Going a bit bigger and deeper on NGC 7000 - 70mm Meade f/5

[Hankmeister3]

As I've learned a bit more about processing stacked images with my antiquated ArcSoft Photostudio 6.0 image processing software, I'm starting to extend the number of lights and the minutes on target.

Last night normally would have been a bomb with me given my propensity for single-frame grabs and the Stakker-lite process I'm trying to "perfect" (I'm using this term with some caveats here). Though the NOVAC Clear Sky Chart indicated clear skies (technically they were), with above average darkness, transparency and average seeing conditions, the sky at my Penfield/Middlefork River Forest Preserve location was really not that close to prognostication. Bortle 3 to mostly 4 skies, with slightly below average transparency and a very weak Pickering 4 sky. There was clear evidence of high altitude smoke from the California/left coast forest fires though it was thin enough to allow me to image within a 25 to 30 degree radius of the zenith. And that area of the sky conditions was changing hour by hour - contracting and expanding by about 10 degrees. So I had little choice but to work with the DSOs within that area of the sky like NGC7000, Dumbbell Nebula, the Veil Nebula complex, eventually the Heart Nebula and a pretty pathetic attempt at imaging Pleiades which was still lower and outside the mostly clear zone.

So I decided to grab some extended strings of those DSOs which were doable and was pleasantly surprised when I stacked and processed NGC 7000 and the Dumbbell Nebula this more. I'll sort through the other captures tonight and tomorrow.

Despite the cornball seeing conditions and the such, I was able to get over 18 minutes of data of NGC 7000 after sorting frames down to 8 very nice lights and no flats, bias or dark frames in keeping with my Stakker-Lite protocols. I'm hopeful I can eventually get close to at least half-hour of data with a stack of 20 or less lights in future forays. Also, my previous tweaks of the SW EQ6-R Pro mount's polar alignment scope are clearly paying dividends. I'm able to get close to five minutes of pretty accurate tracking using only the mount's internal Sidereal rate + PPEC. No outboard autoguider was used since the autoguider I have (as nice as it is) requires use of a laptop which I'm too lazy to bring out on site - plus all the cabling and such. Also my exposures-to-background-fog are generally in the 2.5 to 4 minute range anyway. The tracking rejection rate is about 20% (some nights more) depending on where the object of interest is in the sky.

BTW, with my current post-production set-up, more data time is making it a bit easier to process the stack. That said, I think I'm reaching the sweet spot of my Stakker-lite process. I believe if I can get to 45 minutes of data and keeping it to 20 to 25 lights, I would personally be happy with that level of quality despite not generating bias/dark/flat frames. But that's just me at the moment.

Meade 70mm f/5 quadruplet astrograph - piggybacked
SW EQ6-R Pro (Sidereal + PPEC)
Canon EOS 77D DSLR unmodded
8-frames, 18 minutes 15 seconds, stacked in DSS
3 Layers in ArcSoft PhotoStudio 6.0
No filter

[Mac]

Very nice captures Henry... good to see you adding more subs to your stacking protocol. It's paying off for you.

[seigell]

Nice emphasis of the Ha regions.
Quite Impressive for a non-Modified DSLR!! I guess Canon took a lesson from their "a"-models, and moved the IR Cutoff to a point just PAST the Ha Emission Frequency.
This looks a bit better than my results with my old IR-Modded T2i...

[Hankmeister3]

Thanks, Mac. Go big or go home? Well, sorta big. I'm hoping to reach the next plateau of my Stakker-Lite journey within the next month or so. I'm going to explore the difference in the basic quality of such limited stacks which benefit from in-camera NR software and without. I'm not sure what to expect. Any ideas on your part?

[Mac]

Thanks, Mac. Go big or go home? Well, sorta big. I'm hoping to reach the next plateau of my Stakker-Lite journey within the next month or so. I'm going to explore the difference in the basic quality of such limited stacks which benefit from in-camera NR software and without. I'm not sure what to expect. Any ideas on your part?

When I tried to use the NR built-in to my Nikon, I found it did a fairly descent job but it took too long between shots.

I prefer to have control of how much and where NR is used in the final photo. I guess a lot of it depends on the camera you're using and I look forward to seeing the results.

[Hankmeister3]

Thanks, Mac. Go big or go home? Well, sorta big. I'm hoping to reach the next plateau of my Stakker-Lite journey within the next month or so. I'm going to explore the difference in the basic quality of such limited stacks which benefit from in-camera NR software and without. I'm not sure what to expect. Any ideas on your part?

When I tried to use the NR built-in to my Nikon, I found it did a fairly descent job but it took too long between shots.

I prefer to have control of how much and where NR is used in the final photo. I guess a lot of it depends on the camera you're using and I look forward to seeing the results.

