Deep Sky Astrophotography

Maximilian said:
Don Haines said:
and on a less serious note...... Nasa releases the first detailed images of Pluto.....
*lol* ;D ;D ;D
da-da-da, da-dada, da-dada (trying to intonate "The Imperial March") ;)

Funny how that old tech, well just looks old after seeing jrista's shots from here on earth. I hope the next ones have a 600 F4L IS II on board.
 
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Here are some more (including a further enhanced version of the Lagoon one):

M20 & M8 (Lagoon and Trifid):
EuVYxzJ.jpg


Milky Way (bit of interference from light clouds):
0XQl0rv.jpg


Snake Nebula and region:
66utD35.jpg


Blue Horsehead:
dkZMKUw.jpg


Eagle and Omega (Swan) Nebulas (M16 and M17):
hTXwGjw.jpg


Also reprocessed my old Andromeda data, whole new (and much more realistic) look:

1vmJuNl.jpg


A guy on Cloudy Nights shared his Trifid data, which turned out to be pretty good:

bi2Qp3e.jpg


And my latest, Veil Nebula, which is still a WIP...only got half the data I wanted, plus there were light high clouds moving earlier in the night that left brown muck throughout a lot of the field:

sRgH8kl.jpg
 
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jrista said:
Here are some more (including a further enhanced version of the Lagoon one):

M20 & M8 (Lagoon and Trifid):

Milky Way (bit of interference from light clouds):

Snake Nebula and region:

Blue Horsehead:

Eagle and Omega (Swan) Nebulas (M16 and M17):

Also reprocessed my old Andromeda data, whole new (and much more realistic) look:

A guy on Cloudy Nights shared his Trifid data, which turned out to be pretty good:

And my latest, Veil Nebula, which is still a WIP...only got half the data I wanted, plus there were light high clouds moving earlier in the night that left brown muck throughout a lot of the field:

WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, and WOW

These are inspirational!!!!!

Fantastic!!!!!!!
 
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Don Haines said:
jrista said:
Here are some more (including a further enhanced version of the Lagoon one):

M20 & M8 (Lagoon and Trifid):

Milky Way (bit of interference from light clouds):

Snake Nebula and region:

Blue Horsehead:

Eagle and Omega (Swan) Nebulas (M16 and M17):

Also reprocessed my old Andromeda data, whole new (and much more realistic) look:

A guy on Cloudy Nights shared his Trifid data, which turned out to be pretty good:

And my latest, Veil Nebula, which is still a WIP...only got half the data I wanted, plus there were light high clouds moving earlier in the night that left brown muck throughout a lot of the field:

WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, and WOW

These are inspirational!!!!!

Fantastic!!!!!!!

+1 stunning
 
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meywd said:
Don Haines said:
jrista said:
Here are some more (including a further enhanced version of the Lagoon one):

M20 & M8 (Lagoon and Trifid):

Milky Way (bit of interference from light clouds):

Snake Nebula and region:

Blue Horsehead:

Eagle and Omega (Swan) Nebulas (M16 and M17):

Also reprocessed my old Andromeda data, whole new (and much more realistic) look:

A guy on Cloudy Nights shared his Trifid data, which turned out to be pretty good:

And my latest, Veil Nebula, which is still a WIP...only got half the data I wanted, plus there were light high clouds moving earlier in the night that left brown muck throughout a lot of the field:

WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, and WOW

These are inspirational!!!!!

Fantastic!!!!!!!

+1 stunning
Absolutely fantastic!
 
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Thanks, Guys! :) Hopefully that won't be the last this year...weather has been pretty wild, never know when the night might clear. I've even missed a couple because I thought it was going to be cloudy, and early when I poked my head out it was...only to have it clear later on after I'd mostly gone to bed (and at that point, I can't go out and set up...not on weekdays.)
 
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jrista said:
While you can barely fit a 600/4L and 5D III on the Star Adventurer, it is not recommended. The rule of thumb for imaging is to use only half the rated capacity. More than that, and your tracking accuracy will suffer, which will affect your stars. You shouldn't put more than 5-6 lb on the Star Adventurer for best results. You might get away with 7-8lb, but with longer lenses your star profiles will suffer (you'll have bloated stars, and you'll lose the benefits of the increased resolution of a large lens like the 600mm f/4).


