I have gotten feedback from several people that the 'Stars + Comet Stacking' method is not giving them good results with a colorless comet and/or artifacts like star trails. I've read that this may have to do with the consistency of the background level in the photos being stacked. If that method is not working, I suggest trying "Comet stacking" and "Standard stacking" separately, and combining the two images in Photoshop. To make the 'comet only' stack cleaner be sure to use 'kappa sigma clipping' in the lights tab. However you will likely still have to do some cleanup in Photoshop. I also failed to mention that if you hold the shift key you can manually pick the comet position when it doesn't lock on automatically. Sorry for any frustration from these oversights! Feel free to comment any further suggestions, and good luck!
In DSS instead of skipping the frame when you can't lock onto the comet you can just hold shift to freely move the selection box around the image and position it on top of the comet
@@NebulaPhotos No problem, great tutorial! TH-cam was kinda lacking a nice and clear comet tutorial, so this video is very welcome. Quick question: why did you only choose about 60 images to stack? Was it not to blur the details in the tail too much?
@@pietroalessandrini Yes, mostly for that reason. I've noticed some of the best comet imagers, tend not to use more than an hour of data. Also, I was running short on time to get this video out so I didn't want to experiment too much with different amounts of photos to stack. Now that it's out, I will experiment more with processing as I have over 2 hours of usable data.
Hi Nico. Don't know if it's been mentioned already but DSS is clever enough not to have to click on every image and mark the comet. Just need to make sure the images are in time order and highlight the comet in the first image and do the same with the last image. Make sure one is marked as the reference frame. If a difference reference frame is required (frame positioning etc.) then highlight the comet in this one too and mark this as the reference frame. Clear skies!
Hi Mike, No, I hadn't heard that - definitely makes things a lot less tedious! Thank you I based my instructions off the documentation I found on their website: deepskystacker.free.fr/english/technical.htm#cometstacking Which states: Step 1: Register the comet center DeepSkyStacker can not automatically detect the comet center in the light frames. First, you must set the comet position in all your light frames. Sounds like their documentation really needs updating, esp. since 'all your light frames' was in bold suggesting it was necessary. Cheers, Nico
Thank you for this timely video! I was planning to go out and photograph ZTF tonight so I'll be watching this again (maybe several times) before I head out for my imaging session.
as always a great video. Above all, I like to watch you edit your pictures. This is still a rather difficult topic for me. I have been interested in astronomy and astrophotography since my youth. Your great channel really reignited the fire. I'm learning a lot from your videos and am planning to buy a mount to do astrophotography from my backyard. Thank you very much and always good light!
Excellent tutorial Nico. Thanks so much. Congratulations on both the physical move to NH (hopefully you don’t have to lug your rig down 3 floors anymore) and on the big step to do this full time! Congratulations! I imaged the comet last week and now have to due the processing. Perfect timing from you! Dr B from Manitoba, Canada 🇨🇦
@16:33 Try using (Shift + hover mouse) over the comet nucleus to position the marker if it's not holding on to the nucleus this way you can avoid skipping the frames. Hope it helps!
Awesome tutorial, Nico. Thank you for putting this out. I was about to start searching for something similar because it's supposed to clear up in the next day or so.
This is the video I was waiting for, great job! Yesterday I tried to shoot it after weeks of bad weather, the best sky I could get to was Bortle 5 but still worth trying. I only have access to a 300mm lens on my Sony camera + Star Adventurer; managed to take about 20 minutes of integration with 1 minute exposures (and calibration frames) before having my camera die (one thing I hate about it, in cold weather battery really doesn't last long. Note to future self, buy a spare one...). DSS with the comet function worked wonders! In the end, the final picture is far from good :) , but I'm still happy with the chase and everything that went into it. Especially because, as you said, it's once in a lifetime.
