Forgot Password
Pentax Camera Forums Home
 

Reply
Show Printable Version Search this Thread
09-24-2016, 04:48 PM   #1021
Senior Member




Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 102
Fantastic photo, Pete. You should send it to Sky & Telescope magazine -- maybe they would publish it. Thanks for the data on the exposure time and settings. I'm still trying to learn how to do that.

09-25-2016, 11:05 PM   #1022
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
Pete_XL's Avatar

Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Germany
Photos: Gallery
Posts: 335
QuoteOriginally posted by XLXW Quote
Fantastic photo, Pete. You should send it to Sky & Telescope magazine -- maybe they would publish it. Thanks for the data on the exposure time and settings. I'm still trying to learn how to do that.
Thank you for the praise - but looking at the present publications at T&S I fear it can't compete. I am still learning how to handle the few photons arriving here best......
09-26-2016, 03:43 PM   #1023
Senior Member




Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 102
Here is an interesting article which a guy wrote and posted over on CloudyNights about hooking up DSLR's to telescopes. It may be useful here -- I don't really know as I am not particularly computer literate: Wireless Control of Canon EOS DSLRs with DSLR Controller and TP-Link MR3040 Wireless Router - User Reviews - Articles - Articles - Cloudy Nights
09-29-2016, 04:52 PM - 4 Likes   #1024
Site Supporter
Site Supporter




Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Irvine, CA
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 307
QuoteOriginally posted by Pete_XL Quote
WOW! Lots of kudos!
What setup besides the K5 did you use?


Regards, Pete
Pete,
I now have an Skywatcher Maksutov Newtonian MN190 telescope that I mount on a Orion Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G mount with the "Orion Awesome Autoguider" Package. To focus precisely I have a Bahtinov mask. The mount can control the camera so I just set it up to track at a specific object and take 40 shots or so and stack them in Deep Sky Stacker and do further editing in Photoshop. This telescope has an amazing flat field and is my dedicated deep sky astrograph.

Here is a shot of the Iris Nebula.

Enjoy!

Attached Images
View Picture EXIF
 Photo 
09-29-2016, 05:14 PM   #1025
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
Ex Finn.'s Avatar

Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Southern Maryland. Espoo. Kouvola.
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 7,960
Nice!
09-29-2016, 09:06 PM   #1026
Senior Member




Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 102
Eric:
Excellent capture of the nebula. I am in the process of acquiring an old 1978 Celestron 5 inch Schmidt Cassegrain telephoto lens; and, I am going to learn how to do some astrophotography. I should get it hopefully sometime next week. The lens will be 1,250 mm in focal length Here is a total "novice" question: On the K3 camera or the K5 camera in the camera settings for the lens focal length -- do you set the camera for 1.) the focal length of the telescope or 2.) for the expanded focal length due to the 1.5x sensor in the camera, i.e. 1,250 mm for a 1,250 mm lens or the expanded length of 1,875 mm because of the camera's sensor at 1.5x [1,250 mm x 1.5]?
How long of a period of time did you expose each of the shots of the nebula; and, what settings on the camera did you use to do accomplish it?
I am hoping to get away to the California desert next weekend and give it a try on my C8 -- maybe at the Moon and the Ring Nebula.
09-30-2016, 03:31 AM - 1 Like   #1027
Veteran Member
k5astro's Avatar

Join Date: Apr 2012
Photos: Albums
Posts: 387
QuoteOriginally posted by Eric Seavey Quote
Pete,
I now have an Skywatcher Maksutov Newtonian MN190 telescope that I mount on a Orion Atlas Pro AZ/EQ-G mount with the "Orion Awesome Autoguider" Package. To focus precisely I have a Bahtinov mask. The mount can control the camera so I just set it up to track at a specific object and take 40 shots or so and stack them in Deep Sky Stacker and do further editing in Photoshop. This telescope has an amazing flat field and is my dedicated deep sky astrograph.

Here is a shot of the Iris Nebula.

Enjoy!
Very nice! Super clear and sharp!

