@bjohnson425

Great shots!  Where did you get these?

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Old, but I think it's cool.

Silo Starstack 2016-03-29 by FredMan, on Flickr

My driveway About 45 minutes north of Fairbanks AK

I hate you

I hope you AK guys dont take those northern lights for granted.  Poor slobs like me dream about seeing them

From last weekend.  I used my 20mm f/2.8 instead of my usual 24mm f/2.8-4.  The 20mm has significant coma aberration at f/2.8 in the edges, so I'm often loathe to use it for night photography, thus I think I was shooting this scene at f/4 or f/5.6, knowing that I'd be giving up some stars, but gaining sharpness and detail.  The moon helped to get some better definition in the gorge.  A couple of trains also came rolling through, which might make for some neater lighting as the leaves begin to drop.

Very nice!   Love the bridge

Funny story in post processing.  I was set up from about 7-11pm for the photo, and wanting to see if I had halfway usable results, was processing the stack on my laptop around the campfire at the American Alpine Club campsite located up on the canyon rim.  

While working on the laptop, my dog started growling, so I went to thump him in the head to remind him to be more sociable around people ... only to hit someone else's dog by mistake ... apparently a small dog had crawled into my lap, while I was fixated on the monitor, and I didn't notice. So, when my hand when flying in the direction of my dog, this poor dog's face interrupted the path of travel.  Seems my dog was not happy that some other dog had crawled into my lap.

I found the dog's owner the next morning, and apologized for the inadvertent smack.  She thought it was pretty funny.

Not too bad for an amateur with a D3400/200 mm lens, and bad eyes lol

Pretty sweet if you ask me

I don't have any astrophotos tonight.
But I am set up to get some learning in.
My main tube needs collimating first, a couple of nights ago I noticed it was a bit out of alignment .
Since I have never auto-guided before, tonight I am going to try to get my learning up on PHD2, Metaguide, and how bad (or good) my tracking might be.
Mount is as level as I can get it, so now I just need to wait for dark to get a polar alignment done and then see how frustrated I get.... 

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Thanks. The second pic has some artifacts from experimenting with some filters, but the composition is awesome. Waited for hours for the moon to set with the cactus in the foreground.


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Nice. I’d like a setup like that, but out of my price range.  For now I’ll have to stick with 200/300 mm lenses, and maybe get an 2x extender.

Yeah, a bit pricey - but I spaced it out over many years.
I'm currently imaging afocal with a Nikon Coolpix C5400 but I have a Nikon D90 and a Nikon D80 that I removed the IR filter from for full spectrum imaging (unfortunately the T-Rings are on order and not here yet...).

Took this tonight My very first Milky Way pic. Went out too late to get the best section of the MW. Side note....got stopped by a PCSO DUI check point on the way up the mountain. Deputy shined his light in my back window, and said "That is a badass rig" referring to my AR15.

Sweet scope!

Have you thought about ditching the long tube and getting something like this for your guide scope?  https://www.highpointscientific.com/orion-mini-50mm-guide-scope-08891

It would help take weight off your mount, thus helping your guiding even more.  

How did last night go?  

This guys videos really helped me narrow down my settings and general understanding of how the software works

Most of my research indicated that one should use an off axis guider with SCT due to excessive deviation with temperature changes and scope orientation when using a separate guide scope.

I am curious to see if this setup works well for you.

Well, about as I expected - some good and some bad.
I got the 9.25" SCT collimated with no problems (I've done it several times before).
In the past I had been using a Hartmann mask for a focusing aid, and it worked, but yesterday I made a Bahtinov mask and Holy Shit - that Bahtinov mask makes perfect focus extremely quick and easy, it will be my go-to focusing aid from here out!

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The auto-guiding part was not so successful, but I expected that.
This was only the second time trying it - the first time was a total failure (couldn't even get a lock on a guide star)!
This time my goal was simply to ignore the main tube, find a bright star and see if I could get the guide package to work at all.
I managed to get a mag 2 star in focus and locked in PHD2 but the guiding was unusable (when it was guiding I was getting rms tracking errors over 7 arc-sec in both axis) And even then it would only guide for less than 15 seconds before it would lose lock on the guide star.
I messed with it for several hours then called it a night.
Problems I think I identified:
(1) I did a visual Polar alignment (using a Polar scope in the mount) but I forgot to follow up with a drift alignment - I think my Polar alignment was less than ideal for guiding (my bad).

(2) That piggyback long tube 80mm guide scope has a FL of 910mm, I think that is WAY too much for my present set up since I don't know what I'm doing yet (plus it's heavier than hell!) - I have a .5x focal reducer on order to get the FL down to 455mm that might help (or not). 
But I have already accepted that I'm going to replace the guide scope with either that 50mm Orion Mini (which will work with my main tube if I have the .63 focal reducer on it) but probably I'll end up getting the 60mm Orion guide scope (either will be light years better than what I have now).

(3) My CG5 mount is about 15 years old and I noticed a lot of funky motor noise, tracking glitches, and periodic errors.  I think I need to pull the mount and drive apart and clean out all that old and probably hardened grease, polish up the mating surfaces and re-lube it.

