Deep Sky Astrophotography (Gear Discussion)

[jrista]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Once you get below around -12°F to -15°F, the mechanical and some electronic things definitely start having some trouble. I remember when I was imaging the moon all those years ago that the shutter sounded as though it was struggling. Shutter speeds are pretty slow, though, you usually have second long to many minute long exposures with solar system and deep sky imaging. With slower shutter speeds, shutter performance isn't nearly as important as in high speed photography.

Long term, I don't plan on staying with a DSLR for my astro work. I'm probably going to be moving to an SBIG STx-8300M, not sure whether it will be the STT or STF line. It may be another brand, QHY makes some great imagers, Atik makes some good ones that are usually cheaper than the competition (i.e. it usually costs about $10k for a true 36x24mm FF CCD sensor imager, Atik sells one for about $6000). Astro CCD imagers are specifically built for operation in the extreme cold. Most have a dual-stage TE cooler, and the temp deltas range from -40 to -80 degrees Celsius from ambient. During winter you usually leave the cooler off, or turn it on low. During summer you crank it up. The general idea is to keep the sensor temperature to somewhere between -10° to -20°C.

Dedicated astro imagers also support all the astro imaging stuff. They are monochrome, so generally have higher spatial resolution than DSLRs while still having larger, more sensitive pixels. They often directly support, or even have built in, off-axis guiding (OAG) sensors. They support filter wheels, so you can pop in LRGB and Ha, SII, and OIII and opaque filters, allowing you to program and completely automate extensive multi-spectral imaging sessions.

For a complete astro CCD package from SBIG, for example, with the imager, the filter wheel, OAG, and filters, it usually costs about $5000. So I'll be sticking with my DSLR for at least the next year. ;P

 

[CarlTN]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Once you get below around -12°F to -15°F, the mechanical and some electronic things definitely start having some trouble. I remember when I was imaging the moon all those years ago that the shutter sounded as though it was struggling. Shutter speeds are pretty slow, though, you usually have second long to many minute long exposures with solar system and deep sky imaging. With slower shutter speeds, shutter performance isn't nearly as important as in high speed photography.

Long term, I don't plan on staying with a DSLR for my astro work. I'm probably going to be moving to an SBIG STx-8300M, not sure whether it will be the STT or STF line. It may be another brand, QHY makes some great imagers, Atik makes some good ones that are usually cheaper than the competition (i.e. it usually costs about $10k for a true 36x24mm FF CCD sensor imager, Atik sells one for about $6000). Astro CCD imagers are specifically built for operation in the extreme cold. Most have a dual-stage TE cooler, and the temp deltas range from -40 to -80 degrees Celsius from ambient. During winter you usually leave the cooler off, or turn it on low. During summer you crank it up. The general idea is to keep the sensor temperature to somewhere between -10° to -20°C.

Dedicated astro imagers also support all the astro imaging stuff. They are monochrome, so generally have higher spatial resolution than DSLRs while still having larger, more sensitive pixels. They often directly support, or even have built in, off-axis guiding (OAG) sensors. They support filter wheels, so you can pop in LRGB and Ha, SII, and OIII and opaque filters, allowing you to program and completely automate extensive multi-spectral imaging sessions.

For a complete astro CCD package from SBIG, for example, with the imager, the filter wheel, OAG, and filters, it usually costs about $5000. So I'll be sticking with my DSLR for at least the next year. ;P

I don't blame you at all, there. Ever see any unusual objects when you're out? I find that I get at least one satellite most times I do night imaging. (I realize in a narrower FOV such as at 600mm on a crop sensor, you won't get as many, obviously). One I did about a week ago, with the 135 f/2 on my 6D, pointed north with the horizon in the bottom...only a 30 second exposure...captured two satellites, and I forget how many jets (it was a Friday night, usually loads of air traffic on Fridays). I could only see one or two of the jets with the naked eye. I know you're fond of capturing meteor showers...but just wondered if you've seen anything more strange than that?

I wish I could have captured some of the bright meteors, but there's no forewarning. The one that I heard its sonic boom last year, would have been nice to attempt to capture. But you can never know about those big ones I guess.

I would think there are other interesting military or otherworldly sky phenomena you could see out in the desert southwest...that's probably not something the heavily invested astro imaging people you converse with on those forums, will discuss often though...lest they be mocked or something! Oh wait, nobody ever mocks anyone on forums, do they?

