[W.A.G.7]

Wonderful! It's really nice to see that you are enjoying your hobby. I never knew astrophotography required so many things to setup including the whole software setup, a dedicated computer and all. I have a simple Nikon 8x42 binocular and sometimes I do enjoy looking at the sky. It reveals much more details than what you can see with your eyes. There's quite a lot of information in your writeup and also the photographs, thanks a lot for sharing!

Astronomy by itself is intriguing and once we have a look at the celestial objects through a binoculars or a telescope, we can only imagine the magnitude of things in our world and how small we are in the system!!

[Hayek]

What an incredible thread! You are indeed someone who displays enormous patience and dedication to research in mastering a new field, and then presenting it to us in a simplified manner.

I have always wanted to see the planets through a telescope - we once even packed a telescope borrowed from a friend when we went for a picnic but never managed to set it up. Hence I can only imagine how much patience and skill it takes to set up a complex outfit like yours.

Please keep posting - we will live the astronomy dream vicariously through you.

[graaja]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Here's one that I picked up from google.

It is worth exploring is all I am saying, to understand if it can help you, or not...

Thank you so much. I am already installing this tool to see how the noise reduction works

It is great to know someone working in movies with such advanced software!

Like you said, this will probably lead to getting a more powerful machine. Right now, I have an i7 processor with 12 cores (guess it is 6 physical and 2 logical per core), and Pixinsight uses all the cores. I have been reading Pixinsight groups and see that everyone loves Ryzen 9 for it's multithread. Will probably upgrade in the near future.

Originally Posted by W.A.G.7

Wonderful! It's really nice to see that you are enjoying your hobby. I never knew astrophotography required so many things to setup including the whole software setup, a dedicated computer and all. I have a simple Nikon 8x42 binocular and sometimes I do enjoy looking at the sky. It reveals much more details than what you can see with your eyes.

Thank you for your kind words. Glad to know that you enjoy visual astronomy with your binoculars. Visual astronomy is a ocean by itself and requires a totally different type of skill set, like identifying patterns in the sky, star hopping to locate fainter objects etc. This also needs travel to dark skies. But the advantage is that you can have lots of fun with just a binocular and a tripod.

[Valhalla1979]

Thank so much. Its incredible to see images that aren't straight out of a magazine or website... this feels raw and connected. I love the process and when you can, please add more to the collection. I wonder if you can see Saturns moons?

[Jyotil]

Graaja, Fantastic thread and beautiful pics. Can't help but marvel at the vast expanse that is our universe. May just trigger my appetite again to dive into sky watching and to skip meals . Couple of questions -

1. Is refractor absolutely necessary? And if one was to go for a reflector what would you suggest from the celestron family?
2. How does one capture details of the milky way? What should be the ideal parameters for the camera and exposure duration?

[manmohanmaan]

Simply superb Sir. Thank you for all this, really learnt a lot.

[IP_Man]

Hats off to your dedication in this hobby. I have two questions.

1. How do you deal with two enemies of astrophotography city air and light pollution?

2. Your telescope, can it used for day light photography also? For e.g. birds photography with suitable DSLR adapter?

[Durango Dude]

Terrific thread, though I'm interested in photography this requires a lot of patience and work for a hobby. My idea of photography is not taking 90 shots for a single image. Kudos to you, graaja. I'm more of the "instant gratification" type: so much so have stopped using a tripod and really don't have the time and patience for this. Will keenly follow this thread. You must be burning a lot of midnight oil, hope your family approves. I basically hate spooky places and going far from the madding crowd and light pollution means also security risk of getting mugged by lumpen elements unless you travel in a group of fellow enthusiasts.

[graaja]

Originally Posted by Hayek

What an incredible thread!...

I have always wanted to see the planets through a telescope - we once even packed a telescope borrowed from a friend when we went for a picnic but never managed to set it up. Hence I can only imagine how much patience and skill it takes to set up a complex outfit like yours.

Thank you for your kind words. Hope your interest in seeing the planets gets re-kindled and you fulfill that goal

Originally Posted by Valhalla1979

Thank so much. Its incredible to see images that aren't straight out of a magazine or website... this feels raw and connected. I love the process and when you can, please add more to the collection. I wonder if you can see Saturns moons?

Thank you for the kind words. Yes. We can see the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. In the planet pictures post, I have marked these moons in the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.

Originally Posted by Jyotil

Graaja, Fantastic thread and beautiful pics...

1. Is refractor absolutely necessary? And if one was to go for a reflector what would you suggest from the celestron family?
2. How does one capture details of the milky way? What should be the ideal parameters for the camera and exposure duration?

Thank you for the kind words.

1. A refractor per se is not an absolute necessity, but preferred. Reflectors due to their construction - primary mirror reflecting into secondary mirror can suffer from coma distortions which will need collimation. Refractors are usually quite robust.

