To help keep track of the different sections of images (light, dark, flats and bias), I take a an image with a small red LED light before starting each group. It's easy to pick these out when previewing my images on camera or computer.
An alternative is to make folders for each type of frame in the camera. Start with test shots; once you find your target quickly go to Menu>Select folder>New folder. Repeat for each type of calibration frame. You can just copy the resulting five folders and rename them. This way you don't have to keep track of any file numbers or such.
Just got started in Astrophotography and absolutely love your channel and your content. You’re a huge help for finding ones way around the wonderful world of Astro. Please keep doing what you do, it’s awesome! This video is gonna be a great start to my weekend. I hope you enjoy yours!
You could create individual folders for different types of images in the camera. When you finish shooting light frames, create a new folder for flats, another for darks, etc. This way, I don't need to take notes or remember where I put them. Both methods will work; it's a matter of preference. Thank you, Nico; clear skies. 🔭🌌
OMG Nico, I think it's the first time you've mentioned this highpass trick for making structures more prominent, and contrasty. This is an amazing piece of advice. I've gone back to most of my saved TIFs and did this and results are stunning. Thank you for that!
Absolutely love this kind of video, I started astrophotography by watching these kinds of videos, it's beginner friendly-having many details, I'm so glad you are doing these videos again!
Making that table with calibration frames in it was such a good touch. I had forgotten exactly how to do these, so this helps. Screen shot saved and will be used!
Nico, this is some fantastic information! You might want to add some SEO relating to "astrophotography for beginners" or something along those lines, I think beginners would find this video very helpful.
this always gets me so excited, cuz ive always just seen photos of space and stars and the moon and just assumed, "i cant do that , i dont even own a telescope" but am excited to try this at my inlaws farm , theres no light at all out there so it should be perfect
Absolutely brilliant Nico. I’ve been using Photoshop for some time now but without some of the tips and tricks included in this video. So grateful to you. Like many others, your channel was and still is; at the heart of most of what I do. Thank you so much 🤝
This video is gold! When I saw it was an hour long I hesitated at first, but the way you go step by step with no fluff or unnecessary dialogue makes it so easy to follow along. And the hour actually flew by, thanks!
Hey Nico great video! I have the Star Adventure 2i and use Stellarium to locate my targets as well. One thing that helps in that process is I bought a phone holder that has a cold shoe mount. Attach it to the camera or an extension bar on the side of the scope and make sure it's square on the axis. Pull up my target and manually slew until the app shows I'm on it. It almost always gets me in frame or just outside of frame.
Thank you Nico! You are one of my motivators to keep trying and improving my astrophotography! I got into it sometime in March 2021. I used to just use a 50mm and dslr, but have been slowly increasing my learning steep, I have been trying harder targets and longer exposures with a skywatcher. But the regular dslr lenses don’t cut it for me anymore. I bought a Meade LX90 10’ in December and have been using it to just look at stars while taking astrophotography with my lenses. But I’ve been slowly but surely buying more equipment (bcuz it’s expensive a new piece like every few months) and soon enough I’ll have my X-Wedge to be able to use the Meade Telescope for astrophotography, I have enjoyed this hobby so much. But surely this video will help out the beginners as the one you did on Orion with no star tracker helped me with my first photo in March of 2021. For all the beginners don’t lose faith as this hobby needs dedication and time to perfect as many other hobbies do. Please learn from mistakes and just keep practicing. Videos that are informative like Nico makes are the best ones and help ease the learning curve that a lot of people confront once realizing that doing astrophotography is time consuming and a lengthy commitment! Well That’s all I have to Say! Hopefully everyone has Clear Skies this upcoming season! (P.S Don’t let light pollution lose your motivation, I live in one of the biggest bortle 9 metropolitan areas and it’s hard to go out about 2-3 hours just for less light pollution. Learn the easier targets before going out of your way for better skies. Practice on like the moon, Orion, Pleiades, and maybe even wide field night views to perfect your practice before going out.
Great message! I had something about practicing on bright objects from light polluted areas, but it got cut due to time. I totally agree though! I started deep sky imaging from a city, and spent several months happily doing it that way before I found a dark place to travel to.
I use folders in the camera to separate my lights, darks, flat and bias frames. Much easier for me to find in processing rather than trying to remember or write down frame numbers. I love your videos. You are so good with the details.
Lovvvvveeee these videos! Only 1 small issue with 1 very small thing you said though. Don’t ever delete files in camera! If you’re going to have an SD card corrupt that’s what’s gonna do it, and you could waste hours! Just rely on formatting the whole card to get rid of files. When I’m doing test shots I shine my phone screen into the lens for a photo before and after test shots so it’s suppppper easy to pick them out of the files with the thumbnails
"our sun is going to die" "oh i'm so sorry for your loss!" oh wait 😅. I actually got the Helix nebula to show up in a 75s exposure on a 6D with a 35mm f/1.4 @2.8 on a tracker in AZ. didn't know it was there but once I stitched my pano together it was rising above the horizon! i was floored. so cool to see that in a landscape astro photo. going to make a SHORT vid eventually on that experience. who knows when
I just found your channel as I am just getting into astrophotography. Immediately subscribed as your delivery and content is spot on! Thank you for sharing your knowledge as well as helping those of us that are new to this genre of photography.
What a great video! Subscribed! You mentioned the lens warmer. In how cold / freezing weather (for example during the winter) it is possible still to operate with a DSLR without breaking it?
Excellent as always Nico . I love watching your PS tutorials. I end up doing the same things but in such a convoluted way bouncing back and forth with PI making several versions with numerous masks. I wish I knew PS as well as you - it would save me an enormous amount of time. Maybe when I finally retire I will have time to do this 'the right way". For now I will just pick up a tip here and there. Cheers Kurt
Great video. At the beginning, it may have an idea to mention that you were using a Crop Factor camera and that the focal length of the 200mm lens changes. Anybody using a Full Frame camera may be disappointed in the results using the 200mm lens and wonder what happened.
Perfekt Video. But i think the objekt is to smal for 200mm. IT make more fun with greater objekts. For example the veil nebula is very big. So it's more fun for beginners.
I have found through doing a lot of projects without a star tracker that the brightness of the object matters a lot more than it's apparent diameter, but I agree the ultimate is an object that is both big and bright like M8, M31 or M42, but I've covered many of those already. Veil is a nice object with a star tracker, but I am very skeptical that it would make a good object without one since it is very dim and in a crowded star field, making it doubly difficult.
I did quite a few astro pictures a couple years ago. Wish I'd had this back then. I figured a lot of it by trial and error but missed a lot also. Would have saved hours playing on my computer.