 

[Rienzphotoz]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Jrista...simply outstanding!

After reading through your posts I have to say that I'm impressed by your knowledge, and thankful for the time you've taken to "write a short book" on the subject in this thread! ;D

Jon, that is magnificent! Have you considered posting some tutorials on astro photography? I would love to learn how you make those images, they are just stellar.

Thanks, guys! For all your kind words.

I'm happy to write some tutorials. I have an area set up on my blog at jonrista.com for that. I'd love to see more people get into astrophotography. I've been limited myself to just the moon and larger solar system objects, and maybe some of the larger nebula like Orion, until I got myself a good tracking mount. It's a complex form of photography, but if you like a challenge and like all the gadgetry and math and tinkering and experimenting that goes into astrophotography, you'll love it!

I'd like to get a little bit more experience under my belt before I do write any tutorials...some things I'm still learning and refining my knowledge of.

You are most welcome, your work deserves all the praise that it gets. I am no professional photographer but I do conduct lots of free workshops for many colleagues my office and also at my kids school ... although I am not an expert, I feel I learn more as I teach, the little that I know, to others. I think many CR members would agree that if you did start tutorials (as and when you get time) from whatever that you know now (which I think it is a lot), on Astrophotography, there will be lots people who will learn/benefit from those tutorials. FYI, I did read the "Extreme Digital Upscaling" page on your website and loved it, must confess that I'll have to revisit that page a few times to absorb ... so having seen your writing/explaining style, I think your tutorials would be a great benefit to many like me.

 

[Jack Douglas]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Jon,

Thanks ever so much. I now know enough to start seriously learning.

Jack

 

[jrista]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Jrista...simply outstanding!

After reading through your posts I have to say that I'm impressed by your knowledge, and thankful for the time you've taken to "write a short book" on the subject in this thread! ;D

Jon, that is magnificent! Have you considered posting some tutorials on astro photography? I would love to learn how you make those images, they are just stellar.

Thanks, guys! For all your kind words.

I'm happy to write some tutorials. I have an area set up on my blog at jonrista.com for that. I'd love to see more people get into astrophotography. I've been limited myself to just the moon and larger solar system objects, and maybe some of the larger nebula like Orion, until I got myself a good tracking mount. It's a complex form of photography, but if you like a challenge and like all the gadgetry and math and tinkering and experimenting that goes into astrophotography, you'll love it!

I'd like to get a little bit more experience under my belt before I do write any tutorials...some things I'm still learning and refining my knowledge of.

You are most welcome, your work deserves all the praise that it gets. I am no professional photographer but I do conduct lots of free workshops for many colleagues my office and also at my kids school ... although I am not an expert, I feel I learn more as I teach, the little that I know, to others. I think many CR members would agree that if you did start tutorials (as and when you get time) from whatever that you know now (which I think it is a lot), on Astrophotography, there will be lots people who will learn/benefit from those tutorials. FYI, I did read the "Extreme Digital Upscaling" page on your website and loved it, must confess that I'll have to revisit that page a few times to absorb ... so having seen your writing/explaining style, I think your tutorials would be a great benefit to many like me.

Thanks, Rienz, I really appreciate that. I have a bit of a backlog of articles I've wanted to write on my site for a while. I'll have to start working on them, especially now that I know there may be some people who are actually interested in reading.

 

[TheJock]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

I know there's a whole world of learning on this subject, but if I wanted to try my hand at those lovely circular star trails one evening here in Dubai, would the following be acceptable.

1. Go to Atlantis on the Palm as it's 7klm out to sea and should provide less City streetlight "noise"
2. Camera (manual mode facing towards the north star) on tripod set at 100ISO, f8, AWB, evaluative metering and bulb (using the 18mm end of the 18-55STM kit lens from my 70D)
3. fire shot for 3 minutes

Would this get me one of those nice shots??
Thanks for any input guys, I just fancy giving this a go.

 

[jrista]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Jock,

Few things. First, going 7km off shore from Dubai probably won't do anything to improve your light pollution situation. You'll be over the ocean, which is going to reflect a good percentage of the light from Dubai, which is a pretty concentrated center of LP. You'll probably still be in a red zone, or maybe orange-red transition zone. You would probably need to head more like 50-100km out of town to get darker skies, regardless of whether it's into the desert or near the shore.

You should be using a manual camera mode (bulb will work), thus the metering mode is meaningless, since your choosing the exposure. You also probably want to shoot wide open, as stopping down will make stars flare, which will affect the quality of your star trails.

