[geo444]

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IC-5146

this is a personal very old challenge !
I never could catch this Nebula before, it's too dim
and its light is essentially produced by H-Alpha rays = 656 nm
the pictures you find on inet are mostly made with Astro specialised cams

from the 56x 30 seconds ISO 1600 DNG raw files, I can't see anything else than stars
worse than my M33 Galaxy best raw shown here :
https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/136-pentax-q/212387-astro-q-club-11.html#post3025456


IC-5146 Cocoon Nebula : ~3,600 Light-years from Home - apparent size : 12'
IC-5146 Cocoon Nebula Q10 + SkyGlow Filter + SkyWatcher 200/1000 = 56 x 30 seconds, ISO 1600 :
stacking : DeepSkyStacker 3.3 - finish : Elements 3.0

Shot at sea level in a big city = lots of light-pollution & turbulence !

enjoy !

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Last edited by geo444; 11-16-2014 at 09:20 AM.

[barondla]

Wow geo444. This is an awesome capture. If I am reading this correctly, you took 56 images for stacking? Did you use an ac adapter to power the Q10? You definetly nailed this personal challenge.

thanks for sharing
barondla

[geo444]

Wow geo444. This is an awesome capture... You definetly nailed this personal challenge. thanks for sharing
barondla

thank you so much, barondla !

... you took 56 images for stacking ? Did you use an ac adapter to power the Q10 ?

I took more than 56 DNGs, about ~75, but some were blurred : HEQ5 mount motor inconstancy, turbulence, wind, (clouds)...
it is somewhat hard to achieve 100% sharp pics with 1000 x 5.65 = 5650mm FL on a 11 years old black HEQ5 !

if the tiny 1000 mAh battery was fully charged, it never becomes flat before the end of the night...
the sensor Max power consumption is ~360mW using Video 60fps Full HD Mode
but during 30s exposures, only regulators & timers are at work
=> the CMos keeps the ambiant temperature

by the way,
30s Max exposure is the main limit of Q10
if I could hack the firmware...

[Kendigitize]

The orion nebula. Pentax Q, Fotodiox adapter, SMC A-135mm 2.8 ISO3200, 2sec exp



---------- Post added 11-18-14 at 08:16 AM ----------

Sirius taken with Q & SMC A-135 f2.8

[alfa75ts]

Cross post from the "Reach" thread.

A shot of the moon tonight on a 6" reflector:

[VisualDarkness]

I can almost see the footprints!

[geo444]

.
Astrophotography challenge Q7=4th - Q10=6th !!

first the fourth, NoRules : a photo of the Sun with a Pentax Q7 on a Coronado Solar Max 60 :
Sun May 4 2014 Color: Digital Photography Review
solar activity is well detailled in the center;
congratulations !

then the sixth : the colorfull photo of the M27 nebula, Dumbell in August sky :
M27 Dumbbell in August sky !: Digital Photography Review
incredible, shot by a modest Pentax Q10


M27 Dumbell Nebula : 1350 Light-years from Earth - apparent size : 8' × 5'.6 !
M27 Dumbell = Pentax Q10 + SkyGlow Filter + SkyWatcher 200/1000 = 56 x 30 seconds @ ISO 1600 :
stacking : DeepSkyStacker 3.2 - finish : Elements 3.0

the reworked version that I submitted :

enjoy these Great tiny Pentax !

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Last edited by geo444; 01-19-2015 at 01:30 AM.

[NoRules]

Hi,
Last) astrophoto of 2014. Orion Nebula with Q7 and Pentax SMC 135mm f.2.5. Not very good, but it proves that Q7 can do DSO with only 30 sec. shutter time.
Happy new year!

[Sooty1962]

If we ever get some clear skies without rain where I can see the moon in NW England I am playing out with this set up.....
My much loved Q10, 70-300mm Sigma DG, Steinheil 2X auto PK convertor(2nd hand when I got it in 1988!), Photodiox PQ to PK, strapped to a 1990's Vivanco tripod + fired with a £4 ebay remote.
Tried indoors and yep it has a tiny field of view and can be carefully focussed - so now just to get out in the real world and see if it's any good.

[geo444]

M1 Ngc-1952

This night, Clear sky over Marseille but Huge turbulence :
I had to discard about 50% of my shots !

