and a Canon t3i DSLR mounted in Prime focus. No tracking. Raw video file. I position the scope ahead of the planet, start recording and let the planet drift through the field of view. By starting it before the planet is visible in the FOV the telescope has a chance to settle. If I use the digital zoom I get between 10-15 second .mov files. If I use no zoom I get about a minute or 1800 frames. I haven't been able to really determine which gives me a better result because there are just too many variables so if anyone knows which I should be using I would appreciate it. I do zoom in to achieve focus in any case. I use join mode in PIPP to slice the video files and add all the slices together. I sort them by quality and usually keep 80-90% of them to send to either autostakert and registax
OR
astrosurface.
I've just about finished mounting a tracking system on the Dobsonian, But for planetary stuff I've gotten used to the process of doing it manually.
I think there's a couple advantages of doing it that I don't have any vibration from the motors and the other is that having the planet go all the way across the FOV I'm using different parts of the sensor and hopefully getting the best focus in there somewhere.
On a planet like Jupiter I try and get all of the video files within just a few minutes of each other.
The 1st thing I want to do when I get the motors running right is track Jupiter All night long and then make an animation or a time lapse.

[royal badger]

with that scope you'll get a fantastic result

I used to let mine drift but recently after switching to a barlow I've been shooting at slightly lower resolution to get higher fps

also, I usually do about 1-3 minutes of data

[young plank]

@thin marten yes, I expound on the setup above....

[royal badger]

maybe it's the processing that you have an issue with

[young plank]

@royal badger what scope/cam are you using?

[royal badger]

8" dob and ASI178MC

but my scope is literally half as large as yours

[young plank]

Oh it's definitely the processing.... if I had my way I'd collect the data and drop it off at Costco to be "developed" like film.....

[royal badger]

maybe try out ASIStudio

I believe you don't need an ASI camera to stack with it

it's very easy to use and I've gotten great results even with my phone camera

processing in registax and as3 can be a nightmare sometimes

[young plank]

That's how I got this one. I took all the images and calibration frames. My buddy Ed is a genius with pixinsight..... this is what I got back....
I think I had about 1000 lights....

[royal badger]

yeah that image is wonderful

you can probably do planetary quite easily

[royal badger]

this looks more like a raw video to me

[young plank]

I think this was the same data with my processing in Siril....

[royal badger]

yeah processing can be a pain

I often get artifacts

[stark gorge]

new dob pics

[royal badger]

man I don't know how you do this stuff with a manual 8"

is it the uranus-c?

or dark skies?

[stark gorge]

good camera mostly

and dark skies yeah

[royal badger]

ah

I shot from bortle 4 so far

[stark gorge]

im in a 3 so not too diffrent

[royal badger]

but the one time I tried it it was a bit cloudy so it didn't turn out great

[young plank]

@royal badger I'll give you some raw data if you want to try and do something with it....

[royal badger]

yeah sure

I'll see what asistudio does lol

the difference can be huge

[young plank]

The 17.5" makes it pretty easy. I can't wait to see what I can do with something like the Uranus C. I'm ordering one very soon...

[thin marten]

A good quality barlow could help, and a planetary camera

[royal badger]

raw video and stacked in asistudio (shot during different phases but same seeing)

[young plank]

Knowing what you're doing and enjoying doing it makes a huge Difference.

[thin marten]

You would be surprised the difference between a DSLR and planetary camera

[royal badger]

yeah

my only issue with a barlow is how difficult it is to track objects

I might try to loosen my azimuth part at some point since it's a little hard to turn

[young plank]

I like moon shots...

[royal badger]

yeah they are awesome

[thin marten]

You can get some crazy moon shots with the 17.5

[royal badger]

you should try a moon mosaic

[thin marten]

Did you repair the secondary mirror?

[royal badger]

looks like another day without being able to image

[royal badger]

yeah it's probably the processing

for raw data that looks good

better than mine anyway

I can't get the cassini division unless I stack and process

[thin marten]

Saturn looks kinda under exposed?

[young plank]

I'm not going to replace the mirror yet... it's just about as expensive as the Uranus C..... so my plan is to try something I've been wanting to for a long time. I'm going to move the spider farther away from the primary and mount the camera in place of the secondary. The difference in size of the obstruction alone is interesting.... 3 inches vs 6?

[royal badger]

so it'll basically become an astrograph

[young plank]

@thin marten yeah, not my best just an older one on my phone....
I'll be home in a few hours I'll link a couple of decent raw files uf anyone wants to play with them.

[royal badger]

sure

[thin marten]

Phone?? Crazy for a phone

[young plank]

Yeah my Plan was always to transfer the mirror's into a better tube something that doesn't look like a portapotti....
My scope lives in my driveway...
So I designed a tube that extends with a precision ground ballscrew and linear rails.... so I won't have to move the mirror or the camera, just change the distance between the two for focusing. I'm using a Harmonic Drive so it's got zero backlash and neither does the balls crew. It came out of a wafer machine at Intel. With a 700 step stepper motor and gear reduction on the drive and modest micro stepping the number of steps per revolution is astronomical, literally. So pinpoint focus should be attainable.....

