TheSkySearchers

We've all seen them and go wow! so I've decided to give it a go. At the moment it's probably a case of all the gear and no idea, but thought it would be fun to post up my progress from the absolute beginning. I was at Big Bend area in Texas (Bortle 1) about 3 years ago and took this pic. Stock Canon 1000D with standard lens on a fixed tripod. Yeah it's pathetic in every respect but actually seeing the Milky Way is breathtaking.



That poor pic hasn't put me off though and despite the "not so good" skies here think I can do better. The plan is to use a modded canon 600D with a Samyang 14mm F2.8 lens and travel out of town to find less polluted skies.



After asking some advice on this brilliant, friendly forum, the feedback was short exposures on a fixed tripod with no filters. I did a couple of tests in my back yard (Bortle 5) and things looked promising. I went to a darker site in my RV yesterday with a great forecast. The best time was late evening but it was no go as the clouds rolled in. At 5.30am though it was a bit better but the Milky way had moved on as this Stellarium grab shows.



I stacked some pics together in Pixinsight. There was a bit of cloud but I managed to capture some of it. No calibration frames, just stack em and let the foreground blur.



This time lapse shows how little time I had.

https://youtu.be/y1S5YRok-rw

The main thing is I learned a lot. The camera battery didn't last long, the pan and tilt head on the tripod was useless and as expected and the lens misted up. I've now got a ball head for the tripod, ordered a dummy battery and dew heater. Both of these are USB and will take about 2A each. That equates to about 20W. I've also ordered an Anker 337 Power Bank rated at 26800mAh which should give about 7 hours. In addition, I've made up some cables to run the rig from my 12V 110Ah Lipo RV leisure battery which would run it for days. Talking of cables, I don't like the car power plugs most astro kit comes with. They pull out and are notoriously unreliable. I've cut them all off and I use XLR type connectors for all low voltage connectors. I've used these for years and they have proven to be reliable in the harsh environment of TV and film production.





This is the 12V to usb adapter I've used.



That's where I'm up to. Any comment's, help or advice as always, is very welcome. It's how we improve.

Many thanks for looking,
Clear skies

Pete

That is enormously cool Pete!
I am very much looking forward to your experiences shooting Milky Way images! Not to mention the images themselves.
Do you mind attaching some so that I can view in a larger field? I really can’t see much on my phone screen.

Looks like you have found some ways to improve already and looks like you are putting together a nice setup.

My first AP shots were of the MW from Yosemite and I had a blast, but the results were just ok. That was my extent of it! Of course, Bortle 6-7 skies at home is nothing like skies at Yosemite!

Best of success and looking forward to seeing your work!

Hi Pete. A very good Milky Way image using your Canon 1000D camera on fixed tripod. And it looks like your are really putting your project together nicely with all of your gear. Thanks for sharing these excellent photos of your equipment and capture results with us Pete and keep up the great work.

Nice setup, Pete, and well thought-out. I am looking forward to what you generate.

As an aside, it's nice to put a name to those XLR connectors. I used them for years when setting up the sound system for my a capella group, they are failure-proof for sure.

Bob

Thanks for the replies.
The connectors are called
Neutrik® NC3MXX 3-pole XLR Line Connector
Google will find them. They are available in 3, 4 and 5 pin from memory.
Jim, I've made a flickr account. I assume hosting on there will enable a full size pic in a new screen.
I tried to embed the YouTube video into the post but couldn't get it to work. Not sure if it's my lack of knlowledge or if the forum prevents it.

Again, thank you,
Clear skies
Pete

I moved this post over here (beginner's forum) because it is a project and I believe beginners would really benefit from this post. I think it would get lost in the Deep Sky images forum.

Nice post BTW, keep going!

Cheers,

It's been a while since I updated this thread but only due to bad weather. The forecast looked promising but a waxing crescent moon wouldn't help matters. I live in a valley and it's plagued with light pollution and mist so I drove to a rural location 1,500 ft above sea level.






With the lack of clear skies, I've started doing a bit of cloud spotting





I set the camera up and it was flawless. The Anker power bank never batted an eyelid despite the dew heater being on. It would have run all night easily. The results however were a bit disappointing and as usual the clouds rolled in.....






The main thing I noticed is the noise from the camera. I took some daytime shots with it and my Samsung budget phone was producing much better results. The pics above were taken on my phone. I have every confidence in the Samyang lens though and reckon the Canon 600D is old tech. Moving forwards, I'm going to buy a Player One Poseidon-C Pro cooled camera and try that. Yes, I'll lose the portability of the DSLR but I'm looking for a clean, smooth time lapse, It will be an interesting comparison.

All comments, criticism, sugesstions and help are 100% welcome. I want to learn

Thanks for looking.
Clear skies
Pete

wonderful video , thx .

I absolutely love the video, I am thinking about delving into time lapse video when I get some more time. Mind telling how many frames it took and what software you used to put it together?

