Hey Tony!! - I'm really glad you found it interesting :-) It's a tremendous field of astrophotography and one that I think is growing rapidly! Thank you so much for watching, I hope you have a lovely day! Luke
Hey Jason!! I hope you are able to get out imaging more in AZ now the heat has lessened a bit :-) I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed the video, it's pretty wild what can be done with these newer sensors - I'm only just scratching the surface of it! Have a wonderful weekend my friend! :-) Luke
Hi, thanks for the Video Luke. Still I would like to argue if 3sec or even 10sec exposures are lucky imaging. I honestly think there is much more details possible if you go for
Hey mate, hope you are well! - without a doubt the shorter an exposure the better from a sharpness standpoint, but at the end of the day you still need enough exposure to make the image even worth stacking, so there's always going to be a balance until we have cameras capable of 0e read noise! :-) 'lucky imaging' is a very wooly term which leaves itself open to personal interpretation of what you'd define as lucky! I've personally seen exposures as long as 5s display significant shot to shot variance in sharpness, indicating that they could still be sorted and stacked delivering sharper results than traditional approaches, I'd call that lucky imaging still personally, but I appreciate it won't fit everyone's definition 👍 I can't wait for newer cameras to hit the market in the coming decade perhaps which will allow us to go shorter than ever with our deepsky exposures, good times are ahead! :-D Thank you for watching and sharing some discussion!
What has put me off this so far is the sheer number of frames and the hundreds of GB of data to plough through...! It looks like your process works though. Nicely done - great M57 image.
Hey mate! It certainly makes a LOT of data!! at least when using a 'region of interest' crop of the camera sensor, file sizes can be kept down somewhat, but inevitably it still ends up being a chunk! :-D I wish i'd had a big scope for this experiment like my old 250 or 300mm newtonians, I think they'd have done real justice to it, still the Esprit didn't disappoint even running at 645mm focal length! :-) Thanks for watching!
Wow. I’ve been putting this off because I was so busy. Finally got time to watch it and I’m glad it was a long video. Totally entertaining through to the end. This technique is on the rise. Equally impressive is the work I’ve been seeing done with slow Maksutovs. Fine job. I am planning on putting some up as soon as my new mount comes in. Great video. Clear skies.
Hey Garnett! I hope that you are doing well :-) I'm so glad you liked the video mate! - I agree, the technique is becoming more and more mainstream, I could see it taking over from normal imaging if the equipment and software allowed it in the next decade or so! the benefits in resolution are wonderful :-) Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to watch my video, I am very thankful to you my friend! I hope you have a tremendous weekend and a well earned rest! Best, Luke
Been trying 5 second calibrated subs. Storage, grading and processing is a bit of hassle. Live stacking would solve that hopefully. Possibility for single chip for imaging and guiding with short exposures simplifies things a lot!
The guiding and imaging from the same chip is a super interesting idea, I know SBIG and similar had some cameras a while ago that had a built-in separate guide sensor next to the main imaging sensor but the only issue was it would be looking through any filters etc, making guiding while imaging in narrowband for example quite difficult, I'd love if the idea was revisited though! Thank you for the insightful comment!
Wow, never heard of lucky imaging but I'm gonna give it a go. 5 min subs can be painful with aeroplane trails etc. Your vids are easy to understand and follow, thanks! Pete
Hey Peter! - I hope you have some fun trying them out! it can be really rewarding seeing the result from all those frames :-) the only downside is how long it takes to stack them all sometimes! Clear skies mate :-)
A huge part of the seeing equation is local. The telescope, and the immediate site. As a matter of fact seeing is mostly local, not the far atmosphere. Never the less lucky will work there too. If you null out the local seeing you would get many more diffraction limited frames.
Luke, as always very informative, but also thought provoking to try something new, great final image, PIPP is a great program for planetary imaging. Kr Ian
Hey Ian! Thank you so much, I'm glad you liked it! - Truly PIPP is a stellar program, it helped save the day! :-) I hope that you are getting some clear skies! All the best, Luke
This video just made my Saturday morning Luke. Where to begin, firstly video itself loved the editing(music, angles, bokeh) and just way it was all put together, really engaging. I'm sure that was a lot of work but we'll worth it given the quality. I learned a whole lot here about read noise and the concept itself was really well explained. First time I've come across it (although I've been in the game a whole 9 months lol). Really appreciate the shoutout mate and just love seeing how you used it within the video. Such a kick to hear it in someone else's video. No doubt for me you're one of the top astrophotography channels out there. Looking forward to seeing that new camera you've got coming mate.👍 Great image like the new icon. Cheers Ollie
Hey Ollie!! I'm so thankful to hear you enjoyed the video mate, absolutely chuffed in fact :-) Thank you very much indeed for sharing your music! It was a pleasure to have it in the video, I felt bad putting my voice over your beautiful piano work in truth haha! :D It did fit in quite nicely though I'd say! Thank you for the lovely compliment mate, I'll not be able to get my head out of the door now though as it's swelled up so much! :D Hopefully I'll have a decision made and the new camera ordered as soon as possible!! Can't wait :-) All the very best mate, I hope you have a lovely weekend! Luke
Thank you Beatrice!! - It's wonderful to hear you've enjoyed the video and image! :-) I would love to revisit this subject with other scopes/targets/cameras as it's one that really interests me! Thank you for watching my friend! Clear skies 👍👍
Oh wow, absolutely loved this video Luke, really interesting. I imaging you did a load of research for this one. Quite like what you doing with the camera swap angles too. I would never have thought to do exposures that short but the results look great. The astro monster in my head is shouting to give this a go. Super Image at the end, really nice work. Hope all is well mate. Take it easy!!!
Hey there Ben! Thanks so much for your lovely comment mate, it did take quite a lot of work but I'm quite proud of how the video turned out - not perfect, but probably my best yet :-) it was nice to get out and try something different for a change, and with reasonable success too! :D Thank you so much for giving it a watch matey, I'm really glad you enjoyed it! Hope you have a smashing weekend, Luke
Beautiful result. Thanks for the great video that clearly explained the concept of lucking imaging deep sky object. I'd love to give it a go, my QHY294MM has fairly low read noise and very small pixels so seems well suited for it. I found out that with SharpCap I can capture a ROI in the centre and thus not have to deal with thousands of 47mp fits. Would have loved to see a side-by-side with traditional long-exposes stacked. My suspicion is with smaller apertures you might be diffraction limited so there's less to gain with lucky imaging.
Thanks so much for that!! I really appreciate the feedback, - I'll likely revisit this subject soon in the hope of making more comparisons and demonstrations :-) Cheers!
Very interesting experiment Luke. I recently did something similar, but I used a 70mm x 400mm Guiderscope as a telescope (not the best optics. It was for experimentation) I used a 533MC and a 462MC for Omega Centauri without tracking with 400 x 0.5s + 50% Gain. The results weren't spectacular but good enough to test short exposures with my 10 "SC f / 6.3 soon. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Jesus! I actually watched your Omega Centauri video on your channel with the 462 in, such an amazing sight! :-) How did the 533 and 462 compare if you don't mind me asking? was one clearly better or both similar? I hope that you are able to have some fun with lucky imaging soon with your 10" SCT! That'll be a great instrument for the job! :O I hope you have a wonderful weekend mate!! Luke
@@lukomatico Hi Luke. The 462 MC and 533MC behave similarly in short exposures of 0.5 to 1.0s for Deep Sky. The advantage of the 533MC is the cooling that significantly reduces the noise of the individual frames. As soon as I test with my SC 10 "f/6.3 I will tell you (f/6.3 is the native focal radius of some Meade SC from the 90s). I usually use it at f/4 with FR. With the small field of the 533MC I can avoid the coma and spherical aberrations that the FR produces at the edge of the field due to the short f/4 focal ratio foa an SC. Regards
@@jesuspineiro1622 Thank you so much for getting back to me my friend! That's really interesting information indeed, In that case I may yet try and use my 2600MC (same sensor tech as the 533 basically) as a lucky imaging camera with a region of interest crop selected to keep file sizes down! I really appreciate the info, thank you :-) Have a great day!, Luke
Thank you Luke, throughly enjoyed this latest video, i managed my 1st night since May, last Sunday i was surprised on how much i had forgotten :) only did M31.. Took me an 1/2 hour to find it :) Srar adventurer worked great, Looking for to your next video
Hey mate! I hope your recovery is going well, it's brilliant to hear you got outside and did some imaging :-) I'm sure you'll knock the rust off your skills in no time at all and be right back at it! Thank you so much for watching!
Very interesting Luke! Not heard about Lucky imaging before, I can see the interest in it! Your image of the Ring nebula was brilliant! I too follow the Biscuit! Great channel! Loved to hear Ollies music! He’s very talented in music & Astro! Hope your new gear arrives soon! Keep up the good work Luke👍 Clear skies
Hey Simon!! - I hope you are doing well mate :D Lucky imaging is such a fantastic development, I can see it being the future of imaging in some capacity or another! - So glad you liked the video & music choices :D Ollie deserves more credit than he gets for sure so it's brilliant to see you're a fan of him too like me! I hope you are getting some clear skies mate, we don't have too long to finish off these summer targets now I guess! :-) I can't wait! All the very best, Luke
Fantastic video again Luke and great image, I really enjoyed this. I had the same issue with the grid pattern when I tried planetary imagery using Autostakkert. Like you, I had no idea how to solve the issue. I tried again a few months later and didn't experience the issue again...very strange. thanks for the tip on PIPP, I'll try that in the future if I encounter the same issue. Clear skies
Thank you very much Russell! - I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that's experienced some serious weirdness from Autostakkert! 😅 So glad PIPP saved the day 👍👍 Thank you for watching mate!
Brilliant work Luke I've not got a telescope at the min but going to try this technique with a 100mm prime lens and see how it compares with longer exposure
Hey Anthony! - I'm really glad you liked the video mate! :-) that will be an interesting experiment with your lens, well worth trying out! 👍👍 Wishing you the best of luck with it! Clear skies
@@lukomatico Thanks for the encouragement Luke I live in rural France ( bortle 3 skies) but this year we have not had much of a summer lots of cloudy days hopefully the autumn will be better for astrophotography
Such a fantastic video with bags of information. I can see from everything in this video it must have taken a lot of time and effort to put together and the fear I would have is it not working at the end and you had issues but got around them! Well done. My highlight apart from the image was your summary of Seeing, “The air blurs things”! Awesome and to the point.
Hey Marc! you are spot on, it really was a big effort to edit and record this one, as you create content yourself you'll know all too well how much of a time sink it can be! 👍 I'm so glad you liked the video mate, it's brilliant to hear!! All the best, Luke
@@lukomatico These types of videos though are absolute gems for the community as you're sharing stuff that's not obvious or easy to come by. Nicely done!
Hey! This was a really helpful brillinat video.Couple of questions I have: - did you use the same calibration frame method like "normal" deep sky shooting? - With such a short exposures is it necessary to use cooled cam? (I have asi 178 and 294 pro) - what about taking a video instead of single images and use pipp as3 etc? thx
Hey there Krisztián! - I'm glad you liked the video my friend :-) RE: calibration frames, no darks flats or bias were used, just lights. RE: cooling, - it's always beneficial really, but sometimes not required to perform well with the newer sensors on the market today! RE: video, - that would have been my preferred way to capture it if I was to do this again I guess! :-) Thanks for watching, I hope that helps!
That's a great sensor for this kind of application! incredibly low readnoise per um2 of sensor area :-) I have it's little brother already as it happens, the IMX429 - also an interesting option for this kind of imaging! Clear skies!
@@lukomatico IMX chips are great for amateur astronomy. But, there is another level. In my profession, I use fluorescent microscopes. I have one equipped with Teledyne camera. Teledyne has astronomy cameras as well; with whooping 11-16 um pixel size; 18-bit dynamic range; full size; just 0.7 e- read noise; 90% QE for 400-700nm; takes from 350 to 1100nm. I do know what is cost of astronomy cameras, but microscope cameras are 30K and upward.