I started doing this astrophotography thing about five months ago. Last night, after watching this video the other week, I decided to punch in M 27 just to see if I could see it. I could not see it in the camera screen like what you show in this video but I could on the computer. This is the very first time that I have seen something come up in color! It looks just like what you show in this video. Everything I have done with Andromeda and the area around the North America Nebula shows up black and white with shades of grey so this teal-green nebula was a bit exciting.
@Nebula Photos A faster way to a black mask is to create it when making the mask. Just clicking on mask icon makes a white mask. ADDING the ALT key while clicking on mask icon makes a black mask.
@@NebulaPhotos Try to remember ALT for the "alternate" of a white mask. Also CTRL+J will duplicate the current layer selected or you can drag layer to new layer icon to do the same. Also I beleive while a layers mask is selected you can go to image and choose apply image to make a mask of the image rather than copying the image and pasting it in the mask. Use the options in dialogue to choose merged or the layer you want, blending mode opacity.
Great video as usual. I like the technique of copying the red luminance to emphasize it. I hope it works on my old Photoshop version CS4 . Couple questions: (1) On matching temperature of lights & darks: Last month I took 754 exposures of Sagittarius with my Canon T3i. According to exiftool, the temperature of 1st image @8:58pm was 51 C, middle image @9:21pm 38 C, last image @9:49pm 35 C. How to match temperature with this wide variation? (I do not know why the camera started hot & cooled. It was not noticeably hot when I started.) (2) On your oblong star fix: does it help to enlarge image to 200% or 400%, then after nudging, reduce back (50%/25%)?
Nico, I have a question regarding the first Levels adjustments. I find this step crucial in my image editing, though I'm often stuck afterwards. Well, I have noticed that the way I edit Levels and RGB channels, a slight push to the right or left can make a permanent color shift, affecting everything. For example, several times my histogram looked good, all colours aligned, black looked good, but on the image itself bright objects had mostly green cast, teal, magenta, whatever. This was evident especially when boosting the image further. They didn't look real, nor did nebulae or galaxies. I tried fixing this with all kinds of Curves adjustments, finding true black/white spots, but this colour cast remained. Then after many troubleshooting, I found that the way I adjusted Levels in the beginning was the issue. If I adjusted it right (following the histogram, but also having luck), the whole image would have nice colours - nebulae, galaxies and stars would look good. But If I messed up, it would be a pain to fix and would linger throughout the whole process. I hope you could maybe explain this in more detail, how to be more precise during Levels adjustment and what to look for? Thanks a bunch!
Yes, Photoshop isn't the best at these subtle color calibrations and requires lots of practice and a good eye to use successfully. In your case, I'd highly suggest using the Background Extraction and Photometric Color Calibration processes in Siril (free) and that should fix all problems with colour cast before you even stretch. You can either replace DSS with Siril or still stack in DSS and edit the tiff in Siril before finishing in Photoshop. Link in description for part 2 where I show how to use these processes in Siril.
@@NebulaPhotos Thanks a lot Nico! I never tried Siril and your tutorial was so helpful. I love DSS and got used to it a lot, but will certainly be trying Siril from now on and see how this goes. Could be a real time saver and a fix for my color issues.
Great video, and I have watched your channel to learn about astrophotography. I use a Mac with SiriL, and find it has the best post processing for stacking and background subtraction. I have not found any problems if I name the folders with beginning capitals.
I may try this either this fall or next spring. My roadblock mainly is all the projects that I currently have that lack completion. Another roadblock is I don't particularly want to buy a storage device capable of storing 1000 images that you call lights & 175 images you call calibration images all in RAW format while being uncertain whether I will fall down the rabbit hole. I am wondering what kind of outcome I would get if I experimented by using only 10% of the total images for each class ??? Additionally, while I am familiar with digital darkrooms such as PhotoShop I was always a film photographer and considered digital cheating so I have a bit of a learning curve to become reasonably adept with respect to using the digital photography software. I am considering
No, not without some kind of tracking. If just on a tripod, focal length/ratio on a 70mm refractor is typically around 400mm f/5.6 - that means shutter speed would have to be much shorter (under 1 second) and camera noise starts to dominate because there is not enough signal due to the slower optics and shorter exposures.
@@NebulaPhotos Currently I have a 70mm F/10 but that will be swapped for either a 102mm F/6.5 or a light bucket but I wouldn't be taking any photos with the light bucket. I want to get the Star adventurer GTI or the AVX but some guy on reddit told me not to waste my money and just buy an HEQ5 pro for twice the money which personally is unaffordable atm. I've seen you and Backyard do some crazy photos with the GTI so I think I will go with that.
Thankyou for this epic video. I tried taking a photo of the lagoon and triphid nebula with my 400mm like you recommended, it actually didn’t turn out too bad, thanks for the advice!
If you are shooting in RAW, does it matter what you set the White Balance too? As far as noting when you do flats, etc., what I do is before each calibration type, I first shine my red light in the lens and take a shot. This will mark the start of that particular calibration frame and I also use it to mark when I change to photograph a different subject as well. When I download it onto the computer, that red light exposed shot clearly marks the change. Another question: can the FLAT be done at home, meaning in the house or does it have to be done in the field?
White balance: not for processing, but useful for DSLR shooting since I take preview shots to find the Dumbbell, and it's nicer if those are close to 'true color' so I can be sure the green will stand out. Red light: yes, I've used this technique too, works well! Flats: yes, these can be done at home. Just don't take the lens off of the camera or dust on the sensor may shift.
51:00 Hey Nico, it's Kevin's Question Time! The method you used to bring out the red color, could that take the place of getting your camera astro modified, seeing as how it seems that the camera is capturing the color but it's just being drowned out by the other signals?? Or does getting the camera astro modified allow for more of this Red channel to be captured??
These videos take me a long time (several weeks or sometimes months) to make so 'last night' is no longer last night by the time the video comes out :)
2 Questions: 1. Wouldn’t it be clever to go to LR first, apply Lens corrections and some WB tweaking - and sync ALL files, export them as Tiffs before DSS? 2. How can you work on 32Bit default DSSexport Tifs in PS? I need to use 16Bit export
1. Some people do work that way. I don’t for 2 reasons: One: Opening up your images in LR or PS first will always apply a non-linear stretch. Stacking will still work on stretched images, but not as well and the consequence is usually weird rings around the stars. Two. Calibration won’t work properly with stretched images. So if you go this route, don’t bother taking darks, flats, and bias frames. so I don’t suggest it, but it is an alternative workflow that some people use. 2. In PS, under the image menu there is an option under mode for bit depth. If working in 32 bit I duplicate the layer, do an initial stretch, change it to 16 bit and when it asks say ‘don’t merge’. Then you can continue on editing in 16 bit and all options will be available
Love the videos bro. You got me into astrophotography and now I'm badly taking pictures of the night sky 😂 One question if you don't mind. I want to shoot the NA nebula but it's practically straight up in the sky and I'm having a hard timing framing (have a Canon dslr on a star adventurer and ballhead). Is it just a practice and patience thing or do I need to wait until it's lower in the sky? Thanks for any advice from anyone 🤙🏽
Thank you so much Nico - can we follow the same method from high light poluted city sky like bortell 8-9. Does taking more pictures would help ? - thanks again !! You Rock!!