You will also need to expose for FAR more than just 3 minutes in total. You will want to expose for as long as you can to start getting trails, however even over three minutes, stars are only going to start looking like very, very short little streaks. To get full arcs, you will need to take exposures for hours. To get semi-circular arcs, you will need to take exposures for the entire night. Also remember that you need to point towards a pole to get arcs. If you point near the celestial equator, you get strait streaks that start to bend more and more as to reach the corners of the frame.

I would say set ISO to 100 or 200, f/5.6, AWB probably doesn't matter, bulb mode. You will want a shutter release that allows you to configure exposure length, delay, and count, so you can just set it up to take 100-300 shots that are anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes each, and just let it rip all night long. After about an hour of exposures, you'll have enough frames to create very short star trails. After a few hours, you should have some recognizable arcs, and you should be able to tell fairly well where the pole (whichever pole your pointing at) is. After 6-8 hours, you should have very long, circular trails that clearly show the rotational shape and speed of the stars in the sky, and the location of the celestial pole should be very clear.

 

[Rienzphotoz]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Jock,

Few things. First, going 7km off shore from Dubai probably won't do anything to improve your light pollution situation. You'll be over the ocean, which is going to reflect a good percentage of the light from Dubai, which is a pretty concentrated center of LP. You'll probably still be in a red zone, or maybe orange-red transition zone. You would probably need to head more like 50-100km out of town to get darker skies, regardless of whether it's into the desert or near the shore.

You should be using a manual camera mode (bulb will work), thus the metering mode is meaningless, since your choosing the exposure. You also probably want to shoot wide open, as stopping down will make stars flare, which will affect the quality of your star trails.

You will also need to expose for FAR more than just 3 minutes in total. You will want to expose for as long as you can to start getting trails, however even over three minutes, stars are only going to start looking like very, very short little streaks. To get full arcs, you will need to take exposures for hours. To get semi-circular arcs, you will need to take exposures for the entire night. Also remember that you need to point towards a pole to get arcs. If you point near the celestial equator, you get strait streaks that start to bend more and more as to reach the corners of the frame.

I would say set ISO to 100 or 200, f/5.6, AWB probably doesn't matter, bulb mode. You will want a shutter release that allows you to configure exposure length, delay, and count, so you can just set it up to take 100-300 shots that are anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes each, and just let it rip all night long. After about an hour of exposures, you'll have enough frames to create very short star trails. After a few hours, you should have some recognizable arcs, and you should be able to tell fairly well where the pole (whichever pole your pointing at) is. After 6-8 hours, you should have very long, circular trails that clearly show the rotational shape and speed of the stars in the sky, and the location of the celestial pole should be very clear.

That is some very good advise Jon ... now I need to get my lazy ass to the desert one of these nights (before it gets hot as hell) and practice.

 

[TheJock]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Jock,

Few things. First, going 7km off shore from Dubai probably won't do anything to improve your light pollution situation. You'll be over the ocean, which is going to reflect a good percentage of the light from Dubai, which is a pretty concentrated center of LP. You'll probably still be in a red zone, or maybe orange-red transition zone. You would probably need to head more like 50-100km out of town to get darker skies, regardless of whether it's into the desert or near the shore.

You should be using a manual camera mode (bulb will work), thus the metering mode is meaningless, since your choosing the exposure. You also probably want to shoot wide open, as stopping down will make stars flare, which will affect the quality of your star trails.

You will also need to expose for FAR more than just 3 minutes in total. You will want to expose for as long as you can to start getting trails, however even over three minutes, stars are only going to start looking like very, very short little streaks. To get full arcs, you will need to take exposures for hours. To get semi-circular arcs, you will need to take exposures for the entire night. Also remember that you need to point towards a pole to get arcs. If you point near the celestial equator, you get strait streaks that start to bend more and more as to reach the corners of the frame.

I would say set ISO to 100 or 200, f/5.6, AWB probably doesn't matter, bulb mode. You will want a shutter release that allows you to configure exposure length, delay, and count, so you can just set it up to take 100-300 shots that are anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes each, and just let it rip all night long. After about an hour of exposures, you'll have enough frames to create very short star trails. After a few hours, you should have some recognizable arcs, and you should be able to tell fairly well where the pole (whichever pole your pointing at) is. After 6-8 hours, you should have very long, circular trails that clearly show the rotational shape and speed of the stars in the sky, and the location of the celestial pole should be very clear.