I guided on the stars. If you guide on the comet, the stars will be trailed in the subs and you would have to capture them separately if you want round stars in the final photo
You're a steely eyed missile man! I got so many great photoshop tips from this. I love the feather and density trick for making smooth selections. Adding that to my arsenal for sure. I'm definitely going to try your trick for removing gradients. I've been using the same technique to align the rgb channels, but I didn't know you could display all three channels simultaneously in the histogram panel like that. I've just been eyeballing it. Thanks again! :)
Great video. Thanks for all the work you do in presenting this info to us. One minor point, in your final photo, the ion trail is pointing down, away from the comet. That must mean your camera was significantly rotated or you rotated the images. Since the ion trail points directly away from the Sun, your photo implies the Sun was higher in the sky than the comet when you took these shots, which of course is highly unlikely. Am I wrong?
I picked the rotation angle purely on aesthetics. The telescope has a manual rotator built-in which can rotate the camera the full 360 degrees, so I am used to picking my rotation based on how I want the object to interact with a particular star field. In this case I rotated to fit in the open cluster of stars while putting the comet's nucleus roughly in the center.
16:34 if it is not detecting, just press "shift" and it will be able to mark manual the comet. (If u reading this nebulaphotos, ty for share ur knowledge :3)
Watching one of your videos is like being right next to you hanging out. Congrats on the move, hope you have better skies there. I hope to see you back in the American South West some day. We should organize a desert imaging party sometime! Thanks and well done 👍
Hi Nico. Wonderful work and imaging! I image from a Bortle 7 to 8 site and have nothing like your detail. I have a 70mm F6 refractor and Canon dSLR. Is it your dark skies or your ASI2600 which gives such good comet details(tail and head) ? Why does your comet look so massive?
I don’t have a tracker and use my sigma 150-600mm for the comet. So I have to take 1.6s exposures to avoid trailing and so for any real detail like what you got that means I would have to take about 1,800 pictures 😅 I’ve already attempted one stack with 500….selecting the comet in each frame for 1800…ugh I’m not looking forward to that part 😂 - but THANK YOU for your videos and this one as well as I have learned so much about astrophotography and loving it, especially since I learned from your videos I don’t necessarily need a tracker
If you haven't already slogged through all those frames, you can sort your light frames by time and select the comet in the first of the sequence and the last of the sequence, and DSS will figure out the rest of the frames for you. If there are any pauses or breaks in the sequence (repositioning/refocusing the camera, unchecking or deleting a bad frame) you'll need to select the comet in the frames on either end of the break as well.
Thanks for tip about the tip about the Shift key to manually select the comet. I found that the Shift key with the arrow keys give me finer control than using my mouse, but even so, I am unable to reliably select the exact center of nucleus, based on choosing the pixels in the small, zoomed in view provided. The result is a slight smearing of the comet when stacked. Any idea how to fine tune the selection down to the pixel level?
I found my own answer: If I use my mouse wheel to zoom deeply into a photo, then the ability to move the comet selector while holding the shift key also gets more granular, allowing me to better center my selection on the pixels at the center of the comet's nucleus, using the mouse. This lets me get the best resolution of the comet.
I could only get out with my scope this week due to weather and other comitments. Got some nice time-lapse images/video, but tried getting images for stacking last night and it didn't come out that great. I lowered the ISO compared to what I used for the time-lapse, and I could only get about 15 second exposure before everything starts to trail because of my mount. DSS had issues finding stars and what not. I MIGHT try once more but it's really faint now. It's going to be cloudy over the next few days so bt the time I can get back out again it might be too late. I'm sure there will be other comets eventually though. Maybe some even better.
Hey Nico, great video, enjoyed it very much, great pic too for an hour of integration time ! I have a question, can you by any chance review the askar 65phq ? I saw the 130phq and 80phq reviews, wonder if the little one holds up.
Incredible tutorial, it helps a lot to people who are just starting out. Do you use Siril? I work a lot with him and I would love to see the process in him, it would be wonderful, congratulations again for your great work and dedication to your videos, I love them and I always watch them!
Hi nico love your videos I was thinking of getting svbony 503 telescope for astrophotography would you recommend this telescope or is there a better option? Thanks
Great video Nico we had a comet last year & I tried to stack it in DSS but the comet always ended up[ smeared, I did everything as per your video but sadly it was having none of it.