I love these DSLR and a tripod videos and it's making want to try this as well. One question, if you don't mind. I don't have the time to shoot that long at night, but I could do shorter sessions over several days for the lights. How would you handle the calibration frames? I.e. Take some with each session, or only at the end of one of the sessions.
If you use Deep Sky Stacker, you can use the groups feature at the bottom to put one night into each group. It should calibrate with that night's calibration frames and then combine all the calibrated lights together. So, yes, separate darks/flats each night would be ideal.
@@NebulaPhotos I kinda thought the calibrations should be done each night, but didn't know DSS had the grouping function, which I guess addresses the real root of my question. Thanks for answering with the extra into.
great video and thanks for creating it. but i do have one question. i understand the reason not to use JPEG but my camera will shoot both in RAW and CRAW. CRAW being about half the size. does it make a difference whether i use RAW or CRAW? thank you
I am not sure as my cameras have never had a compressed raw option. I think a good thing to check is try opening a CRAW file in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and see if it opens fine. If it does then it may be worth trying CRAW, if it won't open in DSS than you will have to use the full RAW option.
Dumbbell nebula M27 has a 7.5 magnitude brightness. You can’t see it or find it without star finder equipment. Pick Orion M42 instead for this exercise.
Sure, and I've made a video on capturing with this method: ruclips.net/video/iuMZG-SyDCU/видео.html but all objects are seasonal so I have been trying other objects untracked. M27 was just slightly harder to find than M31, but easier than some of the Messier galaxies in Ursa Major. Any of the messiers are possible to find just using star hopping and live view with enough patience, but I've done a video on other aids for finding objects as well: ruclips.net/video/8MF8DByj_Po/видео.html An internet-connected smartphone has a lot of neat tools for finding.
Yes, it works well and continues to make a difference. Most noticeable if there are dim objects (dusty objects / reflection nebulae) in the field. See this video for real world examples at the end: ruclips.net/video/0vd6Zk5M5OA/видео.html
Great tutorial but thanks to my inexperience I ran into a few problems, which I will share in case it helps anyone. Firstly it was tough to even find the object, and I was doing the Trifid Nebula which ought to be much easier to find. Second, I couldn't even see stars on my camera screen so had to keep taking test shots to even keep the object in the frame. Thirdly, DSS could only find 28 stars even though to my eyes they were in focus, however I think either the light pollution was washing the nebula out, or the exposure was too short, or the focus was slightly off as only the brightest stars were visible and none of the nebula. In any case DSS would only stack 63 of the 400 frames I took. Finally, the stretching process in PS didn't work, probably because of the poor quality of the original image. The first adjustment seemed to work, at least everything became more visible, but then on the second one the data seemed to have all vanished and there was nothing on the histogram. So all in all not very good. I've obviously got a lot to learn ... 😂
The term "planetary nebula" always bugged me. I know, I know, it's because it's round and looks like a planet or rather a gas giant. Wouldn't "remnant nebula" make more sense? I know that there is "supernova remnant nebula" which could be confused with normal "remnant nebulae". But just adding or leaving the prefix "supernova/hypernova" should clear up possible confusion. What do you guys think? Great and informative Video as always! Learned a lot again! Thank you
I noticed you cover the lense for bias frames. When I'm using my telescope I don't cover it for bias frames. Have I been doing this wrong all this time?
Excellent tutorial but one thing i don't understand : star trails are the effect of a rotational movement. When you try to fix the roundness of stars, you just translate the darken leyer. I think you should rotate the leyer.
Technically correct, but there are issues. I don't believe Photoshop allows rotation by single pixels as it does with x, y movement. The smallest increment is 0.1 degree which is too much. At this pixel scale with this much trailing, simple x, y movement works fine, the trails are the exact same across the whole field of view. If this was a wide angle lens and longer exposure, it wouldn't work
Hello got a question I've made a barn door tracker and was able to do 1 minutes lights with no star trail . I remember you saying look at the histogram and aim for the first 1/3. What is better to change to get the histogram right is it the ISO or drop down a few stops? I stop down and drop the iso down 1 as well but not to sure what is best. Thanks for any advice
Just use Affinity photo. The main DEV is an astrophotographer, Astro stacking, and specific astrophotography steps are built in. Photoshop is to expensive and you are just renting it.
Umm.. im using a 750mm F5 newton and a 26MP full frame EOS RP. Is something wrong with my gear or are the 26MP full frame sensors pixels just too big? Because i get on my 750mm newton LESS DETAIL than you with a 200mm lens....
Are you using the Newtonian telescope with a tracking mount? Detail in deep sky astrophotography is more about signal to noise ratio than aperture. By having lower focal length, I can take a longer sub exposure before the stars trail which allows for more detail.
@@NebulaPhotos sure, basic tracking mostly, sometimes with full automatic control (except focussing) and guiding as well. I mean i know my wide field results are utterly garbage since i dont use a coma corrector on my newton, but i just dont get it why even in the center the IQ is at best "just ok" I even bought recently a laser for collimation (ohh my.... just the adjustment of the laser itself is already a cancer), the scope needed slightly adjustments but the images are pretty similar if not the same. Could it be that an older Skywatcher newton (150/750, F5) is just "bad"? Because since a while im using just a Supertele lens (the Canon RF 800 F11) and its image quality is just superior to the 750mm newton (despite being super small and lightweight) I even though already about selling my old, heavy gear and get a higher quality tracker for convenience, it wont be much worse than an old 6" newton on EQ3-2.
@@NebulaPhotos The problem are less star trails than in overall a unsharp picture. At first i though its the garbage EQ3-2 mount, and in fact it plays partially a role in my bad results, but i tried brighter objects with much shorter exposures and its definately not the mount too (at least not alone) I mean im coming extremely close to the limits of the pixel density for sure (100% zooms are not rare at my big FoV)... i guess its the combination of: - poor man mount - big pixels of full frame EOS RP - old telescope together?
I like your videos Nico. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. I have one thing that bothers me a bit. If you take a Dslr camera and you have to take 500 shots of a deepsky object that would mean your camera theoreticaly will be worn out after 300 photos.. 300 x 500 makes 150.000 which is the shuttercount manufacturers give a Dslr. I also know some cameras will go beyond that number before breaking down. Do you have any experience you can share about this? How long do your cameras last? Thank you .