This is great advice, thank you for taking the time to reply in such detail, I now have a firm basis on which to explore!! I'll need to find a dark bit of desert too by the sounds of it!! 8)

 

[jrista]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

I reworked my Rosette Nebula image with a new software package called PixInsight. A VASTLY superior product for astrophotography, it gives me so much more control over everything, and allows me to tweak specific layers and scales of detail independently without messing with my color balance. This version of Rosette is much more color accurate than the nearly monochrome-red version that I posted before...and it has a bit more color contrast, so certain details should be easier to see than before:

 

[CarlTN]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

I reworked my Rosette Nebula image with a new software package called PixInsight. A VASTLY superior product for astrophotography, it gives me so much more control over everything, and allows me to tweak specific layers and scales of detail independently without messing with my color balance. This version of Rosette is much more color accurate than the nearly monochrome-red version that I posted before...and it has a bit more color contrast, so certain details should be easier to see than before:

Interesting, and I do like the color detail of the nebula, but overall it just looks softer than I'd like.

Btw, here are some interesting links, or at least they were interesting to me (not overly scientific of course).

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/far-out-icy-world-widens-our-solar-systems-frontier-n62286

http://www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/Dark-Energy-Camera-DECam

 

[Northstar]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

I reworked my Rosette Nebula image with a new software package called PixInsight. A VASTLY superior product for astrophotography, it gives me so much more control over everything, and allows me to tweak specific layers and scales of detail independently without messing with my color balance. This version of Rosette is much more color accurate than the nearly monochrome-red version that I posted before...and it has a bit more color contrast, so certain details should be easier to see than before:

simply fantastic! it feels like i'm looking at it through an ultra powerful telescope.

 

[jrista]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Interesting, and I do like the color detail of the nebula, but overall it just looks softer than I'd like.

It's a nebula...they generally tend to be "soft", what with being a bunch of whispy gas and all. ;P As for the stars, I purposely "decrispified" them and made them rounder/softer because otherwise they completely dominated the image, making it difficult to actually see the nebula. Part of the reason my stars end up too bright and crisp is the centroids are getting just a touch clipped during my exposures (necessary, to expose the nebula properly), and during processing the centroids get enlarged. So the star reduction routine is really just restoring the proper look to the stars anyway.

simply fantastic! it feels like i'm looking at it through an ultra powerful telescope.

Thanks! Rosette is actually a fairly large nebula. It's larger than the Orion Nebula, which you can sort of see with your naked eye, too large even to fully fit in my 600mm FoV. The entire region is probably a bit bigger than your thumb if you held it out about a foot and a half from your face over the sky...just to give you an idea of how large this region of space actually is. Sadly, Rosette is so dim that unless you had a really garganguan telescope with multi-foot sized aperture, you probably could never observe it visually.

 

[CarlTN]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Interesting, and I do like the color detail of the nebula, but overall it just looks softer than I'd like.

It's a nebula...they generally tend to be "soft", what with being a bunch of whispy gas and all. ;P As for the stars, I purposely "decrispified" them and made them rounder/softer because otherwise they completely dominated the image, making it difficult to actually see the nebula. Part of the reason my stars end up too bright and crisp is the centroids are getting just a touch clipped during my exposures (necessary, to expose the nebula properly), and during processing the centroids get enlarged. So the star reduction routine is really just restoring the proper look to the stars anyway.

simply fantastic! it feels like i'm looking at it through an ultra powerful telescope.

Thanks! Rosette is actually a fairly large nebula. It's larger than the Orion Nebula, which you can sort of see with your naked eye, too large even to fully fit in my 600mm FoV. The entire region is probably a bit bigger than your thumb if you held it out about a foot and a half from your face over the sky...just to give you an idea of how large this region of space actually is. Sadly, Rosette is so dim that unless you had a really garganguan telescope with multi-foot sized aperture, you probably could never observe it visually.

Actually the stars in this image appear soft...as does really the entire image. Just calling it like I see it.

 

[jrista]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Interesting, and I do like the color detail of the nebula, but overall it just looks softer than I'd like.