Before choosing a telescope, the better approach is to understand what is the goal. Do you want to do visual astronomy or photography. Are you interested in deep space objects or planets? The telescope will have to be chosen based on this goal.

2. For Milky Way, you mainly need a wide lenses like a 14mm or 18mm and a camera that has good noise performance. Just shoot single exposures of 15 to 30 seconds at a high ISO (this is where noise performance is important), and you should get the Milky Way. But I have also seen people shooting multiple frames with a 50mm lens and then stitching them using software.

Originally Posted by manmohanmaan

Simply superb Sir. Thank you for all this, really learnt a lot.

Thank you for the kind words!

Originally Posted by IP_Man

Hats off to your dedication in this hobby. I have two questions.

1. How do you deal with two enemies of astrophotography city air and light pollution?

2. Your telescope, can it used for day light photography also? For e.g. birds photography with suitable DSLR adapter?

Thank you for the kind words.

1. For light pollution, there are light pollution filters that block light rays emitted by city lights and pass light spectrum emitted by celestial objects. I use a filter called L-Pro made by a company Optolong. There are many other brands as well like Baader, Astronomik etc. that make very good filters. As I personally don't have the problem of city air pollution, I don't have enough knowledge on how people deal with this issue.

2. With a focal length of 480mm, I am sure the telescope can be used for day light photography as well. But it is too heavy and not sure if it will be agile enough to move the setup to track a bird that may be very active. I haven't tried this.

Originally Posted by Durango Dude

Terrific thread, though I'm interested in photography this requires a lot of patience and work for a hobby. My idea of photography is not taking 90 shots for a single image. Kudos to you, graaja. I'm more of the "instant gratification" type: so much so have stopped using a tripod and really don't have the time and patience for this. Will keenly follow this thread. You must be burning a lot of midnight oil, hope your family approves. I basically hate spooky places and going far from the madding crowd and light pollution means also security risk of getting mugged by lumpen elements unless you travel in a group of fellow enthusiasts.

Thank you for the kind words. This hobby does need burning some midnight oil. In visual astronomy, this cannot be avoided. But photography has its advantage here. I am working on automating the setup in such a way that once I set it up in the evening, I can enter a sequence of targets and the times to shoot these targets and the setup should automatically execute this. That way, I will have all the exposures ready in the morning. I have been successful in getting this for a single target. I started the sequence at 9PM and went to sleep. I had 90 exposures in the morning. Am working on getting this done for multiple targets.

Regarding dark sites, the camps usually are done in some place with security. The first event I attended in Bangalore was in a farm stay in Chiguru. The recent Coorg meet up was in a small home stay near Talacauvery. I think people do travel alone to lonely places. But I have not ventured into this yet.

[kavensri]

I have never come across such a humble and perfect person in my life. First that ‘Fat to Fit’ thread and now this one.
There is definitely something in the way you write and explain everything, which is quite attractive to me.
Each and every post of yours is very easy to understand and I feel connected to it!
I have already bookmarked your ‘Fat to Fit’ thread and I am going to do the same for this one as well.
Thanks for sharing all these information.

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by graaja

I have been reading Pixinsight groups and see that everyone loves Ryzen 9 for it's multithread.

The current generation AMD processors are indeed fast. I cannot reveal too much but to give you an idea, a 32 core AMD Epyc series of server processor we tested annihilates a 52 (104 thread) core Intel Xeon cpu. There is no comparison when it comes to multi threaded performance. Less power consumed too.

Might be over kill. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro's are now available as over the counter purchase. These were previously exclusive to Lenovo on their P620 workstations.

[extreme_torque]

This thread is a goldmine for anyone starting with Astrophotography! Thanks for sharing your passion with us and goes without saying, those pictures are fantastic!

[IP_Man]

I can not come to your level in this hobby but can you please suggest good but economical optical telescope for watching planets?

[graaja]

Originally Posted by kavensri

Each and every post of yours is very easy to understand and I feel connected to it!

Thank you so much for the kind words

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

This thread is a goldmine for anyone starting with Astrophotography! Thanks for sharing your passion with us and goes without saying, those pictures are fantastic!

Thank you so much for the kind words!

Originally Posted by IP_Man

I can not come to your level in this hobby but can you please suggest good but economical optical telescope for watching planets?

For visual astronomy to look at planets, you can start with an 8" Dobsonian telescope like the Orion XT8. This telescope has good focal length to view the planets and the surface of the moon in detail and also you can view some fainter galaxies, nebulae and star clusters. The downside of this telescope is that it is manually operated.

If you want "Goto" functionality and if you can extend your budget, where the telescope can automatically locate and point the objects that you want to view, you can go with Celestron 6SE or Celestron 8SE SCT telescopes.

[deepfreak15]

Simply Superb Ganesh! There are no half measures with you, it's either all or nothing. Admire your attention to detail and the results speak for themselves.