There are only so many objects (mostly bright Messier objects) that this method works for. I assume most people who get started this way will buy a star tracker after doing this for a while. Once you have the star tracker, you can use longer exposures which reduces the number of images needed to stack. But even if you were to keep with this method, 300 shots would take a long time for most people. Between clouds and the moon cycle (better to take photos during new moon), my output is on average around 15 deep sky photos a year so 300 shots would take 20 years at my rate.
Yes, but the t7i is even better because it has an articulating screen, so easier to see what you are doing at night without getting into awkward positions
Ah dang, seems like my 900+ shots of the pelican are severely gimped by me not taking calibration frames apart from the darks, the first stretch you do is basiacally turning everything gray for me and I took those shots when the pelican was like 80 degrees up, so even with Bortle 5 sky I should have something there. I also went with a bit too low of an ISO setting I think (1600 on a stock 70D), I had to do some insane processing in PS to get anything usable out of the data. I know Photoshop very well and I just had to really hone in on the data to see anything. Still, for the very first time actually using a proper camera in my life and using it to do astrophotography, I can see a bit of the Milky Way in my stacked shots, which is probably ok. Kinda bummed a bit with the results, Cygnus seemed like an easy target with ~150mm on the basic 75-300mm Canon lens. Using the Sony RX100 mk4 for a wider shot actually netted me a bit better results (with some extreme vignetting to be fair) with even less shots, but I guess the lens on the Sony is 1.8 and I think I shot on the Canon with f4.6 or maybe f5.0 or something similar.
My analysis: As you found, Cygnus is a pretty easy wide-field milky way target, but the individual nebulae are actually pretty dim, especially with a stock camera since they are mostly red hydrogen-alpha targets. The f/5 also has a big impact as you are taking in something like 8x less light than at f/1.8. So I think it had more to do with focal ratio and the Pelican being very dim and deep red (that the stock camera isn't as sensitive to) than not taking calibration frames. Calibration frames help a bit so I think are worth taking, but don't make a super dramatic improvement. Anyways, keep at it. Sounds like you are making good progress. Clear skies, Nico
Actually a great workflow. Tried it last night on M-81/82 last night. Can detect the barred spiral of M-81 and the "breaks" in M-82 are very pronounced! LOL got carried away. Ended up with 950 subs. Set DSS to 20% ended up stacking 750 subs!! Took the computer all night to stack!!
Yes, I think the 'Motion Blur' tab in Deconvolution process can do a good job. I might make an alternate ending to this video for PixInsight and can show it.
@@NebulaPhotos Perfect! I will try it. I use Photoshop in my job, but don’t want on home computer; since they ask fee annually. In any case, Pixinsight is as good and maybe even better.
The image would look 'cleaner' and you may be able to reveal fainter structures. See this video I made that answers your question with many visual examples (skip to the end for straight comparisons): ruclips.net/video/0vd6Zk5M5OA/видео.html
Omg looks great, but got lost with masks. Is it possible to save the transcript? I started writing it up but still got lost. Great tutorial, problem is, is there a nebula that Southern Hemisphere can view?
Hi Lydia, Here is what I could download from RUclips in terms of a transcript: drive.google.com/file/d/1LBWgiXmtP968l9rDLEjbBMFmq2xlWWPH/view?usp=sharing Re: Southern Hemisphere. Yes, you have the Carina Nebula which would be great for this method. I think the best time for it is in your summer (our winter). telescopius.com is a good site for exploring nebulae to capture. And I did a brief video with a Brazilian astrophotographer on best S. Hemisphere targets without a Star Tracker here: ruclips.net/video/xzBCkVupOzo/видео.html
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To help keep track of the different sections of images (light, dark, flats and bias), I take a an image with a small red LED light before starting each group. It's easy to pick these out when previewing my images on camera or computer.
An alternative is to make folders for each type of frame in the camera. Start with test shots; once you find your target quickly go to Menu>Select folder>New folder. Repeat for each type of calibration frame. You can just copy the resulting five folders and rename them. This way you don't have to keep track of any file numbers or such.
actually a great idea just did my first stacking today and spent so long trying to figure out my bias and dark frames
I wish I'd seen this 10 years ago. Great tip.
@@mistermaster38You can just check the exposure time of the image.
Thanks Nico! You are the best teacher I will ever have
Thanks so much Manish! Clear skies, Nico
I second that! BEST teacher. 👌
Just got started in Astrophotography and absolutely love your channel and your content. You’re a huge help for finding ones way around the wonderful world of Astro. Please keep doing what you do, it’s awesome!
This video is gonna be a great start to my weekend. I hope you enjoy yours!
That was the most welcoming intro I've ever heard
You could create individual folders for different types of images in the camera. When you finish shooting light frames, create a new folder for flats, another for darks, etc. This way, I don't need to take notes or remember where I put them. Both methods will work; it's a matter of preference.
Thank you, Nico; clear skies.
🔭🌌
OMG Nico, I think it's the first time you've mentioned this highpass trick for making structures more prominent, and contrasty. This is an amazing piece of advice. I've gone back to most of my saved TIFs and did this and results are stunning. Thank you for that!
Superb video Nico! - So much inspiration in your work my friend :-) Thank you for sharing!!
Thanks Luke!
Absolutely love this kind of video, I started astrophotography by watching these kinds of videos, it's beginner friendly-having many details, I'm so glad you are doing these videos again!
This is by far the best astrophotography explanation I have ever seen. thx so much!
Making that table with calibration frames in it was such a good touch. I had forgotten exactly how to do these, so this helps. Screen shot saved and will be used!
Nico, this is some fantastic information! You might want to add some SEO relating to "astrophotography for beginners" or something along those lines, I think beginners would find this video very helpful.
this always gets me so excited, cuz ive always just seen photos of space and stars and the moon and just assumed, "i cant do that , i dont even own a telescope" but am excited to try this at my inlaws farm , theres no light at all out there so it should be perfect
Im a beginner in astrophotography and I love you
Always my inspiration!! NICO! Thank you for your teaching brother!
I had a great chat about astrophotography with Nico yesterday, he is amazing
Absolutely brilliant Nico. I’ve been using Photoshop for some time now but without some of the tips and tricks included in this video. So grateful to you. Like many others, your channel was and still is; at the heart of most of what I do. Thank you so much 🤝
Another brilliant video Nico. Great job!
Please keep these going! I'm stuck with a dslr, tracker, and lenses for a while. Your videos are so inclusive. I hope to see more!
DSLR+Tracker is all you need for almost all astrophotography no?
Even lenses for like really small objects
This video is gold! When I saw it was an hour long I hesitated at first, but the way you go step by step with no fluff or unnecessary dialogue makes it so easy to follow along. And the hour actually flew by, thanks!
Thank you so much 💓
Hey Nico great video! I have the Star Adventure 2i and use Stellarium to locate my targets as well. One thing that helps in that process is I bought a phone holder that has a cold shoe mount. Attach it to the camera or an extension bar on the side of the scope and make sure it's square on the axis. Pull up my target and manually slew until the app shows I'm on it. It almost always gets me in frame or just outside of frame.
