Showcase: Astrophotography

[walter_j]

I couldn't find a showcase thread for astrophotography, so I created this one. Please include details to help others with this challenging genre.

This photo was taken with the E-M1.1 with a Oly 12mm F2. 20s, F2, ISO 2500.

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[Quadna71]

I see you placed this thread in the "Nature" category. If you scroll down 5 more categories, you'll see one titled "Astrophotography" where there are 3000+ threads on this topic For what it's worth, great photo!!!

Astrophotography

 

[walter_j]

ok. I just searched, and nothing came up. maybe a moderator can delete this thread

 

[barry]

It's fine. We don't have a main image thread for Astro, afaik.

 

[Hypilein]

We have the milky way thread, which this would belong perfectly in.

 

[TNcasual]

I couldn't find a general Astrophotography image thread in the Astrophrotography Forum area. Most images in that forum are specific. Maybe a moderator could move this thread over there with a sticky. @barry13 What do you think?

 

[TNcasual]

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[AG_Alex2097]

Haven't been around for a while, but during my time away I've spent a lot of it reading, learning and practicing Astrophotography (most of which came from www.clarkvision.com, for which I thank him), to finally have something to share that I'm quite happy with for the limited experience I have.

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Orion, Horsehead & Flame Nebula by Alex Schmitt, on Flickr

The image was taken with an Unmodded Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mk. II & Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 35-100mm f/2.0 @100mm f/2.2 mounted on an Astrotrac TT320X-AG (Unguided) with TH3010 Counter Balance Head
It consists of 20 light frames @68s, ISO-1250 (2 unused) and another 10 light frames @40s, ISO-1250 (1 unused) for the brighter parts in the image (Orion core & some stars), taken over a total time of ~2 hours (very last frame had trailing as the Astrotrac had ran to its end)
A Bahtinov mask was used to achieve correct focus.
No flat, dark or bias frames were used, just in camera dark frame subtraction.
All processing was done in Adobe Camera Raw (pre-stack) and Photoshop (post-stack), processing proved very tricky however as this had quite a bit of noise, haze & light pollution in the image (Artificial brightness of 190 μcd/m2), in order to not amplify either of these, I had to do away with the red nebulosity surrounding the 2 objects and settle for just the brighter parts of the nebulae.
Chromatic aberration was also a big problem, as the red fringing from the 35-100mm coincides with some of the colours in the nebulae, causing standard CA removal tools to create odd patches of discolouring, so manual removal had to be done using curve filters and masks. The same process was used to do the opposite, stretching the image to bring out the details.

One thing I wasn't able to fix however was the very strong halos around the brighter stars which only got amplified more during stretching :/
From reading online, most people seem to be having these issues when using filters (which I wasn't), but I'm guessing glass elements inside the lens also contribute to this (despite the 35-100 having multiple Extra-low Dispersion elements), I suppose this is why people use reflectors instead of camera lenses, but from my understanding, this should be minimised when stopping down, which I'll try next time.

Hope this inspires and helps others on their Astrophotography journey!

 

[walter_j]

Dawn a few years ago with a em1.1 and 7-14 f2.8.

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January 1, 2017

 

[Deleted member 29285]

Orion Wide-field.

Found a U-tube tutorial on astro processing of wide field Orion, by Ian Norman of lonelyspeck.com,
https://petapixel.com/2015/01/18/tutorial-photographing-processing-orion-constellation/

Looked interesting so I thought I would make a set of images to match, and then process them following his instructions.
Well, many days later, this was my best result. Not too impressed with my processing (more practice), but was impressed with the performance of the 12-40mm lens. Very sharp and clean pin-point stars.

E-M5 II, m.zuiko 12-40mm PRO @25mm, 49 exposures 1 min, f/2.8, ISO3200, EQ6 tracking mount.

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[jimr.pdx]

Barnard's loop was my clue to rotate my phone for my northern-hemisphere eyes Nice work! Betelgeuse is definitely a shade dim here, as it should be in its current state.

 

[AG_Alex2097]

@3dpan you should easily be able to go 2 minutes or more with wide field on a tracker, which would allow you to drop the ISO (anything over 1600 becomes questionable with the EM5 Mk. II in my opinion), but that still depends on your time constraints I suppose.
Still a good shot, nice to see how much colour you got out of it!
Would be interested to see what you can get using a different processing workflow as described here (I'd avoid photoshop alignment, in my experience I've found it to be not as great as the dedicated astro apps and makes nebula details turn into mush):
https://clarkvision.com/articles/astrophotography.image.processing.basics/

 

[Deleted member 29285]

@3dpan you should easily be able to go 2 minutes or more with wide field on a tracker, which would allow you to drop the ISO (anything over 1600 becomes questionable with the EM5 Mk. II in my opinion), but that still depends on your time constraints I suppose.
Still a good shot, nice to see how much colour you got out of it!
Would be interested to see what you can get using a different processing workflow as described here (I'd avoid photoshop alignment, in my experience I've found it to be not as great as the dedicated astro apps and makes nebula details turn into mush):
https://clarkvision.com/articles/astrophotography.image.processing.basics/

Thank you for the comments. I actually stacked the images in DeepSkyStacker, and then processed in Photoshop. I was hoping to get more blues in the image.
I was trying for a series of 8 minute exposures. I got six, with good pinpoint stars, but then the moon and the weather conspired against me. As of today the moon is out of sight but the weather is still cloudy. Hopefully in a few days the weather will oblige and I will get some more frames at 8 minutes.
Cheers,
Alec

 

[TNcasual]

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[soundfanz]

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[Robert Chalmers]

My word. They are impressive. Now I have something to aim for. I love the old car shots. Very dystopian.

 

[soundfanz]

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[TNcasual]

Another of my meager attempts:

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[jimr.pdx]

Another of my meager attempts:

View attachment 835747

Wow the clouds really emphasize Venus on this. I like it

 

[Danny_SWE]

I'm not an astrophotographer, but wanted to grab a shot of this comet Neowise C/2020 F3 while we can see it now. It will be a few thousand years until next time

Today I thought to find this comet from our local viewpoint. Went out midnight and found the guiding stars by eyes only. It was sure though to find the comet. But after some spotting in the camera (enhanced) I finally found it! Grabbed some various photos but this with 150mm was best. Have attached a screenshot of spotting app also (though, a much bigger view there).

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Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise by Daniel Cederberg, on Flickr