It's a nebula...they generally tend to be "soft", what with being a bunch of whispy gas and all. ;P As for the stars, I purposely "decrispified" them and made them rounder/softer because otherwise they completely dominated the image, making it difficult to actually see the nebula. Part of the reason my stars end up too bright and crisp is the centroids are getting just a touch clipped during my exposures (necessary, to expose the nebula properly), and during processing the centroids get enlarged. So the star reduction routine is really just restoring the proper look to the stars anyway.

simply fantastic! it feels like i'm looking at it through an ultra powerful telescope.

Thanks! Rosette is actually a fairly large nebula. It's larger than the Orion Nebula, which you can sort of see with your naked eye, too large even to fully fit in my 600mm FoV. The entire region is probably a bit bigger than your thumb if you held it out about a foot and a half from your face over the sky...just to give you an idea of how large this region of space actually is. Sadly, Rosette is so dim that unless you had a really garganguan telescope with multi-foot sized aperture, you probably could never observe it visually.

Actually the stars in this image appear soft...as does really the entire image. Just calling it like I see it.

Indeed, soft exactly as they are supposed to be. No one wants HARD stars in their astrophotos...they are overbearing and dominating, and distract from the rest of the image, from the more interesting aspects of the image.

 

[Rienzphotoz]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Hi Jon,
If I go with a budget of $1000 (along with my current gear below), what telescope and/or accessories would I need to start off Astrophotography?
Thanks

 

[jrista]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Hi Reinz. When it comes to astrophotography, the mount is pretty much the most important thing. Most astrophotographers who have even moderately diverse goals (i.e. just galaxies and nebula) are going to need to use multiple telescopes with different focal lengths, or at least one telescope with barlows and focal reduces, to get a field of view wide enough or narrow enough to frame their subjects properly. A good mount can last you for many, many years, where as telescopes (or, for that matter, camera lenses) usually come and go until you hit the real high end (i.e. 20" RCOS or PlaneWave telescopes).

For $1000, you can get yourself an entry-level mount. Something like the Orion Sirius, which is the little sibling of the Orion Atlas. The Sirius has a capacity of 30lb, which for visual is generally fine, but that pretty much equates to 15lb for astrography (the Sirius doesn't have the most sturdy tripod, so you REALLY have to stick to the 50% capacity limit for imaging work). That is practically nothing in terms of capacity, but if you just stick to your DSLR and lenses, it'll at least get you started.

The Orion Atlas is a much more capable mount, it's capacity is 40lb, however imagers have been putting on 60-70% of the capacity and getting excellent results. Visual observers have put over 50lb on this mount when using sturdier tripods or full blown piers. The Orion Atlas is $1499, however it's fairly frequently on sale for $1399, and at times has been as low as $1200. Given how important the mount is, especially if you think you might want to move up from your lenses to a real telescope at some point in the future (and entry cost for telescopes can actually be pretty low...for example, the Astro-Tech AT6RC, a 6" Ritchey-Chretien telescope, is only $399 and it's designed specifically as an astrograph.) If you can muster it, I highly recommend getting the Orion Atlas mount, even though it's more than your $1000 budget. It will give you LOTS of room to grow in the future if you find that you like astrophotography (it could even be "the" mount you use for the next ten or twenty years....many people used the predecessor to the Atlas/EQ6 class mounts for about that long.)

From your existing equipment, the 5DIII hands down. Don't use a Nikon for astrophotography...their nickname in our community is "Star Eaters", since they clip to the black point, rather than using a bias offset (one of the many ways Nikon "cheats" their way towards cleaner shadows .) Canon's use of a bias offset is the reason there is a lot of banding in their shadows, which isn't good for regular photography. However since in astrophotography we use bias frames to remove the bias from the signal, Canon DSLRs are actually a lot better...they preserve more stars and deep nebula detail. So definitely use the 5D III.

You have a good range of lenses as well for "wide field" work. The 40/2.8 @ f/4 and 50/1.4 @ f/3.5 are both excellent for "whole constellation" images (for example, you could image the entirety of the core Orion constellation, as well as most of his club and kill: http://bit.ly/1lF7hSp) The 100mm Macro @ f/4 is a great lens for imaging entire small constellations, or for imaging parts of larger constellations (for example, it would neatly encompass the core of Orion, but not his club or kill: http://bit.ly/1jIciah) The 70-200 at 200mm @ f/4 is great for narrower regions, small constellations (for example, 200mm would encompass Orion's Belt and Sword, and the small reflection nebula M78: http://bit.ly/1mOwpGH) The 100-400 at 400mm @ f/8, while a bit slower and probably requiring more equipment (such as a guider, which itself would probably require a number of additional accessories to properly mount next to your camera), is good for imaging nebula themselves (for example, it would encompass just Orion's sword, which includes Orion Nebula (M42/M43) and Running Man Nebula: http://bit.ly/1ltmAeo; or it would encompass just Orion's Belt, which includes Horse Head and Flame Nebulas, IC434, and a number of small reflection nebula: http://bit.ly/1dSzPFJ).

