Astrophotography setup questions

Your next step should be to post your work.  Without that you aren't going to get the comments and suggestions you need to make progress.

WRT the two photos you have posted, both  can be significantly improved using curves.  Open the curves function of your processing software, place points at the right and left side to "pin"  the black level and the white level  then pull the middle of the curve up to enhance the color and contrast of your image.  Don't over do it.

CS

Hi Celestron 2 (sorry I dont know your real name),

I'm relatively new to astrophotography too - I started about a year ago, and been on the same journey as you, so hope I can help by sharing my recent experience.

My first comment is that if you can produce images like the one you've posted above of the of M51 (the Whirlpool Galaxy) and M51b (aka NGC-5195), then you do not need better equipment - that is a fabulous image. Both images have nice round stars, so your tracking/guiding is good, and your exposures are good, particularly if these are single exposures.

The EOS 600D is 18Mpx - which is fairly high resolution - actually better than the ZWO astro camera I'm using.
When you say 'modified' - what modifications have you done - presumably something to do with filtering ?

I'd echo David's comment above - post some images on your public page, and invite constructive comments on ways to improve them. Photography is a subjective art, so you're bound to get differences in opinion, but there are thousands of members on AstroBin who have been doing this for a long time and are willing to offer helpful advice. If you've been enjoying this hobby for a few years, then I'm sure you have other images as good as the ones you've posted above. It doesn't even matter if the images are terrible - post them and ask for feedback, then revise the image and ask again

My advice is this - keep using your current equipment, and spend some time learning to improve the images you already have.
I've spent the last month going over my old images and learning how to bring out detail I never knew was there.

This image of the Helix Nebula was one of the first astro-images I took - I was amazed that I got an image at all and immensely proud of it.
As I experimented more with post-processing, I realised there was a lot of room for improvement, and was able to bring out more detail and character in this revised image - although I think it's too 'soft' now, so I haven't finished with it yet.

As you probably already know, AstroBin encourages users to post updates to their images, so 'tinkering' is definitely expected and encouraged.

If you're on a budget, I highly recommend you invest in Affinity Photo to process your images.
I've spent a lot of time trying to use Photoshop and experimenting with other apps, but found the workflow very tedious and frustrating.
At about USD 65, Affinity Photo is a fraction of the price of the other packages, with no annual license fee.
It can stack/ align RAW images and includes post-processing tools specifically designed for astrophotography.
It's also cross-platform, and comes with a free trial.

You will get a lot more mileage out of your existing camera if you master post-processing.

As David and Andrea have suggested, try experimenting with curves, gamma, black point and white point, as well as the noise reduction and clarification tools. You'll be surprised how much your existing images can be improved.

As for your images above :-
- if these are both single exposures (as opposed to stacked images), then your guiding/tracking is fantastic.

- Using a high ISO will introduce more noise - try experimenting with a lower ISO and longer exposures.

- Invest in some stacking software - this allows you to take many images of shorter duration and average them out to reduce the negative effects of imperfect tracking and sensor noise.

- The Whirlpool galaxy is a very nice image. The stars have a natural colour and the dynamic range of the galaxies is good too.
Some of the stars are a little elongated which means your polar alignment/tracking is not 100%, but this can be eliminated by stacking images.
Some of the brighter stars appear a bit bloated, but I think this is due to a bit too much contrast in post-processing, rather than something in the original image. Try experimenting with noise reduction, clarity and saturation to enhance the nebulosity of the galaxies - use this for inspiration, as well as images of the same target posted by others on AstroBin.

- The Wizard's Nebula (NGC-7380) appears to have a good dynamic range, the background stars are nice and round.
Try enhancing the nebula itself - experiment with 'backing off' the background stars so they don't dominate the image, and lower contrast to reduce bloating in the brighter stars. The image also looks to have a colour gradient running diagonally from top left to bottom right - which you can compensate for using the gradient tools in Affinity. Also try to enhance the nebula by experimenting with curves, saturation and masking.

As Andrea rightly says, this is a never-ending quest - but mastering the art of post-processing is likely to get you much more mileage than new equipment.