I'm sorry to be asking this... so is the Star Adventurar an extremely well designed barn door tracker? I mean, you can't track the stars in exposures longer than 2-5 minutes @ 200mm or something like 30 seconds on 600mm, correct?
 
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Alejandro said:
jrista said:
While you can barely fit a 600/4L and 5D III on the Star Adventurer, it is not recommended. The rule of thumb for imaging is to use only half the rated capacity. More than that, and your tracking accuracy will suffer, which will affect your stars. You shouldn't put more than 5-6 lb on the Star Adventurer for best results. You might get away with 7-8lb, but with longer lenses your star profiles will suffer (you'll have bloated stars, and you'll lose the benefits of the increased resolution of a large lens like the 600mm f/4).


I'm sorry to be asking this... so is the Star Adventurar an extremely well designed barn door tracker? I mean, you can't track the stars in exposures longer than 2-5 minutes @ 200mm or something like 30 seconds on 600mm, correct?

The Star Adventurer with the Equatorial Wedge tracks right ascension in sidereal time, so it is definitely not just a glorified barn door. It would be a full equatorial, albeit without any powered DEC tracking (so it will only track in RA, and DEC pointing is manual.)

With an appropriate payload, and good polar alignment, you should be able to track for minutes. With wider field lenses, including a 200mm, you could probably track for 10 minutes, but you really wouldn't need to (the wide lenses suck in a lot of light per pixel.)
 
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Here's another one. This time, the Gamma Cygni region:

2zwbY6y.jpg


Very complex region, lots of emission nebula (both hydrogen and oxygen), lots of reflection nebula, lots of dark nebula. Star clusters. This one was a tough process. Little bit less than three hours integration time.
 
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Thank, Click! Thanks, V8, truly.

I'll keep em comin if I can get em. Weather in Colorado has been really bad this year. Hardly had any clear nights. Been trying through the couple of clear nights we have recently had, but they were riddled with smoke that blew in from California, so still nothing. Now the moon is full, so it will be a couple more weeks before I even potentially get another chance, if the skies are clear (which is unlikely.)
 
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There isn't a whole lot of excitement in the astro community for Canon cameras these days. A couple guys promote them a lot, like Roger Clark, but most people are much more interested in the newer entry-level Nikon DSLRs, like the D5300 and D5500. They have lower dark current, higher resolution, lower noise at low ISO. Canon cameras are rarely used ISO 800 and heavily clipped stars are fairly common, but people are using Nikon's as low as ISO 200 (and in a few cases ISO 100) for the increased DR.

The D800, D810, and D810a, with black point clipping hacks and astro modding on the former two, have garnered FAR more interest among higher end DSLR imagers than the 5Ds. The guys I know who image with them produce some of the most amazing astro images I've ever seen.

If there was any field where read noise and dynamic range mattered more than landscape photography, astrophotography is it. By a long shot.
 
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jrista said:
There isn't a whole lot of excitement in the astro community for Canon cameras these days. A couple guys promote them a lot, like Roger Clark, but most people are much more interested in the newer entry-level Nikon DSLRs, like the D5300 and D5500. They have lower dark current, higher resolution, lower noise at low ISO. Canon cameras are rarely used ISO 800 and heavily clipped stars are fairly common, but people are using Nikon's as low as ISO 200 (and in a few cases ISO 100) for the increased DR.

The D800, D810, and D810a, with black point clipping hacks and astro modding on the former two, have garnered FAR more interest among higher end DSLR imagers than the 5Ds. The guys I know who image with them produce some of the most amazing astro images I've ever seen.

If there was any field where read noise and dynamic range mattered more than landscape photography, astrophotography is it. By a long shot.

I grabbed a 5dsR the other day and once this full moon abates, I will give it a shot. Astro is not my primary use but will see how it holds up to something big, bright, and stacked.
 
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