Astro Photography

Took this over the past week. This was my second attempt at this target and I am quite happy with the result and the fine detail captured. This is a narrowband image. Taking with a WO FTL 132 and an ASI6200MM using a WO ZS 61 as the guide scope.

Photo taken on a Canon t5i using a Sigma 150-600mm lens.

Flickr 3000x1936

22 minutes integration, 45 second subs.

ASI2600MC-Duo, Askar 500/90mm EAF/ASIAIR, CEM26.

Siril, GIMP

Trifid:

(Larger)

Lagoon:

(Larger)

Have been using a William Optics GT71 refractor since 2017. Nice scope, but despite tweaking the flattener / reducer and post processing the heck out of the subframes, I never was amazed by the crispness of the stars nor the flatness across the whole frame. I'd seen images posted on astrobin and elsewhere from newer astrograph scopes, but put off upgrading, since the gurus in the various astrophotography forums seemed to provide amazing images from 50-90mm WO scopes, albeit with long integration times, and narrow band filters.

Finally got an Askar 500mm though. Sheesh, what was I waiting for? The Trifid and Lagoon below were from last night, no filters, with only 22 minutes of integration time plus 3 dark frames. Clouds showed up preventing longer exposure time. Results were simply stacked in ZWO's ASIDarkStack in a minute, then slightly tweaked in dev.macgyver's Photo Editor app on Android. And with just that alone, they already look better than any of my GT71 shots that I spend hours massaging in Siril and Gimp.

Should have just bought an astrograph sooner. Can't wait to see what longer integration times and better guiding brings...

First try of shooting Andromeda. The picture is more of an art image as I added a tilt shift effect.

41 x 25s lights 80mm ISO 3200

Anyone using the Sync for Lemmy app? I sure hope it starts supporting Kbin soon because it's hands down the best Fediverse app already. It has only been out a week.

Unfortunately, being in Kbin this Magazine is not very viewable on it yet. Something to do with Kbin doing things differently - any ideas on what that means?

#astrophotography

Thought I'd share my first image in a while! NGC 6823 has sooo much going on and looks great in both RGB and Narrowband. I went for Foraxx here, with RGB stars. Desperately needed more O3 - I lost 80% of my subs due to high haze. I had to stretch it within an inch of its life!

Taken at the awesome Roboscopes facility in spain on Pier 3 (ASA 12N). I am currently in the process of sending my Tak 160 there for hosting, the skies are FANTASTIC and the managed hosting service the guys there provide is world class. So much better than alternatives.

Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop

Stars RGB.

Manual calibration - WBPP gets Bias wrong :)

DBE on each channel, SPCC, BXT / NXT / SXT. I created a synthetic lum channel from the Ha O3 and S2 and processed that using GHS and curves.

I then GHS'd each NB channel to get them popping as much as possible, and combined them in Foraxx. Added the Lum using LRGB combine.

Then off to Photoshop for a few levels tweaks and the brilliant filter Camera Raw Filter (CTRL + SHIFT + A on a new layer). So many amazing tweaks to be had here. Use opacity to decide how much of the filtered layer to keep.

120 second subs for NB, 60 second for RGB. 3nm Antlia filters.

60 x 120s O3
180 x 120s S2
120 x 120s Ha
15 x 60s RGB

https://www.astrobin.com/88m2xc/

A nebula about 2,500 light years away, this image took about an hour to capture from a Colorado backyard.