@thin marten HA! Stored on my phone, not TAKEN with my phone.....so I can text the images to family and friends who didn't ask for them.

[thin marten]

Ohh ok

[young plank]

@royal badger I have done a couple of them..... I'll post one in a minute if I can find it. All I have is a cracked phone screen..hand me down work phone....

[royal badger]

looks great

[young plank]

That was 11 videos processed with pipp/autostakert/registax then stitched together with Microsoft ICE.

Scope was a Meade ETX-125 EC with my Canon t3i

That's the first one I ever did. I made it into a poster and sent it to my Dad. The people at Kinkos went kind of nuts over it. That was my first real feeling of success. Even though there's a piece actually missing in there. That's why I didn't make it brighter. I like a dark moon anyway.

I gotta start driving here I'll put some raw files up a little later When I get home I gotta go through my Dropbox I've been putting off organizing it for too long

The cool thing about that picture was being able to zoom in. The last one I did was even better and it's a full moon i gotta find it. But you can really zoom in on that 1.

[mossy glen]

Nice, what exposure lenght ?

[ebon zenith]

dobb

[topaz coral]

@young plank what mm fl are you shooting in?

Do you have a planetary cam and a laptop?

The motors shouldnt cause too much vibration I use an eqplate and handtrack and I dont seem to notice vibrations.

[ruby hinge]

Truly

[ebon zenith]

indeed

[wanton kindle]

first jupiter pic with 10" dob

yeah it's pretty bad

any tips?

[topaz coral]

orion from lastnight 2 pan mosiac

[hollow summit]

I'm going to image Mars tonight, anything I need to know?

[mossy glen]

It's pretty bright so you don't need exposures as long as Jupiter

5ms is perfectly fine for me for example

Just got my best iss pass! (quick process)

Pretty neat improvement

[viscid pagoda]

burh literally better than mine

[fickle shore]

https://tenor.com/view/skill-issue-just-a-little-trolling-we-do-a-little-trolling-skill-difference-skill-level-gif-22312836

[thin fern]

that is actually true

[gusty holly]

Set up stellarium to use a foreground of my backyard taken my phone in panorama mode. I did have to edit it a bit to make it seamless but it's really easy to do, and will help a ton with planning shots

[dapper plover]

I was wondering how to get prime focus without a Barlow

[dense night]

complete novice that just got my first look at jupe with my new (used) 8" dob tonight and imo that looks sick

[dapper plover]

Orion with a ZWO asi224mc and a skywatcher 8" untracked dob, around 2 minutes of exposure, 400*0.2 seconds

[dense night]

could you say a bit more about your process? been interested in trying a little astrophotography with my AD8, but not sure where to start!

[dapper plover]

Sure, I connected my ZWO to my dob and my laptop (I used the stock ASI software), aimed at the orion nebula and started taking 0.2s subs, using the auto run feature. Whilst taking subs, I made sure I wasn't touching the telescope so the stars would appear to be somewhat round. I let the nebula drift through the image, paused the auto run, put the nebula back in one of the corners of the image so the nebula wouldn't immediately drift out of view again and started all over again.

[dense night]

awesome! hope to give this a shot myself sometime but i think id probably be better off with a camera specifically for AP rather than just holding my phone up to the eyepiece lol. but maybe i could still get something with that

[marsh fossil]

Untracked AP is an art

[dense night]

yeah so far the most ive done is a few pics of the moon/jupiter and i really love the results but would love to see what i can do with nebulae

[marsh fossil]

You can get pretty far with a manual dob, this is 15mins with my phone and a 5inch tabletop, your 8inch is sure to give you better results and faster

[dense night]

maaaan that looks incredible. bortle?

[marsh fossil]

15mins* sorry

In bortle 5 I think

[dense night]

niiice. i wish i had darker skies closer to me so i could experiment more easily but i guess i could still try in my crappy light polluted skies

[marsh fossil]

This took me like 2 hours total because my phone has a 4s dead time between subs and I was shooting 1s subs

[dense night]

wym dead time?

[marsh fossil]

From what I've seen you can compensate dim skies with more exposure, but the noise will be worse in higher polluted areas

[marsh fossil]

My phone needs 4 seconds to process the previous image, so out of every 1s of exposure I spend 5, meaning 15mins takes me a bit more than an hour to do (and you have to add rests and repositioning time)

[dense night]

oooooh, gotcha

what kind of eyepiece was that orion neb pic through?

[marsh fossil]

A 25mm one, the stock one

[dense night]

nice nice. i need to get an adapter that can fit around my 2" eyepieces lol. i got started with some 20x80 binocs this christmas so i picked up an adapter with only that in mind... didnt think id be bit by the astronomy bug so hard lmao. now i got the 8" dob and im lovin it

[marsh fossil]

A path of no return

[dense night]

lmaooo yea i was already looking at getting a dedicated AP camera just cuz i imagine it would make it a lot easier to just line things up and capture things but... alas, i havent had a laptop in years so im not sure that would work. so itll be just my phone for the foreseeable future lol

[marsh fossil]

I think you can use an ASIAIR to avoid using a laptop, they are controllers for more advanced rigs but I think they can be fitted with an micro-SSD and they take pictures and are controlled via phone

Last time I checked they are inside the 300-400usd price range

[dense night]

ahhhh lmao yea.. my budget is already blown just from buying the dob itself. gonna give it some time to recover, but perhaps someday

[dense night]

just a lil snippet of mars scootin by the moon tonight. had a lot of fog rolling in so the conditions were pretty terrible, but still managed to get this before the clouds completely blocked it from view!

