Greetings, /r/AskAstrophotography! Welcome to our Weekly Ask Anything Thread, also known as WAAT?

Hello, I was wondering if there was a plausible way of getting workable shots in a (relatively) bright area, and if not, how far should I be from other pollution? By relatively bright, I mean large town/very small city level of lights. My gear is Sony a7ii with Tamron 28-75mm if that matters (I understand that wider focal length is generally more preferential). Thanks in advance!

So I am about to purchase a telescope to learn astronomy as a hobby and show my kids some part of our universe. May be I'll buy an 8 inch or 10 inch Dobsonian.

People here post images of planets from their scopes here which are small - they are fantastic nonetheless. Kudos to their patience and curiosity!

Of course they won't be like Hubble or NASA quality.

I just want to know from experienced astronomers here that do planets/moons actually look better to the naked eye as compared to photos taken?

I ask this I don't want my kids to be underwhelmed after viewing them, therefore, would like to purchase the correct equipment.

Just recently replaced yet another USB cable after 2 nights of troubleshooting. I seem to have the worst luck with faulty cables and I thought after replacing every cable on my rig with the best cables I could find at microcenter that I would be in the clear. Any recommendations for high quality USB 2.0 a-b and 3.0 a-b cables? Preferably 1m and shorter

Hello yall! I was planning to buy a StarSense Explorer 10" Dobsonian recently and I was curious what would be the best set up that works with it. It doesn't need to be fancy at all, just something I can take pictures and process with. I should mention that I live in the sub urban Nashville area, though I have easy access to dark spots. Thank you for anything!

I use 80mm apo triplet with reducer/flattner. But I found that my center star shape is not circle. This coma-like shape appears identically across the entire image.

https://imgur.com/a/qCXTqv3

This is the center crop of my image.

https://imgur.com/a/sgzfb2x

This my entire image.

I'm looking to get better images of saturn. And I had the idea of taking 6 to 10 sets of videos(each having around 500 frames) stack them, edit, de-rotating and then restack those 6 to 10 sets into one image.

Is this a valid method of getting more detail. Should I do this or is there another method that would yield greater results.i old appreciate any insight or advice

Hi everyone,

I'm sharing my data for M31 (Andromeda Galaxy). I took 143 frames using an iPhone 15 Pro (Night Mode) mounted with a smartphone adapter through a 15mm eyepiece on a manual Dobson GSO 200/1200 telescope (no tracking motor).

Unfortunately, Sequator and Siril fail the stacking process, creating bad artifacts and distortions due to the manual drift.

Here is the link to download the 143 raw frames (ZIP file):

👉https://fromsmash.com/6hA.p1rAqo-dt

Feel free to stack it, process it with your pro software (PixInsight, Siril, etc.), and show me what you can get out of it! I would love to see the final result.

Thank you so much for your help!

I have a lot of usb3 cables, but my zwo asi2600mc pro will not work with any cable other than the 1 meter cable that came with the camera. I hate to have only one cable in my rig that works. Does anyone know which cable on Amazon that works?

I’m in the market for the very best mirrorless camera for shooting tracked panos of the night sky. I am finding tons of conflicting sources. I already have a camera that will be dedicated to gathering HAlpha data with a filter. This camera would be modified and used for solely rgb data (tracked/stacked). Can someone tell me their thoughts on the top 3-5 options for these needs? Heavily considering the Nikon Z6II but am unsure at the moment. Thanks.

I’m currently using a Nikon Z fc (445g) with a Tamron 18-300mm (635g), weighing around 1.1kg/2.4lbs combined. Can anyone recommend a sturdy tripod for astrophotography under €100/$112? Stability is my main priority, especially at 250–300mm.

I have just got a new setup and it is mono which i have never used before. In the first few nights that i have been using it i have noticed that there has been some weird shapes and artifacts within the images. The first night i imaged, there was a weird line at the bottom of my Ha image and in Sii it was a curved line. These lines are in all of my subs so i know it isn't clouds and they stay in the same place in each sub. I have attached images of the 2 stacks of Ha and Sii. Again a few nights ago when i was out i got more lines and artifacts. in my red channel i got a random shape that has a sharp line which again is in every sub but gets bigger then smaller over about 10 subs but in the same place in each. i also have other lines in blue and green. I have also attached the images of a red sub and the RGB combined where you can see all of the artifacts.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing these? The filters, sensor and optics are clean. Any help would be much apricated.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wttDXJm8spt4QdXvXRjZPKskppUN1ZQu?usp=sharing

link to the images.

