[chupathingie]

Nice collection! Lots of memory-inducing pics there. I left SF in 1987.

[chupathingie]

Nice! That is one seriously thin sliver of moon…

[chupathingie]

another excuse for me to get some arduino action going.

[chupathingie]

Nope, Amarillo TX for the time being.

[chupathingie]

BTW, that’s beautiful.

[chupathingie]

oooooohhhhhhh…… you lucky bastard! Nice catch, man. /me applauds/
I can’t catch a rainbow to save my life it seems.

[chupathingie]

oh lookie… the sig box shows in 2 places, the one I used is… well, useless. Fixed now 😉

[chupathingie]

I’ve typed my sig in the signature box in my prefs, then “save”…

[chupathingie]

You folks are really bad for my wallet…. got me wanting to go buy that mount and some optics all over again.

[chupathingie]

lolz… good one!

[chupathingie]

Resurrecting this from the dead… a major thing to keep in mind is that RAW files allow you to interpolate into 16bits/channel, which means that you need software that allows you to edit in 16bit/channel to really take advantage of the additional color precision. GIMP does not support 16 bits/channel. Supposedly it will in the future, and I do wish they’d get on with it, but the options for editing in 16bit at this point seem to be PhotoShop, Cinepaint and Krita. There are many other specialized packages out there that support high bit depth for limited purposes but those are the only 3 I know of for general manipulation/editing. Photoshop=$$, Cinepaint=limited filter set, Krita=why does this crash all the time.

RAW is a lot more useful than the limited options above suggest though. Underexposed? No problem, usually. Underexposed JPG will leave you with posterized shadows though, since 8bit/channel images only contain 1/256th of the color information of 16bit/channel images.

So shoot in RAW+JPG if you expect to come back and do any processing later on your images, or plan to use them in panorama or HDR software… it really shows in the finished quality of the image.

[chupathingie]

Wow, it has been a while since I checked in! I did take a few images with the 5DII, but since I’m still trying to get to grips with the software alternatives in linux I couldn’t tease anything impressive out of them. My AP dreams are just going to have to wait for a while. 🙁 I’ll console myself with panoramas and the 8mm fisheye I just bought… 360X180 panos in 3 shots. I need to get a bracket made to drop the no-parallax point on top of the head’s pivot point, but that’s at least affordable for now. I knew I should have dropped the coin on the Losmandy when I had it! LOL

[chupathingie]

huh… me too now. link from google works tho.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=jim+solomon+astrophotography&aq=3&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=jim+solomon+&gs_rfai=Cake5-eIoTOqLCorAM6CPoYEKAAAAqgQFT9DOIQc

top link.

[chupathingie]

Hook yourself up with a copy of Cinepaint, Elsinore… unless you’re using windows, they’ve discontinued support for reasons I don’t know. So far it’s been the only open-source package I’ve found that can edit and adjust 16bit/channel (even does 32bit float/channel!) images. Also handles HDR and OpenEXR formats. Sadly, it’s lacking a decent filterset (which I sorely need for astrophotography and other fun photo stuff) but otherwise it’s great for levels and curves on RAW files that would just get mangled in GIMP when one gets aggressive with stretching.

[chupathingie]

OOOOooooohhhhhhh… you have many options here….

Most expensive is a quality german equatorial mount. It’s the way to go if you think you’ll be swapping out payloads or even rigging multiple OTAs to one mount. For the weight of your scope I’m ballparking $2000 and up for one that tracks under load well enough for astrophotography.

Second option is to get a wedge for your existing rig. Converts alt-az to polar for under $1000.

Intead of (or even in addition to) the above, have a look at Hyperstar ( http://starizona.com/acb/hyperstar/whatis.aspx ). You won’t have to worry about field rotation with 30 second exposures and it will open up your FOV tremendously, plus your primary is large enough to mount a full-sized DSLR. Also under $1000. edit: light pollution wreaks havoc with optics this fast, and I’m not sure if LP filters are available for Hyperstar.

I started with registax, but it’s main use seems to be for planetary images captured with a webcam (which it does a pretty good job of). You might want to look at Deep Sky Stacker… it’s free, and plenty of tutorials are scattered around the ‘net.

Also, if you’ve never been, go to http://www.saratogaskies.com/articles/cookbook/index.html. Great resource for starting out in astrophotography. With a DSLR, you really need to shoot Lights, Darks and Flats… especially where you live; thermal noise is the bane of DSLR astrophotographers… and he covers all of the basic concepts of acquisition and processing.

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