@@anata5127 Sounds amazing! - research-grade equipment is phenomenally specced for sure, EMCCD/sCMOS are unreal - I imagine that's what you're using at work 🙂 I hope these professional grade technologies trickle down into amateur level equipment sooner rather than later!
@@lukomatico Yes, it is EMCCD/sCMOS. They will definitely come to amateurs astronomy. I think, in 2-3 years. Once upon time, I used apogee CCD cameras as a student. They long moved to amateur astronomy. The same will happen with cutting edge sensors, which are used for science. Nowadays, you buy camera and it is already old in 2-3 years.
Wow, one of the best Astro videos I have ever watched on utube. Luke, you really are going to be one of the Astro greats. And I love my esprit 80, not imaged with it yet, doing some mods but can’t wait. Thanks for all the videos and tutorials, if you go Patreon I’m in 👍
Wow! That's such a nice thing to say mate, thank you very much indeed! :-) I really hope to keep things going and making content for a long time to come You'll have a brilliant time with your Esprit 80 when you start imaging with it my friend, incredible scope for sure! That's super kind of you say about Patreon! I just think I'm too small of a channel for it yet haha :D Thank you for watching! Clear skies :)
Hey mate!! That's a great target to do it with, I tried it a few years back on the Cat's Eye with a MUCH larger scope than shown here, a 300PDS, it worked fantastically well!! Thank you so much for watching! :D
Really, really interesting video 👍 Was there some focus hunting or just bad seeing? 9.25", 10" and 12" reminds me of another video I watched recently, but we won't talk about that. I'll get my coat.
Hey Paul!! the video cam focus was hunting all over the place, it was driving me nuts!! :P a 9.25, 10 and 12.. I think I've seen that one too at some point, haha! Thank you very much for watching and for your support mate, It's hugely appreciated!
Exaxe gets some very interesting results. I’d say the detail fades towards the edges, but wow, the detail in the center is astonishing. His m42 is unreal. I guess if you get that many frames the SNR is way in your favor and any bad seeing is essentially cancelled out. Interesting.
Hey Keith! For sure he concentrates his processing efforts on the target at hand and perhaps less so on the background, I see what you mean 100%! :-) I'd love to visit some other targets with this method as the seasons progress! Thank you very much for watching, I hope you enjoyed! All the best, Luke
@@lukomatico I’ve often wondered about how seeing affects my long exposures. I always thought surely it screws with the resolution, but what can you do about it? I didn’t think there was a way to get enough photons onto the sensor with short exposures, but I suppose when you get into the hundreds of thousands of subs, maybe there are enough photons.
Luke, I just stumbled across your channel, you would be the perfect neighbour to stargaze with 😆 Absolutely amazing work mate. I am a casual visual observer with a Celestron 9.25 and a binoviwer. After seeing your work I think I am going to start with EAA ans go from there. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much mate, haha!! That's an awesome comment :-) I wish you all the best of luck with getting started at EAA, it's a heck of a lot of fun! Clear skies!
We need back to back comparisons between lucky imaged stacks and more traditional multiple minute exposures to best evaluate which produces the best end result. Also, sort out your auto focus in those indoor shots :)
Hey Andy! - I'll keep the advice in mind about more comparison content if that's what you'd like to see! comparisons however were not the aim of this video, so hence not included. RE: the autofocus, it's a bugger but there's not much I can do - do you have any suggestions? Clear skies!
@@lukomatico Yup, understood, all good stuff. For focus issues, I’d make sure the depth of field was decent, achieve focus, then disable auto focus, so long as you’re not moving about that much, that should give you more consistent results, avoiding focus seeking and the resultant focus breathing.
Thank you for the suggestions!! I much appreciate it :-) I was shooting with the DSLR at f1.8 which may have been too shallow looking back! I'll deffo look into doing it manually next time as it drove me mad to watch it back while editing, I kept basically cringing at how it was losing focus all the time haha! Thanks again for watching and for the quality feedback mate, I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Best, Luke
@@lukomatico Yup, I was watching it thinking that is one hell of a shallow DOF :) That defo contributes to the problem, it’s tempting to use the widest aperture you can just because you have it, everyone’s done that, experiment with more like f/4, depends on how far you are from the camera and the focal length ofc. I look forward to seeing your future videos to see if you crack it. Cheers, be well. Andy.
In planet imaging, key point is how many images will be rejected below some quality point. Sometimes it could be 95%, and almost always more than 80%. How many images survived from those 2500? I have started (April 2022) astrophotography from EAA. Then, I started (July 2022) to keep individual EAA frames, and analyze them. Only -10-20% of images were true lucky (below expected threshold). Exposure were 5-10 sec (actually correct ones calculated by Sharpcap) So, 360 frames per hour, 36 survive. I could say, 7000-10000 such frames are needed and only 700-1000 will be selected for WBPP. This will be true lucky imaging. I learned about Pixinsight and NINA in October 2022, these approaches never overlapped, but I will return to lucky imaging that I have used with EAA.
Awesome mate, very well presented and produced. Your style is very easy to watch and understand and as a total beginner myself (two astro images lol), this means a lot.
Hey Craig! Thank you so much indeed mate, that's really good of you to say! :-) I am so glad to hear that it was easy to watch and understand for someone fairly new to astrophotography, that's simply awesome! - thank you for that brilliant feedback :-) Clear skies mate!
Very well explained Luke 👍👍 I did the same before I had an equatorial mount and telescope, I then used my Canon 1DxII and Canon 600mm f4 L lens on a normal tripod. Because of the tripod I had to follow by hand, so I had a manual dithering 🙂 And because of the long lens and had to hold on a shutterspeed of about 0.8 to maximum 1 second. With those settings I had to shoot a few thousand images, for M31 for example I shot 3275 images + darks, flats and bias extra. Also I kind of lucky imaging I guess but forced to because lacking material to follow the stars ;-) Can't put a link here to show you the result but for me it looks ok, I'm curious what you think about that
Hey Siegfried! :-D 600mm F4, that's a big chunk of glass!! 150mm of aperture on a lens is crazy big :D I'd love to see your image! if you send it over to the email address in my 'about' page on youtube, it'll be under 'business inquiries' - I hope to see it! That's a huge amount of frames to have stacked, I bet it took an immensely long time. Thank you for sharing! Luke
@@lukomatico Yes Luke that 600 f4 is a big relatively heavy lens that i use for my wildlife shoots. I really love the quality of that lens, it's so crisp and sharp. Sometimes I still use it to shoot astro. Will send you the image this week, hope I don't forget
Another great video. Quite interesting topic. Regarding the pattern on the images. Could it be an issue with the Debayer pattern, specifically how it is setup in AutoStakkert. I had the same issue with planetary images with a color camera (I know not apples to apples as you used a mono camera). I had to force the Debayer pattern in AutoStakkert to get rid of hatch. Perhaps there is something to look at (AutoStakkert settings). Again, realize not exactly the same but maybe a clue to lead to the cause of the issue.
Hey there Ernie! - Thank you so much for watching mate! :-) RE: the pattern, the bayer settings were one of the things I checked in my various attempts to get the grid to go away, but unfortunately to no avail - thank you so much for the suggestion though, I do very much appreciate that you'd take the time to offer help and advice like that! :-) I hope you are getting plenty of clear skies my friend! All the very best, Luke
Hey mate! :D Definitely check out a few of the channels on there who are fellow creators, I decided to start putting that list on at the end to say thank you and give credit to my channel members who are kind enough to give direct support! such a lovely bunch! Have a great day mate!
Hey Bill! - I have done in the past and will definitely revisit it as an option, with even a modest processor it can keep up with reasonable framerates including on the fly calibration! :-) I hope you are well!
Another fantastic video Luke. Very informative and something new to try out in the future.You said you were going to up the quality and this certainly delivered,great stuff and an amazing final result on M57.
Hey Jon! - I'd love to make all my videos to this kind of standard (or higher!) but I guess it'll not be possible 100% of the time, that said I'm happy that I didn't rush this out just to combat the feeling of pressure to release content faster :-) It's great to hear that you enjoyed the video, that's all I could really ask for! :D Thank you so much for watching, and for supporting - It's hugely appreciated! All the best, Luke
I keep trying to figure out if I should use a guide cam on my own SC 8" scope even though I'll only do lucky imaging. I get contradictory info on it. Any thoughts?
Hey there mate! - There's definitely some advantages to guiding even with shorter exposures, if nothing else it will allow you to periodically dither your exposures to stop pattern noise building and allow fainter details to show through without being obscured so harshly by noise :-) a worthwhile investment of time and money I'd say to get guiding working! All the best, Luke
@@lukomatico Thanks! That's what I was thinking, too. I just ordered an OAG and for my 8" SC scope. Harder to use but better results at high focal lengths. I'm going place an order for a Player one Sedna guide cam in a few days too.
Hey mate! - You do tend to get quite nice tight stars as a result of those short exposures :-) I had a ccd as one of my first cameras by the way, an Atik 314L+ mono and I absolutely loved it!! Thank you for watching!
10:51 That bit of music sounds similar to the intro of Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" Another lucky coincidence then. Sorry for the off-topic comment 😁
Hey there Edgardo! - Thank you for the comment my friend! :-) The piece of music there was played by my friend Ollie, he could well have drawn inspiration from the piece you mention - great ear if so!! :-) (He's got his own astronomy channel called Ollie's Astro over here on RUclips if you wanted to check him out!) Clear skies! :-)
Nice video Luke, what was your ADU above bias with those shots if you don't mind me asking. Based on the 1.25e RN at gain 300, your bortle scale, and focal ratio, the short exposures you were taking may actually be the correct length of sub exposure anyway.
Hey there Joe! - I don't know exactly off the top of my head RE: adu count, the histogram was off the left at least, but It's true that my light pollution makes it easy to swamp read noise! :D Looking at the 1600mm sub-exposure 'cheat sheet' then I probably wasn't too far off approaching a usable exposure - that said, longer subs definitely give a smoother result, there was quite a lot of FPN that I had to work with in this data that just doesn't show at all in longer subs, but it worked out well enough in the end :D Thank you so much for watching mate! I hope the skies are treating you well, looking forwards to your next work! Best, Luke
@@lukomatico Thanks Luke, I didn't even think of FPN, but I guess that makes sense doing it with a CMOS camera over a CCD. I'm interested to see if any of these astro companies start to make equipment designed for short exposure astrophotography soon.
@@JoesAstrophoto That really would be a dream Joe! - I love the idea of short exposure imaging like this, but just hate the amount of files you have to deal with, it's all very clunky at the moment I guess! :D The new ASI482mc planetary camera looks interesting with it's big pixels and relatively small frame size of 1920x1080, likely to be very sensitive so should be a good fit for lucky imaging, I'm giving it serious thought (also to double up as a guide cam, but there the big pixels won't help so much unless I got an OAG.. there's always something isn't there? LOL!) Thanks mate!
Hey James! - you're already the master of many subs for sure!! I could have sworn you told me about one recently that was at least a few thousand subs deep haha :D Thank you so much for watching matey, I hope you have a great weekend!
Another brilliant video Luke I have commented on your videos before from my other channel but thought I'd make one up that's strictly just for astro, look forward to seeing some more cheers. Tich.
It were a good astro buddy who called the observatory that when I posted it on Facebook , I think his exact words were "oh look a dumpy dalek" @@lukomatico we used to do a lot of outreach together mainly solar but sometimes we did them at night too, sadly he has passed away now but the name has stuck so it's a way to remember him by. I still need to get a permanent electric feed to it but where I live it's a bit awkward to do so an extension lead works just as well for now. Maybe I'll get some videos done at some point but the last image I did there was last week of the North American nebula & it's as noisy as hell so I don't think I'll bother with that one plus I'm having guiding issues so I think my mount needs looking at. Oh the joys of astro lol.