[mossy glen]

My parents are going to offer me a scope when I end highschool (next year)

Im not a 100% sure but I think I'm gonna choose the 10" sw FlexTube with the nexus coma corrector and reducer x0,75

900mm fl at f3.5...

And mounted on an eq platform (up to ~20 sec subs)

I can't wait

[hollow summit]

im building a eq platform and the maths are difficult

[royal badger]

with your current shots at 5" I think you'd be able to compete with jwst if you upgrade

[hollow summit]

agreed, just looking at your images

[mossy glen]

Haha thanks

We'll see how it goes...

[dense night]

hey folks, does anyone have any tips for doing planetary AP with my bare bones untracked 8" dob + smartphone adapter?

ive seen people suggest taking videos and using programs to stack them, but was curious about settings. is highest resolution always the best? framerate? iso/shutter speed? also is there any way to capture both jupiter and its moons at the same time or does that always require compositing? if anyone has any tips id be very grateful!

[royal badger]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/875156953230376971/1071181148484546672/jupiterAstroSurface.png

reprocessed this shot for the 500th time

this time in astrosurface

taken with a manual 8" dob and ASI178MC, no barlow but in extremely good seeing. Only a single one-minute stack, so far it is my favourite shot that I've ever taken

[marsh fossil]

holy shit that's great!

[mossy glen]

Oh that's really nice!

A tiny bit over sharpened imo

[viscid pagoda]

can I have a go with the stack?

[royal badger]

Don't have it anymore unfortunately. I shoot on a 256gb macbook so I have to keep freeing up space.

[mossy glen]

The stack should weight much

It's just the single stacked image

[royal badger]

closest I have is this

I sharpened in the software itself so this is the stack

[dapper plover]

I was wondering what filters are built in to a dlsr camera

[mossy glen]

I just remember I had an argument with some people that I won't mention on this server about dob ap

People can really act stupid when it comes to things they don't know

When it was over the guy that "lead the hate" posted a Pic of m27 and mine was litterally better

It's really sad to see how hateful can people be when people are/act different

[marsh fossil]

[gusty holly]

Pretty surprised to see a such a dim galaxy (mag 13.5) at such short exposures (~30x2sec for each frame)

[mossy glen]

I've redone my 2022 composition, adding my new pics

[marsh fossil]

god damn

[dense night]

far from the most impressive but this is my first attempt at stacking. took a 9 second video and came up with this! honestly very pleased given how this was just with my phone right up to the eyepiece in pretty crummy seeing conditions.

[stuck willow]

First planetary image in awhile

[stuck willow]

betelguse, didnt take darks

[marble vapor]

hey, I want to build an equatorial platform for my 10 inch dobsonian telescope but I can't really find a detailed guide on how to build one. Does anyone know a guide or has anyone built one?

[meager hare]

ask @tender dust he's built his own.

[marble vapor]

Ok thanks

[tender dust]

Heyo!

I keep meaning to do a write up of mine

[royal badger]

could you do AP with one?

[meager hare]

Orion's core a few month ago. Exposures were very short but it was still a lot better than untracked.

I've bought mine btw

And I don't really spend much time aligning it since I mostly only need it for planetary

[marble vapor]

@tender dust So I searched for a guide on how to build a eq platform but most of them only vaguely tell how they have done it. Did you use like a template or something or did you do everything from scratch?

[marble vapor]

Looks awesome. Which camera did you use?

[meager hare]

462mc

8 incher dob

[marble vapor]

Ah nice

[meager hare]

My whole setup is optimized for planetary, you could get a lot better results with a camera thats used for deepsky

[marble vapor]

I maybe going to get a 585mc for my first camera.

[royal badger]

looks wonderful, thx!

[tender dust]

Yes, I can get 6” @ 750mm and probably 10” if I iron out the kinks

[royal badger]

hm

[meager hare]

If you spend a decent amount of time aligning you could get to a few minutes of exposure time depending on your fov. The bigger the sensor the better.

[royal badger]

maybe it'll work with 8" 1200

I'll probably use a focal reducer

[tender dust]

I looked at a lot of plans but eventually designed my own. I still have some pages bookmarked. This thread has a couple of good links https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/315290-10”-equatorial-platform-for-dummies/

[royal badger]

not sure if I can achieve proper focus with one though

[marble vapor]

Perfect, thank you very much.

[tender dust]

One thing is that I don’t rate Vertical North Segments. Reiner Vogel has them on his site but the way he does them will not be accurate enough for AP. The only way to do VNS is to 3D print or CNC them because they should be parabolic or hyperbolic curves.