(4) I'd like to get the piggyback guide setup working because I have all the "stuff", but if I can't get it going I will research an off-axis guider - but that's another $250 minimum and I'd rather avoid that expense right now.  

My goal with this setup is to achieve decent 60 to 90 second guided subs, if I can do that I'll be happy - if not then I'll start saving up for a better EQ mount.

Anyway - I'm not giving up, I think if I keep at it I can get it working.
I have been watching several YouTube videos on PHD2 and they are helping.

That can be a tough scope to guide on that mount.   The longer the focal length the more any guiding errors will show up.   That being said you can do it, 60-90" aint a lot to ask.  

I think you need a smaller focal length guide scope, that will help a ton.   Oh and yeah, bahtinov masks are awesome!!

Any pointers on the Milky Way. My pic has a lot of green to it. I didn’t add any.  Just turned up vibrancy and saturation and the greens popped.

20 sec exposure   [email protected].     ISO 6400


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I'm no expert in astrophotography - yet.....
But from my experience with digital cameras, that looks like blown out noise from over saturation

My concerns/questions would be:
6400 ISO is going to produce a LOT of noise, are you taking any sort of dark frame/flat frame/bias frames for image processing?
If not I would start doing it (don't use the camera High ISO reduction mode).
I would also drop the ISO down to some point that minimizes noise, and then use a bunch of shorter exposure images and then stack them in a program like DeepSkyStacker , you may not get a lot of color but I would take a nice sharp B&W over a blown out color pic .

Perhaps someone with a little more experience with astrophography long exposure will show up and explain what it really is - to date, all my astrophotos were done with exposures under one second (even then I used dark frames).

I was just going by a lot of YouTube videos with the ISO setting.  No to the dark frames. Haven’t tried stacking yet.  The bright core of the Milky Way had gone over the horizon already, so I was taking images of a dimmer section. Can definitely see it on RAW, but can’t seem to bring it out without getting the green. As far as exposure every tutorial mentions 15-20 sec exposures. I guess I will have to try stacking.

I’ll try 1600 and 3200 next time I go out. Even with the observatories here there is still a shit ton of light pollution, so I have to drive quite a way out.


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Yeah, I assume you are down in Tucson?
That's a big enough city to generate a lot of light pollution.
I'm up in Prescott at 5400 feet, and even in my back yard there is light pollution concerns.

Here is the very first set of astro photos I ever took back in January of 2004 before I knew what I was doing.
The Moon pics are single exposure but Saturn is about 25 short exposures stacked in Registax software.
Due to life getting in the way, my telescope sat basically unused from 2004 until now - and now that I'm retired I'd really like to get back into it again! 

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Those are pretty damn cool.  Yeah Tucson.  I went East last night. I think I need to go west of town so I can get better view of the MW.  The brightest part is setting just after sunset this time of year, but I’ll try,


ETA to add new photo after some better editing in Lightroom...looks a lot more natural now...I think







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I might need a nap, looks like tonight will be absolutely ideal here and I am off tomorrow

Looks much better.
Here is an example of why you should be taking "dark frames" for noise removal processing in long exposure photography.
And also why you should be using a lower ISO to keep the noise down.

This is a "dark frame" 1200x900 full crop from my Nikon D90 at 20sec, ISO6400, f3.5 (same as your photo).
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Here is the same crop with the saturation increased by a count of 50 (on my editing program) - look at all that noise....
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Now, here is the same "dark frame" taken with the same settings EXCEPT that I have reduced the ISO to 1600.
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The same crop with saturation increase be the same count of 50 - much less noise.
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So you can see that high ISO really brings up the noise in astrophotography and even at lower ISO levels there is noise that should be subtracted in post processing.

I see. I’ll try a lower iso, and try stacking the next  time.




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Now to throw in some confusion lol. Check out this lady's Instagram. I think this is where I got my setting info from. She takes amazing Milky Way photos. I see she stacks everything. I think stacking is the key. Im going to experiment with ISO 1600-3200 and a mix of maybe 1600 and 6400 and stack them.



Tracyleephotos

Thanks! My humble beginning to astro photography.

She has some very nice photos.
On quick look, it seems she's shooting a Cannon 6D which has a full frame sensor vs the aps-c crop sensors in our cameras.
To get the frame noise in our aps-c sensors down to the level of the full frame sensor we would probably have to shoot at ISO 3200 or less to equal her ISO 6400.
But, yeah you are on the right track - try a lower ISO, shoot multiple shots, shoot some darks, and stack 'em.
It's always fun to try new things! 

 

Crap....forgot all about full frame, and cropped sensors.


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Awesome!

Don't know if they're pointers, but here's some of my examples with EXIF data:
D7100, 12mm, f/2.8, 15 sec, ISO 1600
Milky House Vert by FredMan, on Flickr

D7100, 11mm, f/2.8, 25 sec, ISO 2000
DSC_8690-Milky Way by FredMan, on Flickr

D500, 11mm, f/2.8, 13 sec, ISO 5000

Milky Way 20170627 by FredMan, on Flickr

Now, the D500 has much better ISO performance than the D7100, and I've honed my post skills a bit, so they're not all apples <> apples comparisons.  But, in a nutshell, you need the best ISO-performing body you can get and the fastest lens you can get.

