You don't need a telescope

I live in the middle of the city so not much fun to shoot anything besides the moon.

$10 vintage lens, $5 teleconverter setup

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Thanks for the suggestions. I had planned on using HDR for this set, but since the wind was blowing so hard, I thought the longer exposure would cause even more star wiggles. As it was, I only had 12 out of 40 exposures that were usable. Seems there's always something we have to work around to do this... wind, moon, clouds, city lights... always something!

The Moon & Jupiter two nights ago were pretty close in the sky. My old Sigma lens is such a pain to try to focus. I need to get a nice telephoto lens.

maverick75 wrote in post #17945801
I live in the middle of the city so not much fun to shoot anything besides the moon.

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forum: Astronomy & Celestial

Don't let that stop you. I'm in Atlanta. Granted it's not LA, but you can still get some cool stuff. In Manhattan NY, which is about as dense and light polluted as it gets, I got a conjunction of Venus & Jupiter above the bodega on my block from my fire escape... I still need to post that one. My previous post to this thread is from Atlanta, as it the Opposition of Jupiter in this thread, though that was done with a telescope. The city does limit what you can shoot, but you can get more than just the moon.

PS - Nice shots

pdxbenedetti wrote in post #17945788
I used DSS for my m42 shot above and it's an HDR method, with half at ISO 400 and half at ISO 800 with corresponding darks, flats, and bias frames for each. DSS will automatically load each and make master frames for each ISO to use for the stacking. I find DSS is more consistent with stacking versus PixInsight and it's way faster as well, I stack my DSO shots in DSS and then edit in PixInsight.

I'm surprised you would prefer DSS over PixInsight for stacking having used both. PixInsight gives you total control of the entire process whereas DSS is mostly automatic (which is awesome when you're just learning to do it, but offers less control once you understand how stacking works and you want to control the process.)

For example... suppose we collaborate on imaging the same subject but we don't have the same telescopes or the same cameras. With DSS this is a problem because the frames being stacked aren't taken using the same resolution and image scale and even the field of view can be different if we didn't use the same model telescope. But with PixInsight it's no problem at all.

The automatic methods assume similar frames, but if you do manual integration you just make sure that you select the same 2 (or 3) registration stars and it will stack images of different resolutions and scales. It will also create mosaics (you indicate a couple of stars that are common to both images and it'll use those to piece together your mosaic.)

It offers the fairly "cruise control" automated "BatchPreprocessing" script (roughly the same level of complexity as DSS) but it also allows full manual control over each step once you learn the ropes.

heldGaze wrote in post #17946251
The Moon & Jupiter two nights ago were pretty close in the sky. My old Sigma lens is such a pain to try to focus. I need to get a nice telephoto lens.

That looks great! As for focus... it's always manual focus for astrophotography... but do you have a focusing mask to put on the lens? That can help.

TCampbell wrote in post #17946334
That looks great! As for focus... it's always manual focus for astrophotography... but do you have a focusing mask to put on the lens? That can help.

Thank you!

Yeah, I'm using manual focus of course. And I zoom in as much as I can with live view. It's just with Canon L glass the focus ring has a nice resistance to it, and small moves make small changes. On this lens, the focus ring is very loose and a small touch results in big focus changes. It's much harder to dial-in your focus with this. In fact the change is so great that focus bracketing isn't really possible, instead of taking a round of shots, and changing the focus slightly for another round of shots, I end up just doing a complete refocusing on the subject, the moon in this case. But that's one difference between a lens that costs 2-3000 dollars vs one that costs a couple hundred (I don't remember exactly, this Sigma was bought back in 2008).

I don't have a focusing mask for this lens, and I'm not sure I'm really going to invest anything into this lens. I'll get something like that when I get a new telephoto. I'm debating between the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L II and the Canon 100-400 L II. I'm leaning towards the latter for the extra reach, and then I can fill in the focal length gap with a prime focus at 85mm. I'm liking the stuff I've seen made with the Zeiss Batis 85mm on the Sony A7RII, and at that focal length for portraits a native mount lens will be useful to take advantage of the Eye AF feature of the camera. So it seems like the Canon 100-400 and Ziess Batis 85 is the best decision. But like always I'm taking my time in making any decision like this.

Edit: All that said, I took 11 rounds of brackets and almost every round was in about the same great focus that I had trouble deciding which images to edit. I'm not even sure I chose the best ones. But my capture technique is pretty solid even though I'd prefer a better focus ring to use.

heldGaze wrote in post #17946488
...............