In Siril, after register like normally in the stars, you can then register on the comet. Instead of picking the core In each frame, you can pic it in the first and last image of your image list, the others will be done automatically, saves some time! I used only Siril for the comet and it worked quite well. If you don’t know how to use Siril with comet pictures, just let me know 😉
Awesome video. Tried 180 sec subs. Got the comet OK, but stars were awful. Only using an AZ GTi which isn't brilliant. Doesn't look like (as usual) weather in NW England is going to play ball. At least I will know what to do next time 😁 Cheers Nico
Here's a time-saver for Deep Sky Stacker and comets: If you have an unbroken sequence of light frames, you can sort by time then select the comet in the first and last frames. DSS will interpolate the position of the rest of the frames for you. If there's a break in the sequence (like manually repositioning the camera or pausing to refocus) you'll need to select the comet in the last frame before the break and the first afterward. Same if you uncheck a (bad) light frame, that causes a break in the sequence and you'll need to select the comet in the frames on either side. Better than one by one!
Nice video, Nico! I have a question: I took 50 lights with 2min exposure (tracked DSLR), dark and bias frames, marked the comet on all of them on DSS but after stacking, all I get is a weird smudge where the comet should be but the stars stack perfectly. I tried the comet only mode, its better but still not perfect. What can it be? I also tried stacking only 10 lights but the result is barely better... Was the tracker not aligned enough? Thanks!
Hi João, I'm not sure, but you definitely aren't the only one having trouble with DSS and this tutorial - lots of comments from people who aren't having good luck with it. Maybe it has something to do with the stacking mode (like average, median, kappa sigma clipping) I think I had mine on kappa sigma clipping. Tomorrow I hope to investigate stacking comet images in SIril (also free) and maybe that will be a good alternative.
Hi Nico, Thanks for the detailed tutorial. I was trying to shoot this comet with an equatorial mount that can track the comet. I took several shots with long exposures and the stars did become sort of trailed, and when I tried to stack the pictures in DSS, it tells me that only 1 frame will be stacked. This does make sense since there is only one non-blurry object in each frame and the software would encounter some problems when aligning. May I ask if there is a solution to this type of stacking?
Great video :) How did you guide near Polaris? PHD2 complained about too big adjustments to make to RA and stopped guiding each time. Any issues like this in your session, any tips? Thanks :) EDIT: For the record, i continued unguided with less than optimal but decent results.
I didn't have that problem so I'm not sure. It's a curious error message since you would think the adjustments to RA would actually be quite small when you are close to the pole, not big. I wonder if you changed the calibration step size to a smaller value and re-calibrate if that would help.
@@NebulaPhotos Thanks for the suggestion. I did change the step size, but to larger values, which didn't help. Going to try change it to smaller values in one of the next clear nights, preferably after full moon. Maybe it's also because i have set PHD2 to analyze and adjust to RA perdiodic error (don't remember the caption of the setting, it's on my RaspberryPi, which i don't have here now).
That's great help. Can you also do a walkthrough of stacking with different softwares like WBPP or APP? because I've been trying those two and they are producing start trails those are very hard take out in processing on Pixinsight. Great video!
Chicago area here: Finally have clear nights this whole week after 2 MONTHS. But mother nature says the catch is it has to be 5F out. I did get some pictures but can't we catch a break this winter?
Thank you so much for this video! I'm stacking my frames right now, I am having one issue though. When I get to stacking parameters there is no comet tab for me in DSS 4.2.6. I can only find the comet tab in settings under "stacking settings" on the left under the options section of DSS. I do not believe it's actually effecting the stack when I change it there, as I have tried stacking the same data without selecting anything there and with selecting "Stars and Comet Stacking" under stacking settings with the same bad results. Does anyone know how I could go about getting the comet tab to show up in "stacking parameters" instead of just in "stacking settings"?
I think I actually figured it out 😂 I had clicked on a dark frame and it was previewing that when I clicked "stack checked pictures" I wouldn't have assumed that that would have caused the "comet" tab to go away, but when I clicked and previewed a light frames that had the comet nucleus selected, the "comet" tab appeared in "stacking parameters"! Hope that helps anyone else who may have been a bit confused lol.