Yeah, Mac, the Canon EOS series noise reduction software is not unlike the Nikon's. Both the 77D and 80D Canon's in-camera NR processing roughly takes about the same amount of time as the exposure itself. That's cuts an APer's frame grabbing production in half per night session. I want to definitively establish if the Canon's long exposure whiz-bang NR wizardry is really worth the extra in-field time and trouble in potentially creating a better final image in the end. I'd settle for the same level of quality if it means I can grab twice as many frames in the same amount of field time.

I ran a few quicky "tests" when I started deep-sky imaging about 2.5 years ago and at that time I thought the camera's multi-level NR features were a plus which aided subsequent post-production processing. But now that I've refined my PP techniques I'm wondering if that's no longer true and I'm better off simply grabbing more frames in the same amount of camera-time during any given session and then try to make up any initial image quality differences in the post-production phase.

[BABOafrica]

It's a tough target to capture with a DSLR ... the starfield tends to blot out the nebula. So, pretty good, I would say.

BABO

[Hankmeister3]

Nice emphasis of the Ha regions.
Quite Impressive for a non-Modified DSLR!! I guess Canon took a lesson from their "a"-models, and moved the IR Cutoff to a point just PAST the Ha Emission Frequency.
This looks a bit better than my results with my old IR-Modded T2i...

Thanks Seigell. I hadn't known that about Ha channel and the IR cutoff and the newer Canons. Thanks for the technical heads-up. I wondered why I'm getting a good strong Ha signal though modding would help even more.

[Bigzmey]

Looks great!

[yobbo89]

very nice, good colour, the stars have a nice luminance to them .

some tips, you could try using drizzle to get some resolution back around the stars , you'll most likely have to rescale it back down after to upload due to file sizes.. i checked your scope out, very nice gear . the image scale is 2.2 '' arc/sec , a fair ammount under sampled , a camera with 2.4 um pixel would be a good match for that scope , brings it to about 1.4'' / pixel .

The background seems very slightly cliped , there seems to be even more signal in the dark areas but it just falls off due to the background adjustment.

[mbenjaminz28]

Nice another Meade 70mm quad owner!

[Hankmeister3]

Thanks, Bigzmey.

And thank you Yobba for your tips. Unfortunately, my knowledge and experiential base isn't sufficient to make use of your tips at this point. However, at a later date, I'll probably refer back to your post as an aid to better astrophotos. For example, I heard of "drizzle" and have read exchanges at TSS about drizzle this and drizzle that, but I don't have either the experience or software to apply that processing tool at the moment. What software offers the "drizzle" feature and what exactly does "drizzle" do?

[yobbo89]

from wiki

Drizzle is a digital image processing method for the linear reconstruction of undersampled images. It is normally used for the combination of astronomical images and was originally developed for the Hubble Deep Field observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope.

https://www.stsci.edu/~fruchter/dither/drizzle.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drizzle_( ... rocessing)

deep sky stacker offers drizzle , it is a calibration (stacking) software that many users use here .

[Hankmeister3]

I followed your links and now I know more about what "drizzle" is and what it can do to improve APs.

[Hankmeister3]

Nice another Meade 70mm quad owner!

Presently, I'm more enamored with the Meade 70mm 350mm FL quadruplet astrograph and my Canon EF/L 200mm f/2.8 telephoto than anything else I have. It may be a bit of an exaggeration on my part, but I think relatively bad skies affect smaller optics less. Plus guiding doesn't seem as critical either up to a point.

[TheButcher]

Very NIce Henry!

[mbenjaminz28]

Nice another Meade 70mm quad owner!

Presently, I'm more enamored with the Meade 70mm 350mm FL quadruplet astrograph and my Canon EF/L 200mm f/2.8 telephoto than anything else I have. It may be a bit of an exaggeration on my part, but I think relatively bad skies affect smaller optics less. Plus guiding doesn't seem as critical either up to a point.

I love mine, owned it for a few years now. Very happy with it's performance and ease of use.

[Hankmeister3]

Very NIce Henry!

Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to check out yet another NGC 7000 experiment on my part.

[Hankmeister3]

Nice another Meade 70mm quad owner!

Presently, I'm more enamored with the Meade 70mm 350mm FL quadruplet astrograph and my Canon EF/L 200mm f/2.8 telephoto than anything else I have. It may be a bit of an exaggeration on my part, but I think relatively bad skies affect smaller optics less. Plus guiding doesn't seem as critical either up to a point.

I love mine, owned it for a few years now. Very happy with it's performance and ease of use.

I'm impressed with what less than 3-inches of glass can capture despite it being a quadruplet. Edge to edge sharpness, the flatness of field and complete lack of coma or chromatic aberrations are pretty impressive though one does have to pay a pretty penny for such quality in such a compact package. I really haven't been disappointed in its performance under good skies.