10-01-2016, 11:49 AM - 1 Like   #1028
Site Supporter
Site Supporter




Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Irvine, CA
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 307
QuoteOriginally posted by XLXW Quote
Eric:
Excellent capture of the nebula. I am in the process of acquiring an old 1978 Celestron 5 inch Schmidt Cassegrain telephoto lens; and, I am going to learn how to do some astrophotography. I should get it hopefully sometime next week. The lens will be 1,250 mm in focal length Here is a total "novice" question: On the K3 camera or the K5 camera in the camera settings for the lens focal length -- do you set the camera for 1.) the focal length of the telescope or 2.) for the expanded focal length due to the 1.5x sensor in the camera, i.e. 1,250 mm for a 1,250 mm lens or the expanded length of 1,875 mm because of the camera's sensor at 1.5x [1,250 mm x 1.5]?
How long of a period of time did you expose each of the shots of the nebula; and, what settings on the camera did you use to do accomplish it?
I am hoping to get away to the California desert next weekend and give it a try on my C8 -- maybe at the Moon and the Ring Nebula.
XLXW,
Schmidt Cassagrains are not great for deep sky astrophotography. You can do it but there are certain things that will help make it work well. First, the mirror is not fixed, so for long exposures your image can drift, and cause star trails. Second you are working with F/10, and that is pretty slow, and many of the SC don't have a good flat field that causes the stars to warp near the edge of the frame. Also, you need an equatorial mount to track earth's rotation for at least an hour. the For long exposures with a SC telescope you need an off-axis autoguider to account for the mirror moving while tracking the sky. The Ring Nebula is pretty bright and so is the moon. You wouldn't have to go very far to image the ring nebula. The moon is very bright, and only needs a short exposure. The ring nebula on and f/10 needs at least 30second exposure. The Iris nebula is quite faint and even with my f/5.3 I took 66 images of one minute at ISO800 (would have liked to get over a hundred). The Dumbbel Nebula and most globular star clusters are also pretty bright, so again, you can get away with 30 second exposures. But you will need to stack at least 40 of them to pull out the details. I use a free program that I downloaded called Stellarium to plan what I want to photograph.

Hope this helps.

Eric
10-02-2016, 03:48 AM - 1 Like   #1029
Veteran Member
k5astro's Avatar

Join Date: Apr 2012
Photos: Albums
Posts: 387
QuoteOriginally posted by XLXW Quote
Eric:
Excellent capture of the nebula. I am in the process of acquiring an old 1978 Celestron 5 inch Schmidt Cassegrain telephoto lens; and, I am going to learn how to do some astrophotography. I should get it hopefully sometime next week. The lens will be 1,250 mm in focal length Here is a total "novice" question: On the K3 camera or the K5 camera in the camera settings for the lens focal length -- do you set the camera for 1.) the focal length of the telescope or 2.) for the expanded focal length due to the 1.5x sensor in the camera, i.e. 1,250 mm for a 1,250 mm lens or the expanded length of 1,875 mm because of the camera's sensor at 1.5x [1,250 mm x 1.5]?
How long of a period of time did you expose each of the shots of the nebula; and, what settings on the camera did you use to do accomplish it?
I am hoping to get away to the California desert next weekend and give it a try on my C8 -- maybe at the Moon and the Ring Nebula.
A lot of people confuse the focal length issue. The sensor size of the camera does not change the focal length of the lens or its properties! The crop factor (1.5) is the sensors size relative to a 35 mm sensor - the old film standard. It simply means that your image is a smaller portion of the field of a 35 mm sensor - 1/1.5 x smaller.

So the focal length settings are whatever the lens is - no crop factor to account for.

(The confusion arises because often people are comparing the equivalent fields of view. In this case you need a wider lens (shorter focal length) on a cropped sensor to get the same field of view.)