If you go with just the mount, you will be able to attach your DSLR and a lens. The 100-400mm is probably not quite going to work, as you would need pretty steady tracking to image at f/8...that's pretty slow. Were talking 1" (" means arcsecond, ' means arcminute, 60 arc minutes per degree) tracking, which is not easy to achieve. So your probably going to be stuck at 200mm and less until you decide to upgrade. Thing is, that is really the best place to start anyway, as at those focal lengths, tracking error is really forgiving, so you should be able to track for several minutes, maybe as much as five minutes, without appreciable star elongation or trailing, allowing deep exposures of wide regions of the sky (which, during the two times of year when the milky way is up, are PACKED with IMMENSE swaths of nebula).

Unguided imaging is basically the domain if the wide and ultra wide field. If you want to see the kinds of images you can get at those scales, you should check out AstroBin. Plenty of good examples there (better than anything I've done as of yet.)

If you get an Orion Sirius mount, which is $1000, then that will suffice for DSLR with 200mm and less. You'll need to get a better mount than that if you want to do more. There are a lot of small APO refractors on the market, ranging in price from around $500 to as high as $10,000 or more, however most of the smaller, lighter ones that would work on a Sirius fall into the same general focal range that you already have with your Canon lenses (200mm to ~800mm). The logical upgrade for you would be to eventually move to a Cassegrain type OTA (Optical Telescope Assembly). Cassegrains include your standard SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope), the Celestron EdgeHD (an Aplantic SCT, designed specifically to support a wide and flat field, right into the corners, for imaging), and the Ritchey-Chretien cassegrains (primarily those from Astro-Tech.) Meade also makes some Aplantic SCTs like Celestrons, however they tend to be more expensive, despite not really offering anything more, and there is one special benefit to the Celestron EdgeHD OTAs: They support Hyperstar, a special conversion mod that allows you to do ultra wide field imaging (~200-400mm) at f/2 (REALLY FAST...you could get really deeply exposed images in a couple minutes at that aperture.)

Generally speaking, the best upgrade from DSLR+Camera Lens imaging is to move to something like the Celestron EdgeHD 8" SCT, or the Astro-Tech AT8RC 8" Ritchey-Chretein. Both are reasonably priced, although Astro-Tech's prices are really hard to beat for the quality, optical design, and overall capabilities for imaging. For either of these, you would really want at leas the Orion Atlas (or the equivalent from Celestron, the CGEM or CGEM DX, however the Atlas is really the better option due to the rich community, EQMOD, and the option for installing belt mods to improve tracking and guiding accuracy down the road.)

My recommendation is pick up the Orion Atlas EQ-G, and use your 5D III and 50mm, 100mm, and 70-200mm lenses. You should be able to just bolt your camera to the included Vixen dovetail that comes with the mount, and not bother with purchasing any additional accessories initially. You will need to learn how to polar align the mount (the Atlas comes with a built-in polar finder scope, which once properly centered (the most annoying thing you will ever do, but thankfully you only have to do it once! ), is highly accurate and easy), and you will need to either learn how to use the hand controller to "Align GOTOs", or purchase a $40 EQDIR cable, use EQMOD, and completely computerize your process (HIGHLY recommended, you can buy BackyardEOS ($50) to greatly simplify your imaging sequences, and gain a lot of powerful features, such as highly precise live view focusing on your laptop or a windows 8 tablet, to get the best results.)

 

[Click]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

I reworked my Rosette Nebula image with a new software package called PixInsight. A VASTLY superior product for astrophotography, it gives me so much more control over everything, and allows me to tweak specific layers and scales of detail independently without messing with my color balance. This version of Rosette is much more color accurate than the nearly monochrome-red version that I posted before...and it has a bit more color contrast, so certain details should be easier to see than before:

WOW Amazing shot 8) 8) 8)

 

[Rienzphotoz]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

Hi Reinz. When it comes to astrophotography, the mount is pretty much the most important thing. Most astrophotographers who have even moderately diverse goals (i.e. just galaxies and nebula) are going to need to use multiple telescopes with different focal lengths, or at least one telescope with barlows and focal reduces, to get a field of view wide enough or narrow enough to frame their subjects properly. A good mount can last you for many, many years, where as telescopes (or, for that matter, camera lenses) usually come and go until you hit the real high end (i.e. 20" RCOS or PlaneWave telescopes).

