M45, The Pleiades, With a DSLR

[Mike Lewis]

While there are numerous reasons why many folks migrate to dedicated astro imaging cameras as they progress in the hobby, there are plenty of images out there that are captured using a DSLR.

Here is one example, of a very common object, The Pleiades (Object 45 from the Messier catalogue), that benefited from some dark skies, and of course a very stable tracking mount.

The camera was just a used T2i (550D) that I had picked up for this purpose. The camera was modified by removing the low pass filter, to allow for better Hydrogen-alpha response, although on an image like this, that modification made no difference in what was captured.

Equipment:

Canon 550D (astro-modified, clear glass filter)
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 580mm f/5.8 Astrograph Refractor

Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC

Light Frames:
28 x 480 secs (3 hrs 44 mins) @ ISO 800

Dark Frames:
10 x 480 secs (1 hr 20 mins) @ ISO 800

Bias Frames:
30 x 1/4000th sec

Comments and critiques welcomed!

ML

 

[JimFox]

Wow Mike! These astro shots of yours are just blowing my mind! Such incredible quality and down with what some would consider a lower quality DSLR.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Yes, in the case of astro images, the number of pixels or the camera quality in general is usually not as important as a number of other things, starting with the tracking mount. In fact, many of the best selling dedicated astro cameras even today are still using a 4/3rds sized sensor that sports 8 megapixels. The fact that it is cooled, and is monochrome, are what make it special for astro. It is also a bit counter intuitive, but it turns out that better color astro images can be made with a mono sensor and filters than can be made with a Bayer filtered typical one shot color sensor.

ML

 

[AlanLichty]

That's a seriously nice shot.

I did stop to look up what your T2i was connected to for this type of imagery. Definitely not something I have laying around on my shelf. I am curious why you would go cheap on the camera given the cost of what you connected it to?

 

[Mike Lewis]

Alan,

Well, you have discovered the 'dirty little secret' of astro imaging, once you start to get serious with it. It starts to cost serious money! So in this case, once I realized I was hooked, I started to upgrade my gear as I got better and started to realize where i could improve things to get better results. But with the cost of things being what they are, I had to do this in stages. So the expensive mount had to come first, as it truly is the most important piece. Then I went for a telescope, as they have a definite visual impact on star shapes, especially at the edges of the FOV. Then eventually came the cooled mono camera with a filter wheel.

 

[AlanLichty]

Yeah - when I finally scrolled down to the Order Now button on the site for the MyT mount I had to pause for a moment to catch my breath when I saw the price.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is absolutely gorgeous.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Yeah - when I finally scrolled down to the Order Now button on the site for the MyT mount I had to pause for a moment to catch my breath when I saw the price.

Yes, unfortunately mounts get expensive if you want something reliable. You can spend a third of this, and get something that will work with a lot of care and feeding. The MyT is a truly robotic mount, meaning once it is set up and aligned, it can be operated completely remotely. That is important for the day in the far future when I am able to site this gear in a remote dark sky site and operate if from my house, instead of freezing my buns off outside. After all, I haven't spent enough money on this hobby yet, so i need to find a way to spend more

But in truth, if you like to tinker with stuff, and like the engineering challenges, you can get good images spending lots less money. You just have to be prepared to have issues to solve many times when you go out to capture data.

ML

 

[Mike Lewis]

This is absolutely gorgeous.

Ben,

Thanks a lot! I was very excited when I saw how this was going to come out. It is always an amazing transformation from what the single light frames look like to what the calibrated, dark subtracted, aligned, stacked, and stretched final image with extra tweaks for saturation and sharpness end up looking like. I think I enjoy the post processing part of astrophotography almost as much as being out under the stars beating on the gear and collecting the data. It is certainly all worth it when an image comes together!

ML

 

[Bob Denton]

You put in so much work, the result is great!

 

[Mike Lewis]

Hopefully not dragging this thread out too far, but I thought I would post one of the original unprocessed frames, a jpg converted from an unprocessed RAW file, just for comparison, in case anyone was interested. This is of course just one of the frames used to make the final image, before it has been dark subtracted and bias adjusted:

You can tell if is the same scene, but a lot of the fainter detail is not visible yet.

ML

 

[Tom Narwid]

While there are numerous reasons why many folks migrate to dedicated astro imaging cameras as they progress in the hobby, there are plenty of images out there that are captured using a DSLR.

Here is one example, of a very common object, The Pleiades (Object 45 from the Messier catalogue), that benefited from some dark skies, and of course a very stable tracking mount.

The camera was just a used T2i (550D) that I had picked up for this purpose. The camera was modified by removing the low pass filter, to allow for better Hydrogen-alpha response, although on an image like this, that modification made no difference in what was captured.


View attachment 13284


Equipment:

Canon 550D (astro-modified, clear glass filter)
Software Bisque MyT Mount
Stellarvue SVQ100 580mm f/5.8 Astrograph Refractor

Software:
Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8
Lightroom CC

Light Frames:
28 x 480 secs (3 hrs 44 mins) @ ISO 800

Dark Frames:
10 x 480 secs (1 hr 20 mins) @ ISO 800

Bias Frames:
30 x 1/4000th sec

Comments and critiques welcomed!

ML

As good as any I have seen with a astro camera.