I hope that helps - and I'll look forward to seeing the images above on your public page soon - and hopefully many more after that

Gary

Hi Celestron 2,
Another thought to add to Lynn K's comments …

I have a ZWO (Chinese) ASI-071MC Pro single-shot colour camera. Its very easy to use and includes things like sensor cooling, anti-dew and other bells & whistles.

But - I also have a nice DSLR, along with the appropriate adaptors, which produces equally good images on my telescope.

The main reason I bought the AS-071 was so I could leave it permanently bolted to my APO refractor, and grab my DSLR anytime I needed it, without the fiddling of swapping things around.

My personal experience is that I still have a lot to learn about acquisition, and have a loooong way to go before I can justify the expense of better equipment.

BUT - I've spent a lot of time learning about post-processing, which has improved my images immensely.

One thing about a dedicated Astro camera is that it will likely store images as FITS files, which encapsulates a lot of astronomical information like RA/DEC etc into the image. So - you will need software that can read FITS files, and I highly recommend getting something that also does stacking and post-processing.

IMHO - the best investment you can make is to spend $100 on something like Affinity Photo, experiment with optimising your existing images,
and keep posting then on AstroBin for feedback.

Gary

First of all, great job on what you’ve done to date with what you have: well done.

Secondly, if you’re looking to up your game, I have a few suggestions:

1) Get more integration time. 2 hours isn’t a ton of time, especially with an SCT and a DSLR like you have. Experiment: try 4, 6, 8 hours or more, even over multiple nights. At some point you’ll reach diminishing returns on additional integration time, but if you’re just around 2 hours now I guarantee more time will lead to noticeably better images.

2) You didn’t mention processing: make sure you are calibrating everything properly with flats, darks, and bias. 

3) Don’t mess with a new scope or mount or camera yet. You don’t need it: you can improve with the equipment you have. 

4) On the topic of processing, use the best software you can afford.  IF you can save up for it, I highly recommend Pixinsight. It’s really the best out there and it WILL make a difference in your final images. And it’s not as hard as you might think to learn: trust me. If not, there are many choices out there. My main point is to use the best software you can afford and really learn how to get the best out of it. Just looking at your images, which are a great start just to re-iterate, I guarantee you can get better results by focusing learning to make the most of a software platform. YouTube tutorials and other online forums can help a ton in this respect. 

Keep at it man! You’re doing awesome. Hope this helps a bit.

Thank you very much for your comments. The images are both stacked using DeepSkyStacker (apologies I didn’t word that very well).  I used 180/300 second exposures, I can’t remember which (it may have been different for the two images). 

I’ll have a look at Affinity photo, I’ve been using photoshop thus far and am starting to get to grips with it but it does cost a bit per month. 

Regarding the camera, I have been considering an OSC cooled camera but have held off due to the cost. A cooled camera with an equivalent sensor to the Canon EOS600D I currently use is a bit out of my price range at the moment. My other concern is that the less expensive ones have smaller sensors which could make life significantly harder with the 945mm focal length I’m dealing with (the focal length is with an f6.3 reducer/Flattener). 

I haven’t got that much to post at the moment as I haven’t been able to get the telescope out much recently due to bad weather and warm/light summer nights. I’ll have a go though.

1st very nice photos and keep up the good work!
2nd, Post Processing,
3rd, Post Processing,
lastly, Post Processing!

There is a TON of excellent suggestions that has been stated and probably the one that @andrea tasselli along with several here have stated is processing your images! I’ve learn here on AB myself that post processing is key to making your images presentable. I’ve had images that I’ve taken a while back that were just ok and with the new software and processing techniques made them into literally different images!

My best example would be the Cocoon Nebula: 
1st time I processed it I was ok happy with it. https://www.astrobin.com/t2jya2/
But I just recently reprocessed it in APP and came up with this now. https://www.astrobin.com/pw48gv/
2 completely different images. And here is the thing, while I’m really happy with it now, I know if I gave it to any number of imagers here on AB they could make it way better then my best attempt. Point is post processing is KEY to creating a beautiful image.

Your equipment, Nothing wrong with it for now. I think the AVX is a great little mount capable of “WOW” images with the right setup. Your SCT may not be optimal but it is teaching you a lot about autoguiding (because of the longer fl) and image scale! If you get good results with that for tracking, you will have even better results when you do an imaging newt or ST80ed (as some have mentioned) on that mount.

