Milky way with 350d

[floreatfocuser]

Thought Id stick mine up for comparison.

First one i have ever taken, looked pretty poor until I did that high pass thingy and brought out loads of more stars, maybe over did it a bit but great to see coalsack so well

about 5 minutes piggybacked on etx125

[AstroTasmania]

Hi,

Thanks for sharing, also good to see others posting their early DSLR results, it encourages more newcomers to share their results, it's how we all learn. This is a very popular camera for astro use and with the introduction of the later model the 400 XT?, the price of a 350D drops quite a bit.

The final result has a lot to do with image processing and Noel Carboni is one of our leading Guru's in this area, I always check his posts for ideas and inspiration.

Clear skies...

[Radar]

G'day Floreatfocuser,

5 minutes riding an ETX. Nice work. I'm yet to make the jump to DSLR's. I think CCD and DSLR are the way to go though, I'm looking forward to delving into that world soon.

Does your ETX have a wedge?

[floreatfocuser]

Made the piggyback mount for ETX out of old garden pressure sprayer. Have modified my 884 tripod. changed dec rod for threaded rod with butterfly nut so can adjust it accurately, and built a base from wood which I use to allow me to adjust RA kind of like on a proper equatorial mount and made a chain link to legs to make it more stable and allow accurate leg positioning (i.e put legs back in same place when I put it out on lawn. Can now get pretty good polar alignment using something like WCS and webcam. Hoping to use it to drive my 350d with 200mm with 2* extender and get some pictures of Orion Nebulae.

I have a question, if instead of taking a 5 minute image I want to take 30 second images, how many do I have to take to get the same brightness as the single exposure. Everytime I try to do a stacking my images come out too dark!!

Andy

[Radar]

Made the piggyback mount for ETX out of old garden pressure sprayer. Have modified my 884 tripod. changed dec rod for threaded rod with butterfly nut so can adjust it accurately, and built a base from wood which I use to allow me to adjust RA kind of like on a proper equatorial mount and made a chain link to legs to make it more stable and allow accurate leg positioning (i.e put legs back in same place when I put it out on lawn. Can now get pretty good polar alignment using something like WCS and webcam. Hoping to use it to drive my 350d with 200mm with 2* extender and get some pictures of Orion Nebulae.


Hi Andy, I would love to see a photo of this sometime. Sounds like you are quite handy with the DIY stuff.



I have a question, if instead of taking a 5 minute image I want to take 30 second images, how many do I have to take to get the same brightness as the single exposure. Everytime I try to do a stacking my images come out too dark!!
Andy

I would have thought the same amount of time would have yielded the same result, but I could be wrong because I don't shoot DSLR yet. Someone else may be able to shed more light on this for you.

Regards

Ray

[floreatfocuser]

will track down some pictures,

wood bit of wedge is under reconstruction but will take pictures of rod and piggyback

[h0ughy]

the image is a bit over processed, but promising :thumbsupmate:

[floreatfocuser]

Thanks, obviously not too impressive judging from the muted response.

Here is another attempt of same photo but different processing

Is this any better?

[Radar]

I think the first one had more detail. What processes did you use for the second one?

[AstroTasmania]

Hi Floreatfocuser,

For a 5-minute exposure you should have a better result, can you tell me what image processing software you are using, also what did you take the image as RAW, Jpeg, etc. Lens and aperture details also, and lets see where it needs another look?

Look forward to your reply, maybe also send me an original unprocessed image to my Shevill.Mathers@SkyandSpace.com.au email if you can, don't do anything to it other than reduce its size to around 2 MB.

Clear skies...

[floreatfocuser]

Hi thanks very much for help, image is on desktop computer which won't show a picture on screen at the moment, will email you it when I get a new graphics card (and it works, i hope)

It was taken as a raw image, think lens was fully open though (my mistake)

Was using cheapo lens which came with 350D, at 18mm (the second image I sent was cropped a bit to allow me to send a bit more detail) I struggled with focus a bit


I processed it using photoshop cs2, did my attempt at levels first, then used high pass at the setting at the far right, then redid levels . I think that was it anyway, was a bit hit and miss!

[astro-gran]

Great work very nice FOV, colour and so many stars. The Southern Cross stands out nicely. I always say that 50 percent of this hobby is acquiring the images and 50 percent is the processing to bring out all the fine details. Thanks for sharing your work!
Clear Skies,
astro-gran
Great work very nice FOV, colour and so many stars. The Southern Cross stands out nicely. I always say that 50 percent of this hobby is acquiring the images and 50 percent is the processing to bring out all the fine details. Thanks for sharing your work!
Clear Skies,
astro-gran

[floreatfocuser]

Thanks astrogran, a bit of encouragement goes a long way

Radar , have put some pictures of home made wedge for meade 884 tripod

http://members.iinet.net.au/~ambheard/mri.zip

And astrotasmania have put a cropped copy of that photo below to download.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~ambheard/pictures.zip

Will email you link aswell

Look forward to seeing what you can do

Clear Skies

[AstroTasmania]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the link to download the file.

I would also ask our resident image processing Guru, Noel, to take a look and try his magic touch. His comments would be very useful indeed. I am a beginner at DSLR stuff as well but the difference between my image at 30 seconds and yours at 5 minutes with the same camera, has me puzzled why yours looks so different. What ISO setting and lens aperture did you use?

Are there some clouds along the lower part of the image?

Clear skies...

[Radar]

That wedge looks very well put together Andy. Nice work. Is that peice of transparent plastic there to help you align it?

[floreatfocuser]

AstroTasmania

If you look at file properties in CS2 it tells yo what they were.

Just in case you cant fiind them:

Shutter 300 secs
F3.5
18mm
ISO 200

Yes there are a few clouds across bottom of image

Radar:

Thanks, seems to work pretty welll.

Yeah I made that piece of perpex with the correct angle for my latitude so when I change from Alt Az back and forth to polar don't have to spend ages trying to find correct declination, just make sure tripod level and use the piece of perspex

[AstroTasmania]

Hi Andy,

Here is a shot of the Milky Way from Texas, similar equipment used. For your interest/info.

http://willowberry.net/keithnk%5Fm42/Sky/Milkyway.htm

Clear skies...

[Radar]

Awesome pic Shev. :thumbsupmate:

[floreatfocuser]

Mmmmmm, now I know what mine should look like.


Nice Shot!!!!!!!