Hayden Gill, a member of our Cuyahoga Astronomical Association (CAA) braved a very cold but crystal-clear February night collecting image data to create this picture; it was also his very successful first effort at image stacking.
Gill wrote: “I shot it with a Nikon D7200 on a SkyWatcher EvoStar 80ED {telescope}, CGEM II mount. For guiding I have a 60mm ZWO scope and a ZWO 174 mono” guide camera. He used his Nikon for the data capture and Deep Sky Stacker to build the image. Each exposure was two minutes at ISO 800. He used 34 light images, 20 darks, 20 flats, 25 bias frames. Post processing was in Photoshop.
“This was my first attempt at astrophotography stacking. First time stacking and first time really putting all my gear to use how I have been intending to. Can’t wait to get back out!”
We will be eager to see Gill’s continued progress and images!
M42 – The Orion Nebula: Two exposures, “…a minute at 400 ISO and a minute at 100 ISO. One each. I just erased the center from the ISO 400 on top of the ISO 100 layer.” – John Burkett
CAA member John Burkett writes about how he, a person who says he has used a telescope only six times in his life, created images that would be the envy of many a veteran amateur astronomer.
Wanting to do astrophotography for many years, I could never justify the expense if I rationally totaled the equipment costs; clearly, the only solution was to be irrational. Feeling time-pressured in July ’17 to acquire a longer DSLR camera lens for the {total solar} eclipse, I bought a used Stellarvue 130 instead.
The first time I used the goto mount, I didn’t know if it was polar-aligned or not, and gave up at 3 AM.
The second time, I had acquired a magical device called PoleMaster. It says “click on Polaris”, but how do I know if I’m clicking on Polaris or not?
The third weekend, I was more confident of the polar alignment but only then realized the need to know names of stars to align the mount. After an hour or so with an app, I found Altair and confidently pressed “enter” on the hand controller. Wow, this was exciting, the mount started moving, the scope is spinning around and when it stopped, the telescope was pointing below the horizon. I spent an hour or two, staring at the equipment wondering if I put something together backwards or selected the wrong hemisphere, or broke it. I released the clutch and pointed it at the moon so I could say I captured something.
The 4th time I set up the CGEM, I went through the motions of a three-star alignment, repeatedly. This took all night, since I didn’t know any star by name yet.
The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) in the upper-right, is located just to the south of the star Alnitak in Orion’s Belt, and part of the much larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The large glowing cloud to left of center is NGC 2024 – the Flame Nebula. Photo by John Burkett.
Finally, on the 5th CGEM weekend, being frustratingly entertained, I was able to align everything. I selected the Dumbbell, took a shot and captured it. I continued to do the tour of random DSOs (deep-sky objects). I noted the same length of trails in a six-minute exposure as in a two-minute exposure. The camera body to mount had uncorrectable play, so I determined its natural sitting and wrapped the intervalometer cable around the camera so that it would dangle in the desired direction, using its weight to avoid the unintended motion of the less than ideal mounting.
Just in time for some use-it-or-lose-it vacation, I wanted to spend a week at this. To be honest, I’ve been a self-described night sky [amateur] photographer for many years, so once I had the mount figured out, exposing and {image editing} was second nature. As in DSLR camera photography, I shot both over and under exposures, choose the best two and just erased the over-exposed center of one layered image, on top of the other image in Photoshop. And that is my beginner M42 with a DSLR on a goto telescope adventure. I think I’m going to enjoy contributing and learning astrophotography.
Burkett notes that his digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR) is a Nikon D810 not modified for astrophotography. He shot the images from Kissimmee, Florida in February 2018. And yes, we are among those awestruck at his first efforts. — ed
CAA member Keven Tag shared this lovely image of M42, the Orion Nebula, with us. His techniques and results are pretty advanced. Here’s what he said: “Thought I’d send this along. The skies were fairly clear last night {March 14} and I was able to get a nice shot of M42. This was captured from my Strongsville driveway so considering the amount of light pollution, results aren’t bad. It helps that it’s a nice bright target.” Technical stuff: a light pollution (Astronomik CLS-CCD) filter. Also, I use a modified Canon Rebel XSi which has the two native Canon filters removed. Here are some other details…. This was from a stack of (1600 ISO) Subs: Lights: 5X20, 5X40; Darks: 5X30; Flats: 5X30. Equipment and processing details — Mount: CGEM, Scope: Stellarvue SVR90, Camera: Canon XSi(Honis modified), Filter: Astronomik CLS-CCD, Mount Control: TheSkyX, Camera Control: BackYardEOS, Processing: Deep Sky Stacker.”
CAA: Cuyahoga Astronomical Association 