@@BlakeTheSavage Having the same issue, I found that I didn't have a Reference frame selected. Sort your file list by Score, right-click the highest scored frame and make that one the Reference. After that, the Comet tab showed up.
Hi Nico, There is great anticipation that Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks might become visible in the same sector of the sky during totality of the 8 Apr solar eclipse, together with Jupiter and Venus. Will you be doing a feature on photographing this once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon or if not, provide some technical guidance on capturing it with a camera ? Thanks.
Yes, starting about 13 minutes in to my latest video I discuss it and show some planning tips using stellarium: th-cam.com/video/zfL0phpISAM/w-d-xo.html
Watching this again preparing for C2023 Tsuchinshan-Atlas. Hopefully the weather will get better soon but the autumn in northern Germany is not very kind to astrophotographers :(
Great video sir. One question, if the comet is moving faster than the stars? Do you still guide on the stars? In other words, do you use multi-star guiding on the stars or do you manually select the comet as the "guide star" and guide on the comet itself?
I’ve always guided on the stars. I think guiding on the comet’s nucleus is only really required at high focal length with long exposures (say 1000mm and 5 min. Subs). And guiding on the stars also allows you to add the stars back in from the same imaging run.
Dude .. I left NH .. mainly cuz I love astrophotography..( and hate shoveling, falling, walking and driving in snow.. ) so I moved to Southern Arizona .. building an observatory .. but if you're out this way.. drop me a note.. Bortel 3 backyard :) ..
Correct, when you start polar alignment, the AM5 should be in home position with polemaster in line. Both ADM and Buckeye Stargazer make accessories for attaching the polemaster to the dovetail like this.
My first tracker was original SKYWATCHER SA. As everyone knows polar alignment was tough at best. I found a DIY retrofitter,, who made 3d accesories. ASTROKRAKEN.FR. French engineer. He built a very sofisticated mount from scratch. Anyway I bought a bracket for that SW SA that allowed a POLEMASTER to be mounted. Yah, I know pricey (more than tracker) but the Qhyccd POLEMASTER is awsome! I now have SA GTI. I made a fixture allowing me to place it in the "objective" hole on its built in polar scope. This way I can continue to use it if I the added laptop isn't too much of a hassle. Too bad POLEMASTER doesn't have an ANDROID App. I use a tablet with my ASIAIR.
N.I.N.A. (Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy) has a very cool plugin called 'Orbitals'. On one hand, as it knows the location of the comet at any time, you can just tell a GoTo mount to slew and center the comet and then do a framing to your likening. On the other hand, it also knows the shift rates for RA and Dec. This comes in very handy as it can sync these values to the 'comet tracking' feature of PHD2. This allows you to guide on a star as usual, but will keep the comet centered while the stars move/trail. Unfortunately, the max shift rate PHD2 can handle is 5000arcsec/hr and the comet passed that rate already.
The stars will be trailed in one of the pictures, but you can combine with a stars picture to get a good result. I've made a tutorial here: th-cam.com/video/Z-iqu2IaTTU/w-d-xo.html
I tried all 3 Comet stacking options, and used shift click to select the comet, but I don't know why my final stacked image is not a single bright ball as it's expected? It looks like a tracked star; while all stars are pin point sharp. I took 120 images at 30 sec long with ED80 and DSLR camera.
Great video!! My DSS stack is completely black, with only a few stars visible, and no matter how many s-curves I put on it, it won't show any details. I took out my darks, and it works normally, showing the data and details. I've tried multiple dark stacks from different days, and they all give a black output. I have 17 nights with 17 different objects, each with decent data, and I can't process them :( I don't know what to do. Any ideas?
In that case, I'd probably just go without the darks for now - they make a bigger difference in the summer months, so should be fine to stack and process without them.
