SpaceEngine

Winter is the best!  It has the longest and clearest nights

Yeah well, my equipment begs to differ lol. My mount stops functioning well past -15C (the motor slows down) and it regularly gets below -20C to -25C at night. Also the powdery snow and frequent frosts makes going outside at night during winter all the more questionable. A single random gust of wind with some snow and that's basically 6k usd down the drain.

btw the rest of our photos are here.

https://deepnighttech.com.au/image/Grampians/

All the raw and jpeg. I only really processed the Orion ones but there is others of the Milkyway and Magellanic clouds.

You get a sense of how dark it was given the shadows of the clouds and trees just look black.

btw the rest of our photos are here.

https://deepnighttech.com.au/image/Grampians/

All the raw and jpeg. I only really processed the Orion ones but there is others of the Milkyway and Magellanic clouds.

You get a sense of how dark it was given the shadows of the clouds and trees just look black.

Would you mind uploading all of the files zipped on google drive and share them with me? I'd love to try processing your images, if that's ok with you of course.

Winter is the best!  It has the longest and clearest nights

Yeah well, my equipment begs to differ lol. My mount stops functioning well past -15C (the motor slows down) and it regularly gets below -20C to -25C at night. Also the powdery snow and frequent frosts makes going outside at night during winter all the more questionable. A single random gust of wind with some snow and that's basically 6k usd down the drain.

Oh wow it doesn't get that cold here, we are expecting our first freeze and first snow next weekend.  The coldest it's gotten in the winter here regularly is about -15C and the record is around -19.  But that only happens once a decade or so.  Average annual snowfall here is half a meter but it's very variable from 2 meters (our record) down to one centimeter lol. We've gotten almost one meter in a single snowstorm!

btw the rest of our photos are here.

https://deepnighttech.com.au/image/Grampians/

All the raw and jpeg. I only really processed the Orion ones but there is others of the Milkyway and Magellanic clouds.

You get a sense of how dark it was given the shadows of the clouds and trees just look black.

Would you mind uploading all of the files zipped on google drive and share them with me? I'd love to try processing your images, if that's ok with you of course.

Yeah, that's my friends website that it's on atm. I will ask him if he can upload it all zipped to google drive or somewhere for you to download from.

https://deepnighttech.com.au/image/astro/

All of them should be there.

https://deepnighttech.com.au/image/astro/

All of them should be there.

Website auto blocked because it was deemed malicious.

Odd?  I can open the link from my post and download them.

My friend decided to buy his first scope, a 200mm Skywatcher with HEQ5 Pro mount. 
2nd night out after we figured out how to get all the software integrated and working. EQmod, stellarium and sharpcap and some other one for the guide scope.  We had issues with no RA tracking with the guide scope but my friend has now worked out the issue, was some software settings.


We had terrible viewing conditions with thick smoke here in Aus and the moon was also out illuminating the smoke. Almost no stars were visible, only just barely.

Gimped RA tracking, no filters, iso 200, 480sec single frame of exposure on a canon DSLR, poor smoky conditions. Bit of processing on my part, I had no idea what I was doing, noob at image processing. 

But we got this as a proof of concept that the setup works, which it did.  

Goals are to eventually get a proper CCD with filter wheel and perform a good amount of exposures in decent conditions not this mess that the bush fires caused, stack and process. My friend is really good at image processing so I think it will work out.

1st night of some proper imaging. Stuffed the setup when my friend knocked out the power plug on the setup trying to plug in the laptop charger so we lost a lot of time and only managed to get some 15 or so exposures and some ended up corrupting so only stacked 11 of them and 10 dark, 10 bias but the results were pretty decent.

I still can't work out what that line is in the top of the image, it's in all the light frames but not in the darks so I am guessing it's some reflection in the scope itself?

I still can't work out what that line is in the top of the image, it's in all the light frames but not in the darks so I am guessing it's some reflection in the scope itself?

Good question.  My first thought would have been some kind of inconsistent sensor/read noise, but if it's not in the darks (did you raise the exposure in the darks to make sure?), I think your guess that it's in the optics must be right.  Satellites passing through the frame can also cause streaks, but usually more sharply defined than what you have.

A very beautiful capture, regardless.   The nebula colors and diffraction spikes on the stars are gorgeous.

I still can't work out what that line is in the top of the image, it's in all the light frames but not in the darks so I am guessing it's some reflection in the scope itself?

Good question.  My first thought would have been some kind of inconsistent sensor/read noise, but if it's not in the darks (did you raise the exposure in the darks to make sure?), I think your guess that it's in the optics must be right.  Satellites passing through the frame can also cause streaks, but usually more sharply defined than what you have.

A very beautiful capture, regardless.   The nebula colors and diffraction spikes on the stars are gorgeous.

I double checked all the light frames and they all have it for that night, previous nights don't have it so I'm lost to what it is?

My friend is re-integrating and processing the frames in a much better program called pixinsight. I just used the very basic deepsky stacker.

I will post the updated image once he is done.

Updated pics.

non photoshopped version straight out of pixinsignt.

https://deepnighttech.com.au/image/astr ... an2010.tif

Photoshopped version, that line had been removed and few other tweaks.

https://deepnighttech.com.au/image/astr ... 010_ps.tif

I still can't work out what that line is in the top of the image, it's in all the light frames but not in the darks so I am guessing it's some reflection in the scope itself?

Good question.  My first thought would have been some kind of inconsistent sensor/read noise, but if it's not in the darks (did you raise the exposure in the darks to make sure?), I think your guess that it's in the optics must be right.  Satellites passing through the frame can also cause streaks, but usually more sharply defined than what you have.

A very beautiful capture, regardless.   The nebula colors and diffraction spikes on the stars are gorgeous.

I like DSS because it's a very versatile program.  I'm looking for a program to enhance the resolution of my lunar images.... any ideas?
Also, I dont believe stacking reduces light pollution, as stacking adds all light together, but it does improve the SNR.  Is it true Wat that taking a lot of very short exposures is better than fewer subframes that have longer exposures?  For example, 100 exposures of 4 sec each vs 12 exposures of 32 sec each?  I'm referring specifically to wide angle images of the constellations and the brighter DSO like M31 and M42.