[marble vapor]

I have a 3d printer so that actually could work.

But I'm not good at modeling so it will probably be hard to find a good model

[tender dust]

Instead of VNS I cut a circle segment and mounted it at an angle. But mine only needs to support a 6” dob, you might need more support for a 10”.

[marble vapor]

Ok I'm going to take a look at that thanks.

[tender dust]

The principle of these mounts is pretty easy. You’re making an earth derotation device, something that spins at an opposite rate to the earth. Imagine a large cylinder. One end points to Polaris, the other near the ground. This cylinder rotates on its axis. Now slice that cylinder parallel to the ground so it creates a flat surface. That’s what your dob will sit on. Think about how you can rotate what’s left of the cylinder and how it will tilt your dob. Now the rest of the problem is working out how to cut away the underside of that cylinder so you can actually physically support it while allowing it to rotate in the same way.

[mossy glen]

What model is it?

[meager hare]

Asterion Ecliptica Light

Some kind of Ukrainian company

Its just about the cheapest way to track with a dob

[mossy glen]

Ah ok

it's on my list

I'm still not sure if I should buy the ecliptica light, pro or TMS platform

[tender dust]

@mossy glen did I see right in the jokes thread that you got the ISS with your H.130P? How did you manage to do that?

[mossy glen]

Yes I did!

I took a better one recently

I just manually tracked it and out of the 20k frames I got a few hundreds lucky ones

[tender dust]

What camera do you have again? 462 wasn’t it?

[mossy glen]

224mc

Almost the same but smaller sensor

[marsh fossil]

that sounds so tedious

[stark gorge]

ISS tracking is easy

[viscid pagoda]

cap

[stark gorge]

Ok C11

I can keep the ISS in frame for a good portion of my tracking

[thin marten]

you have more focal length than the year on the calendar

[mossy glen]

WHAT lmao

How do you do that

[stark gorge]

Dob 👍

[mossy glen]

Well me too lol

Oh I think I know why

My fl is twice shorter but your sensor is 4times bigger and the heritage isn't really smooth

[stark gorge]

Better astrocam + larger dob I think is the main.

Yah

[mossy glen]

Did you add any barlow?

[stark gorge]

Nah

Native 1200mm

[mossy glen]

Oh ok now i understand

Mine was at 2000mm+ the smaller sensor...

[stark gorge]

Yeah I wouldn’t Barlow for the ISS if you are hand tracking. More light with no Barlow

[mossy glen]

My native fl is 650mm

So without the barlow...

But I have nice result (I think), it's just that I have only a few hundreds useful frames out of the 20k total

[stark gorge]

mine are only single frames. i got a total of 1900 frames with maybe 40 good ones.

[mossy glen]

Oh these are really good for single frames

f6 though

I think I've finished my ngc 891!

1 hour of data on 3 nights

[stark gorge]

pretty

[mossy glen]

I'll soon end my "5 galaxies project"
NGC 891 and NGC 2146 are done, I miss ~30min on M81 and 1hour on M82, and idk how much I need on M51

Next project is a mosaic on M42

[stark gorge]

i want to mosaic M42 too.

[mossy glen]

With your dob/cam it's gonna be insane

[marble vapor]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask my question but here it is. I'm currently planning on building my own eq platform for my telescope but I stumbled across a problem. The problem is I don't really know how to calculate the centre of gravity of my telescope. could someone help?

[meager hare]

Yall know any good planetary nebulae worth shooting rn?

[mossy glen]

What's your focal lenght and pixel size?

And what hemisphere

[meager hare]

1200mm 2.9um, northern

f/6

I can get some decent 2 sec exposures with the eq platform

I was going to go for the owl but I’m wondering if there are ones more interesting

My balcony is south btw

[stark gorge]

What’s your platform look like/what do you have? I have the same spec setup and have been meaning to make one. 2s subs would be so op for me.

[mossy glen]

Owl is pretty dim and not very interesting

Imo

Ngc 2392 is very nice

What I got at 650mm with 3.75 pixels

It's very bright too

Idk if you have access to ngc 6543 but it's nice too, maybe you could get the dimmer expensions with 2sec subs

Also ngc 2440 may be nice

[meager hare]

Nice its very well placed for me

I’ll give the eskimo a go

[meager hare]

Asterion ecliptica light

Although If you have the tools to make I would go the diy route

Since asterion makes models in intervals of 45, 50 and 55

And I got lucky because my city is at 54.7 N

You also gotta have a real compass and know how to set your declination so your compass points true north

[meager hare]

This is what the setup looks like. I’m shooting Venus at the moment

[mossy glen]

And 2" subs only?

They announce 30" at 1200mm

[meager hare]

Yeah but my balcony has metal in it so I have to eyeball north

Like my compass goes haywire when I try to put it next to the platform on the ground

Still I probably couldn’t do planetary without it

Makes everything so much easier

But I’ve been wondering. There’s a 10” at my family’s summer house thats in bortle 2/3. I go there every summer and do visual. The summer house dob weighs about 42 kilos, but my eq mount is rated for 30. It would be a bummer to break the platform but imagine a 10” in bortle 2 with a well aligned eq platform.