By the way, the K5 and K3 work great with the GPS unit (or built in on the K3 I think) which will help you camera track the stars, but more than 300mm may be too much. Worth looking into!
10-02-2016, 03:18 PM   #1030
Senior Member




Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 102
Guys:
Thanks for the helpful and useful information. One of the things I was thinking about doing in the desert is shooting movie frames of the Moon and/or a planet with the Pentax K3 through the C8 or some other telescope. Has anyone ever had any experience with that? I have an 80 mm achromat finder telescope (Lumicon) and a 77 mm Kowa flourite spotting scope which will work like a camera lens -- or at least Kowa said it would but I don't have the digiscoping attachment for it and it is expensive to acquire it.
Is there any astronomy astrophotography software out there which will stack Pentax movie images?
10-03-2016, 04:08 AM - 1 Like   #1031
Veteran Member
k5astro's Avatar

Join Date: Apr 2012
Photos: Albums
Posts: 387
QuoteOriginally posted by XLXW Quote
Guys:
Thanks for the helpful and useful information. One of the things I was thinking about doing in the desert is shooting movie frames of the Moon and/or a planet with the Pentax K3 through the C8 or some other telescope. Has anyone ever had any experience with that? I have an 80 mm achromat finder telescope (Lumicon) and a 77 mm Kowa flourite spotting scope which will work like a camera lens -- or at least Kowa said it would but I don't have the digiscoping attachment for it and it is expensive to acquire it.
Is there any astronomy astrophotography software out there which will stack Pentax movie images?
Of course! DeepSkyStacker is used by most people it seems. Works great and is easy to use. But you need to output DNG raw files, not PEF files.
10-03-2016, 09:35 AM   #1032
Senior Member




Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 102
Thanks. I'll try to find it on the internet somewhere.
10-03-2016, 09:43 AM   #1033
New Member




Join Date: Oct 2016
Posts: 1
Thank you friends
I get a lot of information in this group
keep good posting & excellent pict
10-03-2016, 04:41 PM   #1034
Senior Member




Join Date: Dec 2014
Location: Milky Way Galaxy, Planet Earth, Speeding towards the Virgo Supercluster
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 156
QuoteOriginally posted by gbeaton Quote
Of course! DeepSkyStacker is used by most people it seems. Works great and is easy to use. But you need to output DNG raw files, not PEF files.
Deep Sky Stacker WILL NOT work w/ "movie" files. Raw, jpg..etc...it's not meant for video frames...
10-04-2016, 03:26 AM   #1035
Veteran Member
k5astro's Avatar

Join Date: Apr 2012
Photos: Albums
Posts: 387
QuoteOriginally posted by SKYGZR Quote
Deep Sky Stacker WILL NOT work w/ "movie" files. Raw, jpg..etc...it's not meant for video frames...
Oops... PIPP (Planetary image pre-processor) is good for movie processing.
Reply

Bookmarks
  • Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook
  • Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter
  • Submit Thread to Digg Digg
Tags - Make this thread easier to find by adding keywords to it!
activations, angle, camera, dslr, flickr, gps, images, interval, k-5, k-5 ii, k-5 iis, k5, lake, leds, lens, pentax, pentax k-5, picture, shutter, sky, star, thanks, time
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Astrophotography iClick Pentax DSLR Discussion 1248 12-19-2021 05:07 PM
Astrophotography with Kr??? kooks Pentax K-r 5 04-23-2011 07:12 AM
Astrophotography Naturenut Troubleshooting and Beginner Help 4 09-09-2010 07:27 AM
Astrophotography with K10 J-Rod Photographic Technique 5 12-12-2009 06:08 PM
K7 And Astrophotography Christopher M.W.T Pentax DSLR Discussion 49 11-25-2009 08:51 AM



All times are GMT -7. The time now is 07:02 PM. | See also: NikonForums.com, CanonForums.com part of our network of photo forums!
  • Red (Default)
  • Green
  • Gray
  • Dark
  • Dark Yellow
  • Dark Blue
  • Old Red
  • Old Green
  • Old Gray
  • Dial-Up Style
Hello! It's great to see you back on the forum! Have you considered joining the community?
register
Creating a FREE ACCOUNT takes under a minute, removes ads, and lets you post! [Dismiss]
Top