"Oh the joys of astro" Hahaha, I love it :D so true mate. I'm sorry to hear of your friend, but it's good that you have the gift of his obsy name for you to keep him in your memory, that's a nice story :-) Good luck on the videos should you choose to make some! I'll be sure to check em' out if you let me know! :D Clear skies mate!
Hey Tich! - I just wanted to let you know that I did see that you'd left comments on my latest video but it seems to be automatically being deleted :-( I have this channel and your 'Tich Wykes' one both as approved commenters so I'm not sure what's going on - I'm sorry about that anyway mate, I just didn't want you thinking I'd ignored you or something :-) All the best, Luke
@@lukomatico No worries mate if you can let me know if this works then that would be great, I think a comment may have been deleted as I posted a link to my mates blog about the ASI air plus that he tested recently so thought you might have been interested, so maybe youTube thought I were a spammer? I did enjoy your last video about the ASI air plus btw would love one myself but budget is holding me back, although I did read that QHY are building something similar so there's hope for me yet, well if it will operate my old ccd that is lol.
Lucky imaging is not about freeze framing the seeing. Seeing is not constant. Lucking imaging is about capturing when the momentary seeing is better than the average and stacking those images. And it was amateurs that developed lucking imaging. It doesn't work on large telescopes.
Hey there! Thanks for your comment :-) I believe we mostly agree on this, but perhaps would personally phrase a discription differently even though the essence of what's being described is the same. Lucky imaging really IS about freeze framing the seeing, simply because the seeing isn't constant as you say - you take the best and stack them, rejecting the worst. It does indeed work on large telescopes though, better than on small telescopes even as they have a higher overall resolution limit - why else would the best terrestrially captured planetary images come from huge scopes using planetary lucky imaging techniques, and not from small scopes 👍
It was a few videos consisting of 2-ish seconds per frame of video :-) taking normal 2s long photos would have worked just as well, but that would mean dealing with thousands of files rather than just a few video files containing all the data. Hope that explains it!
Great video as always mate 👍. Don’t know about anyone else, but the moment that music kicks in at the end, gets me giddy 😂. Simply knowing the results are about to drop on screen 😂. Great image and great information.
Haha :D that's awesome to hear Will! - I'm really glad that you've enjoyed the video and reveal! I'm always worried that the thumbnails are too much of a giveaway but getting people to click on the videos is half the battle! :D Clear skies my friend! Luke
Thanks for the video. Since it's like everyone now is doing astrophotography, we need a niche inside of a niche hobby :-) Lucky DSS imaging has really captured my interest but there still isnt too much out there. I am really trying to put Dr Robin Glover theory into practice by taking alot of pictures in a short exposure of 1 to 2 seconds. I have a HyperStar on a C6 so this should make it a little easier. Since I live close to Chicago, IL, USA the sky glow is insane so I need all the help I can get!
I'm glad you liked it David!! - There's so many interesting techniques and avenues to explore these days, and likely loads more new ways of imaging yet to emerge! What a time to be alive :-) good luck with your imaging my friend 👍👍
Awesome Video!! Love The Ring Nebula Shot!! I do EAA imaging With My ZWO ASI 224mc! I need Try Imaging Some Clusters and Orion Nebula hopefully by this Winter! Great Video! I follow AstroBiscuits Channel As Well By the way!! He has a Series Of Videos On Lucky Deep Sky Imaging! I really Love That image Of Ring Nebula! Clear Skies👍🏻🙂🔭
Hey Avanteesh! Thank you very much matey! I'm happy with how it turned out, your 224 is a great camera for lucky imaging for sure! you'll be able to take some amazing shots with it :-) Thank you for watching!!
Brilliant video Luke. I'll be honest I'd never heard of lucky imaging before this so found it absolutely fascinating. Does this technique still require guiding ?
Hey there Paul! :-) I'm really glad you liked it mate! To answer your question, it doesn't need autoguiding! I used it anyway but arguably not using it can be better for this type of imaging as the small natural drift over time will act a bit like a dither over enough frames! Thank you so much for watching mate, I hope you have a brilliant day! Luke
Great video Luke! I'd never even considered lucky imaging for DSO's but am having some serious tracking issues with my mount at the moment so might be worth giving it a go while I try to sort that out. You got a great result and I think the saturation/colours look awesome. 😉😉
Thanks Riz! :D It can definitely save you a session or two if your mount is playing up mate! - I hope you get it sorted out soon man, and thank you for watching!
Hey there! - It's definitely still worth it to dither - I should have set up some sort of time based dithering (every couple of minutes perhaps) during capture as it would have helped a bit during processing :-)
Hey Noddy! - That's brilliant mate, thank you so much for that kind compliment :D I'd love to keep making higher quality videos if possible :-) Hope you have a brilliant weekend matey! Luke
Hey there Tom! - I should have put a section in the video about it really, sorry about that! - It was just Sharpcap 4.0 :-) I'm glad you enjoyed the video! Thank you for your support my friend :-) Clear skies!
I mean this in kindness - your music is distracting. Your voice is fine for doing the narration on your own, and your mic is great for voiceover work. You really don't need musical support, but if you're set on having underscoring, I'd suggest turning it way down, particularly the early part of the video. Thanks for the content though.
Hi Luke, This video was FASCINATING!!! Maybe I missed it, but were the original luminance images saved as an SER file or individual FIT or TIFF files? Also, what capture program did you use? I want to do more on the Ring nebula with the larger C11 scope. there is an outer ring glowing in dull red that I somehow want to try to capture, but it will take more than 3 second exposures .... more like 300 seconds. Again, FASCINATING video. (Patrick of Savannah)
Hey Pat! :-) I'm so glad you found it interesting! - re: the file type, they were all .ser video files but due to a problem with autostakkert they needed to be turned into .tiffs with PIPP! I think you and your C11 will take a magnificent image of M57 and it's extensions - I can't wait to see how it turns out! Thank you for watching Pat! All the very best, Luke
Good video Luke with lots of great information. Not sure about lucky imaging myself, to be fair I have not tried it (old school, old git lol) Think I will give this a try though and see what results I get
Hey Glenn! - I hope things are good for you at the moment mate, I just saw you got a new scope - what a beautiful beast of a photon hoover, it's glorious! :-) I bet lucky imaging would work well with that to be honest if you give it a go! I just wanted to say big big congrats on 2k subs man, nobody deserves it more mate! Clear skies! Luke
@@lukomatico thanks Luke. It is certainly a light bucket. Having some challenges re balancing and guiding but getting there. Weather as always playing its part. May even join the BAT and see what I can add. Best get it working first lol 2K subs ....i was shocked actually as it kind of happened quite quickly
Hey Flemming! - A dedicated astro camera is a really fun thing to own if you love astrophotography!! :D I'd recommend it always! I'm sure your Nikon D700 can still take a nice pic or two though! :-) Clear skies my friend
@@lukomatico Hehe yep. Though the Nikon D700 doesn't provide true raw images, and clips the black. Also it's really weak in the reds. So that MC 533 looks pretty tempting :D
Thanks for putting this out there, this is an interesting field and I found this searching for lucky imaging. It would have been really useful to show your great final image against an image taken using the same gear by the more traditional method with 3 or 5 minute subs etc Quick question - I thought one of the principles of lucky imaging was discarding those shots that may not be as clear due to atmospheric impact at that specific time, ensuring you are only stacking the sharpest ones possible. It looks as though you may not have done this, was there a particular reason why?
Hey there! - thank you so much for watching and giving such a detailed comment! :-) Regarding frame rejection : you're absolutely right that you'd usually be very discriminatory with frame selection when performing lucky imaging, however some benefit to resolution can be realised just by using short subs vs the usual long ones, even if you stack nearly all of them without much rejection - I've tested this myself an there's definitely an increase in detail, though not as extreme as only stacking the absolute best few frames 👍 The reason I kept more frames was down to needing the extra SNR that more exposure brings, the end result was still quite noisy so a 'best 10%' stack would have been too noisy to use for the video :-) You made a good suggestion about showing a version taken with longer exposures would have been good, I'd definitely try and do that next time - I just need more clear nights to do it all haha! Thanks again for watching 🙏
Hey mate! - The star shapes were lovely and round, no problems there :-) I wonder if some of the images you've seen in the past were from alt-az mounted scopes as this method is popular among users of them? field rotation over time gives you a similar effect to the egged stars :-) Thank you so much for watching mate!
It's probably not applicable anymore, but I encountered the opposite issue where pip didn't debayer Jupiter capture correctly. I had to resort to using Siril for debayering and then utilized pip once more with debayering disabled.
I had a similar issue last week to what you're experiencing. I normally capture in FITS format and debayer in Siril. However, for some reason, the settings in the capture software reverted to "PNG" format, which I couldn't debayer using Siril. The solution I found was as follows: convert PNG to FITS format files using a Linux tool: mogrify -format fits -path ../converted/ *.png. Then in Siril, change the settings to use a predetermined debayer setting (because no debayer info is included in the converted file), and then debayer with Siril. This solved my issue, this method does also work for "tif" files.
Hey Luke, great video and glad to see you back, its been a while :D. Just a quick question for DSO lucky imaging, say i take 1500 1 second exposures will i have to go through each one to see which subs are the best frames or will i for example in DSS select the best % frames? Thanks
Wonderful video Luke (as always!). 👍👍 Four points of follow-up... 1. A question: Did you use all of the short sub-exposures to make the final image? The reason I ask is as follows: During long exposures, the atmosphere is constantly changing, meaning that there are moments when the image is steady, and moments when some or all of the image has been distorted by the atmospheric turbulence. Because both occur quite frequently, then both good & bad moments of seeing will contribute to what the camera records during a long exposure. In a sense, the final result of a long exposure is sort of an average of what the camera 'sees' during the 'sharp moments' and 'blurred moments'. Now, if you take many short exposures, I would think that you will have captured some that occurred only during 'sharp moments', and some that captured the object only during 'blurred moments'. If you then combine all of the sub-exposures, wouldn't you be getting the same average of the 'sharp moments' & 'blurred moments' as a long exposure? I would think that the real benefit of taking huge numbers of short sub-exposures would come from tossing the images that were blurred & only stacking the images taken during the 'sharp moments' (i.e only choose shots which would have the smallest stars in the image). Having said all that, the fact is that your final image of M57 is quite impressive. Perhaps my logic is incorrect? 2. I should point out that the benefit of 'lucky imaging' is greater as the aperture of the telescope increases, because larger apertures look through larger chunks of the atmosphere, which increases the likelyhood that some part of that chunk of atmosphere is turbulent & distorting the image. Anyone who has done planetary or double-star observing (visually) with a larger aperture telescope knows that moments when the object is truly sharp & undistorted are much less frequent with larger scopes (although those moment will show huge amounts of detail). 3. It's interesting to note that, in the past, that the following question was posed & answered (*): "What size of refractor delivers the optimum price/performance ratio for visual observing?". Yes, larger apertures of refractor provide more theoretical resolution and high contrast, but smaller apertures have fewer moments of bad seeing & have the same high contrast. Well, it turns out that, for typical observing conditions that most amateurs experience (especially at middle lattitudes), the 'sweet spot' for refractors is....yup!....a 5-inch aperture! (*) It may have been Robert Burnham Jr., a noted 20th visual astronomy expert & author of the much-loved three-volume "Burnham's Celestial Handbook". 4. For several decades, astrophotographers wishing to battle the effects of seeing during long exposures have made use of an "Adaptive Optics" unit, which is placed in front of the filters & camera. They can be quite effective when objects are too faint for short exposures & the imaging is done with larger apertures. Here's a link to a company that has been making Adaptive Optics for astrophotographers for quite a while. diffractionlimited.com/product/ao-8a/
Hey Derek! Thank you so much for taking the time to write such an in depth comment! :-) RE: 1 - I did not use all of the exposures, I used around 65-70% IIRC which was still too many, but I needed some signal! :D It's not too bad to stack slightly poorer frames with better ones when you are using advanced stacking algorithms which are able to weight the subframes and give greater presence to those that are sharper and a diminished effect to those that are lower quality, it takes out some of the need to 'weed out' the bad subs, just as long as you've gotten rid of the very worst the software can make a good guess as to which subs it should stack based on FWHM etc :-) If you were purely averaging when stacking then absolutely you'd want to get rid of everything that wasn't the cream of the crop though! RE: 2 -You're absolute right mate! I've had first hand experience with that kind of effect for sure, as you say it's way more pronounced on a larger aperture - my 12" newtonian showed it strongly when I was lucky imaging the core of the cat's eye nebula a few years ago with it - some frames were crystalline, others were... well,... not so good!! :D RE: 3 -I wish I'd actually taken a look through my Esprit 120 visually, but so far I haven't! I really should rectify that soon. - I always liked visual through newts when I had them, but rather surprisingly my best ever visual view of the ring nebula came from an 80mm apo, it was just there as plain as day, I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing from such a small scope! amazing stuff :-) RE: 4 -Oh man, I'd love an AO someday if it became feasible to own one, they are incredible aren't they? :-) If I won the lottery I'd have one of the laser artificial star ones, but I'd have to move house as I live near a flightpath and I don't think they'd approve haha :-) A man can dream! Than you so much for watching and leaving your thoughts my friend, I very much appreciate it!! Have a wonderful weekend :-) Luke
Rank amateur here...I was under the impression that calibration frames weren't really necessary for doing lucky imaging. Perhaps I am confusing this with live stacking method?
