Hello,

I am in the Army in Iraq and am trying to maintain my interest in astrophotography. Over here the only piece of equipment I own is a Olympus 5050Z. I point in the general direction using sandbags and hope for the best. I could capture the Comet, quality is much to be desired. Any suggestions as to how I can get the most out of my current situation? PS I also have Photoshop 6.

V/R

Gene
US Army
Bagdhad, Iraq

Hi There,

We sure appreciate and are proud of you guys that are deployed over there. You must have dark desert skies, except for your compound that is.

Set your ISO to the fastest you can 400-1600 whatever you can get, make sure your F-stop is F4 or faster.

To keep star trailing to a minimum, keep your exposures under 30 seconds.

You can try to take a bunch of short 8-30 sec. exposures and stack them all in Adobe 6, using layering and set the opacity at 50% to help you align them all together.

Try not to change the camera position between shots, this will minize loss of overall field, you may have some loss or overlap, Then crop the overlap edges.

Try to use levels in adobe, use the slider bar to adjust your image for maximum detail. Levels is under the "image" "adjust" menu.

Play with the other settings, Color balance, Brightness & contrast, and even variations.


Hopefully this helps.

Please post your results to the forum and welcome!

__________________
Best Regards,
John Chumack
The Chumack Observatories
MPC 838 Dayton Research Station
MPC H66 Yellow Springs Research Station
www.galacticimages.com

Stacking images with Registax is much easier. The program aligns and then stacks them, performs optimization, and more. Free download.

http://registax.astronomy.net/

I would like to see your images no matter what they look like.
I learn soemthing from everything I analyze.

Thanks for your support in Iraq.

I served in the U.S. Navy on a submarine in the 1970s.

I am very proud of you and everyone around you. It must be very nice to have internet access out there in the field like that. If any of you guys want to email me, please feel free (charbell at bellsouth.net) . Hang in there! We are rooting for you and praying too.

I remember the submarine patrols I went on where there was no contact at all for a month at a time. Not good.

I go to mass on Sunday's with a guy who is flying in and out of over there on one of those big cargo planes with the Air National Guaird. Should I get him to make a special delivery????

__________________
Heaven's Gate Observatory H47
32° 15' 59"N, 90° 51' 22"W
http://www.quantumhyperspace.com/

Yes I agree, if you can download Registax2 free software, then use it first to auto-align your images, much easier, the version2 will stack a variety of image formats as well.


I would still use Adobe for final color balancing and adjustments, as the registax color adjustment feature is not a robust as Adobe Photoshop.


If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Good luck with your night sky shooting.

P.S.
I too was in the military, US Navy from 82 to 86, an AQ repairing F14 black boxes & sidewinder missile harnesses, AIMD, NAS Oceana, Virginia Beach, VA.

__________________
Best Regards,
John Chumack
The Chumack Observatories
MPC 838 Dayton Research Station
MPC H66 Yellow Springs Research Station
www.galacticimages.com

Thank you all for your suggestions, I will download registax and try it.
Yes there are dark skys here also very little air turbulence. I cannot wait to get home to start work on a home built GEM and 8" newt. in June or July.


Used to be stationed at FT. Monroe, VA so I am very familiar with Oceana NAS, love that area!!!

Take Care,

Gene

Somewhere in
Bagdhad, Iraq