Astrophotography-first attempts

Wailin

Got my equipment over a week ago and was itching to try it all out. Had a go last night from my back garden with loads of light pollution and a near full moon. Breezy night and difficulty with polar alignment certainly didnt help but was glad to have a go at all. Results not great but for first attempt I never expected masterpieces! Can only improve from here on in, especially with stacking and processing, not easy at all. Had star trails at 20 sec(!) so alignment was definitely well off but strong gusts of wind could have caused it too. Really need to read up on accurate polar alignment. Lookng forward to improving and heading to dark sites for better pics. Anyway, here's a few shots of M42, Pleides, Double cluster and the moon!

Myrddin

Gorgeous shoots man :cool: Whats your setup/gear?

Capri86

Brilliant. Yeah I would like to know your set up. I'm not sure how you do tracking yet

ZeRoY

Good pictures! Its a great hobby but can be so annoying in Ireland with the weather!!

murrayp4

Lovely M42

Wailin

Thanks guys, am happy enough with them but the amount of processing that goes into them to get them half decent is ridiculous. I suppose in a dark site away from light pollution it would be alot less.....joys of living in Dublin! I'm using a skywatcher 80ED mounted on an NEQ6 Pro and camera is a canon 1100D. The moon shot was at 1/125, ISO 100 and the rest were around 15sec exposures, roughly 6-12 subs with some darks and bias stacked with DSS. I am only starting to figure out the darks, bias, stacking etc,, its fairly tricky to a newbie although I have the book 'Making every photon count' which is a help.

Totally agree Zeroy, the weather is very disheartening, especially when you spend lots of money on equipment thats weather dependent. Its a good hobby though, hopefully things will pick up.

brav

How did you process the images after stacking them?

Looks like some detail was clipped for example in M42 picture, I think you could get more detail out of it but maybe a bit too much noise.

Just to add: they are better pictures than I have been able to manage!

Wailin

brav wrote: »

How did you process the images after stacking them?

Looks like some detail was clipped for example in M42 picture, I think you could get more detail out of it but maybe a bit too much noise.

Just to add: they are better pictures than I have been able to manage!

Thanks Brav, I don't know how i processed them to be honest, just messed around with levels a bit to get rid of the light pollution. I have never used photoshop before so haven't a clue, any tips would be great! Whats clipping and how can you tell it has occurred?

I had another quick attempt tonight, got better alignment and had a go again at M45 but only got 9 shots before the rain came in, didnt get any darks etc, stacked and processed and it looks better than my previous attempt that had darks and bias. Lots to learn, but enjoying it so far.

brav

http://www.myastronomyjournal.com/DSLR-AIP/C002-M31-Walkthrough/

That is a tutorial for M31 but a lot of the same principles apply. I thought the histogram in your M42 image looked like it was clipping on the left like you brought in the black point a bit too much.
In that video above I would look at the first part more, with curves and levels, the rest can come later and he uses a lot of actions which you can download for PS but the levels and curves you can do right now.