M1 Crab Nebula : ~6,500 Light-Years from Home - apparent size : 4' x 6'
M1 Crab Nebula : Q10 + SkyGlow Filter + SkyWatcher 200/1000 = 40 x 30 seconds, ISO 1600 :
stacking : DeepSkyStacker 3.3 - finish : Elements 3.0
the best I can with 20 minutes only :





history of this tiny mag.~8.5 Nebula
It is the remains of the summer 1054 explosion of a SuperNova !
Chinese astronomers said it was six times brighter than Venus and about as brilliant as the full Moon

.
the Pentax Q10 really has an incredible BSI sensor :
www.pentaxforums.com/forums/38-photographic-technique/256035-astrophotography-k5-q-adapter.html#post2959867
who knows the address, fax # or mail @ of the " Pentax listens to its Customers " ?
I'll write to Pentax until they let us expose more than 30 seconds !


PS: impossible to add some subs these days to get a brighter version of M1 !
... submitted it as is in the challenge "Pentax Q Series" ...
got a 5th place in this challenge :
www.dpreview.com/challenges/Entry.aspx?ID=888130

[Kendigitize]

I shot this video of the feb full moon (Frost Moon) using an Orion SkyScanner 100, 2x barlow lens, tmount & Pentax Q. It's 4,400mm I believe.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/millermagic/15828068334/

And then I shot Saturn with the SkyScanner, 2x barlow, 15mm eyepiece, PentaxQ, 01 lens and digiscope adapter. I have no idea how to calculate the length on that set up.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/millermagic/16262894438/

[kwb]

Hi all, thanks for insipirng an astro-photo beginner like me!
I've been waiting for clear sky since I got my C-T adapter to use with my kid's Orion Spaceprobe 3 telescope.
Yesterday there was a no-cloud pocket in the sky and I got this moon shot. No PP other than reducing the size in silkypix with all default settings.
This is an inexpensive (less than 100USD delivered when I bought it in 2011) small 3" reflector but I think it's pretty good for the price. Focal length is 700mm, so it's 35mm equivalent of 3220mm for Q7.
Also, this is a primary focus photo on a reflector, meaning no chromatic aberration, and that's a win for a person like me who has no PP chops and has been annoyed by heavy CA from some glasses on Q7 in the past.

[kwb]

On the same night I took the moon with Orion Spaceprobe 3 and Q7 (previous post), I actually took some Jupiter shots. I didn't like that the patch of the sky Jupiter was in was covered by very thin cloud or mist or something, making some halo around the star, but today I thought that this might be a good opportunity for me to test some stacking and PP, two things that I'm new to.

After choosing 27 usable shots, I used RegiStax to stack them, then used darktable (that's raw processing software on Linux) to bump up the exposure of the moons a bit, adjusted the dark level to remove most of the halo, and bumped up the saturation a bit.

This is what I got:

If you look closely, you can see one of the moons on the left bottom, two on the upper right, and another one is on the right edge of Jupiter. Also, if you look very closely, you can see some small structures between the bands of Jupiter.
I'm fairly satisfied with the result. I almost gave up on stacking because it was such a pain, but I'm happy I didn't.

What stacking software do you guys use?

I had to kill RegiStax many times because it became totally unresponsive when I gave it 27 files at once, so I had to divide the images to three groups stacking 9 at a time to make three intermediate stacked images, and stacked these three to have the final result that is an equivalent of 27 shots stacked in one image. But I had to manually crop intermediate images so that Jupiter comes to approximately the same position from image to image, otherwise RegiStax couldn't stuck them. And RegiStax stripped most of EXIF information when saving to tiff. It was really tedious.

I first tried DeepSkyStacker, which seems to be a nice program, but it turns out that it is not suitable for pictures like this one because it needs many stars to align multiple images. I'll use it for maybe Orion shot or something in the future.

On a positive note, post processing was not as bad/cryptic/painful as I feared. I think I might improve over time.

[baro-nite]

First shot at stacking and some PP-ing with Jupiter

Impressive, well worth the effort I'd say! Seems that all the best astronomy software is for Windows so I've not had much luck on Mac OS.

[kwb]

Impressive, well worth the effort I'd say!

Thank you, and thanks for starting this thread!

I've not had much luck on Mac OS.

I mostly use Linux and Mac for job and at home, it would be nice if there's a good stacking program on Macs and/or Linux.