Nice.  Admittedly I need better lenses for sure. Just using kit lenses for now. I was doing a lot of macro stuff, which is a hell of a lot less expensive to do than astro. Lightroom/Photoshop definitely is a must for even the high end cameras when it comes to night photos.




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I had some fun with glowsticks :-)

Nice!  Camera?  Lens?  EXIF?

Cool idea!   I like it

Hmmm -
I wonder if my CG5 mount can handle the payload of a 6-24x60 Barska (used as a finder scope)on a picatinny rail... 

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ETA:
OK, here's my first ever DSO pic, I used the above pictured setup.
This was just a test to see if I could actually get an image.
Next time out I'll do a drift alignment so I can get some longer exposures and pick up more of the actual galaxy and also work on fine focusing.

M31 Andromeda Galaxy:
Tracking but unguided, Nikon D90, 18-200 at 200mm f5.6, ISO 1600, 30x30s, 20 darks, 20 bias, stacked in DeepSkyStacker.
Here's a crop.
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I didn't take any Flats, so you can see the vignetting caused by the lens in this un cropped photo :
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ETA: OK, this morning I took some Flats against the morning sky and then reprocessed.  You can see how the flat frames really reduced the vignetting in the uncropped photo:

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Pardon my rambling.... 

They are both used as focusing aids with a telescope, but they don't exactly act as a fresnel lens.

The top one is a Hartmann mask, when placed over the objective lens of the telescope it will produce three separate images in the eyepiece if the telescope is out-of-focus - as the telescope comes into focus the three images converge into one focused image.  While this works reasonably well, it's very hard to get the "exact precise" focus that we all want.

That's where the bottom mask comes in, it's called a Bahtinov mask and it is capable of producing perfect focus using diffraction patterns generated by the layout of those slits.  The Bahtinov mask produces diffraction spikes that looks like an "X" with another spike that transverses it as the focus changes.
The idea is to adjust the focus so that the transversing diffraction spike is precisely centered on the "X" diffraction spikes, at this point the telescope is in precise perfect focus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahtinov_mask

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Once I started using the bahtinov masks I wondered why it had taken me so long to do so, they are one of the best things you can use in astrophotography.

Maybe?  

Drone Moon by FredMan, on Flickr

I've gotten my intervalometer set up for my new long exposures, and its going to thunderstorm tonight. Remind me why my lazy ass didn't go out on a perfect monday night with tuesday off? Other than the being dead tired...

I just got my intervalometer in the mail today, it's just one of those inexpensive Viltrox ones but it seems to work great.
I have already set up my t-scope to try it out tonight - maybe.
I'm still trying to sort out PHD2 and my ridiculously long focal length guide scope.....

I think mine was like $9 on amazon, its trash and has no off switch, it eats three sets of batteries a year

Next day off for me is thursday, everyone cross their fingers for a clear wednesday night

Improving slowly, but surely. This is eight stacked images.  I took a shit load of pics. I threw this small stack together for the hell of it before bed. I also thik someone was gonna jack my truck, or break into it. I was just off the highway in the middle of nowhere outside the passenger side of my truck in the dark. This car pulls next to my truck. They didnt see me. It slowly rolls, and stopped. Rolls a bit more, and stops. I turned my flashlight on, and the car leaves. Always have my G19, or 20, and had my AR as well.

Ill see if I can improve this after converting my other RAW's to DNG, and separate everything into folders. There was unexpected light pollution. Not sure what freakin town this was creating it. Think it was Sierra Vista.

ETA: On second thought I dont like this. I need to edit on my PC rather than my laptop. Looks completely different.

I also picked the wrong time to get into MW pics. Had no idea there  was a MW "season" where the bright core sets sooner after sunset. MAR-OCT are the best months...July being the best.

How are you stacking them?  Photoshop?  If doing it in photoshop one of the better ways is to open them all as layers, align them all manually then convert all to a smart object then set the blend mode to mean for the smart object.   I'll double check though, I'm on my phone but I think that is how I did it with my shots before I bought Nebulosity, which does my stacking now

Quite basic, actually. Canon T3i with Samsung fisheye lens.
45 minute exposure for top photo (100 ISO, widest aperture setting).
Bottom photo is with widest aperture, 1600 ISO and 30 second exposure.
T3i camera doesn't do well with high ISO so for the bottom image I had to do a lot of editing in lightroom to remove the noise.
These photos would be a lot better if I had a full-frame camera (and newer cameras have a lot less ISO noise than mine).

The worst part is the schedule, middle of the night is a lot shorter when its visible, also the damn moon and the heat and the bugs... ahhhh!

I took about 50 pics. Even in the middle of nowhere Az there is still friggin light pollution. I Drove about an hour out of town, and thought I’d be good, but light from a smaller town about 30 miles away was till screwing up my pics. Couldn’t see much with the eye, but it sure showed up in my pics with the long exposures. Total orangish tint on all of them. I think it’ll be better next year when the core is higher over head.

As far as stacking still learning. I did watch a video on manual alignment.



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