Well, it has been a while since I last posted, mostly due to cloudy skies and rain. But last night I used my Celestron NexStar 6i scope to image the Moon which is now past "First Quarter" (I will post it later).
But typically I don't image dim deep sky objects (galaxies, nebula, etc) because of the bright moonlit sky. But just for the fun of it I slewed the scope to M 27, aka the Dumbbell Nebula. In my enthusiasm I did not connect the autoguide scope so I was only able to get 10 second exposures without star smearing. Using 6400 iso on my Canon T3i camera I took a single image...dark, almost nothing there (as I expected).
The second shot below is the same shot but merely lightened... UUGGH! Lots of grain and you can barely see the nebula...
However, in the desire to have some fun I started taking 118 of these 10 second shot (yes, that is a lot of pics!) and gave it a go using DeepSkyStacker to integrate them. The result... ok, the graininess is gone but nothing to write home about yet...
But now for the "magic" of post-processing to bring out detail and color that you can't see easily!
After post-processing with Luminar 2018... WOW! Who would have thought! Here is a "before and after" post-processing screen capture:
Now for the BIG REVEAL:
WOW! Total integration time: just under 20 minutes of overall exposure time, some time with post-processing and, well, there it is!
By the way, this was taken with an unmodified stock Canon T3i. There is a lot more red available but I would need to use a modified camera without the standard infrared filter. Maybe later...
Lesson:
So, even if you can only get short exposures with astrophotography due to the limitations of the light of the Moon, poor guiding, etc... go ahead, get A LOT OF THEM and you just might be surprised by what you get after post-processing the final image!
But typically I don't image dim deep sky objects (galaxies, nebula, etc) because of the bright moonlit sky. But just for the fun of it I slewed the scope to M 27, aka the Dumbbell Nebula. In my enthusiasm I did not connect the autoguide scope so I was only able to get 10 second exposures without star smearing. Using 6400 iso on my Canon T3i camera I took a single image...dark, almost nothing there (as I expected).
The second shot below is the same shot but merely lightened... UUGGH! Lots of grain and you can barely see the nebula...
However, in the desire to have some fun I started taking 118 of these 10 second shot (yes, that is a lot of pics!) and gave it a go using DeepSkyStacker to integrate them. The result... ok, the graininess is gone but nothing to write home about yet...
But now for the "magic" of post-processing to bring out detail and color that you can't see easily!
After post-processing with Luminar 2018... WOW! Who would have thought! Here is a "before and after" post-processing screen capture:
Now for the BIG REVEAL:
M 27 aka The Dumbbell Nebula
By the way, this was taken with an unmodified stock Canon T3i. There is a lot more red available but I would need to use a modified camera without the standard infrared filter. Maybe later...
Lesson:
So, even if you can only get short exposures with astrophotography due to the limitations of the light of the Moon, poor guiding, etc... go ahead, get A LOT OF THEM and you just might be surprised by what you get after post-processing the final image!
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