[weathermon]

Nice work Kevin!

To say I am happy with these shots is an understatement. I've learnt so much in the last few days about Deep Sky Stacker and how to properly take subs. I also made a cable to go from the EQ6 mount to my K3 - the Synscan controller (v3.35) has an intervalometer built in now so I used that!

M20 details:
ISO 800, 60x60 seconds,60 dark frames, Skywatcher ED100, 2.5x Powermate, 0.85x field reducer, tracked by Orion SSAG and PHD Guiding software. Processed in Deep Sky Stacker and refined in Photoshop with Starspikes Pro plugin. Shot on Pentax K3

NGC 5139 details:
NGC 5139, ISO 800, 300 seconds, Skywatcher ED100, 2.5x Powermate, 0.85x field reducer, tracked by Orion SSAG and PHD Guiding software. Processed in Lightroom 5. Shot on Pentax K3

Edit - just re-stacked the M20 using 60 dark frames and re-uploaded. Much better!!

Cheers, Mike

Attached Images

   

---

Last edited by weathermon; 06-27-2014 at 05:44 AM.

[Learjet]

They are great Mike! Although dunno about the spikes with a refractor lol.

I'm having trouble with DSS and RAW files with my K-x, so I had to go back to jpg which is inferior at 8 bit. Which format of files do you use with DSS and your K-3 / K-5? Now that I have my K-5, which format does DSS like more betterer? PEF or DNG?

[VoiceOfReason]

I use dng for dss from my K5

[weathermon]

Yep DNG here as well for the K3 and K5 - Haha yeah a bit of cheating with the spikes and the ED100 Something different

[Learjet]

Thanks heaps chaps. DNG it is then. I'll yell if I have a problem. PEF was giving me swapped channels for some reason.

[Stone G.]

Now that I have my K-5, which format does DSS like more betterer? PEF or DNG?

My experiences: If you have the latest version (Deep Sky Stacker 3.3.4) there wouldn't be much of a difference, neither with K-5 nor with K-3. And the K-x should be supported too (?) according to the overview on the DCRAW page.

[Learjet]

I just run a stack of 2 frames through DSS 3.3.4 with indoor pics using DNG and it seems to be working okay now with this combination. But strewth, 25 MB for each DNG.... I'm gonna need a bigger hard drive!

[weathermon]

Re-uploaded my M20 I took last night using 60 dark frames (and removed the star spikes) - much nicer to look at now

[Learjet]

First light with the K-5 last night! Cloud prevented going any longer than a few minutes, but I am very impressed with what it can do in such a short time. All pics taken with the K-5, ED100 at F7.2.

A cluster NGC6231 was 12 x 1 minutes at ISO 800.
Nearby IC4626 in Scorpius was 32 x 1 minutes at ISO 3200 with a Lumicon Deep Sky filter.
NGC104 - 47 Tucana was only 8 x 30 seconds at ISO 800 before the clouds rolled in.

[Learjet]

I really like the colours in this shot. This is the Southern Pleiades, IC2602. Only 24 x 30 seconds, ED100 at F7.2, Pentax K-5.

Bigger at Astrobin. IC2602 The Southern Pleaides (Kevin) | AstroBin

[weathermon]

Wow nice Kevin! Love the colours of IC2602. Here's my effort of M83 the other night - 125 minutes total exposure with 5 minutes per sub. I should have used ISO800 instead of 1600 though the K3's sensor got really hot.

[ruggiex]

I finally had a chance to give this a shot this past weekend to try out a recently obtained O-GPS1. Unfortunately the milky way was mostly blocked by the mountain and trees and I am really not that far from the city light pollution, the result is still encouraging. I'm looking forward to go out and do more in the future. Any tip is welcome.

15mm F/4, 120 seconds, ISO 1600

[Learjet]

Nice result with the GPS unit Ruggiex.

Mike that's a great M83. It needs many, many hours to look good, which is why I've been avoiding it. 5 minute subs through the ED100 at Native prime focus F9 I would have used ISO 400. Question, how do you know the sensor was hot? Does the K3 have an inbuilt temp sensor?

[weathermon]

Nice result with the GPS unit Ruggiex.

Mike that's a great M83. It needs many, many hours to look good, which is why I've been avoiding it. 5 minute subs through the ED100 at Native prime focus F9 I would have used ISO 400. Question, how do you know the sensor was hot? Does the K3 have an inbuilt temp sensor?

Thanks Kevin - yeah I'm pretty happy with only 125 minutes total time - I'll prob go back and redo it at ISO800 with shorter 2 minute subs - the Powermate is good because it doesn't have the light loss the normal barlows do but the image quality around the edge of it suffers though (pretty bad coma). With the last few frames I was taking, I started to get an orange glow in the pics so I thought it was the orange streetlight. When I was doing the dark frames, the last 10 images kept getting more and more orange until it had a pretty bad orange glow over the whole pic instead of being black - I should have let the sensor rest for about 2 mins in between pics to let it cool off instead of a 5 second break. Looks like it's time for moon pics soon Hey what sky pollution filter do you recommend? I wouldn't mind trying something to cut out a bit more light pollution when shooting in the backyard - was quite surprised (even though it was fairly dark) just how much light there still is when I took a 13 second shot at ISO6400 with the K5.

[Stone G.]

Mike that's a great M83. It needs many, many hours to look good, which is why I've been avoiding it. 5 minute subs through the ED100 at Native prime focus F9 I would have used ISO 400. Question, how do you know the sensor was hot? Does the K3 have an inbuilt temp sensor?

When I was doing the dark frames, the last 10 images kept getting more and more orange until it had a pretty bad orange glow over the whole pic instead of being black - I should have let the sensor rest for about 2 mins in between pics to let it cool off instead of a 5 second break.

Wow, some truly great images in this thread recently.

Actually, there is a temperature sensor inside the camera. Not quite sure where it is measured but, anyway, you can see what that temperature was in Exiftool. Here's an example where I used the K-3 for prime-focus solar photography and where the temperature rose considerably above ambient temperature:



So, it could be very interesting, if weathermoon would take the trouble and give us insight in the camera temperatures at the beginning and at the end of his M83 session.