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Astrophotography in October- 2011.10.29-30

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SabotNoob
Doomheim
#1 - 2011-10-31 15:12:39 UTC
Earlier this month, I posted pictures from my first Astrophotography attempt in late September (link below). We went up to the mountains again on Saturday evening through Sunday morning. The sky was great and I managed to shoot nine objects.

I am using the exact same equipment as last time, but there's a significant improvement in quality and detail.

Three reasons for the improvement in quality and detail:
1- I am shooting in RAW format, which is a much bigger format compared to JPEG, and captures much, much more detail.
2- I am shooting 4-6 shots of the same object, at 3-5 minutes of exposure each, then stacking them together to enhance quality.
3- I am using Photoshop to bring out the details that are initially hidden in RAW images. RAWs require much processing.

The guys that are guiding me say that these images can be tweaked even more, but this is as far as my Photoshop skills will allow me to go, for now. JPEGs average about 4MB in size each, while RAWs average around 20MB and up in size. Much detail is lost if shooting in JPEG only. Next time, I'm planning on taking up to 20 shots of the same object, for even more detail (I should have taken at least 20 shots of the North America nebula, for example, as it's a tough one).

Link below. Best viewed if you click on Slideshow, then the Full Screen icon on the bottom-right once the slide show starts. Descriptions are available in normal viewing mode only (descriptions won't show while in slide show).

Some of the same objects from September were shot again, so you can compare them with the new shots.

Enjoy! Big smile

Astrophotography 2011.10.29-30 (Newest)

Astrophotography 2011.09.24-25 (Previous pictures)
Iosue
League of Gentlemen
The Initiative.
#2 - 2011-10-31 21:35:10 UTC
wow, Shocked

Some really great shots there. Orion and Andromeda were awesome. Makes me want to get into astrophotography. Keep up the good work and keep sharing here with us. Cheers.
CCP Phantom
C C P
C C P Alliance
#3 - 2011-11-01 17:11:32 UTC
This is very impressive!

A huge improvement. Taking "quick" shots and adding them together seems to give good results. How do you handle the normalizing? I imagine that if you add two white points you somehow need to normalize the resulting color, otherwise you will end up with just a huge white blob because of the noise. Have you tried to filter out noise with some threshold before you add the pictures? And have you tried to take even shorter shots but more of them? Or longer and fewer?

Thank you for sharing these results!

CCP Phantom - Senior Community Developer
SabotNoob
Doomheim
#4 - 2011-11-01 22:55:19 UTC
CCP Phantom wrote:
This is very impressive!

A huge improvement. Taking "quick" shots and adding them together seems to give good results. How do you handle the normalizing? I imagine that if you add two white points you somehow need to normalize the resulting color, otherwise you will end up with just a huge white blob because of the noise. Have you tried to filter out noise with some threshold before you add the pictures? And have you tried to take even shorter shots but more of them? Or longer and fewer?

Thank you for sharing these results!


Good questions.

I actually don't do any adjustments to normalize. The program that I use that stacks them together, may normalize them but I'm not entirely sure of that. In Photoshop, however, when you stack them together, I do know that you have to set the opaqueness to different levels on each of the images (Base image being at 100%, 2nd frame at 80%, 3rd frame at 60%, etc.). It's unusually noisy if you don't adjust the opaqueness in Photoshop. It's a hassle in Photoshop though, which is why I use the other program (ImagesPlus) to stack. If you take the images at different ISO settings, then you need to normalize them to make them consistent, but I don't do that either since I use the same ISO on each object.

The noise can be removed with this plugin for Photoshop called Noise Ninja. It is extremely easy to use and you can adjust the strength of noise removal. It has a few other advance features as well which I haven't gotten around to experimenting with yet. You usually use this plugin after stacking them together. I imagine you can use it before too, but that would be tedious if you have multiple shots.

With taking multiple shots, the longer your exposures and the more you have, the better! Usually with shorter exposures and fewer shots, you don't have as much data to work with to bring out that hidden detail. More exposure time and a higher number of shots gives you much more detail. I haven't tried it yet, but I was thinking of taking 10 minute exposures and more than 5 shots, to see how that would compare. The North America Nebula in my link requires at least 20 shots and I only had 5, lol. It was enough to bring out some of it, but I'm missing a lot.
BLACK-STAR
#5 - 2011-11-01 23:25:39 UTC
These are really cool to look at, thanks for posting more of these epic shots.
SabotNoob
Doomheim
#6 - 2011-11-02 14:59:23 UTC
Thanks, stay tuned for more. Going again at the end of this month (if the site doesn't get snowed in, that is).

My favorite out of this set is the Dumbbell Nebula (2nd image in the set). It's not the nebula that amazes me, it's the sheer number of stars in the background. Then, to know that each of those stars are light years away from each other, boggles the mind... Shocked THEN, to know that I'm just looking at a very small piece of the sky! ShockedShocked
Zagam
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#7 - 2011-11-02 16:33:07 UTC
Incredible photos. I especially like the pic of the Orion Nebula, and also the Andromeda Galaxy photo (the wispiness of the latter gets me).

Keep up the good work, and I look forward to your next installment!
Vicker Lahn'se
Stryker Industries
Stryker Group
#8 - 2011-11-02 17:11:48 UTC
This is awesome stuff. You're really making me want to get into this sort of thing.
SabotNoob
Doomheim
#9 - 2011-11-02 17:21:01 UTC
It was about $2,000, more or less, for everything I have. That's a bit pricey, but within reasonable grasp of most people. I haven't reached the full potential of my setup yet so it'll keep me busy for quite a while before I upgrade a bit.

Plus, if you end up not liking it relatively soon after buying your gear, you can resell your stuff for fairly close to what you bought it for since it'll still be new. That's the mindset I had going in, that I would resell and try to get back 90% of my money if I didn't like it. At least I would have given it a shot and only been out a few hundred, that way. Damn hobby, ended up sticking with it... lol.