For $1000, you can get yourself an entry-level mount. Something like the Orion Sirius, which is the little sibling of the Orion Atlas. The Sirius has a capacity of 30lb, which for visual is generally fine, but that pretty much equates to 15lb for astrography (the Sirius doesn't have the most sturdy tripod, so you REALLY have to stick to the 50% capacity limit for imaging work). That is practically nothing in terms of capacity, but if you just stick to your DSLR and lenses, it'll at least get you started.

The Orion Atlas is a much more capable mount, it's capacity is 40lb, however imagers have been putting on 60-70% of the capacity and getting excellent results. Visual observers have put over 50lb on this mount when using sturdier tripods or full blown piers. The Orion Atlas is $1499, however it's fairly frequently on sale for $1399, and at times has been as low as $1200. Given how important the mount is, especially if you think you might want to move up from your lenses to a real telescope at some point in the future (and entry cost for telescopes can actually be pretty low...for example, the Astro-Tech AT6RC, a 6" Ritchey-Chretien telescope, is only $399 and it's designed specifically as an astrograph.) If you can muster it, I highly recommend getting the Orion Atlas mount, even though it's more than your $1000 budget. It will give you LOTS of room to grow in the future if you find that you like astrophotography (it could even be "the" mount you use for the next ten or twenty years....many people used the predecessor to the Atlas/EQ6 class mounts for about that long.)

From your existing equipment, the 5DIII hands down. Don't use a Nikon for astrophotography...their nickname in our community is "Star Eaters", since they clip to the black point, rather than using a bias offset (one of the many ways Nikon "cheats" their way towards cleaner shadows .) Canon's use of a bias offset is the reason there is a lot of banding in their shadows, which isn't good for regular photography. However since in astrophotography we use bias frames to remove the bias from the signal, Canon DSLRs are actually a lot better...they preserve more stars and deep nebula detail. So definitely use the 5D III.

You have a good range of lenses as well for "wide field" work. The 40/2.8 @ f/4 and 50/1.4 @ f/3.5 are both excellent for "whole constellation" images (for example, you could image the entirety of the core Orion constellation, as well as most of his club and kill: http://bit.ly/1lF7hSp) The 100mm Macro @ f/4 is a great lens for imaging entire small constellations, or for imaging parts of larger constellations (for example, it would neatly encompass the core of Orion, but not his club or kill: http://bit.ly/1jIciah) The 70-200 at 200mm @ f/4 is great for narrower regions, small constellations (for example, 200mm would encompass Orion's Belt and Sword, and the small reflection nebula M78: http://bit.ly/1mOwpGH) The 100-400 at 400mm @ f/8, while a bit slower and probably requiring more equipment (such as a guider, which itself would probably require a number of additional accessories to properly mount next to your camera), is good for imaging nebula themselves (for example, it would encompass just Orion's sword, which includes Orion Nebula (M42/M43) and Running Man Nebula: http://bit.ly/1ltmAeo; or it would encompass just Orion's Belt, which includes Horse Head and Flame Nebulas, IC434, and a number of small reflection nebula: http://bit.ly/1dSzPFJ).

If you go with just the mount, you will be able to attach your DSLR and a lens. The 100-400mm is probably not quite going to work, as you would need pretty steady tracking to image at f/8...that's pretty slow. Were talking 1" (" means arcsecond, ' means arcminute, 60 arc minutes per degree) tracking, which is not easy to achieve. So your probably going to be stuck at 200mm and less until you decide to upgrade. Thing is, that is really the best place to start anyway, as at those focal lengths, tracking error is really forgiving, so you should be able to track for several minutes, maybe as much as five minutes, without appreciable star elongation or trailing, allowing deep exposures of wide regions of the sky (which, during the two times of year when the milky way is up, are PACKED with IMMENSE swaths of nebula).

Unguided imaging is basically the domain if the wide and ultra wide field. If you want to see the kinds of images you can get at those scales, you should check out AstroBin. Plenty of good examples there (better than anything I've done as of yet.)

