Neat pictures I've taken

[dmg1969]

Some of my latest astrophotography done over the Thanksgiving weekend.

[glatt]

Very nice. You had some clear skies.

What's your setup? Apologies if you've told us before.

[dmg1969]

No problem Glatt. I use my Canon PowerShot SX20IS in manual mode and take about 10 light frames at 15 seconds each, ISO of 800 and aperture of 2.8. I also take 10 dark frames (same settings as light frames with lens covered) and 10 bias frames (lens covered and fastest exposure you can with the camera). After downloading, I import them into Deep Sky Stacker (http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html) to stack them to bring out the details. That's it. No photoshop...don't even own it.

[dmg1969]

Here are the other two from that night...

[glatt]

So when you stack them, that will subtract a lot of the noise from the consumer grade sensor? I've got a similar camera, and may try that. The night sky doesn't get very dark here though.

[dmg1969]

Originally Posted by glatt

So when you stack them, that will subtract a lot of the noise from the consumer grade sensor? I've got a similar camera, and may try that. The night sky doesn't get very dark here though.

Yes, exactly Glatt. The DSS will average the dark frames and bias frames and create a master dark and master bias. DSS will then use those and the light images to create the image.

Having a lot of ambient light will definitely not help. The best thing to do is find a dark area away from the city on a night where there is a new moon. Moonlight will kill you. Once your eyes adjust, look for interesting areas of the night sky that appear to have smudges of the Milky Way and concentrate on those. Ten photos of each area should be fine. Then, take your 10 dark frames and 10 bias frames and you're done. Then, just download them and use DSS.

[Lola Bunny]

I thought the rain on the red leaves were pretty, so I took a pix.