Hey mate! - calibration files are definitely a boon but not totally necessary, - I often use at least flats and bias when doing even live-stacking too! :-) Cheers!
I didn't get if you talked about what may be the most important part of lucky imaging. How to find the "lucky" frames when you have thousands and thousands of total images. Did you just throw everything in Pipp? How did you measure which frames to keep. That would be the whole point of this exercise, to throw away all but the sharpest ones.
Hey cucu! - You are right , I should have elaborated more on my selection!! - I took around 2100 frames but did not use them all, I told DSS to stack the best 70% I think it was, I'd have loved to be more careful in selection but I just couldn't find the energy to go through all the subs manually to check them at that time :D Definitely something I should have brought up and talked more about though, cheers! I hope you have a great weekend mate!
@@lukomatico Thanks! No worries, it was a very cool exercise indeed. Ever since Astrobiscuit's video came out, I've been wondering about this. At some point I will end up trying it. On the other hand, for true lucky imaging we'd need much shorter exposures to essentially mitigate seeing wobbles. Probably even 1 second is on the upper limit... which brings up the need for much larger aperture for light gathering capabilities. Also, likely you will need to ditch way more frames. Take the example of planetary luck imaging, they take 10-20k frames and keep only 10% in average...
@@cucubits True mate! it's a real hotbed of challenges but the rewards are insane when it all goes well and is executed right, like Exaxe's examples on Astrobin! :D Thank you so much for getting back to me!
Great video Luke! PIPP is a great program for a lot of things. I was wondering why I can't find a 130PDS in the United States. Ever since watching your comparison video I've wanted one.
Hey mate! Yeah PIPP really saved my bacon, I'll have to explore the program more over time as it seemed quite capable! RE: the 130PDS, it seems for whatever reason that SkyWatcher don't sell them in the United States! - I'm really sorry about that, such great scopes should be on sale everywhere! Clear skies mate
Haha :D Traditional is still best in most cases so I'd not worry mate! On the occasional target lucky imaging can really shine though :-) I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for watching mate!
You weren't lying when you said about upping your content quality Luke! I was like - well it's already good already, but this blew me away with the research and experimentation put into it. Did you also script some of this as well? or do you have a really good memory lol Just really well put together and super right up my street with the lucky imaging. Basically loved it! I've been flat out at work and building a shed in the evenings but I meant to mention the new ASI485 and ASI482 to you! I thought these might peak your interest :D I did initially think the ASI482 would have the lower read noise with it's massive 5.8um pixels, However, I do notice the read noise is lower on the 485 which I didn't expect considering it has much smaller 2.9um pixels. I'm of course getting one, that goes without saying, and might opt for the 485 version as it gives 0.6"/pixels with the 200p which sounds perfect for Lucky imaging, and 4x the real estate compared to my 462 for framing those lovely galaxies. Which one are you getting? I'm guessing 485 as well right? Take care and fantastic upload, I told you that you're better than Trevor ;)
Hey Chris!! Ahh mate you are too kind haha! :D I'd love to make every video to a higher quality, I guess it'll end up being a bit of a mix though in the end! You've got me! - I did try scripting out some of this, it made it a little easier to get my thoughts out in a semi-coherent manner as I'm prone to a good ramble otherwise! :P On the note of the 485 and 482, they are interesting cameras! - regarding the read noise, the 482 is the better bet even though it's read noise figure is a little higher - the read noise is 2x higher than the 485, but the pixel size is 4x as large! making the 482 sensor 2x lower read noise than the 485 on a per unit of pixel area basis! :D As you mention though, getting a good sampling ratio is key! 0.6"/pix sounds like in the right conditions you could get phenomenal resolution! - worth a think about the 482 still though as 1.2"/pix is still good, files would be smaller and you could drizzle the data back up in resolution? so many things to consider! my head hurts... :P I've a heck of a mountain to climb yet to approach Trevor's videography skills haha, but man is that a head-swellingly nice compliment you gave, thank you!!! I'm going to continue scratching my head about the 482/485 choice.. hmmm, I don't suppose you have any idea when they are due do you? All the very best my friend, and thank you so much for your incredible comment! Luke :-)
@@lukomatico ah yeah, I wasn't dividing the read noise over the pixel area, Cheers for that, it makes sense now. This makes the decision tougher because I reckon you get around 0.6"/pixel with those fleetingly small moments of still seeing. (Yes you can drizzle like you say, but that's basically an educated guess algorithm) On the other side you get half the read noise, hhhmm? It's a bit vague but we should have them in about a week, maybe a touch longer.
Hey Ian! You'd usually stack just the best ones, but in an ideal world you'd have lots of good frames to stack rather than just a few! :-D I stacked the best 65%-ish of those lights that I captured for reference :-) Clear skies!
I find the biggest downside of luckyimaging is the time it takes to process - I had about 2000 frames from my ASI533MC and it took more than a day to process using Astro pixel processor.
Hey Timothy! - Oh mate, I felt this comment in my very bones haha!! it take sooooo lonnngggg, even with a region of interest crop! Thank you so much for watching!
As expected from you this looks amazing! Lucky imaging is a very good tecnic but it would totally destroy my current PC, what laptop/PC CPU, GPU and Ram do you use? I'm planning on buying a good PC to be able to stack and work with thousands of frames without it crashing and lagging non stop so if you could help with that I'd really appreciate it! Your image was very very beautiful and very sharp for such a small target honestly I believe this tecnic would work great on other targets such as m13,m63,m27,m81 and m82 and much more! Thanks for the video and for the great content, as always it's a blast watching your videos.
Hey Savjol! - Thank you so much mate, I'm really glad that you enjoyed the video and results :-) It'd definitely work on a variety of targets like you mentioned, worth checking out more! Regarding the PC I use, it's a ryzen 5 3600 processor, 16gb of ram and the gpu although largely just for gaming is an rtx 2060 - I hope that helps you :-) Thank you so much for your time and support my friend, I hope you have a brilliant weekend! Luke
What a great hobby. I’m glad to be part of it. ❤
Me too!! 👍👍
Great video Luke. I am another that has not heard of lucky imaging. Lots of food for thought here. Cheers
Hey Tony!! - I'm really glad you found it interesting :-) It's a tremendous field of astrophotography and one that I think is growing rapidly!
Thank you so much for watching, I hope you have a lovely day!
Luke
"the air blurs things" ........ OMG !! I love it Luke. That line stole the show my Heavenly Hobby friend. Keep 'em coming
Hey Mike! - Always great to hear from you my friend, I'm really glad you liked the video!! 😀
I'll keep the videos coming for sure!
Clear skies 👍👍
You have great production quality, and the end result picture is great.
That's really kind of you to say mate, thank you!! 👍👍
I don't even know what to say. This kinda blew me away. Had no idea that this was even possible for DSOs... amazing!!!
Hey Jason!! I hope you are able to get out imaging more in AZ now the heat has lessened a bit :-)
I'm really glad to hear you enjoyed the video, it's pretty wild what can be done with these newer sensors - I'm only just scratching the surface of it!
Have a wonderful weekend my friend! :-)
Luke
Excellent. Great for the short exposures you took
Thank you so much Mike!! I think this would work better with larger apertures and darker skies though! 👍👍
Excellent video mate, I found the read noise breakdown very helpful. Cheers.
That's awesome to hear mate!! - thank you for taking the time to comment :-)
Hi, thanks for the Video Luke. Still I would like to argue if 3sec or even 10sec exposures are lucky imaging. I honestly think there is much more details possible if you go for
Hey mate, hope you are well! - without a doubt the shorter an exposure the better from a sharpness standpoint, but at the end of the day you still need enough exposure to make the image even worth stacking, so there's always going to be a balance until we have cameras capable of 0e read noise! :-)
'lucky imaging' is a very wooly term which leaves itself open to personal interpretation of what you'd define as lucky!
I've personally seen exposures as long as 5s display significant shot to shot variance in sharpness, indicating that they could still be sorted and stacked delivering sharper results than traditional approaches, I'd call that lucky imaging still personally, but I appreciate it won't fit everyone's definition 👍
I can't wait for newer cameras to hit the market in the coming decade perhaps which will allow us to go shorter than ever with our deepsky exposures, good times are ahead! :-D
Thank you for watching and sharing some discussion!
What has put me off this so far is the sheer number of frames and the hundreds of GB of data to plough through...! It looks like your process works though. Nicely done - great M57 image.
Hey mate!
It certainly makes a LOT of data!! at least when using a 'region of interest' crop of the camera sensor, file sizes can be kept down somewhat, but inevitably it still ends up being a chunk! :-D
I wish i'd had a big scope for this experiment like my old 250 or 300mm newtonians, I think they'd have done real justice to it, still the Esprit didn't disappoint even running at 645mm focal length! :-)
Thanks for watching!
Wow. I’ve been putting this off because I was so busy. Finally got time to watch it and I’m glad it was a long video. Totally entertaining through to the end. This technique is on the rise. Equally impressive is the work I’ve been seeing done with slow Maksutovs. Fine job. I am planning on putting some up as soon as my new mount comes in. Great video. Clear skies.
Hey Garnett! I hope that you are doing well :-)
I'm so glad you liked the video mate! - I agree, the technique is becoming more and more mainstream, I could see it taking over from normal imaging if the equipment and software allowed it in the next decade or so! the benefits in resolution are wonderful :-)
Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to watch my video, I am very thankful to you my friend!
I hope you have a tremendous weekend and a well earned rest!
Best,
Luke
Brilliant image and fun to watch! I’ll be giving this a go when the skies finally clear up from rain and wildfire smoke!
Thanks so much mate!! :-D Hope your skies clear soon!
This was a brilliant presentation of the subject. I feel illuminated!!
Thank you so much! That's really wonderful to hear :-)
Good job Luke. I'll have to have a go at it one day.
That would be great Richard! :-) I'd love to try it some more myself on different targets 👍
Thank you for watching!
This is where we are going. On the edge of technology. Great in depth explanations. Imagine combined with on chip dithering.