I could probably get some killer images with that setup

[meager hare]

And my sensor is very very small

I would imagine if I could perfectly align north, I could maybe get 30” with an aps-c sensor

[mossy glen]

Haha that must be great

Next year I should have a 10 inch f3.8 on an eq platform

In b4

[meager hare]

Do you think a 30kg rated platform could hold a 42kg dob?

[mossy glen]

I don't know for sure but I don't think it'll damage it

Worse that can happen is less accurate tracking I belive

[meager hare]

Might put some strain on the motor. The whole thing is built pretty well though.

Most of the weight is held on those two rollers

Idk

Actually gonna try ztf with the Nikon and the tiny heritage since it can focus dslrs

[mossy glen]

Good luck!

[high hamlet]

Cat’s Eye, Spirograph, Blue Snowball, Ghost of Jupiter, Ring

[meager hare]

Getting some decent 10 sec subs. Platform is very good at 650mm

[meager hare]

Holy shit I can see the ring in live view

Eskimo is so bright

[meager hare]

@mossy glen how do you stack your PNs? AutoStakkert or programs for deepsky?

[high hamlet]

I’ve used Autostakkert but astrosurface is better at registering stars

[marsh fossil]

heritage my beloved

[meager hare]

I guess it isnt bad for a heritage on an eq plat

[marsh fossil]

you have a plat?

[meager hare]

yeah eq platform

I do planetary with an 8" on the plat but I needed way less focal length for ztf so I tried the heritage

[marsh fossil]

can you send me a pic of the plat?

[meager hare]

This is with the 8” on top

[marsh fossil]

that's so nice

i envy you

how much was the plat?

[meager hare]

It was around 280 euro

They aren’t that expensive

[marsh fossil]

oh so they're cheaper than an eq

maybe i'll get that instead of an eq for my herritage

[meager hare]

Yeah its probably the cheapest way to get tracking for a dob

[meager hare]

The heritage is a light scope though I would get a proper ep mount for that

Platforms are generally for scopes that are too heavy for eq mounts

The tracking isn’t really that good for imaging anyway, but its enough to keep a planet in frame which makes things much easier.

[marsh fossil]

fair enough

and how does that compare to an already motorized dob?

[meager hare]

If I had the money I would have gotten a goto dob

[marsh fossil]

[meager hare]

I only play around with deepsky, but I’m serious with planetary and a goto dob works better for my purposes

But goto is way too much to justify purchasing for me.

I guess the ultimate thing would be a goto dob on an eq platform

bcs then you get equatorial tracking for deepsky imaging and go-to so you can find everything easily

[marsh fossil]

wouldn't the goto overcompensate?

[meager hare]

There are probably different modes.

idk

[meager hare]

@mossy glen which stacking method do you use for PNs in astrosurface?

[marsh fossil]

Finished the shroud!!

[meager hare]

nice

[unreal jackal]

How heavy are those first scopes

[marsh fossil]

Which ones?

[vestal olive]

Is that platform available on chile?

[meager hare]

Idk I'm not from there

[vestal olive]

I rlly want one of those

But i can't find stock anywhere

[uneven ravine]

Which is it exactly??? Very curious about it

[meager hare]

Asterion Ecliptica Light

[uneven ravine]

That’s amazing! Up to 10”, so my Skywatcher 250p should do fine

Not €280, but still relatively cheap

The ‘Pro’ is not that much more expensive

[mossy glen]

@meager hare how heavy is your scope?

[meager hare]

Is it a flex tube?

[meager hare]

My 8" is about 20-25 kg or so

[mossy glen]

Thanks! Have you tried Sharcap polar alignement tool? It looks interesting

Also do you see any decrese in tracking quality when the platform is at the extreme positions?

[meager hare]

Yeah I've seen a video one how you can drift align a platform but I don't really do much deepsky if at all so I haven't tried it

[meager hare]

wdym?

[meager hare]

If you 250p is one of those that extend you should get the ecliptica pro

Flextubes weigh more

[mossy glen]

Yeah FlexTube is above 30kg without the accessories

[mossy glen]

Nvm

[meager hare]

wind can be a problem sometimes, I shoot from a balcony.

Just sayin tho, if you do planetary and you want a small roi for the higher fps, you gotta nudge the scope a little with your finger throughout capture

[uneven ravine]

No a normal one

[meager hare]

Oh then the light version should be fine

[uneven ravine]

But does it track well?

I read some variable reviews on it

[mossy glen]

Where do you live @uneven ravine ?

There are some artisanal platforms you can buy for similar prices

They probably will be better

[meager hare]

The best choice is to make your own

[uneven ravine]

The Netherlands. So Europe 🙂

I don’t mind making one, but I don’t know if I can do that

[uneven ravine]

Alright!

[mossy glen]

Tms platforms look very nice

He lives in Netherlands I believe

I'm gonna order one as soon as they are available

[uneven ravine]

I’ll look into those!