If you get an Orion Sirius mount, which is $1000, then that will suffice for DSLR with 200mm and less. You'll need to get a better mount than that if you want to do more. There are a lot of small APO refractors on the market, ranging in price from around $500 to as high as $10,000 or more, however most of the smaller, lighter ones that would work on a Sirius fall into the same general focal range that you already have with your Canon lenses (200mm to ~800mm). The logical upgrade for you would be to eventually move to a Cassegrain type OTA (Optical Telescope Assembly). Cassegrains include your standard SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope), the Celestron EdgeHD (an Aplantic SCT, designed specifically to support a wide and flat field, right into the corners, for imaging), and the Ritchey-Chretien cassegrains (primarily those from Astro-Tech.) Meade also makes some Aplantic SCTs like Celestrons, however they tend to be more expensive, despite not really offering anything more, and there is one special benefit to the Celestron EdgeHD OTAs: They support Hyperstar, a special conversion mod that allows you to do ultra wide field imaging (~200-400mm) at f/2 (REALLY FAST...you could get really deeply exposed images in a couple minutes at that aperture.)

Generally speaking, the best upgrade from DSLR+Camera Lens imaging is to move to something like the Celestron EdgeHD 8" SCT, or the Astro-Tech AT8RC 8" Ritchey-Chretein. Both are reasonably priced, although Astro-Tech's prices are really hard to beat for the quality, optical design, and overall capabilities for imaging. For either of these, you would really want at leas the Orion Atlas (or the equivalent from Celestron, the CGEM or CGEM DX, however the Atlas is really the better option due to the rich community, EQMOD, and the option for installing belt mods to improve tracking and guiding accuracy down the road.)

My recommendation is pick up the Orion Atlas EQ-G, and use your 5D III and 50mm, 100mm, and 70-200mm lenses. You should be able to just bolt your camera to the included Vixen dovetail that comes with the mount, and not bother with purchasing any additional accessories initially. You will need to learn how to polar align the mount (the Atlas comes with a built-in polar finder scope, which once properly centered (the most annoying thing you will ever do, but thankfully you only have to do it once! ), is highly accurate and easy), and you will need to either learn how to use the hand controller to "Align GOTOs", or purchase a $40 EQDIR cable, use EQMOD, and completely computerize your process (HIGHLY recommended, you can buy BackyardEOS ($50) to greatly simplify your imaging sequences, and gain a lot of powerful features, such as highly precise live view focusing on your laptop or a windows 8 tablet, to get the best results.)

WOW, that's a lot of information ... I've copy pasted it on to my smartphone and will have to go over it at least a few times to get my heard around it ... I think it looks like I'll have to raise my budget to around $2000 ... thanks for the awesome info.

 

[jrista]

Re: Deep Sky Astrophotography

WOW, that's a lot of information ... I've copy pasted it on to my smartphone and will have to go over it at least a few times to get my heard around it ... I think it looks like I'll have to raise my budget to around $2000 ... thanks for the awesome info.

Yeah, I would say $2000 will get you much farther. I spent just a little over $2000, on the Orion Atlas, a guiding setup, and a few accessories from ADM to help me mount it all.

I HIGHLY recommend you look into BackyardEOS. You can do astrophotography with nothing but a cable release and bulb mode, but BYEOS makes things much, much easier. Especially focusing, it uses a tethered live view mode to show you, on your laptop screen (or a Windows 8 tablet, if you have that) what the camera sees through the lens. You can center on bright stars, and actually control the lens' focus (even if it's switched to manual) with BYEOS itself, and it offers some VERY fine control. You'll never be able to focus properly with just the viewfinder or just live view on the back of the camera, and getting focus right is pretty critical.

BYEOS also lets you set up sequences, choose aperture, ISO, and exposure duration, mirror lockup, etc. You can set up multiple sequences in a single "program" to take multiple exposures of different durations as well, so you can create HDR images for scenes that might require it (say Orion Nebula or Andromeda Galaxy). It also lets you program sequences to take dark, bias, and flat frames (which you should research, as they are pretty essential). Taking darks, biases, and flats can be a real pain when you do it with a cable release, because you have to keep reconfiguring the exposure for different things. With BYEOS, you can just program HUGE sequences of darks, for example, spanning exposure times from 30 seconds to 600 seconds, and just let it run (which literally takes hours.)

Anyway, with $2000 you'll definitely have enough to get started.