Thank you! I think the future is bright for astrophotography, and hopefully not just from increasing light pollution levels 💡😅
@@lukomatico The universe doesn't tolerate mistakes. We'll end up in the dark eventually ;)
Been trying 5 second calibrated subs. Storage, grading and processing is a bit of hassle. Live stacking would solve that hopefully. Possibility for single chip for imaging and guiding with short exposures simplifies things a lot!
The guiding and imaging from the same chip is a super interesting idea, I know SBIG and similar had some cameras a while ago that had a built-in separate guide sensor next to the main imaging sensor but the only issue was it would be looking through any filters etc, making guiding while imaging in narrowband for example quite difficult, I'd love if the idea was revisited though!
Thank you for the insightful comment!
Awesome image , well done old chap.
Thank you kindly Peter! :-) Cheers for watching!
Wow, never heard of lucky imaging but I'm gonna give it a go. 5 min subs can be painful with aeroplane trails etc. Your vids are easy to understand and follow, thanks!
Pete
Hey Peter! - I hope you have some fun trying them out! it can be really rewarding seeing the result from all those frames :-) the only downside is how long it takes to stack them all sometimes!
Clear skies mate :-)
What a great video Luke. Looking forward to your next creations.
Thank you so much Denis! I really appreciate the kind words :-)
Clear skies!
Impressive imaging!!!
Thank you so much!! :D
A huge part of the seeing equation is local. The telescope, and the immediate site. As a matter of fact seeing is mostly local, not the far atmosphere. Never the less lucky will work there too. If you null out the local seeing you would get many more diffraction limited frames.
Luke, as always very informative, but also thought provoking to try something new, great final image, PIPP is a great program for planetary imaging. Kr Ian
Hey Ian!
Thank you so much, I'm glad you liked it! - Truly PIPP is a stellar program, it helped save the day! :-)
I hope that you are getting some clear skies!
All the best,
Luke
This video just made my Saturday morning Luke. Where to begin, firstly video itself loved the editing(music, angles, bokeh) and just way it was all put together, really engaging. I'm sure that was a lot of work but we'll worth it given the quality. I learned a whole lot here about read noise and the concept itself was really well explained. First time I've come across it (although I've been in the game a whole 9 months lol). Really appreciate the shoutout mate and just love seeing how you used it within the video. Such a kick to hear it in someone else's video. No doubt for me you're one of the top astrophotography channels out there.
Looking forward to seeing that new camera you've got coming mate.👍
Great image like the new icon.
Cheers
Ollie
Hey Ollie!!
I'm so thankful to hear you enjoyed the video mate, absolutely chuffed in fact :-)
Thank you very much indeed for sharing your music! It was a pleasure to have it in the video, I felt bad putting my voice over your beautiful piano work in truth haha! :D It did fit in quite nicely though I'd say!
Thank you for the lovely compliment mate, I'll not be able to get my head out of the door now though as it's swelled up so much! :D
Hopefully I'll have a decision made and the new camera ordered as soon as possible!! Can't wait :-)
All the very best mate, I hope you have a lovely weekend!
Luke
Excellent video sir Luke... nice one
Thanks so much mate :-D I'm glad to see you've been enjoying my videos!
Thanks for watching and giving your support!!
Love this video. Gladly sat through the whole thing, I'm so amazed people can almost match the quality of Hubble using this amazing technique.
Thank you so much mate, that's very kind of you! - I'd love to revisit this type of video one day and try again!! :-)
Thanks for watching!
Great quality video, Luke! Wonderful image of the Ring Nebula: sharp and beautiful colors! Clear Skies! 👍🙂🌌🔭
Thank you Beatrice!! - It's wonderful to hear you've enjoyed the video and image! :-) I would love to revisit this subject with other scopes/targets/cameras as it's one that really interests me!
Thank you for watching my friend!
Clear skies 👍👍
Oh wow, absolutely loved this video Luke, really interesting. I imaging you did a load of research for this one. Quite like what you doing with the camera swap angles too. I would never have thought to do exposures that short but the results look great. The astro monster in my head is shouting to give this a go.
Super Image at the end, really nice work.
Hope all is well mate. Take it easy!!!
Hey there Ben!
Thanks so much for your lovely comment mate, it did take quite a lot of work but I'm quite proud of how the video turned out - not perfect, but probably my best yet :-)
it was nice to get out and try something different for a change, and with reasonable success too! :D
Thank you so much for giving it a watch matey, I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
Hope you have a smashing weekend,
Luke
Beautiful result. Thanks for the great video that clearly explained the concept of lucking imaging deep sky object. I'd love to give it a go, my QHY294MM has fairly low read noise and very small pixels so seems well suited for it. I found out that with SharpCap I can capture a ROI in the centre and thus not have to deal with thousands of 47mp fits.
Would have loved to see a side-by-side with traditional long-exposes stacked. My suspicion is with smaller apertures you might be diffraction limited so there's less to gain with lucky imaging.
Thanks so much for that!! I really appreciate the feedback, - I'll likely revisit this subject soon in the hope of making more comparisons and demonstrations :-)
Cheers!
great video as always mate!
Thank you so much mate! :D I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Phenomenal! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and experience. I always enjoy your videos.
Thank you so much Michael! I appreciate that my friend :D
Very interesting experiment Luke. I recently did something similar, but I used a 70mm x 400mm Guiderscope as a telescope (not the best optics. It was for experimentation) I used a 533MC and a 462MC for Omega Centauri without tracking with 400 x 0.5s + 50% Gain. The results weren't spectacular but good enough to test short exposures with my 10 "SC f / 6.3 soon. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Jesus! I actually watched your Omega Centauri video on your channel with the 462 in, such an amazing sight! :-)
How did the 533 and 462 compare if you don't mind me asking? was one clearly better or both similar?
I hope that you are able to have some fun with lucky imaging soon with your 10" SCT! That'll be a great instrument for the job! :O
I hope you have a wonderful weekend mate!!
Luke
@@lukomatico Hi Luke. The 462 MC and 533MC behave similarly in short exposures of 0.5 to 1.0s for Deep Sky. The advantage of the 533MC is the cooling that significantly reduces the noise of the individual frames. As soon as I test with my SC 10 "f/6.3 I will tell you (f/6.3 is the native focal radius of some Meade SC from the 90s). I usually use it at f/4 with FR. With the small field of the 533MC I can avoid the coma and spherical aberrations that the FR produces at the edge of the field due to the short f/4 focal ratio foa an SC. Regards
@@jesuspineiro1622 Thank you so much for getting back to me my friend! That's really interesting information indeed, In that case I may yet try and use my 2600MC (same sensor tech as the 533 basically) as a lucky imaging camera with a region of interest crop selected to keep file sizes down!
I really appreciate the info, thank you :-)
Have a great day!,
Luke
Thank you Luke, throughly enjoyed this latest video, i managed my 1st night since May, last Sunday i was surprised on how much i had forgotten :) only did M31.. Took me an 1/2 hour to find it :) Srar adventurer worked great, Looking for to your next video
Hey mate! I hope your recovery is going well, it's brilliant to hear you got outside and did some imaging :-) I'm sure you'll knock the rust off your skills in no time at all and be right back at it!
Thank you so much for watching!
Yeah ASTRO BESQUIT good stuff 👏 all of his videos are awesome man ....hello from Panamá 🇵🇦
Hey there my friend! 👍👍
Very interesting Luke! Not heard about Lucky imaging before, I can see the interest in it! Your image of the Ring nebula was brilliant! I too follow the Biscuit! Great channel! Loved to hear Ollies music! He’s very talented in music & Astro! Hope your new gear arrives soon! Keep up the good work Luke👍 Clear skies
Hey Simon!! - I hope you are doing well mate :D
Lucky imaging is such a fantastic development, I can see it being the future of imaging in some capacity or another! - So glad you liked the video & music choices :D Ollie deserves more credit than he gets for sure so it's brilliant to see you're a fan of him too like me!
I hope you are getting some clear skies mate, we don't have too long to finish off these summer targets now I guess! :-) I can't wait!
All the very best,
Luke
So did you reject any of the Lum frames? Like planetary people do, using only the best 20% or so? Or did you use them all?
I did reject some yeah, but I can't quite remember the exact parameters of this stack 👍
Fantastic video again Luke and great image, I really enjoyed this. I had the same issue with the grid pattern when I tried planetary imagery using Autostakkert. Like you, I had no idea how to solve the issue. I tried again a few months later and didn't experience the issue again...very strange. thanks for the tip on PIPP, I'll try that in the future if I encounter the same issue. Clear skies
Thank you very much Russell! - I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one that's experienced some serious weirdness from Autostakkert! 😅
So glad PIPP saved the day 👍👍
Thank you for watching mate!
Such a great video, image and channel Luke, very interesting well done.
That's really kind of you to say mate, thank you very much indeed! :-)
Clear skies!!
great video - love the preamble and target selection! Keep up the great work!
That's brilliant to hear!! Thank you so much indeed mate! :-)
Clear skies,
Luke
Brilliant work Luke I've not got a telescope at the min but going to try this technique with a 100mm prime lens and see how it compares with longer exposure
Hey Anthony! - I'm really glad you liked the video mate! :-) that will be an interesting experiment with your lens, well worth trying out! 👍👍
Wishing you the best of luck with it!
Clear skies
@@lukomatico Thanks for the encouragement Luke I live in rural France ( bortle 3 skies) but this year we have not had much of a summer lots of cloudy days hopefully the autumn will be better for astrophotography
Greate Tutorial Luke Thanks
Thank you so much Rigobert! - Super glad you liked the vid :-)
Clear skies!
Great video Luke and nice image 👍
Thank you very much mate!! :D
Such a fantastic video with bags of information. I can see from everything in this video it must have taken a lot of time and effort to put together and the fear I would have is it not working at the end and you had issues but got around them! Well done. My highlight apart from the image was your summary of Seeing, “The air blurs things”! Awesome and to the point.
Hey Marc! you are spot on, it really was a big effort to edit and record this one, as you create content yourself you'll know all too well how much of a time sink it can be! 👍
I'm so glad you liked the video mate, it's brilliant to hear!!
All the best,
Luke
@@lukomatico These types of videos though are absolute gems for the community as you're sharing stuff that's not obvious or easy to come by. Nicely done!
Awesome Video Luke! Been wanting to see something like this for a while. Love your tutorials. Keep up the great work
Thank you mate!! I'm so happy you've enjoyed it :-)
Clear skies my friend!
Informative and well thought out, def food for thought on trying a new method. And a very nice final image. Well Done Luke
Hey Mark! - Thank you very much for that mate, I appreciate it!
All the best,
Luke
Hey! This was a really helpful brillinat video.Couple of questions I have:
- did you use the same calibration frame method like "normal" deep sky shooting?
- With such a short exposures is it necessary to use cooled cam? (I have asi 178 and 294 pro)
- what about taking a video instead of single images and use pipp as3 etc?
thx
Hey there Krisztián! - I'm glad you liked the video my friend :-)
RE: calibration frames, no darks flats or bias were used, just lights.
RE: cooling, - it's always beneficial really, but sometimes not required to perform well with the newer sensors on the market today!
RE: video, - that would have been my preferred way to capture it if I was to do this again I guess! :-)
Thanks for watching, I hope that helps!
Great video Luke and very interesting approach - great channel!
Thank you very much indeed mate!! I'm glad you enjoyed it :D
Haha I think "Red Iris" by Heyson is rapidly becoming the gold standard for astrophotography reveal music 🤣
Haha! I think you are right!! It is a really good track though at least! :D
Thanks for watching mate!
Imx432. There are cool cameras with this chip.
That's a great sensor for this kind of application! incredibly low readnoise per um2 of sensor area :-) I have it's little brother already as it happens, the IMX429 - also an interesting option for this kind of imaging!
Clear skies!
