#Orion Nebula (Phone AP)

113 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

coarse flame
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Orion Nebula

  • Scope: Celestron Nexstar 6SE
  • Shot with: Google Pixel 6 Pro
  • 200 5s flats
  • 30 5s darks
    Stacked and Processed by the legend: @wary forge
Spring_M422.png
acoustic bone
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might be the BEST orion image ive ever seen taken on phone

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im just confused why u included the integration time for you calibration frames, and not your lights!

coarse flame
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so i was told to do a 5s exposure image but i didnt know the difference between lights, flats, and darks

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so i was just like "yeah flats seems about right"

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then someone told me i was supposed to do lights, so

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ill reshoot with lights after i shoot andromeda tmr

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its kinda crazy because i started doing this hobby on dec 25th with a hobby killer and built my way up to a celestron nexstar 6se

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im extremely happy that hobby killer didnt ruin the experience for me

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ill stop ranting now though, thanks a lot, it means a lot to be told that its one of the best you've seen with a phone

weak sleet
acoustic bone
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usually u would write something like:
50*120s lights
calibrated with darks, flats, dark flats,

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or something like that

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because people dont really care what your calibration settings are

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they are generally more interested in the total integration time (total time your sensor is open)

acoustic bone
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because they are the actual target you are shooting

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after lights, i would prioritise flats --> darks --> biases

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flats are taken using an evenly lit display/light panel, such as a laptop. its important to use a diffuser (piece of paper will work) between your telescope and the light panel, or the pixels could cause diffraction artifacts, which will ruin your image. the importance of flats are to remove vignetting and dust

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darks are taken with a lens cap on, using the same exposure time and ISO as your lights. what darks do is basically "cancel out" the noise imposed by your camera sensor, which can be especially high in longer exposures

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if you ever see little bright coloured pixels spotted around your image, those are "hot pixels" or "dead pixels", and are basically singular pixels which dont work in your camera (at least not well)

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what darks do is basically subtract them out, which improves your image

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finally, you can take "bias frames" which are there to improve your flats.

radiant gazelle
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Flats need bias to calibrate correctly. Darks just calibrate out fixed pattern noise, like hot pixels or amp glow. They actually increase noise.

acoustic bone
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when you take an image, your camera has something called an "offset value" which essentially raises the black level of your image with a pedestal of noise

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the noise often favours some lines of your sensor, so by taking those they prevent your flats causing line artifacts to the lights

acoustic bone
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also stuff like amp glow can be mitigated

radiant gazelle
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Walking noise is the weirdest stuff. What everyone calls walking noise isn’t actually walking noise

wary forge
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phone what

acoustic bone
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obviously not some noise that decided to take an evening walk

radiant gazelle
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Everyone says it’s from not dithering, which isn’t entirely true. Dithering in one direction will make it significantly worse than not dithering at all

acoustic bone
radiant gazelle
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Yeah

acoustic bone
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ofc if you dither in one direction, it kind of makes guiding useless

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surely nobody dithers in one direction🤯

radiant gazelle
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Not dithering at all but guiding is better than dithering in one axis

radiant gazelle
acoustic bone
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(i dont have a guidestuff for it)

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but if you do enough separate nights, then the changing nights will be a dithering effect

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so your separate sets of walking noise will average out

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(guys pls dont learn from me this is horrendous practice)

coarse flame
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good morning, this got a lot of messages while i was asleep

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shooting andromeda later tonight (if weather plays nice), will definitely share results afterwards

acoustic bone
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haha yes LMC correcting my knowledge of calibration frames

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anyways read the top if you're interested, u should learn the different types of image frames

coarse flame
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do you think you could sum it up? i dont wanna get lost in the back and forth banter and think one thing is better than the other when its not lol

acoustic bone
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ok

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lights: your target images

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flats: take with light panel, corrects for dust and vignetting (same aperture and iso as lights)

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darks: taken with lens cap, same shutter speed and iso as lights, corrects for certain types of dynamic noise and FPN

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bias: taken with lens cap, very short shutter speed, but same iso as flats, corrects the "bias signal" in your flats, so they minimse inducing noise into lights during division

coarse flame
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is there any source i could use that says how many lights, flats, darks, and biases to take for certain objects

acoustic bone
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just google it

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but basically

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flats, biases, darks: take 20-30 each

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lights: as many as possiblr

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basically with lights, the more you take, the more of an image u can make

coarse flame
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gotcha

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yeah one downside of phone is having to upload all the images to google drive

acoustic bone
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theres also something called "integration time" which is basically the total amount of "shutter open" time your lights add up to

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so lets say each light is 60 seconds, and you take 30

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then your total integration time is 0.5h

coarse flame
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oh so just all the time added up, gotcha

acoustic bone
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as a beginner, i would recommend aiming for at least 1-2 hours of integration time

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except for targets like orion's core

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because they are very bright

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its easy to minimise the noise using less integration time

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i did a similar image, only 8 minutes of integration time

coarse flame
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so, andromeda is in the western sky, and its supposed to vanish beneath my house within like 2 hours so i wont have much time to image it, how much integration time do you think i should do for that

coarse flame
acoustic bone
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haha thanks, its just demonstrating how the brighter it is, less integration time required

coarse flame
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yeah gotcha

acoustic bone
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but theres almost no other target i would do such a short time on

coarse flame
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i dont believe i can do more than like 15 second long exposures on one object since im using an alt-az

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or else the photo will probably come out blurry due to the object moving slightly

acoustic bone
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oh thats ok

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just need to take more "subs"

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which means more individual lights

coarse flame
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ah ok yeah

acoustic bone
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thats an advantage in resolution, your images will be sharper

coarse flame
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well i plan on shooting andromeda for like 40 mins then shooting orion again

acoustic bone
coarse flame
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i mean like 40 mins of lights

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idk what exposure time is best for andromeda with an alt-az

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but 400 10 sec exposures should give me about an hour of integration time with lights

acoustic bone
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yeah sounds good

acoustic bone
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so not used to shooting andromeda

coarse flame
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im central

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like very central lol

acoustic bone
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i tried once in china but meh

7CC9CAFE-4C8B-4EAD-8A65-333137BAEED4.jpg
coarse flame
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its not bad imo

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its a little noisy tho

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gotta clear my google drive since i have a 15 gb cap on it

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super excited to see what i can get

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lemme recap
x400 10s exp lights
x30 10s exp darks
x30 10s exp flats
x30 10s exp biases
all at ISO 1600

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for andromeda

acoustic bone
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what's the red

coarse flame
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its the laser detect auto focus on my phone

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theres no way to disable it so i have to cover it with tape

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problem is i only have blue masking tape so it still leaks into the sensor a bit

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ive reduced it the best i can, i really gotta get some electrical tape

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reduced to this, best i could get it to

image.png
sand flicker
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@coarse flame nice work, welcome to nerd

coarse flame
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yooo thank you

wary forge