IMHO, (and thats all this is) look at your post processing and software! Personally processing software can be worth MORE than any other piece of equipment you can buy for now. If there was only 1 other thing I would buy or upgrade to other than the software/processing skills would be a good OSC CMOS camera. I’m personally a big fan of the ZWO brand.

Again keep up the great work, and best of luck! Keep posting on AB! I’ve found this site to be so much friendlier than so many other site and the people here are wonderful at helping others and sharing there thoughts and ideas!

Dale

I would be thinking about more imaging time at night and calibration in the daytime without impacting data colection.
My suggestion is to invest in a cooled astro camera.
This allows you to take images at a set temperature and mimic that temperature in the day time for calibration images.
i.e. You can then take say 25 darks inside, at home, during the day, away from dark site for example, just by setting the camera at the same temperature (bin, offset & exposure time) as the lights were taken

Next, a light panel for flats. Again, in order to take calibration data outside of your imaging time.

Unfortunately, my two suggestions require a purchase but will give you more time to collect data in a given night and more data results better images because of more signal to drown out the noise (another way of saying better SNR)

Processing improvements will only go so far but data is king.

I'm new to astrophoto, but regarding your first image of the Whirpool galaxy , it's excellent. 
The second one , seems to have some background gradient, like either light pollution or the stretching caused some color artifacts.  It happens to me all the time too. 
Here is the thing with osc or mono cameras.  They will only complicate things if things aren't already complicated enough.  I have 2 osc cameras, and yet I like my Pentax and Nikon cameras better, because it's just so simple to deal with them.  My issue with them is summer heat and  their noise level due to heat. (Some people will deal with that and make them disappear during post process, like never happened) 

So that's my 2 cents, if you ever decide to buy a cooled CMOS astro camera, just remember, you are adding more complications . I've seen /read plenty of people selling their CMOS cameras with the excuse that they just don't want to deal with .fits files  and don't want to deal with 7 different filters and have spent thousands of dollars ,  they want to keep it simple and easy as possible.

Thanks very much for the advice. I have been looking at filters for a while and the Optolong L-eNhance/l-eXtreme seem to be the best options for the DSLR (I'll stick with it for the moment) but I'm not sure which to go for. Any thoughts?

I have Bortle 4 skies according to the Clear Outside app (sky quality of 21.0) if this helps. 

I will try an post the images and will keep tweaking the second image to try and bring the nebula a bit better (Affinity photo is definitely something I might try out).

The camera is astro modified, and I'm fairly sure that the IR filter has been removed. The Optolong L-eNhance filter is tri-band (Ha, H-beta and OIII) and seems to be a little bit cheaper than the Astronomik UHC filter you recommend. Is there a big difference between the two? 

Along a totally different train of thought, what do you think about using a Raspberry Pi (Astroberry) for telescope and camera control? I am currently using an ancient windows laptop that still runs Windows Vista and is incompatible with ASCOM so am looking to change this in the near future.

Hi Celestron2,
I defer to Andrea's experience as far as the filters go.
Andrea also raises an excellent point about the need for filtering if you have Bortle 2 skies ...
The only suggestion I can make is to experiment

In terms of the AstroBerry, I'm not familiar with it personally, but on their website it does look very impressive.

The only thing I'd recommend is to make sure it includes plate-solving (I think it might do because it seems to support  K-Stars),
and Polar Alignment.

Another alternative is the ASIAir Pro by ZWO - more info here.
I use one of these, it includes most (all ?) of the features I see on the Astroberry website, plus power management,
and is incredibly versatile and easy to use. And its actually based on a raspberry pi too

I'd be very interested to know which way you decide to go.

Regards,

Gary

Hi Celestron2,
In terms of filters …

The Astromonik UHC filter is optimized for f/4+, it has essentially no loss within the passbands unless you have f2 or less.
You mentioned your DSLR has been astro-modified - in that case the Astronomik UHC will give you near perfect colour balance.

In any case, I suggest you buy the best filter you can afford, it will definitely make a difference.

Once you get your filter, try capturing images using identical settings, with/without the filter, then use a photometry tool to examine your images. Most software can display RGB values per pixel - that will help you see the effect the filter has on your images.

Good luck

​​​​​​​Gary