@@lukomatico IMX chips are great for amateur astronomy. But, there is another level. In my profession, I use fluorescent microscopes. I have one equipped with Teledyne camera. Teledyne has astronomy cameras as well; with whooping 11-16 um pixel size; 18-bit dynamic range; full size; just 0.7 e- read noise; 90% QE for 400-700nm; takes from 350 to 1100nm. I do know what is cost of astronomy cameras, but microscope cameras are 30K and upward.
@@anata5127 Sounds amazing! - research-grade equipment is phenomenally specced for sure, EMCCD/sCMOS are unreal - I imagine that's what you're using at work 🙂
I hope these professional grade technologies trickle down into amateur level equipment sooner rather than later!
@@lukomatico Yes, it is EMCCD/sCMOS. They will definitely come to amateurs astronomy. I think, in 2-3 years.
Once upon time, I used apogee CCD cameras as a student. They long moved to amateur astronomy. The same will happen with cutting edge sensors, which are used for science.
Nowadays, you buy camera and it is already old in 2-3 years.
Merry Xmas and M57. Compliments on your background music ( I would set it -30% of gain though )
Thanks so much mate!
Wow, one of the best Astro videos I have ever watched on utube.
Luke, you really are going to be one of the Astro greats.
And I love my esprit 80, not imaged with it yet, doing some mods but can’t wait.
Thanks for all the videos and tutorials, if you go Patreon I’m in 👍
Wow! That's such a nice thing to say mate, thank you very much indeed! :-)
I really hope to keep things going and making content for a long time to come
You'll have a brilliant time with your Esprit 80 when you start imaging with it my friend, incredible scope for sure!
That's super kind of you say about Patreon! I just think I'm too small of a channel for it yet haha :D
Thank you for watching!
Clear skies :)
Wow, enjoyed this one, gonna give it a go.. Thanks 🔭 📸
Awesome to hear that Andy! I wish you good luck with it :D
Clear skies!
Great video and image Luke! I may give this technique a try on cat's eye next year.
Hey mate!! That's a great target to do it with, I tried it a few years back on the Cat's Eye with a MUCH larger scope than shown here, a 300PDS, it worked fantastically well!!
Thank you so much for watching! :D
Hubble is my guide scope ;)
Really, really interesting video 👍
Was there some focus hunting or just bad seeing?
9.25", 10" and 12" reminds me of another video I watched recently, but we won't talk about that.
I'll get my coat.
Hey Paul!! the video cam focus was hunting all over the place, it was driving me nuts!! :P
a 9.25, 10 and 12.. I think I've seen that one too at some point, haha!
Thank you very much for watching and for your support mate, It's hugely appreciated!
Exaxe gets some very interesting results. I’d say the detail fades towards the edges, but wow, the detail in the center is astonishing. His m42 is unreal. I guess if you get that many frames the SNR is way in your favor and any bad seeing is essentially cancelled out. Interesting.
Hey Keith!
For sure he concentrates his processing efforts on the target at hand and perhaps less so on the background, I see what you mean 100%! :-)
I'd love to visit some other targets with this method as the seasons progress!
Thank you very much for watching, I hope you enjoyed!
All the best,
Luke
@@lukomatico I’ve often wondered about how seeing affects my long exposures. I always thought surely it screws with the resolution, but what can you do about it? I didn’t think there was a way to get enough photons onto the sensor with short exposures, but I suppose when you get into the hundreds of thousands of subs, maybe there are enough photons.
@@lukomatico I just realized why the edges of his frame gets blurry. It’s because he uses a barlow sometimes.
Thanks for the insight Keith! 👍👍
I appreciate your thoughts :-)
Luke, I just stumbled across your channel, you would be the perfect neighbour to stargaze with 😆 Absolutely amazing work mate. I am a casual visual observer with a Celestron 9.25 and a binoviwer. After seeing your work I think I am going to start with EAA ans go from there. Keep up the good work.
Thank you so much mate, haha!! That's an awesome comment :-) I wish you all the best of luck with getting started at EAA, it's a heck of a lot of fun!
Clear skies!
We need back to back comparisons between lucky imaged stacks and more traditional multiple minute exposures to best evaluate which produces the best end result. Also, sort out your auto focus in those indoor shots :)
Hey Andy! - I'll keep the advice in mind about more comparison content if that's what you'd like to see! comparisons however were not the aim of this video, so hence not included.
RE: the autofocus, it's a bugger but there's not much I can do - do you have any suggestions?
Clear skies!
@@lukomatico Yup, understood, all good stuff. For focus issues, I’d make sure the depth of field was decent, achieve focus, then disable auto focus, so long as you’re not moving about that much, that should give you more consistent results, avoiding focus seeking and the resultant focus breathing.
Thank you for the suggestions!! I much appreciate it :-) I was shooting with the DSLR at f1.8 which may have been too shallow looking back! I'll deffo look into doing it manually next time as it drove me mad to watch it back while editing, I kept basically cringing at how it was losing focus all the time haha!
Thanks again for watching and for the quality feedback mate,
I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Best,
Luke
@@lukomatico Yup, I was watching it thinking that is one hell of a shallow DOF :) That defo contributes to the problem, it’s tempting to use the widest aperture you can just because you have it, everyone’s done that, experiment with more like f/4, depends on how far you are from the camera and the focal length ofc. I look forward to seeing your future videos to see if you crack it. Cheers, be well. Andy.
In planet imaging, key point is how many images will be rejected below some quality point. Sometimes it could be 95%, and almost always more than 80%. How many images survived from those 2500?
I have started (April 2022) astrophotography from EAA. Then, I started (July 2022) to keep individual EAA frames, and analyze them. Only -10-20% of images were true lucky (below expected threshold). Exposure were 5-10 sec (actually correct ones calculated by Sharpcap) So, 360 frames per hour, 36 survive. I could say, 7000-10000 such frames are needed and only 700-1000 will be selected for WBPP. This will be true lucky imaging.
I learned about Pixinsight and NINA in October 2022, these approaches never overlapped, but I will return to lucky imaging that I have used with EAA.
Awesome mate, very well presented and produced. Your style is very easy to watch and understand and as a total beginner myself (two astro images lol), this means a lot.
Hey Craig! Thank you so much indeed mate, that's really good of you to say! :-)
I am so glad to hear that it was easy to watch and understand for someone fairly new to astrophotography, that's simply awesome! - thank you for that brilliant feedback :-)
Clear skies mate!
Very well explained Luke 👍👍
I did the same before I had an equatorial mount and telescope, I then used my Canon 1DxII and Canon 600mm f4 L lens on a normal tripod.
Because of the tripod I had to follow by hand, so I had a manual dithering 🙂
And because of the long lens and had to hold on a shutterspeed of about 0.8 to maximum 1 second.
With those settings I had to shoot a few thousand images, for M31 for example I shot 3275 images + darks, flats and bias extra.
Also I kind of lucky imaging I guess but forced to because lacking material to follow the stars ;-)
Can't put a link here to show you the result but for me it looks ok, I'm curious what you think about that
Hey Siegfried! :-D
600mm F4, that's a big chunk of glass!! 150mm of aperture on a lens is crazy big :D
I'd love to see your image! if you send it over to the email address in my 'about' page on youtube, it'll be under 'business inquiries' - I hope to see it!
That's a huge amount of frames to have stacked, I bet it took an immensely long time.
Thank you for sharing!
Luke
@@lukomatico Yes Luke that 600 f4 is a big relatively heavy lens that i use for my wildlife shoots.
I really love the quality of that lens, it's so crisp and sharp.
Sometimes I still use it to shoot astro.
Will send you the image this week, hope I don't forget
Another great video. Quite interesting topic. Regarding the pattern on the images. Could it be an issue with the Debayer pattern, specifically how it is setup in AutoStakkert. I had the same issue with planetary images with a color camera (I know not apples to apples as you used a mono camera). I had to force the Debayer pattern in AutoStakkert to get rid of hatch. Perhaps there is something to look at (AutoStakkert settings). Again, realize not exactly the same but maybe a clue to lead to the cause of the issue.
Hey there Ernie! - Thank you so much for watching mate! :-)
RE: the pattern, the bayer settings were one of the things I checked in my various attempts to get the grid to go away, but unfortunately to no avail - thank you so much for the suggestion though, I do very much appreciate that you'd take the time to offer help and advice like that! :-)
I hope you are getting plenty of clear skies my friend!
All the very best,
Luke
Oh and thank you for your channel list. I wasn’t aware of some of them. I should do the same one day.
Hey mate! :D Definitely check out a few of the channels on there who are fellow creators, I decided to start putting that list on at the end to say thank you and give credit to my channel members who are kind enough to give direct support! such a lovely bunch!
Have a great day mate!
Awesome video! By any chance did you test live stacking via sharp cap? Curious if it would keep up at high frame rates
Hey Bill! - I have done in the past and will definitely revisit it as an option, with even a modest processor it can keep up with reasonable framerates including on the fly calibration! :-)
I hope you are well!
Another fantastic video Luke. Very informative and something new to try out in the future.You said you were going to up the quality and this certainly delivered,great stuff and an amazing final result on M57.
Hey Jon! - I'd love to make all my videos to this kind of standard (or higher!) but I guess it'll not be possible 100% of the time, that said I'm happy that I didn't rush this out just to combat the feeling of pressure to release content faster :-) It's great to hear that you enjoyed the video, that's all I could really ask for! :D
Thank you so much for watching, and for supporting - It's hugely appreciated!
All the best,
Luke
I keep trying to figure out if I should use a guide cam on my own SC 8" scope even though I'll only do lucky imaging. I get contradictory info on it. Any thoughts?
Hey there mate! - There's definitely some advantages to guiding even with shorter exposures, if nothing else it will allow you to periodically dither your exposures to stop pattern noise building and allow fainter details to show through without being obscured so harshly by noise :-) a worthwhile investment of time and money I'd say to get guiding working!
All the best,
Luke
@@lukomatico Thanks! That's what I was thinking, too. I just ordered an OAG and for my 8" SC scope. Harder to use but better results at high focal lengths. I'm going place an order for a Player one Sedna guide cam in a few days too.
Ah nice mate! - congratulations on your new gear! :-D OAG can be a little painful to setup but when it's done it's very good 👍
Clear skies!
Great stuff. I’m guessing this technique has an added bonus of better stars even at a gain of 300. I image in ccd so wouldn’t know.
Hey mate! - You do tend to get quite nice tight stars as a result of those short exposures :-) I had a ccd as one of my first cameras by the way, an Atik 314L+ mono and I absolutely loved it!!
Thank you for watching!
10:51 That bit of music sounds similar to the intro of Ryuichi Sakamoto's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence" Another lucky coincidence then. Sorry for the off-topic comment 😁
Hey there Edgardo! - Thank you for the comment my friend! :-) The piece of music there was played by my friend Ollie, he could well have drawn inspiration from the piece you mention - great ear if so!! :-) (He's got his own astronomy channel called Ollie's Astro over here on RUclips if you wanted to check him out!)
Clear skies! :-)
Nice video Luke, what was your ADU above bias with those shots if you don't mind me asking. Based on the 1.25e RN at gain 300, your bortle scale, and focal ratio, the short exposures you were taking may actually be the correct length of sub exposure anyway.
Hey there Joe! - I don't know exactly off the top of my head RE: adu count, the histogram was off the left at least, but It's true that my light pollution makes it easy to swamp read noise! :D Looking at the 1600mm sub-exposure 'cheat sheet' then I probably wasn't too far off approaching a usable exposure - that said, longer subs definitely give a smoother result, there was quite a lot of FPN that I had to work with in this data that just doesn't show at all in longer subs, but it worked out well enough in the end :D
Thank you so much for watching mate!
I hope the skies are treating you well, looking forwards to your next work!
Best,
Luke
@@lukomatico Thanks Luke, I didn't even think of FPN, but I guess that makes sense doing it with a CMOS camera over a CCD. I'm interested to see if any of these astro companies start to make equipment designed for short exposure astrophotography soon.