Hey Nico. As usual, I got a question. So I have a clear sky after midnight Fri night/Sat morning. I have some generic lenses. I have a Canon T3i and I have a 75-300mm, a 55-200mm, a Nifty Fifty, and an 18-55mm. I also have the Star Adventurer 2i Pro. Which lenses would be appropriate to get the full comet in frame? How long is the integration time before it starts looking fuzzy or having star trails? How would I make a time lapse of the comet moving? Thank you in advance for your advice. Great video!
Heya Nico, Ive been struggling with this one and keep getting a double nuclei when trying on dss, this is the first commet Im trying to photograph, untracked sadly at 105mm. Here is hoping I get more clear skies!
Yes, polar align. To make the time-lapse, calibrate and register (star align) your images as you normally would and then turn those images into the timelapse, and you will have an image where the comet moves and the stars stay still. If you have pixinsight, the blink process has a cool utility that makes the timelapse for you if you download ffmpeg.
Would there be a way to stack it well just using Starry Sky Stacker for Mac? I don’t have a Windows machine so can’t use DSS…or do we just live with the fuzzy 😂
A quick question please, I know you mentioned about not using light pollution filters/narrowband which makes sense. Would an Optolong L Pro be something that could be used because its more of a galaxy/broadband filter? I'm in more of a Bortle 5/6 area and wondered if that might help. Would be using it with an ASI 533 MC Pro. Thanks for the useful tutorial :)
From Bortle 5/6, I would suggest that you do NOT use the L Pro for capturing the comet. It blocks a lot of the green and yellow spectrum that make up the colors of the comet.
I didn't catch it in the video - did you focus your scope with a Bahtinov's mask on an actual comet, or the stars, like usual? Asking because a comet is significantly closer to Earth than stars are.
If the comet nucleus is bright enough it may work to focus on that, but a star with the mask will work just as well if not better. There is a certain point where everything is at 'infinity' focus for a telescope, and both the comet and the stars are at the same 'infinity' focus, so it doesn't matter which you focus on.
Okay, but I believe (not sure though) that for planetary imaging one cannot focus on the stars for a perfect focus on the planet. Am I wrong on this one?
@@rimantasri4578 A Bahtinov mask works best with a 'point source'. All stars are point sources meaning they are so far away we can't resolve any surface detail. A planet is close enough that with sufficient resolution, we can resolve them as disks rather than points, and yes in this case a Bahtinov mask won't work perfectly on them. You can absolutely still focus on the stars with a Bahtinov mask and then slew to a planet and have perfect focus as they are both at infinity focus for any lens/telescope.
It is part of that clamshell system holding the telescope. It was supplied with the Askar FRA300 Pro telescope instead of more traditional telescope rings. Not sure why they went with that design, but I've not had any issues with it.
I'm like super new to this, how many images do you recommend taking since you have to manually align in DSS. Or is it just a matter of how much work do you want to do?
I think 20 minimum is a good starting place, and I'm not sure if more than an hour of data is advisable since the comet moves so much. I would need to experiment more to say for sure.
Hi Nico, I'm trying to decide which lens to use on my Nikon Z, either a prime 105 mm f 2.8, or my 100 to 400 at 400mm f/5.6. All things being equal, which would you choose? I'll be attaching camera and lens to my star adventurer. Thanks!
hey Nico. After excruciatingly selecting the comet in all 840 frames, I got...... a black and white image. The stars have a faint trail on them even though I selected the comet and stars option, and I can't get any color out of my image, no matter how much I boost the saturation and vibrance. I can't get a starless layer either, because all my stars have faint trails on them. Am I just stuck? is there a workaround or a solution or do I have to re-do everything?
Try the Comet only mode. Others have reported this issue and have said doing the two stacks separately has helped. Not sure what's going on. Might also be an issue with the stacking method (average vs. median vs. kappa sigma clip) I believe I had mine on Kappa sigma clipping which helps get rid of star trails (mostly).
Just process the RGB normally and combine them, then do the comet processing part. If you use PixInsight, Alaskan Astro recently released a tutorial for mono comet processing with PI.
