My daughter has a 2 story house here in Colorado with a upstairs deck off the dining room. I had been wanting to try setting up my Deep Space Astro gear here for a while, and with the prospect of 20 degree weather, I decided rather then drive to a dark sky site a few hours away, I would try setting my gear up and then testing a couple of light pollution filters I have to see if I can see through the light pollution.
I have the L-Pro and the L-Enhance filters. I have actually been using the L-Pro for the last few months in even dark sky locations to help add a touch more contrast and to narrow down the wavelengths closer to the ones from Nebula. But more then anything I wanted to try the L-Enhance filter which is more aggressive but also darker, so it's going to block a bit more light, though I wasn't sure how much more.
Well last night it was clear skies so, I set up my gear and then took some images of the Rosette Nebula first with the L-Pro filter. I got an hour worth of 3 min subs at 600mm on it as I wanted to get as tight as I could. Then next I switched to the L-Enhance filter, and to my surprise there didn't seem to be very much difference in terms of light loss, so I was able to use the exact same 3 min exposures on it. Immediately I could tell it was giving me so much better images. The L-Enhance comes closer to the Narrow Band filters that many of the guys use in on their Mono Astro cameras. So after the first 3 min sub as I saw the review of it on my ipad, I was so excited!
I also ended up with some awesome guiding. That's an area I still need more work on to fine tune the adjustments, but last night I had awesome guiding. Where I had to be careful is with my daughters deck being made out of wood, and with it being 30 years old, it has a lot of give in it. So any walking, even the most gentle of steps would throw the guiding for a tizzy! So I ended up placing the ipad (which controls everything) on the dog house roof next to the patio door, so I could just open the patio door to watch or make adjustments or changes without having to step onto the deck.
Now for how bad this deck is, I guess I got lucky with the exact placement of the tripod last night since at least my stepping on it, didn't throw off my polar alignment. Tonight is a clear sky again, so I have my gear setup up again on the deck, and tonight, each step is making the polar alignment dance all over the screen. I am currently capturing the Andromeda Galaxy as I wanted to see how the L-Enhance filter will do with it. Once I am done with the current run, I am going to see if I can slide the tripod over to some more solid support beams.
The area I am at in Northern Colorado is a Bortle 6 sky for reference.
And as a side note, I am really so excited about the quality of the images I am getting now. You guys don't see the 100% pixel peeping level, but I do while processing. And the detail of the images from what I was getting with my D850 to now with the ASIAir 2600mc Pro is like night and day. Such incredible detail at the pixel level. The D850 produced some great images for me over the last 2 years, so I am glad I started there, but I am now so glad that last Christmas I decided to give myself a gift of this ASIAir 2600mc Pro. It's light years ahead of just using a DSLR.
41 Lights at 180 secs
20 - Flats
5 - Darks
Gem28 - Astro mount
ASIAir 2600mc Pro - asto camera
Tamron 150-600mm @ 600mm
ASIAIr 120mm Guide Scope
DeepSkyStacker - Stacking Software
Photoshop - for Processing
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS... As I was processing this, I ended up going with a bit of an Orange hue to the Rosette. I hope it's okay. I have seen others similar to this look, and was curious if I could achieve the same look.
I have the L-Pro and the L-Enhance filters. I have actually been using the L-Pro for the last few months in even dark sky locations to help add a touch more contrast and to narrow down the wavelengths closer to the ones from Nebula. But more then anything I wanted to try the L-Enhance filter which is more aggressive but also darker, so it's going to block a bit more light, though I wasn't sure how much more.
Well last night it was clear skies so, I set up my gear and then took some images of the Rosette Nebula first with the L-Pro filter. I got an hour worth of 3 min subs at 600mm on it as I wanted to get as tight as I could. Then next I switched to the L-Enhance filter, and to my surprise there didn't seem to be very much difference in terms of light loss, so I was able to use the exact same 3 min exposures on it. Immediately I could tell it was giving me so much better images. The L-Enhance comes closer to the Narrow Band filters that many of the guys use in on their Mono Astro cameras. So after the first 3 min sub as I saw the review of it on my ipad, I was so excited!
I also ended up with some awesome guiding. That's an area I still need more work on to fine tune the adjustments, but last night I had awesome guiding. Where I had to be careful is with my daughters deck being made out of wood, and with it being 30 years old, it has a lot of give in it. So any walking, even the most gentle of steps would throw the guiding for a tizzy! So I ended up placing the ipad (which controls everything) on the dog house roof next to the patio door, so I could just open the patio door to watch or make adjustments or changes without having to step onto the deck.
Now for how bad this deck is, I guess I got lucky with the exact placement of the tripod last night since at least my stepping on it, didn't throw off my polar alignment. Tonight is a clear sky again, so I have my gear setup up again on the deck, and tonight, each step is making the polar alignment dance all over the screen. I am currently capturing the Andromeda Galaxy as I wanted to see how the L-Enhance filter will do with it. Once I am done with the current run, I am going to see if I can slide the tripod over to some more solid support beams.
The area I am at in Northern Colorado is a Bortle 6 sky for reference.
And as a side note, I am really so excited about the quality of the images I am getting now. You guys don't see the 100% pixel peeping level, but I do while processing. And the detail of the images from what I was getting with my D850 to now with the ASIAir 2600mc Pro is like night and day. Such incredible detail at the pixel level. The D850 produced some great images for me over the last 2 years, so I am glad I started there, but I am now so glad that last Christmas I decided to give myself a gift of this ASIAir 2600mc Pro. It's light years ahead of just using a DSLR.
41 Lights at 180 secs
20 - Flats
5 - Darks
Gem28 - Astro mount
ASIAir 2600mc Pro - asto camera
Tamron 150-600mm @ 600mm
ASIAIr 120mm Guide Scope
DeepSkyStacker - Stacking Software
Photoshop - for Processing
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS... As I was processing this, I ended up going with a bit of an Orange hue to the Rosette. I hope it's okay. I have seen others similar to this look, and was curious if I could achieve the same look.