@@JoesAstrophoto That really would be a dream Joe! - I love the idea of short exposure imaging like this, but just hate the amount of files you have to deal with, it's all very clunky at the moment I guess! :D
The new ASI482mc planetary camera looks interesting with it's big pixels and relatively small frame size of 1920x1080, likely to be very sensitive so should be a good fit for lucky imaging, I'm giving it serious thought (also to double up as a guide cam, but there the big pixels won't help so much unless I got an OAG.. there's always something isn't there? LOL!)
Thanks mate!
Fab video Luke and great result. Inspiring me to experiment with even more subs :)
Hey James! - you're already the master of many subs for sure!! I could have sworn you told me about one recently that was at least a few thousand subs deep haha :D
Thank you so much for watching matey, I hope you have a great weekend!
Haha yeah I did a Pano in Cygnus that was 6000 subs iirc. My biggest ever single stack was 3600 of the veil.
Another brilliant video Luke I have commented on your videos before from my other channel but thought I'd make one up that's strictly just for astro, look forward to seeing some more cheers.
Tich.
It's great to hear you've enjoyed the video Tich! - Thank you so much for watching, love the RUclips name by the way 😁
It were a good astro buddy who called the observatory that when I posted it on Facebook , I think his exact words were "oh look a dumpy dalek" @@lukomatico we used to do a lot of outreach together mainly solar but sometimes we did them at night too, sadly he has passed away now but the name has stuck so it's a way to remember him by. I still need to get a permanent electric feed to it but where I live it's a bit awkward to do so an extension lead works just as well for now. Maybe I'll get some videos done at some point but the last image I did there was last week of the North American nebula & it's as noisy as hell so I don't think I'll bother with that one plus I'm having guiding issues so I think my mount needs looking at. Oh the joys of astro lol.
"Oh the joys of astro" Hahaha, I love it :D so true mate.
I'm sorry to hear of your friend, but it's good that you have the gift of his obsy name for you to keep him in your memory, that's a nice story :-)
Good luck on the videos should you choose to make some! I'll be sure to check em' out if you let me know! :D
Clear skies mate!
Hey Tich! - I just wanted to let you know that I did see that you'd left comments on my latest video but it seems to be automatically being deleted :-(
I have this channel and your 'Tich Wykes' one both as approved commenters so I'm not sure what's going on - I'm sorry about that anyway mate, I just didn't want you thinking I'd ignored you or something :-)
All the best,
Luke
@@lukomatico No worries mate if you can let me know if this works then that would be great, I think a comment may have been deleted as I posted a link to my mates blog about the ASI air plus that he tested recently so thought you might have been interested, so maybe youTube thought I were a spammer?
I did enjoy your last video about the ASI air plus btw would love one myself but budget is holding me back, although I did read that QHY are building something similar so there's hope for me yet, well if it will operate my old ccd that is lol.
Lucky imaging is not about freeze framing the seeing. Seeing is not constant. Lucking imaging is about capturing when the momentary seeing is better than the average and stacking those images. And it was amateurs that developed lucking imaging. It doesn't work on large telescopes.
Hey there! Thanks for your comment :-)
I believe we mostly agree on this, but perhaps would personally phrase a discription differently even though the essence of what's being described is the same.
Lucky imaging really IS about freeze framing the seeing, simply because the seeing isn't constant as you say - you take the best and stack them, rejecting the worst.
It does indeed work on large telescopes though, better than on small telescopes even as they have a higher overall resolution limit - why else would the best terrestrially captured planetary images come from huge scopes using planetary lucky imaging techniques, and not from small scopes 👍
Very interesting! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Hey David!! Thank you very much my friend :D I'm so glad you liked it!
Thank you for your support!
Best wishes,
Luke
Soo did you make a lot of 2 sec exposure pics or a video? I am not even an amateur APer so I got confused.
It was a few videos consisting of 2-ish seconds per frame of video :-) taking normal 2s long photos would have worked just as well, but that would mean dealing with thousands of files rather than just a few video files containing all the data.
Hope that explains it!
Great video as always mate 👍. Don’t know about anyone else, but the moment that music kicks in at the end, gets me giddy 😂. Simply knowing the results are about to drop on screen 😂. Great image and great information.
Haha :D that's awesome to hear Will! - I'm really glad that you've enjoyed the video and reveal! I'm always worried that the thumbnails are too much of a giveaway but getting people to click on the videos is half the battle! :D
Clear skies my friend!
Luke
Thanks for the video. Since it's like everyone now is doing astrophotography, we need a niche inside of a niche hobby :-) Lucky DSS imaging has really captured my interest but there still isnt too much out there. I am really trying to put Dr Robin Glover theory into practice by taking alot of pictures in a short exposure of 1 to 2 seconds. I have a HyperStar on a C6 so this should make it a little easier. Since I live close to Chicago, IL, USA the sky glow is insane so I need all the help I can get!
I'm glad you liked it David!! - There's so many interesting techniques and avenues to explore these days, and likely loads more new ways of imaging yet to emerge! What a time to be alive :-) good luck with your imaging my friend 👍👍
Awesome Video!! Love The Ring Nebula Shot!! I do EAA imaging With My ZWO ASI 224mc! I need Try Imaging Some Clusters and Orion Nebula hopefully by this Winter! Great Video! I follow AstroBiscuits Channel As Well By the way!! He has a Series Of Videos On Lucky Deep Sky Imaging! I really Love That image Of Ring Nebula! Clear Skies👍🏻🙂🔭
Hey Avanteesh! Thank you very much matey! I'm happy with how it turned out, your 224 is a great camera for lucky imaging for sure! you'll be able to take some amazing shots with it :-)
Thank you for watching!!
Brilliant video Luke. I'll be honest I'd never heard of lucky imaging before this so found it absolutely fascinating. Does this technique still require guiding ?
Hey there Paul! :-) I'm really glad you liked it mate!
To answer your question, it doesn't need autoguiding! I used it anyway but arguably not using it can be better for this type of imaging as the small natural drift over time will act a bit like a dither over enough frames!
Thank you so much for watching mate, I hope you have a brilliant day!
Luke
Great video Luke! I'd never even considered lucky imaging for DSO's but am having some serious tracking issues with my mount at the moment so might be worth giving it a go while I try to sort that out. You got a great result and I think the saturation/colours look awesome. 😉😉
Thanks Riz! :D It can definitely save you a session or two if your mount is playing up mate! - I hope you get it sorted out soon man, and thank you for watching!
Luke, but what about dithering with those short frames ???
Hey there! - It's definitely still worth it to dither - I should have set up some sort of time based dithering (every couple of minutes perhaps) during capture as it would have helped a bit during processing :-)
Cracking stuff Luke. Felt like I was watching an episode of Horizon or something of that ilk. Fascinating! 👍🏻 Noddy
Hey Noddy! - That's brilliant mate, thank you so much for that kind compliment :D I'd love to keep making higher quality videos if possible :-)
Hope you have a brilliant weekend matey!
Luke
Another fine tutorial. What software are you using for the acquisition process?
Hey there Tom! - I should have put a section in the video about it really, sorry about that! - It was just Sharpcap 4.0 :-)
I'm glad you enjoyed the video! Thank you for your support my friend :-)
Clear skies!
I mean this in kindness - your music is distracting. Your voice is fine for doing the narration on your own, and your mic is great for voiceover work. You really don't need musical support, but if you're set on having underscoring, I'd suggest turning it way down, particularly the early part of the video. Thanks for the content though.
I appreciate the feedback mate, cheers!! This is a fairly old video now, a lot of newer videos have no bgm, or lowered volume 👍👍
Clear skies!
Hi Luke,
This video was FASCINATING!!! Maybe I missed it, but were the original luminance images saved as an SER file or individual FIT or TIFF files? Also, what capture program did you use? I want to do more on the Ring nebula with the larger C11 scope. there is an outer ring glowing in dull red that I somehow want to try to capture, but it will take more than 3 second exposures .... more like 300 seconds. Again, FASCINATING video.
(Patrick of Savannah)
Hey Pat! :-)
I'm so glad you found it interesting! - re: the file type, they were all .ser video files but due to a problem with autostakkert they needed to be turned into .tiffs with PIPP!
I think you and your C11 will take a magnificent image of M57 and it's extensions - I can't wait to see how it turns out!
Thank you for watching Pat!
All the very best,
Luke
Good video Luke with lots of great information. Not sure about lucky imaging myself, to be fair I have not tried it (old school, old git lol)
Think I will give this a try though and see what results I get
Hey Glenn! - I hope things are good for you at the moment mate, I just saw you got a new scope - what a beautiful beast of a photon hoover, it's glorious! :-) I bet lucky imaging would work well with that to be honest if you give it a go!
I just wanted to say big big congrats on 2k subs man, nobody deserves it more mate!
Clear skies!
Luke
@@lukomatico thanks Luke. It is certainly a light bucket. Having some challenges re balancing and guiding but getting there. Weather as always playing its part. May even join the BAT and see what I can add. Best get it working first lol
2K subs ....i was shocked actually as it kind of happened quite quickly
Coming back to this video….did you dither? If so, how often?
I did dither, but I don't remember the frequency I'm afraid - it'll have been every minute or so I guess with short shots like this 👍
Hope that helps!
Great stuff. Now I have another reason to replace my old Nikon D700. :D
Hey Flemming! - A dedicated astro camera is a really fun thing to own if you love astrophotography!! :D I'd recommend it always! I'm sure your Nikon D700 can still take a nice pic or two though! :-)
Clear skies my friend
@@lukomatico Hehe yep. Though the Nikon D700 doesn't provide true raw images, and clips the black. Also it's really weak in the reds. So that MC 533 looks pretty tempting :D
Very cool. Curious whether you used a Barlow here - or just crop the ROI?
Just a crop my friend, I didn't have a barlow at that time I'm afraid! 👍
@@lukomatico cool. Thanks. Great video BTW
Thanks for putting this out there, this is an interesting field and I found this searching for lucky imaging. It would have been really useful to show your great final image against an image taken using the same gear by the more traditional method with 3 or 5 minute subs etc
Quick question - I thought one of the principles of lucky imaging was discarding those shots that may not be as clear due to atmospheric impact at that specific time, ensuring you are only stacking the sharpest ones possible. It looks as though you may not have done this, was there a particular reason why?
Hey there! - thank you so much for watching and giving such a detailed comment! :-)
Regarding frame rejection : you're absolutely right that you'd usually be very discriminatory with frame selection when performing lucky imaging, however some benefit to resolution can be realised just by using short subs vs the usual long ones, even if you stack nearly all of them without much rejection - I've tested this myself an there's definitely an increase in detail, though not as extreme as only stacking the absolute best few frames 👍
The reason I kept more frames was down to needing the extra SNR that more exposure brings, the end result was still quite noisy so a 'best 10%' stack would have been too noisy to use for the video :-)
You made a good suggestion about showing a version taken with longer exposures would have been good, I'd definitely try and do that next time - I just need more clear nights to do it all haha!
Thanks again for watching 🙏
Now that’s a thought provoker. Excellent image. How were the star shapes, I’ve seen some of these images with slightly oblong stars.
Hey mate! - The star shapes were lovely and round, no problems there :-) I wonder if some of the images you've seen in the past were from alt-az mounted scopes as this method is popular among users of them? field rotation over time gives you a similar effect to the egged stars :-)
Thank you so much for watching mate!
It's probably not applicable anymore, but I encountered the opposite issue where pip didn't debayer Jupiter capture correctly. I had to resort to using Siril for debayering and then utilized pip once more with debayering disabled.
Interesting to hear that mate!! - thank you for sharing!
I had a similar issue last week to what you're experiencing. I normally capture in FITS format and debayer in Siril.