I have gotten feedback from several people that the 'Stars + Comet Stacking' method is not giving them good results with a colorless comet and/or artifacts like star trails. I've read that this may have to do with the consistency of the background level in the photos being stacked. If that method is not working, I suggest trying "Comet stacking" and "Standard stacking" separately, and combining the two images in Photoshop. To make the 'comet only' stack cleaner be sure to use 'kappa sigma clipping' in the lights tab. However you will likely still have to do some cleanup in Photoshop. I also failed to mention that if you hold the shift key you can manually pick the comet position when it doesn't lock on automatically. Sorry for any frustration from these oversights! Feel free to comment any further suggestions, and good luck!
Could you post a video for "cleanup" part? That's the most difficult and important one.
In DSS instead of skipping the frame when you can't lock onto the comet you can just hold shift to freely move the selection box around the image and position it on top of the comet
Good tip! I forgot about that.
@@NebulaPhotos No problem, great tutorial! TH-cam was kinda lacking a nice and clear comet tutorial, so this video is very welcome. Quick question: why did you only choose about 60 images to stack? Was it not to blur the details in the tail too much?
@@pietroalessandrini Yes, mostly for that reason. I've noticed some of the best comet imagers, tend not to use more than an hour of data. Also, I was running short on time to get this video out so I didn't want to experiment too much with different amounts of photos to stack. Now that it's out, I will experiment more with processing as I have over 2 hours of usable data.
@16:38 I came to say the same thing about holding shift to move over the comet freely if it doesn’t snap. Thanks 👍
you saved me! Thanks
great photo and video
I’ve seen hundreds of versions of this comet and yours is by far best, thanks for sharing.
Amazing tutorial you did here Nico! God bless and protect.
Hi Nico.
Don't know if it's been mentioned already but DSS is clever enough not to have to click on every image and mark the comet. Just need to make sure the images are in time order and highlight the comet in the first image and do the same with the last image. Make sure one is marked as the reference frame. If a difference reference frame is required (frame positioning etc.) then highlight the comet in this one too and mark this as the reference frame.
Clear skies!
Hi Mike,
No, I hadn't heard that - definitely makes things a lot less tedious! Thank you
I based my instructions off the documentation I found on their website: deepskystacker.free.fr/english/technical.htm#cometstacking Which states: Step 1: Register the comet center
DeepSkyStacker can not automatically detect the comet center in the light frames.
First, you must set the comet position in all your light frames.
Sounds like their documentation really needs updating, esp. since 'all your light frames' was in bold suggesting it was necessary.
Cheers, Nico
@@NebulaPhotos Yes I agree, I think the instructions are a bit dated now, I don't think this is at the top of the developer's 'to do' list... yet 🙂
Perfect timing, just eating before heading out and noticed this video!! Thanks Nico!
Very excited, I'll use your tips if I can get clear enough skies for it here!
Superb, Nico!! Stunning shot.
Thanks for the processing video on the comet. I captured it but wasn't sure how to process the subs. I really appreciate all the info.
I always wondered how to stack those images properly!
Im glad and lucky I was even able to see it. The weather had been absolutely horrible since the comet and im in Nashville, TN
Hey Nico, hey everyone!
Already liked and ready to learn
Thank you for this great video. Very explicative!
Thank you for this timely video! I was planning to go out and photograph ZTF tonight so I'll be watching this again (maybe several times) before I head out for my imaging session.
Brilliant work Nico! I learn so much from your videos! Home you’re doing well my friend (clearly you are!)😊
A great lesson on how to capture and edit comets. I will take advantage of it and use it on the C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-Atlas. Thank you very much.
What a great tutorial! Now I have to budget for a tracking mount and tripod!
Thanks Nico. Great tutorial. :)
I was hoping for this video! Thank you!
Great tutorial Nico! I'll be saving this to refer to later!
as always a great video. Above all, I like to watch you edit your pictures. This is still a rather difficult topic for me. I have been interested in astronomy and astrophotography since my youth. Your great channel really reignited the fire. I'm learning a lot from your videos and am planning to buy a mount to do astrophotography from my backyard. Thank you very much and always good light!
