What is your shortest best? - Forums

Topic starter

Oct 3, 2022

I would like to ask others about what is your experience with short integration times?. A lot of us have limitations of view (such as trees ) and it is not always possible to get long integration times.. I am certainly in that group since I have very tall pines surrounding me. I have managed to come up with some not too bad short integration time pictures taking advantage of some settings (long exposures and gain) .

What is your shortest best ?
Here are some of my examples of integration times of 2 hours or less.

Please join Massachusetts Astro. Clear skies!. Alicia

The Pleiades (Messier 45)

Wizard nebula (NGC 7380)

Antares region, Rho Ophiuchi

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r3delson

Mar 24, 2023

I had quite a challenge last summer imaging M8, the Lagoon Nebula from my backyard. It's low in the sky here in New England and only for a few weeks a year I get an early evening window between a huge tree and the side of my house, the window is under an hour! I took about 45 minutes of data on this one. Most of my deep sky subs are around two minutes, I used to do longer but since I got the ASI2600 I've found two minutes to be the sweet spot. I try to take more subs, over 60 when possible, that makes the difference but here I only got 20.

Here's the link to the M8 shot: https://www.astrobin.com/v19na3/

- Richard

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Jay Hovnanian

Mar 24, 2023

I hadn't owned a scope since I was seventeen. Many years later I bought a 6" reflector ... then an 8" reflector ... and then wanted to "get back into Astrophotography" (which, back then - 1975-6 - was strapping my Olympus SLR onto my 8" f/8 reflector and hoping for the best when I got the prints back). How things have changed ....

Fast forward to 2021 when I owned some nice equipment and started shooting (with help from @Nico Carver , @Marsha Wilcox and a few others whose names I can't rind here right now). To me, two hours seemed about right

.... The Horsehead was one of my first shots, but not until I reprocessed last year did I publish it here. It was one of my 2-ish hour shots:

The Horsehead Nebula Region

Jay

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r3delson

Mar 24, 2023

Hi Jay!

It sounds like we had similar experiences. I got a classic orange C-8 in 1978 and used the Olympus OM-1. I replaced the filter with their astro filter (presumably better Ha). Celestron had a "drive corrector" which basically regulated the RA motor via a hand held box with a dial and you watched the position in the cameras viewer, that was tracking. I still have the C-8 and all the other gear including the OM-1. I had joined an astronomy club back then and developed my film and prints in their darkroom.

I didn't use the scope for quite some time but years later I removed the corrector plate to clean the degraded coatings off and optically the scope is as good as new. I had a renewed interest in astrophotography with the introduction of computer technology to the mix and digital imaging. In 2006 I bought a Celestron CGE with an 11" scope and about two years later added some CCD cameras which was driven via a laptop.

- Richard

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