Rho Ophiuchi

[kiwiapple]

At last! I have wanted to shoot Rho Ophiuchi for ages, but never had any luck until now. The target is a bit too big to shoot with my telescope, so I used my mirrorless camera (a Canon R5) on a Benro Polaris mount with my 70-200mm f/2.8L lens, at around 135mm. I set the rig to shoot 60-second frames for 3 hours, with a dew heater on the lens to prevent fogging in the winter conditions (it worked!). This time I used Siril to stack my frames, and did final processing in Pixinsight and Photoshop.

 

[Comet Hunter]

Nicely Done

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Interesting colors. Nice work.

 

[AlanLichty]

Amazing you can get an astro image like this from a regular camera.

 

[Mike Lewis]

James,

This is very cool - this target is always exceptional to see. I am encouraged as I am hoping to get some astro on a trip to the Southern Hemisphere this fall and I have the same camera and tracker you used here, although I confess I just have not gotten going with the Benro Polaris yet. Nice to see it working this well though.

As a comment, on my monitor at least this seems to look a bit green, so I took the liberty of copying the small version and passing it thru SCNR.

You might play with this yourself a little bit if you like. In any case though a very fine image and very inspirational for me as well!

ML

 

[JimFox]

Hey James, this is great! I also have Rho Ophiuchi on my list for this week. I swear I will not be copying (too much) if I image this and the Lobster.

I thought your image looked great, and kind of liked the added green colors in it. But then I saw Mikes edit on it with SCNR, and I do like the colors of Rho Ophiuchi better in his edit I think. It definitely brings out the blue better I think. And I still think your image looks great. Scrolling back and forth I still like your image a lot, the greens might not be correct but they make it more colorful which I usually like.

So this was shot using the Polaris? I haven't looked much at that since there was that big splash with that and it's abilities a year ago? Or was it 2 years ago? Anyway, so it looks like it's capable of tracking with your R5 and the 70-200mm. That's pretty impressive. How hard was it to set up for this? Is Polar aligning easy? Have you used it for any other Astro?

 

[kiwiapple]

Y

James,

This is very cool - this target is always exceptional to see. I am encouraged as I am hoping to get some astro on a trip to the Southern Hemisphere this fall and I have the same camera and tracker you used here, although I confess I just have not gotten going with the Benro Polaris yet. Nice to see it working this well though.

As a comment, on my monitor at least this seems to look a bit green, so I took the liberty of copying the small version and passing it thru SCNR.

View attachment 62209


You might play with this yourself a little bit if you like. In any case though a very fine image and very inspirational for me as well!

ML

You're absolutely right--I always forget about SCNR! I have reprocessed the image (see the post I'm about to put up) and have remembered SCNR this time!

 

[kiwiapple]

Hey James, this is great! I also have Rho Ophiuchi on my list for this week. I swear I will not be copying (too much) if I image this and the Lobster.

I thought your image looked great, and kind of liked the added green colors in it. But then I saw Mikes edit on it with SCNR, and I do like the colors of Rho Ophiuchi better in his edit I think. It definitely brings out the blue better I think. And I still think your image looks great. Scrolling back and forth I still like your image a lot, the greens might not be correct but they make it more colorful which I usually like.

So this was shot using the Polaris? I haven't looked much at that since there was that big splash with that and it's abilities a year ago? Or was it 2 years ago? Anyway, so it looks like it's capable of tracking with your R5 and the 70-200mm. That's pretty impressive. How hard was it to set up for this? Is Polar aligning easy? Have you used it for any other Astro?

I'm with you about the green, and as I mentioned in my reply to Mike, I always forget about applying SCNR to my images.

Yes, I decided to put the Polaris to use, primarily since I find the polar alignment of my other DSLR-friendly mount (a Star-Adventurer) too fiddly down here in the southern hemisphere, particularly for where I wanted to position my rig, which was in a location where my house blocked the view of the southern celestial pole. Polaris does not require polar alignment per se, and over the past few months Benro has apparently done a lot of work behind the scenes tweaking the device to make it far more usable and reliable. I do plan to make more use of it in the coming months, and in fact if the weather holds tonight I plan to wake up at 3am to head about a half-hour away from me to a site where I want to shoot a Milky Way arch over a scenic spot, something I've been planning for months, if not years. I actually went to this spot rather unexpectedly the other morning, and I used Polaris to shoot the thing, but I did my panorama incorrectly, resulting in a barely-usable image (see below). Of course the error was mine, not Polaris's, though if I were to be uncharitable, I might say that their documentation could stand to be improved a tad.

 

[kiwiapple]

Hey James, this is great! I also have Rho Ophiuchi on my list for this week. I swear I will not be copying (too much) if I image this and the Lobster.

I thought your image looked great, and kind of liked the added green colors in it. But then I saw Mikes edit on it with SCNR, and I do like the colors of Rho Ophiuchi better in his edit I think. It definitely brings out the blue better I think. And I still think your image looks great. Scrolling back and forth I still like your image a lot, the greens might not be correct but they make it more colorful which I usually like.

So this was shot using the Polaris? I haven't looked much at that since there was that big splash with that and it's abilities a year ago? Or was it 2 years ago? Anyway, so it looks like it's capable of tracking with your R5 and the 70-200mm. That's pretty impressive. How hard was it to set up for this? Is Polar aligning easy? Have you used it for any other Astro?

Oh, and as for set up, Polaris is a breeze (now). You just put it on your tripod, which should be as level as you can manage, and then you simply hold your smartphone against Polaris in exactly the way the app shows you to do it (any errors in this regard will total screw things up) and then you do an alignment with a bright star, moon or planet and you're off! It's dead-simple and in my experience lately it is very accurate. They have even added a setting to allow you to tell Polaris that you're using an L-bracket, which causes it to realign the mount accordingly. It's a very clever piece of kit.

 

[JimFox]

Oh, and as for set up, Polaris is a breeze (now). You just put it on your tripod, which should be as level as you can manage, and then you simply hold your smartphone against Polaris in exactly the way the app shows you to do it (any errors in this regard will total screw things up) and then you do an alignment with a bright star, moon or planet and you're off! It's dead-simple and in my experience lately it is very accurate. They have even added a setting to allow you to tell Polaris that you're using an L-bracket, which causes it to realign the mount accordingly. It's a very clever piece of kit.

That's all very good info! I might have to look at the Polaris to use as a 2nd Mount when I want to shoot some of the larger nebula. What is the longest subs you have taken with it?