Excellent tutorial Nico. Thanks so much. Congratulations on both the physical move to NH (hopefully you don’t have to lug your rig down 3 floors anymore) and on the big step to do this full time! Congratulations! I imaged the comet last week and now have to due the processing. Perfect timing from you! Dr B from Manitoba, Canada 🇨🇦
Thank you Nico for this material :)
@16:33 Try using (Shift + hover mouse) over the comet nucleus to position the marker if it's not holding on to the nucleus this way you can avoid skipping the frames. Hope it helps!
I was hopeing you was going to do this video.
Awesome tutorial, Nico. Thank you for putting this out. I was about to start searching for something similar because it's supposed to clear up in the next day or so.
This is the video I was waiting for, great job! Yesterday I tried to shoot it after weeks of bad weather, the best sky I could get to was Bortle 5 but still worth trying. I only have access to a 300mm lens on my Sony camera + Star Adventurer; managed to take about 20 minutes of integration with 1 minute exposures (and calibration frames) before having my camera die (one thing I hate about it, in cold weather battery really doesn't last long. Note to future self, buy a spare one...). DSS with the comet function worked wonders! In the end, the final picture is far from good :) , but I'm still happy with the chase and everything that went into it. Especially because, as you said, it's once in a lifetime.
Thanks for your video. Can you clarificar if you guider on the stars or on the comet.
I guided on the stars. If you guide on the comet, the stars will be trailed in the subs and you would have to capture them separately if you want round stars in the final photo
Great stuff as always! I would love to see another part with the process in siril (and gimp if necessary) if you got the time! 😊
Here you go: th-cam.com/video/Z-iqu2IaTTU/w-d-xo.html :)
thank you
That was awesome can’t wait to try the editing process again tomorrow 👍
You're a steely eyed missile man! I got so many great photoshop tips from this. I love the feather and density trick for making smooth selections. Adding that to my arsenal for sure. I'm definitely going to try your trick for removing gradients. I've been using the same technique to align the rgb channels, but I didn't know you could display all three channels simultaneously in the histogram panel like that. I've just been eyeballing it. Thanks again! :)
Awesome 🔥
Great video. Thanks for all the work you do in presenting this info to us. One minor point, in your final photo, the ion trail is pointing down, away from the comet. That must mean your camera was significantly rotated or you rotated the images. Since the ion trail points directly away from the Sun, your photo implies the Sun was higher in the sky than the comet when you took these shots, which of course is highly unlikely. Am I wrong?
I picked the rotation angle purely on aesthetics. The telescope has a manual rotator built-in which can rotate the camera the full 360 degrees, so I am used to picking my rotation based on how I want the object to interact with a particular star field. In this case I rotated to fit in the open cluster of stars while putting the comet's nucleus roughly in the center.
But you are correct that if we could actually see the ion tail in the sky it would be pointed up from our vantage point.
16:34 if it is not detecting, just press "shift" and it will be able to mark manual the comet. (If u reading this nebulaphotos, ty for share ur knowledge :3)
Great image Nico. The lighter version definitely looks the best. 👍
Watching one of your videos is like being right next to you hanging out. Congrats on the move, hope you have better skies there. I hope to see you back in the American South West some day. We should organize a desert imaging party sometime! Thanks and well done 👍
Thanks Andy! Skies are pretty decent here (Bortle 3), but the clouds are another story. I definitely look forward to more trips to the SW!
@@NebulaPhotos Bortle 3 are absolutely great for east of the Mississippi, congratulations. Even in WV, I have over a 90 minute drive to Bortle 3🤩🔭📷
looks better than the picture ive seen on BBC News today
superb tutorial, as always! : )
will actually try this one now that you motivated me, haha
Awesome you are in NH now! Much better skies than cambridge.. Great video
Hi Nico. Wonderful work and imaging! I image from a Bortle 7 to 8 site and have nothing like your detail. I have a 70mm F6 refractor and Canon dSLR. Is it your dark skies or your ASI2600 which gives such good comet details(tail and head) ? Why does your comet look so massive?