Great tip Rich! I've done the same in the past, but don't always remember to bring it.
Thank you Nico! You are one of my motivators to keep trying and improving my astrophotography! I got into it sometime in March 2021. I used to just use a 50mm and dslr, but have been slowly increasing my learning steep, I have been trying harder targets and longer exposures with a skywatcher. But the regular dslr lenses don’t cut it for me anymore. I bought a Meade LX90 10’ in December and have been using it to just look at stars while taking astrophotography with my lenses. But I’ve been slowly but surely buying more equipment (bcuz it’s expensive a new piece like every few months) and soon enough I’ll have my X-Wedge to be able to use the Meade Telescope for astrophotography, I have enjoyed this hobby so much.
But surely this video will help out the beginners as the one you did on Orion with no star tracker helped me with my first photo in March of 2021. For all the beginners don’t lose faith as this hobby needs dedication and time to perfect as many other hobbies do. Please learn from mistakes and just keep practicing. Videos that are informative like Nico makes are the best ones and help ease the learning curve that a lot of people confront once realizing that doing astrophotography is time consuming and a lengthy commitment!
Well That’s all I have to Say!
Hopefully everyone has Clear Skies this upcoming season!
(P.S Don’t let light pollution lose your motivation, I live in one of the biggest bortle 9 metropolitan areas and it’s hard to go out about 2-3 hours just for less light pollution. Learn the easier targets before going out of your way for better skies. Practice on like the moon, Orion, Pleiades, and maybe even wide field night views to perfect your practice before going out.
Great message! I had something about practicing on bright objects from light polluted areas, but it got cut due to time. I totally agree though! I started deep sky imaging from a city, and spent several months happily doing it that way before I found a dark place to travel to.
Excellent presentation again.
I use folders in the camera to separate my lights, darks, flat and bias frames. Much easier for me to find in processing rather than trying to remember or write down frame numbers. I love your videos. You are so good with the details.
Another great video Nico!! Keep up the good work!
You just saved my night! Finally someone that know how to teach.
Great podcast, loved it!
Thanks Ricardo! I appreciate the support!
Lovvvvveeee these videos!
Only 1 small issue with 1 very small thing you said though. Don’t ever delete files in camera! If you’re going to have an SD card corrupt that’s what’s gonna do it, and you could waste hours!
Just rely on formatting the whole card to get rid of files.
When I’m doing test shots I shine my phone screen into the lens for a photo before and after test shots so it’s suppppper easy to pick them out of the files with the thumbnails
Ah, thanks for pointing that out. Never occurred to me, but makes sense
@@NebulaPhotos no worries at all my dude! I work in video production so I figured I could share some of my tips too!
"our sun is going to die" "oh i'm so sorry for your loss!" oh wait 😅. I actually got the Helix nebula to show up in a 75s exposure on a 6D with a 35mm f/1.4 @2.8 on a tracker in AZ. didn't know it was there but once I stitched my pano together it was rising above the horizon! i was floored. so cool to see that in a landscape astro photo. going to make a SHORT vid eventually on that experience. who knows when
Love these kinds of videos, Nico! I always pick up a new technique with them.
Thankyou for shareing your amazing skils! You inspire me to take a photo of Andromeda galaxy couple days ago, and it turn great! Clear skies! :)))
Your videos have really inspired me to get into astrophotography. You are a brilliant teacher!
I just found your channel as I am just getting into astrophotography. Immediately subscribed as your delivery and content is spot on! Thank you for sharing your knowledge as well as helping those of us that are new to this genre of photography.
What a great video! Subscribed! You mentioned the lens warmer. In how cold / freezing weather (for example during the winter) it is possible still to operate with a DSLR without breaking it?
Yes, the lens warmer still works well below freezing in my experience. In that case, helps prevent frost on the lens.
Absolutely love your videos Nico! Thanks for sharing 👌
Excellent as always Nico . I love watching your PS tutorials. I end up doing the same things but in such a convoluted way bouncing back and forth with PI making several versions with numerous masks. I wish I knew PS as well as you - it would save me an enormous amount of time. Maybe when I finally retire I will have time to do this 'the right way". For now I will just pick up a tip here and there. Cheers Kurt
Thanks Kurt!
Great video. At the beginning, it may have an idea to mention that you were using a Crop Factor camera and that the focal length of the 200mm lens changes. Anybody using a Full Frame camera may be disappointed in the results using the 200mm lens and wonder what happened.
Even if I look at all your videos, thank you for regularly coming back on the basics for settings, etc. This is a good teaching approach (for me !)
Perfekt Video.
But i think the objekt is to smal for 200mm.
IT make more fun with greater objekts.
For example the veil nebula is very big. So it's more fun for beginners.
I have found through doing a lot of projects without a star tracker that the brightness of the object matters a lot more than it's apparent diameter, but I agree the ultimate is an object that is both big and bright like M8, M31 or M42, but I've covered many of those already. Veil is a nice object with a star tracker, but I am very skeptical that it would make a good object without one since it is very dim and in a crowded star field, making it doubly difficult.
I did quite a few astro pictures a couple years ago. Wish I'd had this back then. I figured a lot of it by trial and error but missed a lot also. Would have saved hours playing on my computer.
I started doing this astrophotography thing about five months ago. Last night, after watching this video the other week, I decided to punch in M 27 just to see if I could see it. I could not see it in the camera screen like what you show in this video but I could on the computer. This is the very first time that I have seen something come up in color! It looks just like what you show in this video. Everything I have done with Andromeda and the area around the North America Nebula shows up black and white with shades of grey so this teal-green nebula was a bit exciting.
@Nebula Photos
A faster way to a black mask is to create it when making the mask.
Just clicking on mask icon makes a white mask.
ADDING the ALT key while clicking on mask icon makes a black mask.
Ah, thanks for the tip Ron. Very helpful!
@@NebulaPhotos Try to remember ALT for the "alternate" of a white mask.
Also CTRL+J will duplicate the current layer selected or you can drag layer to new layer icon to do the same. Also I beleive while a layers mask is selected you can go to image and choose apply image to make a mask of the image rather than copying the image and pasting it in the mask. Use the options in dialogue to choose merged or the layer you want, blending mode opacity.
Thanks very much for this complete guide from A to Z. This video is definitely going to be my goto video when I will be doing astrophoto!
Awesome job - love your content and education! I have yet to apply and follow along with your processes - but I'm eager to jump in soon!
Great! I hope you try it
Great video as usual. I like the technique of copying the red luminance to emphasize it. I hope it works on my old Photoshop version CS4 .