Hungary though

[frozen flint]

Uh I have a dob can I be here too

[frozen flint]

How’d you make that? What kinda material and stuff like that? I’ve been thinking of making one too but Idrk where to start

The premade ones are quite expensive

[uneven ravine]

Picked up this beauty yesterday 🙂 Comes with some nice accessories like a Baader Hyperion 8-24mm

[marsh fossil]

Idk how you call it in English, I think it's called "foamy" it's like a soft foam that usually qualifies as school supply. Then to hold it closed and in place with the telescope I used Velcro and some silicon glue

Be very careful if it doesn't close properly, don't put your hand anywhere near the primary, my finger just slipped and now I have this blue hand grease spot on the mirror and don't know how to clean it

[tranquil cove]

Hey everyone! I have Sky-Watcher Classic 150p dobsonian and i took some pretty good photos(planets, orion nebulae, moon...) with my Galaxy S9 smartphone, then a realized my girlfriend has a Nikon D3100 DSLR, so i was expecting to take much better images, but now im having some issues with it. I was reading a lot about it, tried almost every settings, but the photos of my smartphone are three times better than the Nikon ones. Is the camera too old for this hobby, or i am the one, who is doing something wrong? Maybe i was just expecting too much.

[frozen flint]

Thanks! Gonna look into that!

[mossy glen]

Recent smartphones have really good sensors

Some even do stacking

[thin marten]

you didnt do anything wrong. DSLR cameras aren't good for planetary

especially the nikon D3100

i have that same camera

and a similar scope

the problem is that the video is lower resolution than the native resolution

only 1920x1080

so its downscaled and compressed

you could take individual shots, but not fast enough to stack and get a good image

i have had luck using the D3100 for lunar imaging.

[stark gorge]

Get a webcam if you want cheap planetary imaging

[tranquil cove]

Have you tried any deepsky object with this setup?

[thin marten]

I have with my 5" scope

It's better than a phone

But I advise against it

Doing dso untracked with a Dobsonian and any DSLR will quickly kill the camera

El em si(LMC) for example took 36,000 shots for a single target using a planetary camera. If he had used a DSLR thats 1/3 of that camera's shutter life spent on 1 target.

[high hamlet]

@meager hare how’s the Asterion Ecliptica platform for deepsky? Have you experimented with how long of exposures you can get away with?

I saw you posted an Eskimo Neb pic and it looks really nice

[meager hare]

Yeah I’m not really sure of the max I could get. The problem is I image on a balcony and the balcony has metal in it. Because of that I can’t use my compass to align north so I always have to eyeball alignment. I am going to my summer house during the coming summer where I have a 10 inch that I can get out on the field and property align the platform, I will let you know when I try that.

[high hamlet]

Oh wow impressive stuff, do you find yourself re adjusting the frame while imaging at all?

[meager hare]

Yeah I gotta do it every couple of minutes, I’m at f/6 tho with a 1/2.8” inch sensor so my fov is very small. But I bet if I could get my setup out on the field and do a proper alignment with my compass I could get some nice subs.

The website advertises that you can get 30 sec subs at 1200mm

So don’t kn

I might be going to my summer house in a few weeks for the weekend so if it’s clear I’ll try with the big dob on the field.

[high hamlet]

Nice

I’m seriously considering getting one of those platforms

[meager hare]

They are are pretty decent for planetary too, couldn't do planetary without the platform, but you do have to ever so slightly nudge the scope so the planet stays in your small roi to get the max fps

Then again thats with my rough alignment, you could get much better tracking if you set yours up in a field with no metal around that would interfere with the compass

[uneven ravine]

Me to! In contact with the TMS makers already

[mossy glen]

Also there's a tool in firecapture that makes your roi follow the planet

You can do that manually in Sharcap

Really useful

[mossy glen]

Nice!

Idk if I already said it but I'm gonna buy one from them

[meager hare]

But you still get the high fps of a small roi?

[mossy glen]

I think so yes

I'm not sure, I've never tested it because it's too hard untracked

But I see no reason why it wouldn't work

[meager hare]

Ill try it next time I have a chance

[mossy glen]

Do you have access to polaris from your balcony?

[meager hare]

nope

Its a south facing balcony

good for planetary

[mossy glen]

Oh ok

[meager hare]

I know that it would be possible for me to align north by pointing to polaris

[mossy glen]

You could try sharcap's polar alignement tool, even if you don't go as much in the details as you'll want with DSOs it's still better

[mossy glen]

More than that, there's a really easy, quick and quite accurate way to polar align with polaris

[meager hare]

Yeah saw a video about that, I will probably do that when I bring the platform to my summer house.

I'm actually really looking forward to that. 10 inch with and eq plat at bortle 2/3, with a super sensitive planetary cam.

I think I can get some very nice pictures

[mossy glen]

I hope everything will work as planned!

It would be great for you

[meager hare]

Yeah in the video there was a similar method, like you do an exposure in sharpcap and you adjust the platform acording to the drift graph

[uneven ravine]

Not that I know of. That’s great. When are you buying one?

