A Couple of Galaxies

[EquineArt]

These pictures are so amazing!
Even with that high iso I am truely impressed by the clarity of them!
Very well done!

 

[spacefuzz]

beautiful

 

[ScubaDude]

Love the shots. Very well done. Makes me want to go out and buy a telescope, though instead I will content myself with looking at the work of others.

I'm having a blast with it, but it's an expensive hobby. I bought my 'scope used for $500, and I'm going to spend ~$1500 on a new tripod/mount, ~$350 for a new focuser (the stock one isn't strong enough to hang a camera on and still remain perfectly perpendicular to the 'scope), and ~$400 on a guidescope/guide camera. And that's getting the least expensive equipment that's adequate for the job... most people spend a lot more. There's also a steep learning curve... not just for taking the photos, but for processing them also.

 

[ScubaDude]

These pictures are so amazing!
Even with that high iso I am truely impressed by the clarity of them!
Very well done!

The secret is to take a bunch of images, followed by a bunch of "dark" images (put the lens cap on and take black photos, which record the heat/sensor/read noise). There are programs that will process all of the images, stacking and averaging the images to reduce random noise and subtracting the "dark" images to reduce the non-random noise. There are a lot of post-processing tricks, too. I usually work on the final image for a week or three to get them to look good.

 

[Patrice]

Everybody on the planet uses phrases such as "effective focal length," "equivalent focal length," etc.

Does not mean it's correct or accurate.

Here is a scenario: I use my 6 inch f6 refractor with my fx camera at prime focus to image a deep sky fuzzy. I know my telescope's air spaced triple lens has a focal length of 900 mm. Now everybody knows what the imaging setup is. But when I'm processing the image I determine that a crop to 50% of the image area is a better representation of what I had in mind for the image, do I now go around saying I imaged with a 1800 mm (effective focal length) telescope? No I don't and most astro imagers would not expect me to. I'd get a lesson on telescopes at the next club meeting if I did.


Seems like you are getting serious with astro imaging. AstroStu is a member on this forum, check out some his posts. Cloudy Nights is one of a few forums with imaging boards.

My own experience tells me it's useless to try and create images not seen before or done better than mine. Beautiful and extraordinary images abound on the net everywhere. Hubble has rendered all of our efforts rather redundant. For me the hobby is about trying to achieve the best results possible given the selected equipment and process. Astro imaging is really more of a technical quest than an artistic one.

 

[ScubaDude]

Everybody on the planet uses phrases such as "effective focal length," "equivalent focal length," etc.

Does not mean it's correct or accurate.

[snip]

I didn't come here to debate a term that was in common use long before I got into this hobby. Go bother somebody else.