Couple questions:
(1) On matching temperature of lights & darks: Last month I took 754 exposures of Sagittarius with my Canon T3i. According to exiftool, the temperature of 1st image @8:58pm was 51 C, middle image @9:21pm 38 C, last image @9:49pm 35 C. How to match temperature with this wide variation? (I do not know why the camera started hot & cooled. It was not noticeably hot when I started.)
(2) On your oblong star fix: does it help to enlarge image to 200% or 400%, then after nudging, reduce back (50%/25%)?
Even though I watched a similar one of yours earlier, I just enjoy watching it again for a new target. Always enjoy your videos.
Nico, I have a question regarding the first Levels adjustments. I find this step crucial in my image editing, though I'm often stuck afterwards. Well, I have noticed that the way I edit Levels and RGB channels, a slight push to the right or left can make a permanent color shift, affecting everything. For example, several times my histogram looked good, all colours aligned, black looked good, but on the image itself bright objects had mostly green cast, teal, magenta, whatever. This was evident especially when boosting the image further. They didn't look real, nor did nebulae or galaxies. I tried fixing this with all kinds of Curves adjustments, finding true black/white spots, but this colour cast remained.
Then after many troubleshooting, I found that the way I adjusted Levels in the beginning was the issue. If I adjusted it right (following the histogram, but also having luck), the whole image would have nice colours - nebulae, galaxies and stars would look good. But If I messed up, it would be a pain to fix and would linger throughout the whole process.
I hope you could maybe explain this in more detail, how to be more precise during Levels adjustment and what to look for? Thanks a bunch!
Yes, Photoshop isn't the best at these subtle color calibrations and requires lots of practice and a good eye to use successfully. In your case, I'd highly suggest using the Background Extraction and Photometric Color Calibration processes in Siril (free) and that should fix all problems with colour cast before you even stretch. You can either replace DSS with Siril or still stack in DSS and edit the tiff in Siril before finishing in Photoshop. Link in description for part 2 where I show how to use these processes in Siril.
@@NebulaPhotos Thanks a lot Nico! I never tried Siril and your tutorial was so helpful. I love DSS and got used to it a lot, but will certainly be trying Siril from now on and see how this goes. Could be a real time saver and a fix for my color issues.
Great image man 👍! Also what telephoto lens was used capturing this fantastic nebula (my favorite one)?
Canon EF 200mm f/2.8 L ii. I think discontinued now, but still plenty around on the used market. Very nice lens for this purpose.
Great video, and I have watched your channel to learn about astrophotography. I use a Mac with SiriL, and find it has the best post processing for stacking and background subtraction. I have not found any problems if I name the folders with beginning capitals.
I may try this either this fall or next spring. My roadblock mainly is all the projects that I currently have that lack completion.
Another roadblock is I don't particularly want to buy a storage device capable of storing 1000 images that you call lights & 175 images you call calibration images all in RAW format while being uncertain whether I will fall down the rabbit hole.
I am wondering what kind of outcome I would get if I experimented by using only 10% of the total images for each class ???
Additionally, while I am familiar with digital darkrooms such as PhotoShop I was always a film photographer and considered digital cheating so I have a bit of a learning curve to become reasonably adept with respect to using the digital photography software.
I am considering
This video helped me so much in the PS-Section! Learned many techniques! THANKS - although I will forget the most of it within seconds unfortunatly 😂
"Goodevening. Our sun is going to die :)" 💀
"Dew can form on the lens in humid environments" *Laughs in Arizonan*
Also, with the same camera, would it be more efficient to use even just a 70mm refractor with coated lenses?
No, not without some kind of tracking. If just on a tripod, focal length/ratio on a 70mm refractor is typically around 400mm f/5.6 - that means shutter speed would have to be much shorter (under 1 second) and camera noise starts to dominate because there is not enough signal due to the slower optics and shorter exposures.
@@NebulaPhotos Currently I have a 70mm F/10 but that will be swapped for either a 102mm F/6.5 or a light bucket but I wouldn't be taking any photos with the light bucket. I want to get the Star adventurer GTI or the AVX but some guy on reddit told me not to waste my money and just buy an HEQ5 pro for twice the money which personally is unaffordable atm. I've seen you and Backyard do some crazy photos with the GTI so I think I will go with that.
Thanks a lot ♥
Thankyou for this epic video. I tried taking a photo of the lagoon and triphid nebula with my 400mm like you recommended, it actually didn’t turn out too bad, thanks for the advice!
Thank you for a well explained tutorial. Now I have something to go after without being to confused haha.
One of these days I'll run into you at Ninigret
If you are shooting in RAW, does it matter what you set the White Balance too? As far as noting when you do flats, etc., what I do is before each calibration type, I first shine my red light in the lens and take a shot. This will mark the start of that particular calibration frame and I also use it to mark when I change to photograph a different subject as well. When I download it onto the computer, that red light exposed shot clearly marks the change. Another question: can the FLAT be done at home, meaning in the house or does it have to be done in the field?
White balance: not for processing, but useful for DSLR shooting since I take preview shots to find the Dumbbell, and it's nicer if those are close to 'true color' so I can be sure the green will stand out.
Red light: yes, I've used this technique too, works well!
Flats: yes, these can be done at home. Just don't take the lens off of the camera or dust on the sensor may shift.
Thanks!
Thanks Taylour! I appreciate the support
Ok… that was a dramatic start…
Hi. Am I safe to used a fixed tripod with no star tracker with a 135mm rokinon f2 lens? Im worried about poor quality images
51:00 Hey Nico, it's Kevin's Question Time!
The method you used to bring out the red color, could that take the place of getting your camera astro modified, seeing as how it seems that the camera is capturing the color but it's just being drowned out by the other signals?? Or does getting the camera astro modified allow for more of this Red channel to be captured??
But wait Nico… it’s been cloudy at night for a week around here. Where you at brother? Awesome video though. Ty.
These videos take me a long time (several weeks or sometimes months) to make so 'last night' is no longer last night by the time the video comes out :)
2 Questions:
1. Wouldn’t it be clever to go to LR first, apply Lens corrections and some WB tweaking - and sync ALL files, export them as Tiffs before DSS?
2. How can you work on 32Bit default DSSexport Tifs in PS? I need to use 16Bit export
1. Some people do work that way. I don’t for 2 reasons: One: Opening up your images in LR or PS first will always apply a non-linear stretch. Stacking will still work on stretched images, but not as well and the consequence is usually weird rings around the stars. Two. Calibration won’t work properly with stretched images. So if you go this route, don’t bother taking darks, flats, and bias frames. so I don’t suggest it, but it is an alternative workflow that some people use.