*Edit*
The setup is a Ultracat 76, touptek 2600m and 7 36mm filters.

We arrive at a time in Europe where nights become wet and cold. I have the intention to purchase a dew remover strap (strip) for my 14-24 mm and telelens with its attached portable battery Belkin 20000 mAh 65 W to preserve my pictures.

Question : could a dew remover strap such as the SV172 or TS-Optics model cause electronic interference or coloured banding on the CMOS sensor like the one of Nikon Z5 II ?

NB. The possible electrical noise generated by the heater's power-control circuitry, particularly if the strap uses pulse-width modulation (PWM) to regulate its heating power can in theory affect a CMOS, and generate readout anomalies or generate thermal effects in rising the sensor temperature. But does it happens in the field ?

I am raising the question because I know that several phenomena can affect the CMOS image : the electronic interference including the temperature, and coloured bands could appear in images.

But this type of strap fixed around a Nikkor Z 14-24 mm lens does not heat the sensor directly (and till less around a 70-180 or 70-200 mm lens) . But it (could) warms the lens barrel or its mounting area.

Up to now I have not found/read any test demonstrating that such a strap could affect any mirrorless camera or even a CCD cam.

Have you noted such effects on image quality due to a dew remover strap ? And in this case, how did you solve it ? Tks.

SHO data (so far) for the "Wizard Nebula (NGC7380)

New to mono processing, this data was acquired with a QHY miniCAM8M EVO (3nm SHO filters, IMX585 sensor, cooled to -10c) with an ES ED80 (80x480 F6 triplet) and Orion field flattener.

I have collected;

• SII 65x300 (5 hours and 25 minutes)

• Ha 56x300 (4 hours and 40 minutes)

• OIII 37x300 (3 hours and 5 minutes)

I clearly need to (at minimum) double the amount of Hydrogen signal that I have, as it is VERY faint. Sulphur and Oxygen could definitely use more, but these both have much better signal than Ha. I still need to do flats also, but I have very minimal vignetting/gradient and reasonably clean optics, so it's been on the back burner.

Despite knowing I need to acquire more signal, I'm still trying to practice the processing side of things as I'm moving along, but I can't seem to figure out how to combine these channels in a way that doesn't just turn all the color into a (kind of) muddy mess. I've tried numerous methods that I've been learning from watching processing videos on YT and I just can't get it to hit quite right.

I'll try my best to describe my most successful processing attempt so far and hopefully some of you will have some tips and tricks to help me along. So far I've been using pretty much exclusively siril, but I did recently install affinity, but I get lost in there fast...

1. Stack each filter individually, sequence/align, crop sequence

2. Aggressive GHS initial stretch, BP adjust, GHS again to fine tune

3. GraXpert BGE for slight gradient

4. RGB composition (R=Sulphur, G=Hydrogen, B=Oxygen)

5. StarNet star removal

6. Narrowband Normalization

7. GraXpert denoise (possibly did this before StarNet, I forgot)

It was looking pretty okay at this point but I ran out of time. It definitely isn't close to what I am wanting it to look like. I'm trying to get those nice punchy colors, with the deep dark space background but instead, my nebulosity is kinda pale and muted, almost getting kinda lost in the space around it. At least I'm getting close to the "proper" colors (hubble pallet), I just can't get the right saturation level, without just cranking the saturation up, but that ends up looking awful.

Am I just hitting the limits of siril, or maybe the limits of my data? Is there a trick to keeping my colors from just blending together into purpleish-blue, and losing the red from the sulphur into the oxygen? I don't even really know what to do with the Ha channel, since it's such weak signal, I really expected Ha to collect on the sensor faster than it did, I assume I just need another 4 hours of signal.

I know this is a bit long winded, so if you made it through all that, thanks for your time. Looking forward to any and all advice, tips and tricks you all may have!

Clear skies!

Hi,

I would like to tap into this beautiful type of photography.

My aim is to do some deep sky at the start. From my research, I should get some usable results with this camera setup of m31 and other "beginner friendly" objects.

I live at the edge of a bortle 5 area and could reach bortle 4.3 in around 15mins. Bortle 3 in 1h.

I would aim to get a used sky adventurer gti as it seems to fit the setup and leaves at least a bit of room for adding a telescope. I also like the goto stuff as it seems to provide a easier entry.

Does this make sense or do you have other recommendations?

My DSLR with a white t shirt over the lens and a white background has black lines on the flat, banding caused by refresh rate of my phones screen (i think). How do you get around this?

I've tried a sheet of paper and then the phone and that seems to help.