Clear Skies,
Chris

I initially set the camera to AV (aperture priority) to try to capture the sunset. It seemed to compensate for the varying light levels. The iris was fully open at F2.8.The plan was to change the camera to manual and take 20s exposures once it was dark. The clouds had rolled in by that time though.
I managed 1000 frames and the raw image files were compiled in Sony Vegas. I zoomed to give a 16:9 aspect ratio but there's terrible colour banding in the vid, not sure why. I shot CR2 files and it seems that the levels were lifted when I edited it which could explain the colour banding. I also ran an anti flicker fx but when I tried a de noise filter, the PC ground to a halt. I could use an image container in Pix and batch process individual images using RC astros blur and noise exterminator, but guess that would take a while. There's a free program called virtualdub that can compile the images but it only renders avi files iirc. I guess there are others though.
Whilst I was out, I did some cloud formation time lapses. I want to try to put together a compilation of shots. I have various cameras that will do this and tried them all. The results were interesting to say the least but daytime stuff is not really astro related.

Hope that helps, any more Q's, fire away
Clear skies
Pete

Very beautiful captures Peter!

Hey Pete,
Great video! Felt like I was there.
What a fantastic place to image!
Looks like you should get great s/n ratio images from that spot. Really low lp?
Good for you! Can’t wait to see more!

Juno16 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:51 pm Hey Pete,
Great video! Felt like I was there.
What a fantastic place to image!
Looks like you should get great s/n ratio images from that spot. Really low lp?
Good for you! Can’t wait to see more!

Thanks for the kind words.

I went back to do some more because the LP is really low there. I also took my scope to do some imaging but the wind was insane, it was really struggling guiding. I did however leave the Canon camera out all night troble free but a full moon spoiled the fun.
Night timelapse starts at 2.14




I'm still wondering in I will ever catch the Milky Way
Thanks for looking
Clear skies
Pete

Did you travel around Big Bend or stay in one location or ???
BB is on my bucket list and I can be there in a mere 23 hours if I drive non-stop.

Hi Pete,
Guiding or not, your video and time-lapse are fabulous!
What a beautiful place!
Thank you Pete for sharing your wonderful work with us!

pakarinen wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 10:56 pm Did you travel around Big Bend or stay in one location or ???
BB is on my bucket list and I can be there in a mere 23 hours if I drive non-stop.

I stopped in Waco most of the time. I was suprised but I could see the Milky Way from my friends suburban back yard. I stopped only one day and night at BB which from my app (clear outside) is bortle 1. I went to McDonald Obsy for a late evening which is Bortle 2 but there were a lot of people about and it was dimly lit for safety reasons. I prefered BB though because it was absolute blackness. I also went to the Palo Duro canyon for a night. That was also awesome too. Milky Way has been on my bucket list for about 30 years but it was definately worth the efffort. The memories will live with me forever. Texas is a massive, like really big! I'm sure there are lots of places that are away from light pollution but yeah, I understand the distances and travelling times.

Juno16 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 06, 2023 12:34 am Hi Pete,
Guiding or not, your video and time-lapse are fabulous!
What a beautiful place!
Thank you Pete for sharing your wonderful work with us!

Your vey welcome Jim. I thought it might be interesting for some of you guys to see things from this side of the pond.
I've not come up with the goods yet though. I had another trip out on Thursday to a different location and learned a bit more. It's relatively easy astro imaging from my back yard with my permanent setup. Remote setup has it's challenges that you don't take into consideration like wind! I'm sure I'll get there though, these things are not easy and it seems you need perfect conditions to get what your looking for.


Thanks for looking
Clear skies
Pete

Petrol wrote: ↑Sat Apr 08, 2023 9:18 pm Texas is a massive, like really big!

Yup. Almost 3 times bigger than the UK. If that helps put it into perspective. I've lived all over that state. From Lubbock to San Antonio.

pakarinen wrote: ↑Wed Apr 05, 2023 10:56 pm Did you travel around Big Bend or stay in one location or ???
BB is on my bucket list and I can be there in a mere 23 hours if I drive non-stop.

I want to go back!

Clear skies
Pete

I went back to the dark location, no moon and took 1300 16s frames. Main problem at the moment is that the CR2 files are being auto stretched in windows. I've tried to convert them to Tiff files before rendering into a video but whatever I do, the images are streched which is increasing the noise. I might have to try Jpeg files or use an astro cam on the back of the lens to take Fits files.





I'm also going to try putting the cam on a guided mount and stacking the images in Pixinsight. Maybe with darks, flats and bias frames I might be able to get some detail. Looks like I'm a bit nearer but still a long way to go.
Thanks for looking,
Pete

Do you use Irfanview as your initial graphics viewer? It can see CR2 images and does nothing to them until you tell it to.

https://www.irfanview.com/