[mossy glen]

As soon as they are available!

[dense night]

first attempt at stacking a dso - 75x 1" exposures, untracked. definitely far from the most impressive and i really have no idea what im doing with processing the stacked result, but i am still decently pleased! lots and lots to learn..

[dense night]

and cropping the mosaic out:

[topaz token]

I have the ssame one

[gilded tundra]

what's the focal length and aperature of your dob?

[dense night]

1200mm and 203mm. i just attached my phone to the 30mm eyepiece that came with my apertura ad8.

will try again once the clouds decide to leave! also plan on trying to capture calibration frames since that's something i didn't do with these!

[gilded tundra]

OOHH thank you very much

im planning on getting a 150mm 1200mm dob and i was wondering what would orion nebula would look like

[dense night]

nice! i've heard that 8" (~200mm) is the sweet spot for many. big enough to really collect a lot of light but not so big it's unweildy.

would highly suggest checking out FB marketplace/craigslist/etc for deals on used scopes. i got my current dob through FB and if you're careful you can find some incredible deals. mine had been looked after very well and even came with a few nice tweaks added by the previous owner - and all for a couple hundred cheaper than it would have been to buy new.

as for what the orion nebula looks like - i feel like that pic i posted is sorta better and sorta worse. with your eye you get more definition but it appears more muted, color-wise. extremely impressive imo, but just something to be aware of! i actually got the chance to check out the same nebula through a 36" dob at a star party recently and it was absolutely incredible. so much detail and definition, but still has only a slight green-blue tint and mostly appears grey to me.

[gilded tundra]

Hmm ill see and do what i can, unfortunately from where i live there isnt much lads who sell used dobs and it isnt good deals aswell or sometimes even scams, but ill see my options thanks!

[dense night]

depends on what you consider worth it! i ended up driving 4 hours away to pick up mine. added like $50 worth of gas and 8 hours in the car lol but it was worth it for saving a couple hundred on the scope!

but im also a noob when it comes to all this stuff so definitely look at what other more experienced folks are saying too!

[gilded tundra]

They told me the same thing

Look for a used dob

With a good deal

Its tricky in where i live

Thx btw

[gusty holly]

Snowy but clear

[high hamlet]

Beautiful

[mossy glen]

I just got some data on m57, ngc 6543 and m 16

[stark gorge]

i got some dob data last night too. gotta process it

[mossy glen]

Nice, what targets?

[stark gorge]

omega centauri, centaurus a, gacrux, jewel box, mimosa and alpha centauri

[mossy glen]

Wow great

[mossy glen]

@stark gorge I did a few tests with siril's stacking parameters and i found a few interesting things

So normalization improves the snr by a bit (quick normalization is faster and almost as good)
Sigma clipping can be quite destructive and worsen things instead of improving so choose a high enough sigma value (you can now generate a rejection map to see)
Finally weighted fwmh is really interesting: 100% frames with it gives a slightly better fwmh than 75% no weight with a lot better snr

Idk how it works in astrosruface but it may be useful for you (and everyone else here of course...)

[stark gorge]

Cool

I’ll maybe try it out

SiriL takes heaps of space lol

[mossy glen]

I have some of Cat eye's faint ring

But its reallllly faint

[unreal jackal]

I know people here have the Uranus C cam so I have a quick question: will the Uranus C thread right on to my m48 threaded field flattber or is will it require an adapter?

[stark gorge]

It’s M42 so nah you need an adapter.

@unreal jackal

[unreal jackal]

Ight thx.

[high hamlet]

there’s a Galaxy here guys trust

[mossy glen]

Ngc 891?

[high hamlet]

Yup

[mossy glen]

Oh yes this one is really faint

I could barely see it in my live view

Had to stretch A LOT

[marsh fossil]

Reprocessed my mid Feb Carina neb. I'm quite proud of it

[high hamlet]

Awesome shot

[marsh fossil]

Ty, I was really lucky with this data

[high hamlet]

Cigar tonight

And a super cursed m78

[wraith adder]

Nice

[mossy glen]

Tms platforms are in production so I'll be tracked soon

[frozen flint]

Don’t platforms like that like long AF to produce

Btw got a link to those platforms? Sounds interesting @mossy glen

[mossy glen]

Uh

I hope not

[mossy glen]

https://tms-astro.webnode.hu/eq-platform/

They're probably the best "cheap" platforms in Europe

Also he's designing a photographic platform that may (I'm not sure) include autoguiding

It's price will be around 900€ but I'll buy it in one year or 2

[frozen flint]

Seems interesting

Though I wonder how close results with a platform like that will be to images with an actual eq mount

Especially for that photographic platform

[vestal olive]

Save for s coms corrector

[mossy glen]

Well if there's indeed guiding I think it will be very close

We'll see how is the guiding accuracy (if there's some) when they come out

And even if it performs worse than a German mount I think the ease of use, price and stability/load capacity makes it really interesting for rather big telescopes

[frozen flint]

If it does perform the same as a German mount then yes it would be a very good alternative to an actual mount especially for very big scopes

Because yeah having to buy a mount for a 12” or bigger is gonna cost ya a shitton of money

I hope there comes some information about those platforms sometime soon

[mossy glen]

Btw I think the first model will be up to 12" telescopes

A 12" mount for 900€... That's pretty cool

[frozen flint]

Would it be able to hold a 12” goto as well thou

[unreal jackal]

A lil snapshot using my S10+ in pro mode through my Orion XT8 with 10mm Sirius plossl eyepiece.