However, for some reason, the settings in the capture software reverted to "PNG" format, which I couldn't debayer using Siril.
The solution I found was as follows: convert PNG to FITS format files using a Linux tool: mogrify -format fits -path ../converted/ *.png.
Then in Siril, change the settings to use a predetermined debayer setting (because no debayer info is included in the converted file), and then debayer with Siril.
This solved my issue, this method does also work for "tif" files.
Hey Luke, great video and glad to see you back, its been a while :D. Just a quick question for DSO lucky imaging, say i take 1500 1 second exposures will i have to go through each one to see which subs are the best frames or will i for example in DSS select the best % frames? Thanks
You can set DSS to auto select x% which works really well.
@@jdpjamesp yup!! Thank you, I do use that on my longer exposure images but would it also work for shorter sub times?
Absolutely. I use it all the time and I work untracked.
@@jdpjamesp oo thanks! And that’s pretty cool! What focal lengths do you work with at untracked? It must be hard to push it above 200mm?
I stick at 135mm max but on an aps-c so cropped. But at f/2.0 you can get some great results.
Wonderful video Luke (as always!). 👍👍 Four points of follow-up...
1. A question: Did you use all of the short sub-exposures to make the final image? The reason I ask is as follows: During long exposures, the atmosphere is constantly changing, meaning that there are moments when the image is steady, and moments when some or all of the image has been distorted by the atmospheric turbulence. Because both occur quite frequently, then both good & bad moments of seeing will contribute to what the camera records during a long exposure. In a sense, the final result of a long exposure is sort of an average of what the camera 'sees' during the 'sharp moments' and 'blurred moments'.
Now, if you take many short exposures, I would think that you will have captured some that occurred only during 'sharp moments', and some that captured the object only during 'blurred moments'. If you then combine all of the sub-exposures, wouldn't you be getting the same average of the 'sharp moments' & 'blurred moments' as a long exposure? I would think that the real benefit of taking huge numbers of short sub-exposures would come from tossing the images that were blurred & only stacking the images taken during the 'sharp moments' (i.e only choose shots which would have the smallest stars in the image).
Having said all that, the fact is that your final image of M57 is quite impressive. Perhaps my logic is incorrect?
2. I should point out that the benefit of 'lucky imaging' is greater as the aperture of the telescope increases, because larger apertures look through larger chunks of the atmosphere, which increases the likelyhood that some part of that chunk of atmosphere is turbulent & distorting the image. Anyone who has done planetary or double-star observing (visually) with a larger aperture telescope knows that moments when the object is truly sharp & undistorted are much less frequent with larger scopes (although those moment will show huge amounts of detail).
3. It's interesting to note that, in the past, that the following question was posed & answered (*): "What size of refractor delivers the optimum price/performance ratio for visual observing?". Yes, larger apertures of refractor provide more theoretical resolution and high contrast, but smaller apertures have fewer moments of bad seeing & have the same high contrast. Well, it turns out that, for typical observing conditions that most amateurs experience (especially at middle lattitudes), the 'sweet spot' for refractors is....yup!....a 5-inch aperture!
(*) It may have been Robert Burnham Jr., a noted 20th visual astronomy expert & author of the much-loved three-volume "Burnham's Celestial Handbook".
4. For several decades, astrophotographers wishing to battle the effects of seeing during long exposures have made use of an "Adaptive Optics" unit, which is placed in front of the filters & camera. They can be quite effective when objects are too faint for short exposures & the imaging is done with larger apertures. Here's a link to a company that has been making Adaptive Optics for astrophotographers for quite a while. diffractionlimited.com/product/ao-8a/
Hey Derek!
Thank you so much for taking the time to write such an in depth comment! :-)
RE: 1 - I did not use all of the exposures, I used around 65-70% IIRC which was still too many, but I needed some signal! :D
It's not too bad to stack slightly poorer frames with better ones when you are using advanced stacking algorithms which are able to weight the subframes and give greater presence to those that are sharper and a diminished effect to those that are lower quality, it takes out some of the need to 'weed out' the bad subs, just as long as you've gotten rid of the very worst the software can make a good guess as to which subs it should stack based on FWHM etc :-)
If you were purely averaging when stacking then absolutely you'd want to get rid of everything that wasn't the cream of the crop though!
RE: 2 -You're absolute right mate! I've had first hand experience with that kind of effect for sure, as you say it's way more pronounced on a larger aperture - my 12" newtonian showed it strongly when I was lucky imaging the core of the cat's eye nebula a few years ago with it - some frames were crystalline, others were... well,... not so good!! :D
RE: 3 -I wish I'd actually taken a look through my Esprit 120 visually, but so far I haven't! I really should rectify that soon. - I always liked visual through newts when I had them, but rather surprisingly my best ever visual view of the ring nebula came from an 80mm apo, it was just there as plain as day, I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing from such a small scope! amazing stuff :-)
RE: 4 -Oh man, I'd love an AO someday if it became feasible to own one, they are incredible aren't they? :-) If I won the lottery I'd have one of the laser artificial star ones, but I'd have to move house as I live near a flightpath and I don't think they'd approve haha :-) A man can dream!
Than you so much for watching and leaving your thoughts my friend, I very much appreciate it!!
Have a wonderful weekend :-)
Luke
Rank amateur here...I was under the impression that calibration frames weren't really necessary for doing lucky imaging. Perhaps I am confusing this with live stacking method?
Hey mate! - calibration files are definitely a boon but not totally necessary, - I often use at least flats and bias when doing even live-stacking too! :-) Cheers!
I didn't get if you talked about what may be the most important part of lucky imaging. How to find the "lucky" frames when you have thousands and thousands of total images. Did you just throw everything in Pipp? How did you measure which frames to keep. That would be the whole point of this exercise, to throw away all but the sharpest ones.
Hey cucu! - You are right , I should have elaborated more on my selection!! - I took around 2100 frames but did not use them all, I told DSS to stack the best 70% I think it was, I'd have loved to be more careful in selection but I just couldn't find the energy to go through all the subs manually to check them at that time :D
Definitely something I should have brought up and talked more about though, cheers!
I hope you have a great weekend mate!
@@lukomatico Thanks! No worries, it was a very cool exercise indeed. Ever since Astrobiscuit's video came out, I've been wondering about this. At some point I will end up trying it. On the other hand, for true lucky imaging we'd need much shorter exposures to essentially mitigate seeing wobbles. Probably even 1 second is on the upper limit... which brings up the need for much larger aperture for light gathering capabilities. Also, likely you will need to ditch way more frames. Take the example of planetary luck imaging, they take 10-20k frames and keep only 10% in average...
@@cucubits True mate! it's a real hotbed of challenges but the rewards are insane when it all goes well and is executed right, like Exaxe's examples on Astrobin! :D
Thank you so much for getting back to me!
Great video Luke! PIPP is a great program for a lot of things. I was wondering why I can't find a 130PDS in the United States. Ever since watching your comparison video I've wanted one.
Hey mate! Yeah PIPP really saved my bacon, I'll have to explore the program more over time as it seemed quite capable!
RE: the 130PDS, it seems for whatever reason that SkyWatcher don't sell them in the United States! - I'm really sorry about that, such great scopes should be on sale everywhere!
Clear skies mate
Don't tell me all of this now after I've purchased all my gear to do it the "traditional" way.... No more spending!!!
Haha :D Traditional is still best in most cases so I'd not worry mate! On the occasional target lucky imaging can really shine though :-) I hope you enjoyed!
Thanks for watching mate!
Pretty impressive Luke!
I was wondering if you had dithering activated?
Hey there mate! I did not dither for this capture but I absolutely should have! ah well, there's always next time :D
Thank you for watching!
looks so nice man :)
Thank you mate!! 😀👍👍
your welcome :D
You weren't lying when you said about upping your content quality Luke! I was like - well it's already good already, but this blew me away with the research and experimentation put into it. Did you also script some of this as well? or do you have a really good memory lol Just really well put together and super right up my street with the lucky imaging. Basically loved it!
I've been flat out at work and building a shed in the evenings but I meant to mention the new ASI485 and ASI482 to you! I thought these might peak your interest :D I did initially think the ASI482 would have the lower read noise with it's massive 5.8um pixels, However, I do notice the read noise is lower on the 485 which I didn't expect considering it has much smaller 2.9um pixels. I'm of course getting one, that goes without saying, and might opt for the 485 version as it gives 0.6"/pixels with the 200p which sounds perfect for Lucky imaging, and 4x the real estate compared to my 462 for framing those lovely galaxies. Which one are you getting? I'm guessing 485 as well right? Take care and fantastic upload, I told you that you're better than Trevor ;)
Hey Chris!!
Ahh mate you are too kind haha! :D I'd love to make every video to a higher quality, I guess it'll end up being a bit of a mix though in the end!
You've got me! - I did try scripting out some of this, it made it a little easier to get my thoughts out in a semi-coherent manner as I'm prone to a good ramble otherwise! :P
On the note of the 485 and 482, they are interesting cameras! - regarding the read noise, the 482 is the better bet even though it's read noise figure is a little higher - the read noise is 2x higher than the 485, but the pixel size is 4x as large! making the 482 sensor 2x lower read noise than the 485 on a per unit of pixel area basis! :D
As you mention though, getting a good sampling ratio is key! 0.6"/pix sounds like in the right conditions you could get phenomenal resolution! - worth a think about the 482 still though as 1.2"/pix is still good, files would be smaller and you could drizzle the data back up in resolution? so many things to consider! my head hurts... :P
I've a heck of a mountain to climb yet to approach Trevor's videography skills haha, but man is that a head-swellingly nice compliment you gave, thank you!!!
I'm going to continue scratching my head about the 482/485 choice.. hmmm, I don't suppose you have any idea when they are due do you?
All the very best my friend, and thank you so much for your incredible comment!
Luke :-)
@@lukomatico ah yeah, I wasn't dividing the read noise over the pixel area, Cheers for that, it makes sense now. This makes the decision tougher because I reckon you get around 0.6"/pixel with those fleetingly small moments of still seeing. (Yes you can drizzle like you say, but that's basically an educated guess algorithm) On the other side you get half the read noise, hhhmm? It's a bit vague but we should have them in about a week, maybe a touch longer.
Nice👍 👍👍👍
Thank you Sunil! :-)
Clear skies!
With Lucky Imaging, are you suppose to just chose the best lights rather than stack many?
Hey Ian! You'd usually stack just the best ones, but in an ideal world you'd have lots of good frames to stack rather than just a few! :-D I stacked the best 65%-ish of those lights that I captured for reference :-)
Clear skies!
I find the biggest downside of luckyimaging is the time it takes to process - I had about 2000 frames from my ASI533MC and it took more than a day to process using Astro pixel processor.
Hey Timothy! - Oh mate, I felt this comment in my very bones haha!! it take sooooo lonnngggg, even with a region of interest crop!
Thank you so much for watching!
As expected from you this looks amazing! Lucky imaging is a very good tecnic but it would totally destroy my current PC, what laptop/PC CPU, GPU and Ram do you use? I'm planning on buying a good PC to be able to stack and work with thousands of frames without it crashing and lagging non stop so if you could help with that I'd really appreciate it! Your image was very very beautiful and very sharp for such a small target honestly I believe this tecnic would work great on other targets such as m13,m63,m27,m81 and m82 and much more! Thanks for the video and for the great content, as always it's a blast watching your videos.
Hey Savjol! - Thank you so much mate, I'm really glad that you enjoyed the video and results :-) It'd definitely work on a variety of targets like you mentioned, worth checking out more!
Regarding the PC I use, it's a ryzen 5 3600 processor, 16gb of ram and the gpu although largely just for gaming is an rtx 2060 - I hope that helps you :-)
Thank you so much for your time and support my friend, I hope you have a brilliant weekend!
Luke
@@lukomatico thank you very much Luke! Really appreciate it!