2. In PS, under the image menu there is an option under mode for bit depth. If working in 32 bit I duplicate the layer, do an initial stretch, change it to 16 bit and when it asks say ‘don’t merge’. Then you can continue on editing in 16 bit and all options will be available
@@NebulaPhotos thx! Great info!!
l enjoy and learned from your videos
Wow, that was a quick hour 👍🤩 Sadly I was lost as soon as you started duplicate layers in Photoshop 😅 But I loved watch it anyway 👌
Love the videos bro. You got me into astrophotography and now I'm badly taking pictures of the night sky 😂 One question if you don't mind. I want to shoot the NA nebula but it's practically straight up in the sky and I'm having a hard timing framing (have a Canon dslr on a star adventurer and ballhead). Is it just a practice and patience thing or do I need to wait until it's lower in the sky? Thanks for any advice from anyone 🤙🏽
Yes, just practice. No need to wait. When it is high in the sky is the perfect time to shoot it, as the Zenith is the darkest spot.
@@NebulaPhotos Thanks. Much love and look forward to learning more from your videos 🤙🏽
Thank you so much Nico - can we follow the same method from high light poluted city sky like bortell 8-9. Does taking more pictures would help ? - thanks again !! You Rock!!
The same method works, but the results will be noisier. And yes taking more pictures will help with the noise from light pollution.
@@NebulaPhotos thanks a lot - would definitely try 🌌🙌🏻
I love these DSLR and a tripod videos and it's making want to try this as well. One question, if you don't mind. I don't have the time to shoot that long at night, but I could do shorter sessions over several days for the lights. How would you handle the calibration frames? I.e. Take some with each session, or only at the end of one of the sessions.
If you use Deep Sky Stacker, you can use the groups feature at the bottom to put one night into each group. It should calibrate with that night's calibration frames and then combine all the calibrated lights together. So, yes, separate darks/flats each night would be ideal.
@@NebulaPhotos I kinda thought the calibrations should be done each night, but didn't know DSS had the grouping function, which I guess addresses the real root of my question. Thanks for answering with the extra into.
@@Nareimooncatt you need calibrations for each session. If I remember right.
great video and thanks for creating it. but i do have one question. i understand the reason not to use JPEG but my camera will shoot both in RAW and CRAW. CRAW being about half the size. does it make a difference whether i use RAW or CRAW?
thank you
I am not sure as my cameras have never had a compressed raw option. I think a good thing to check is try opening a CRAW file in Deep Sky Stacker (DSS) and see if it opens fine. If it does then it may be worth trying CRAW, if it won't open in DSS than you will have to use the full RAW option.
@@NebulaPhotos thank you
OH WOW
Man your videos make me regret selling my trusty Nikon D7000 couple of years ago.
Dumbbell nebula M27 has a 7.5 magnitude brightness. You can’t see it or find it without star finder equipment. Pick Orion M42 instead for this exercise.
Sure, and I've made a video on capturing with this method: ruclips.net/video/iuMZG-SyDCU/видео.html but all objects are seasonal so I have been trying other objects untracked. M27 was just slightly harder to find than M31, but easier than some of the Messier galaxies in Ursa Major. Any of the messiers are possible to find just using star hopping and live view with enough patience, but I've done a video on other aids for finding objects as well: ruclips.net/video/8MF8DByj_Po/видео.html An internet-connected smartphone has a lot of neat tools for finding.
i got the same problem living in rhode island i want to get into this but not travel to far. any suggestions?
Have you tried multiple exposure over more than one night to further increase total exposure time? If so did it make any difference?
Yes, it works well and continues to make a difference. Most noticeable if there are dim objects (dusty objects / reflection nebulae) in the field. See this video for real world examples at the end: ruclips.net/video/0vd6Zk5M5OA/видео.html
Great tutorial but thanks to my inexperience I ran into a few problems, which I will share in case it helps anyone. Firstly it was tough to even find the object, and I was doing the Trifid Nebula which ought to be much easier to find. Second, I couldn't even see stars on my camera screen so had to keep taking test shots to even keep the object in the frame. Thirdly, DSS could only find 28 stars even though to my eyes they were in focus, however I think either the light pollution was washing the nebula out, or the exposure was too short, or the focus was slightly off as only the brightest stars were visible and none of the nebula. In any case DSS would only stack 63 of the 400 frames I took. Finally, the stretching process in PS didn't work, probably because of the poor quality of the original image. The first adjustment seemed to work, at least everything became more visible, but then on the second one the data seemed to have all vanished and there was nothing on the histogram. So all in all not very good. I've obviously got a lot to learn ... 😂
How can you deal with those huge tif files that stacking creates. To big for my cp.
The term "planetary nebula" always bugged me. I know, I know, it's because it's round and looks like a planet or rather a gas giant.
Wouldn't "remnant nebula" make more sense? I know that there is "supernova remnant nebula" which could be confused with normal "remnant nebulae". But just adding or leaving the prefix "supernova/hypernova" should clear up possible confusion. What do you guys think?
Great and informative Video as always! Learned a lot again! Thank you
Is a D-frame camera pretty much required for this (mine is F-frame) ?
Any digital interchangeable lens camera will work, the lens is more important. A fast focal ratio helps a lot!
I noticed you cover the lense for bias frames. When I'm using my telescope I don't cover it for bias frames. Have I been doing this wrong all this time?
Yes. Bias frames like darks should be done with no light hitting the sensor. We just want to capture the fixed pattern noise from the sensor.
Excellent tutorial but one thing i don't understand : star trails are the effect of a rotational movement. When you try to fix the roundness of stars, you just translate the darken leyer. I think you should rotate the leyer.
Technically correct, but there are issues. I don't believe Photoshop allows rotation by single pixels as it does with x, y movement. The smallest increment is 0.1 degree which is too much. At this pixel scale with this much trailing, simple x, y movement works fine, the trails are the exact same across the whole field of view. If this was a wide angle lens and longer exposure, it wouldn't work
@@NebulaPhotos thanks for the replay. You are absolutely correct.
Hello got a question I've made a barn door tracker and was able to do 1 minutes lights with no star trail . I remember you saying look at the histogram and aim for the first 1/3. What is better to change to get the histogram right is it the ISO or drop down a few stops? I stop down and drop the iso down 1 as well but not to sure what is best. Thanks for any advice
Raise the ISO up to about 3200 or 6400. After that if still not at 1/3, open the aperture more
@@NebulaPhotos Its the other way im to exposed need to dim it down. Do have a bit of light pollution
@@Bradl0y Turn down ISO, but not below 800, then start stopping down the lens
@@NebulaPhotos perfect thank you
Just use Affinity photo. The main DEV is an astrophotographer, Astro stacking, and specific astrophotography steps are built in. Photoshop is to expensive and you are just renting it.
Whats the lens name?
Umm.. im using a 750mm F5 newton and a 26MP full frame EOS RP.
Is something wrong with my gear or are the 26MP full frame sensors pixels just too big? Because i get on my 750mm newton LESS DETAIL than you with a 200mm lens....