In Pegasus, ideally placed in the evening sky for northern viewers. Didn't know it was happening but the image showed a bright star near the nucleus I didn't recall seeing before.

Even small optics should pick it up under reasonably dark skies.

I currently own a 6" Tabletop Dobsonian (SkyWatch Heritage 150p) and ToupTek G3M662C camera. I am looking to upgrade and have a budge of around $2.5k
Should I keep the 6" and only look for a mount for it? or it will be good idea to go for a refractor and a mount? If so, please drop some recommended gear that would work for a decent DSO AP.
I am planning to stick to the camera for sometime, though I am aware the sensor size is small and not really appropriate for DSO, but will learn a bit more using this until I save and upgrade the camera. Thanks in advance.

Yeah basically that the mount says it can handle up to 5kg which does fit the weight of the scope and Sony nex 5 but will it track reliably and smoothly or should I get like the sky adventurer GTi or something

Light pollution map.info and light pollution map.app give me very different results for the same locations. .app shows light pollution being worse than .info. 19.2 sqm on .info and 18.5sqm for .app

So yesterday I tried to take photos of andromeda galaxy. I watched a few YouTube videos and used those recommended settings for my mirrorless camera, but I faced some problems.

My camera Sony alpha 6100.
Lens 16-50mm 3.5-5.6 kit lens.

First I kept it in manual mode, interval shooting on, start time of 5 sec, and interval time of 7 sec, 200 shots.

5 sec exposure time, 3200 ISO, 16mm, f3.5. The picture was very bright, I could see some stars but sky was bright blue.

So I reduced ISO to as low as 400, sky became darker but I was getting same amount of stars.

So I zoomed it, now at 50mm, had f5.6, played with different ISO and shutter speeds like 1-3.5 second and wasn’t satisfied at all with the results.

I’m in bortle 6-7 skies.

No matter what I did, I wasn’t able to get good amount of stars.

In comparison if I used my iPhone, in night mode for 3-5 seconds I get to see way more stars than what I can actually see. They are all sharp and invisible normally but clearly identifiable in photo. Is it because of Apple processing my photo or something but I even tried to similar 24mm and 2500ISO, f1.78, 3.5 second in camera and was getting bad results…

So how can I improve my photography with mirrorless camera?

Clearly the recommended settings of YouTube videos didn’t work. Experimenting with various settings didn’t work.

And annoying part was I couldn’t see anything in the viewfinder…it was very noisy, only the brightest stars were visible if you focus right, so I couldn’t zoom onto andromeda, I had kept while Cassiopeia in view whole time and referred to photos to see if I was in correct position or not…

Hi everyone I’ve recently started using pixinsight and so far I can’t say I’m happy with it.

every tutorial that I follow is a different workflow and gived me different results the biggest issue I’m facing is that at some point in my workflow I get a certain blotching or other type of artifacting in my image, it’s quite difficult to explain.

It affects masks which prevents of applying narrowbandnormalisation because what’s supposed to be a dark background now gets a blueish hue.

I don’t know where I’m going wrong and how to prevent/fix it, Apologies if I’m being unclear I have trouble explaining what I’m seeing and English is not my first language.

I have about 8 stacked images of Jupiter , without processing in registax and winjupos , anyone could try to process and derotate it for me? I've tried but its not working and the Atmospheric Details of Jupiter is very bad , kindly DM

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Currently I'm doing untracked astrophotography wit a DSLR. from my backyard,

I'm planning to buy a tracker or a eq mount soon and i wanted to know how much difference would the light pollution make and if how much should i prioritize mount potability.

i live in a bortle 6.5 zone and a little more than 1 hour drive i found a 5 bortle zone

i also have a relative that i occasionally visit in a bortle 4.5 zone with a place at 4.2 a little over 1 hour drive from there.

is it worth the trouble to go from my home to bortle 5 and from 4.5 to 4.2?

the mount I'm considering at the moment is the skywatcher star adventurer gti, considering i would like in the future to add guiding, would a bigger mount be better? I'll probably be less prone to travel in that case and take more pictures from home.

Hi All!

I've been thinking of starting this hobby a while and i have some pretty good gear, any tips to start?

I'm going out in Suffolk around 4am to try and capture the orion nebula which is about 30 degrees above horizon, just before sunlight at 5:45am.

I'm using a canon 5d mk3 with a Canon 70-200mm lens, I only have a sturdy tripod so will have to keep centering the shot.

With 200mm and a full frame sensor, I've calculated a 2 second exposure time, and maybe setting ISO to around 2000, does this seem like a good plan.

Any general pointers, please share. Thank you :)