New Rig for Astro Imaging

[mightymonoped]

Very good. I've been hoping to get into this, and one of my friends keeps suggesting it to me. The big problem is the general weather round here - it's so often cloudy - not to mention cold and raining.

I'd consider one of those fibre glass observatory "sheds", plus at least one decent mount etc. if the weather was more reliable, but mostly it isn't, so probably not sensible for these parts.

Celestial bodies are a bit off this year. Doesn't look as though we'll get to see the eclipse in December now, either.

How long were your exposures? Did you have to stack up a lot of images to get those results? Did you use any filters?

Very good, anyway!

Thanks guys!

The first shot (Heart & Soul) is my first foray into ‘narrowband’ imaging (i.e using a filter that restricts light to certain frequencies). In this case, I used an Optolong L-eNhance filter, which only lets through Hydrogen Alpha, Hydrogen Beta and Oxygen III frequencies. The advantage of this kind of imaging is that to a large extend it ignores light pollution or unwanted nuisances such as Moonlight.

Generally, the more image time you capture, the better. This increases signal to noise ratio and gives cleaner images.

The Deep Sky process is roughly the following process.

1. Capture lights, darks, flats and bias images.
2. Calibrate the lights - use the darks, flats and bias to remove any unwanted elements such as hot pixels, vignetting and light gradients.
3. Align/Stack the calibrated lights.
4. Process - stretch and refine the stacked image.

In the case of the Heart & Soul image, I captured:-

34 x 180s lights plus about 15 darks, 20 flats and 40 bias. (The flats and bias can be captured anytime though).

You’re right about the weather, that and light pollution are two critical factors. Narrowband imaging is starting to help with one, but the British weather will alway be the biggest challenge (hence me shifting to a more mobile setup at the moment, I can fit it all into a single holdall).


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