Are you using the Newtonian telescope with a tracking mount? Detail in deep sky astrophotography is more about signal to noise ratio than aperture. By having lower focal length, I can take a longer sub exposure before the stars trail which allows for more detail.
@@NebulaPhotos sure, basic tracking mostly, sometimes with full automatic control (except focussing) and guiding as well.
I mean i know my wide field results are utterly garbage since i dont use a coma corrector on my newton, but i just dont get it why even in the center the IQ is at best "just ok"
I even bought recently a laser for collimation (ohh my.... just the adjustment of the laser itself is already a cancer), the scope needed slightly adjustments but the images are pretty similar if not the same.
Could it be that an older Skywatcher newton (150/750, F5) is just "bad"?
Because since a while im using just a Supertele lens (the Canon RF 800 F11) and its image quality is just superior to the 750mm newton (despite being super small and lightweight)
I even though already about selling my old, heavy gear and get a higher quality tracker for convenience, it wont be much worse than an old 6" newton on EQ3-2.
@@NebulaPhotos The problem are less star trails than in overall a unsharp picture.
At first i though its the garbage EQ3-2 mount, and in fact it plays partially a role in my bad results, but i tried brighter objects with much shorter exposures and its definately not the mount too (at least not alone)
I mean im coming extremely close to the limits of the pixel density for sure (100% zooms are not rare at my big FoV)... i guess its the combination of:
- poor man mount
- big pixels of full frame EOS RP
- old telescope
together?
If you don't mind, send me an example (raw if possible) to nicocarver at Gmail dot Com. I might have more to say if I could see an image
@@NebulaPhotos a final result or a single light? Most of my recent stuff is not stacked/edited at all (bcause of frustration with the quality^^)
Do you zoom in for these kind of picture or not ? Btw great video
Things Trillons of miles away are impossible to spot with a camera ....same thing with a telescope
Can you please show how to do the same thing in GIMP?
Yes, it is available right here: ruclips.net/video/flnRjxnXcTI/видео.html
@NebulaPhotos Awesome, thank you so much! 👌🏻
I like your videos Nico. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. I have one thing that bothers me a bit. If you take a Dslr camera and you have to take 500 shots of a deepsky object that would mean your camera theoreticaly will be worn out after 300 photos.. 300 x 500 makes 150.000 which is the shuttercount manufacturers give a Dslr. I also know some cameras will go beyond that number before breaking down. Do you have any experience you can share about this? How long do your cameras last? Thank you .
There are only so many objects (mostly bright Messier objects) that this method works for. I assume most people who get started this way will buy a star tracker after doing this for a while. Once you have the star tracker, you can use longer exposures which reduces the number of images needed to stack. But even if you were to keep with this method, 300 shots would take a long time for most people. Between clouds and the moon cycle (better to take photos during new moon), my output is on average around 15 deep sky photos a year so 300 shots would take 20 years at my rate.
When you say a camera and a lens, the lens you're talking about, is a small telescope.
Is the EOS Rebel T7i basically the same.
Yes, but the t7i is even better because it has an articulating screen, so easier to see what you are doing at night without getting into awkward positions
Ah dang, seems like my 900+ shots of the pelican are severely gimped by me not taking calibration frames apart from the darks, the first stretch you do is basiacally turning everything gray for me and I took those shots when the pelican was like 80 degrees up, so even with Bortle 5 sky I should have something there. I also went with a bit too low of an ISO setting I think (1600 on a stock 70D), I had to do some insane processing in PS to get anything usable out of the data. I know Photoshop very well and I just had to really hone in on the data to see anything.
Still, for the very first time actually using a proper camera in my life and using it to do astrophotography, I can see a bit of the Milky Way in my stacked shots, which is probably ok. Kinda bummed a bit with the results, Cygnus seemed like an easy target with ~150mm on the basic 75-300mm Canon lens. Using the Sony RX100 mk4 for a wider shot actually netted me a bit better results (with some extreme vignetting to be fair) with even less shots, but I guess the lens on the Sony is 1.8 and I think I shot on the Canon with f4.6 or maybe f5.0 or something similar.
My analysis: As you found, Cygnus is a pretty easy wide-field milky way target, but the individual nebulae are actually pretty dim, especially with a stock camera since they are mostly red hydrogen-alpha targets. The f/5 also has a big impact as you are taking in something like 8x less light than at f/1.8. So I think it had more to do with focal ratio and the Pelican being very dim and deep red (that the stock camera isn't as sensitive to) than not taking calibration frames. Calibration frames help a bit so I think are worth taking, but don't make a super dramatic improvement. Anyways, keep at it. Sounds like you are making good progress. Clear skies, Nico
Actually a great workflow. Tried it last night on M-81/82 last night. Can detect the barred spiral of M-81 and the "breaks" in M-82 are very pronounced! LOL got carried away. Ended up with 950 subs. Set DSS to 20% ended up stacking 750 subs!! Took the computer all night to stack!!
Glad it worked well for you Ray! M81/82 is a great one to try with this method. I haven't done those without a tracker yet.
@@NebulaPhotos I hope you post it when you do. I was shooting in a suburban light polluted sky. I imagine you'll get way more detail in a good sky.
Are there way to make round stars in Pixinsight?
Yes, I think the 'Motion Blur' tab in Deconvolution process can do a good job. I might make an alternate ending to this video for PixInsight and can show it.
@@NebulaPhotos Perfect! I will try it.
I use Photoshop in my job, but don’t want on home computer; since they ask fee annually. In any case, Pixinsight is as good and maybe even better.
Click on mask and use ctrl+I to invert the mask from white to black or black to white. Instead of filling with black or white.
Ha, good point! That is easier to remember.
38:00
So, what if I took 1500 1 second pictures, would I have less work to do in post?
The image would look 'cleaner' and you may be able to reveal fainter structures. See this video I made that answers your question with many visual examples (skip to the end for straight comparisons): ruclips.net/video/0vd6Zk5M5OA/видео.html
@@NebulaPhotos yeh I watched that video, was really good, I learned a lot there, thanks
Was the camera astro modified?
Nope, stock.
Omg looks great, but got lost with masks. Is it possible to save the transcript? I started writing it up but still got lost. Great tutorial, problem is, is there a nebula that Southern Hemisphere can view?
Hi Lydia, Here is what I could download from RUclips in terms of a transcript: drive.google.com/file/d/1LBWgiXmtP968l9rDLEjbBMFmq2xlWWPH/view?usp=sharing
Re: Southern Hemisphere. Yes, you have the Carina Nebula which would be great for this method. I think the best time for it is in your summer (our winter). telescopius.com is a good site for exploring nebulae to capture. And I did a brief video with a Brazilian astrophotographer on best S. Hemisphere targets without a Star Tracker here: ruclips.net/video/xzBCkVupOzo/видео.html