1s exposure at iso 800 (I think)

[high hamlet]

Pillars of Creation just now

Quickly brightening sky so I stopped after like 90s worth

[high hamlet]

Tried getting the Crab just now

[serene ferry]

My first Deep sky image with my 16 Dobson. It's 150 125ms frames.

And this is my dobson with a self build Rockerbox.

[high hamlet]

Awesome dob

[vestal olive]

bro's a complete engieneer 💀

[serene ferry]

Thx bro, actually i am a student now but my dad helped me a lot building it.

[mossy glen]

Cool! Do you plan on adding some tracking?

An eq platform would be nice with this monster

[serene ferry]

Yes already in my mind but first I need to recoated /replace the secondary and maybe recoated the primary

[serene ferry]

Maybe also build a own eq mount in 4 years for graduation at my school

Ore put on the eq8 of my Astronomy Club.

[mossy glen]

An eq platform would be nice with this monster

[mossy glen]

Oh yes sure

I don't know what's your budget but if you have the money, one of tpp's platforms would be great

You're in america right?

[serene ferry]

No Europe, Austria

[serene ferry]

Depends how much money it is

[mossy glen]

Oh so you might want tms ones instead

There's geoptica too

Tms makes a platform for dob's up to 20", it costs a bit over 500€

And he's working on a photographic platform that will cost about twice

[serene ferry]

Is it with tracking or just the platform?

[mossy glen]

Tracking? Or do you mean guiding?

[serene ferry]

No just a motor not like manual

[mossy glen]

It comes with everything you need, including motors, battery, compass...

https://tms-astro.webnode.hu/eq-platform-20/

[serene ferry]

Ok maybe worth a look, but i think i could build one my self much cheaper.

[mossy glen]

I'll soon buy the small model, I can share my experience with it

[serene ferry]

Ok nice 👍

Because for tracking i would 3d print a giant worm gear wich goes around the Rockerbox

[mossy glen]

Yes it will be cheaper but not necessarily same quality, it really depends on your diy skills

[mossy glen]

Oh 3d printing

Interesting

[serene ferry]

Because 540 very much.

I think i would only need like 200€ for steel wood and screws etc

[mossy glen]

Yep sure

More expansive models can support guiding too, which is really interesting

[serene ferry]

And i don't really understand how the eq platform you mentioned applys the motion

[serene ferry]

The websites say 20s wich is already much better then 100ms

[mossy glen]

I talked to him about this and it's 20s with a 5 or 6 inch dob at ~500mm fl, something around that
But having 2s subs for example and not having to reframe all the time is certainly already a huge improvement

The need for longer exposures really depends on your camera

[serene ferry]

Yes

[mossy glen]

Btw congrats for red nerd! (I don't know when it happened but I only notice it now)

[serene ferry]

I am interested when you get yours how it applies the motion, because i don't know wich sytsem would work universaly with all different rockerbox designs

[serene ferry]

Thx, when i posted that i am doing lucky imaging on M42 for the Bat.

[mossy glen]

I don't see how this platform is different from other eq platforms but sure I'll share my experience with it!
It's in production rn, I'll buy it as soon as it's avaliable

[serene ferry]

Ok i am really interested, because i already have problems reentering at 1800mm and for planetary want t use at least a 2x Barlow

[serene ferry]

I like how you thought i am American because of my bad English XD

[frozen flint]

@mossy glen I was thinking about the eq platform again and in hindsight I might actually not go for one, I thought I might get an eq8r at some point and mount the 12” flextube ota onto that thing somehow. Not that it really matters rn because it will most likely happen in a few years at least but I think the eq8r or just a strong mount in general might be a better bang for your buck than an eq platform

[serene ferry]

On long Therme with other telescopes yes, but there is a big price difference

[mossy glen]

Your probably right, though it really depends on the performances of the photographic eq platform, we'll when it comes out...

Also tpp's platforms are used by quite a lot of people and it's amazing

Guiding and support HUGE dobs with really long subs

Wait a minute

[mossy glen]

Wrong name lol

http://www.equatorialplatforms.com/pricing.shtml this ones

They are expansive but 4 min subs with a 16 inch... Yeah

[frozen flint]

Okay okay

That’s really good tho

Yeah maybe we’ll see

[inner stone]

hello

[inner stone]

no way is this a tracker for Dobs?

[mossy glen]

Yep

I'll order one soon btw

Also you can build it yourself

[inner stone]

do they provide instructions on how to build one?

[mossy glen]

You can find some pretty easily on internet

If you have some tools and enough diy skills you can build one for ~200€

It's not as good as a classic German mount though

[mossy glen]

Tms platforms should be finished next weekend