I don't have a focusing mask for this lens, and I'm not sure I'm really going to invest anything into this lens. I'll get something like that when I get a new telephoto. I'm debating between the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L II and the Canon 100-400 L II. I'm leaning towards the latter for the extra reach,...............

just get them both. I did and never regretted the decision. The 70 - 200mm spends the most time on the camera
They are both very good lenses

A pity I cannot say the same for my 50mm f1.4 prime. The coma aberration around the outer 1/4 of the frame is shocking
when it's being used for astro work. The 24 - 105 is so much better. Hell, even the Samyang 14mm blows the canon 50mm
out of the water when it comes to pic quality

for daytime shots with the 50mm, landscape/portraiture it isn't a problem and the aberration isn't noticeable
But on star pix, dealing with pinpoint light sources, it's a shocker


Dave

Here is my starting point for editing M42. This is my first go at it with the skywatcher star adventurer. I shot 8 x 30s at ISO 1600, 3200, 6400 (24 shots total), and now I have to use layer masks to bring them through. I will post when Its done, hopefully I have time this weekend to edit a bit. Shot with a 7D and 400mm f5.6.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/F5gc​bc

Davenn wrote in post #17946625
just get them both. I did and never regretted the decision. The 70 - 200mm spends the most time on the camera
They are both very good lenses

A pity I cannot say the same for my 50mm f1.4 prime. The coma aberration around the outer 1/4 of the frame is shocking
when it's being used for astro work. The 24 - 105 is so much better. Hell, even the Samyang 14mm blows the canon 50mm
out of the water when it comes to pic quality

for daytime shots with the 50mm, landscape/portraiture it isn't a problem and the aberration isn't noticeable
But on star pix, dealing with pinpoint light sources, it's a shocker

Dave

I found the same thing with my 50mm f1.4. An otherwise great lens, but pretty useless for astro, unless stopped down quite a bit. Of course, that's not useful, so...

TCampbell wrote in post #17946331
I'm surprised you would prefer DSS over PixInsight for stacking having used both. PixInsight gives you total control of the entire process whereas DSS is mostly automatic (which is awesome when you're just learning to do it, but offers less control once you understand how stacking works and you want to control the process.)

For example... suppose we collaborate on imaging the same subject but we don't have the same telescopes or the same cameras. With DSS this is a problem because the frames being stacked aren't taken using the same resolution and image scale and even the field of view can be different if we didn't use the same model telescope. But with PixInsight it's no problem at all.

The automatic methods assume similar frames, but if you do manual integration you just make sure that you select the same 2 (or 3) registration stars and it will stack images of different resolutions and scales. It will also create mosaics (you indicate a couple of stars that are common to both images and it'll use those to piece together your mosaic.)

It offers the fairly "cruise control" automated "BatchPreprocessing" script (roughly the same level of complexity as DSS) but it also allows full manual control over each step once you learn the ropes.

Every time I've tried registering and stacking with PixInsight I get horrible horrible alignment. I haven't tried any of the more complex settings, but the automatic method has always been much worse than DSS for me.

Davenn wrote in post #17946625
A pity I cannot say the same for my 50mm f1.4 prime. The coma aberration around the outer 1/4 of the frame is shocking
when it's being used for astro work.

Dave

I recently tried it for the first time and agree with you Dave, though a stop or two closed down improves things a lot. Have you tried any other 50mm lenses? I'd especially like to know if the 50/1.2L is appreciably better in this regard, say at f/2.0 or faster.

Just to add. another I find lacking is the 135 f2, I think it and the 50 1.4 are of the same vintage ? I have an adapter for a old t- thread 50mm I need to try it out.

Steve

Madweasel wrote in post #17947956
I recently tried it for the first time and agree with you Dave, though a stop or two closed down improves things a lot. Have you tried any other 50mm lenses? I'd especially like to know if the 50/1.2L is appreciably better in this regard, say at f/2.0 or faster.

It's the only 50mm prime I have. The 24 - 105 doesn't have that problem at any setting between 24 and 105mm

and my 14mm f2.8 Samyang is a little ripper !!! really impressed with it considering it's very affordable price
it blows the 50mm out of the water for quality

Dave

The clouds cleared enough early this morning for me to take some more shots of the moon. After getting a few of the moon, I switched to Jupiter, and then, just to see what I could do with the Tamron 150 to 600mm zoom, I turned it to Mars, and then to Saturn. I overexposed Jupiter to get the moons to show up well. Mars turned out overexposed because I thought having the stars in the background would be more interesting, but doing that ruined the shots, so I didn't bother with it. Getting an oval on the first shot of Saturn got me interested, and I kept reducing the exposure more and more to try to resolve the rings, to produce something besides an overexposed oval blob. I was really surprised to be able to finally see the planet with the rings. Very small, but clear.

These aren't to scale at all. I cropped Jupiter a little bit, but cropped Saturn a lot, and then enlarged it to this size. I have NO idea how much this is enlarged over the original shot, but it's a lot. Trying to get a more realistic color ruined the resolution, so I had to leave it with too much of a yellow tint. Now, I think I'll have to set up my telescope to see if I can improve over the poor images I got with it a couple of years ago.

*EDIT* The "moon" below and to the right of Jupiter seemed to be slightly elongated, while none of the others have that problem. So, as usual, I went to Stellarium to find out what caused it. In the photo, Callisto is high and to the left, Io is just above the planet, and Europa and Ganymede are really close together below Jupiter, so close they blend into one bright speck. So, nothing wrong with the tracking, lens, or anything else... just moons going about their business, as usual.

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