I don’t have a tracker and use my sigma 150-600mm for the comet. So I have to take 1.6s exposures to avoid trailing and so for any real detail like what you got that means I would have to take about 1,800 pictures 😅 I’ve already attempted one stack with 500….selecting the comet in each frame for 1800…ugh I’m not looking forward to that part 😂 - but THANK YOU for your videos and this one as well as I have learned so much about astrophotography and loving it, especially since I learned from your videos I don’t necessarily need a tracker
If you haven't already slogged through all those frames, you can sort your light frames by time and select the comet in the first of the sequence and the last of the sequence, and DSS will figure out the rest of the frames for you. If there are any pauses or breaks in the sequence (repositioning/refocusing the camera, unchecking or deleting a bad frame) you'll need to select the comet in the frames on either end of the break as well.
I've recently photographed this comet too and I was going to go out tonight hoping for some patches of clear sky 👍
Great video and very informitive.
Thanks for tip about the tip about the Shift key to manually select the comet. I found that the Shift key with the arrow keys give me finer control than using my mouse, but even so, I am unable to reliably select the exact center of nucleus, based on choosing the pixels in the small, zoomed in view provided. The result is a slight smearing of the comet when stacked. Any idea how to fine tune the selection down to the pixel level?
I found my own answer: If I use my mouse wheel to zoom deeply into a photo, then the ability to move the comet selector while holding the shift key also gets more granular, allowing me to better center my selection on the pixels at the center of the comet's nucleus, using the mouse. This lets me get the best resolution of the comet.
Wish we had a break in the clouds so I could capture this comet! It's been cloudy every night since... November? Thanks for sharing the view!
Great video as always! FYI, If DSS won't lock on the comet, you can just hold the shift key while you manually place it. Clear skies!
You look kind of cool guy. I’m gonna follow you. Greetings from Mexico City.
I could only get out with my scope this week due to weather and other comitments. Got some nice time-lapse images/video, but tried getting images for stacking last night and it didn't come out that great. I lowered the ISO compared to what I used for the time-lapse, and I could only get about 15 second exposure before everything starts to trail because of my mount. DSS had issues finding stars and what not.
I MIGHT try once more but it's really faint now. It's going to be cloudy over the next few days so bt the time I can get back out again it might be too late.
I'm sure there will be other comets eventually though. Maybe some even better.
Hey Nico, great video, enjoyed it very much, great pic too for an hour of integration time ! I have a question, can you by any chance review the askar 65phq ? I saw the 130phq and 80phq reviews, wonder if the little one holds up.
Yes, I have a sample copy from Askar, and just need a couple fully clear nights to make a review.
Welcome to NH. Awesome tutorial! When you mentioned DSLR settings, is that on a tracker?
Thanks! Correct, on a tracker. For untracked, it would be 2 second exposures at ISO6400.
@@NebulaPhotos Got it, thanks. I'll try again after I defrost my hands😂
Incredible tutorial, it helps a lot to people who are just starting out. Do you use Siril? I work a lot with him and I would love to see the process in him, it would be wonderful, congratulations again for your great work and dedication to your videos, I love them and I always watch them!
Here you go: th-cam.com/video/Z-iqu2IaTTU/w-d-xo.html :)
@@NebulaPhotos Fantastic!! 🤓
Hi nico love your videos I was thinking of getting svbony 503 telescope for astrophotography would you recommend this telescope or is there a better option?
Thanks
Yes, it's a good one. Definitely also get the matched 0.8x reducer/flattener with it. For photography, the flattener is a must!
Great video Nico we had a comet last year & I tried to stack it in DSS but the comet always ended up[ smeared, I did everything as per your video but sadly it was having none of it.
In Siril, after register like normally in the stars, you can then register on the comet. Instead of picking the core In each frame, you can pic it in the first and last image of your image list, the others will be done automatically, saves some time! I used only Siril for the comet and it worked quite well. If you don’t know how to use Siril with comet pictures, just let me know 😉
Thank you, I will try it!
Awesome video. Tried 180 sec subs. Got the comet OK, but stars were awful. Only using an AZ GTi which isn't brilliant. Doesn't look like (as usual) weather in NW England is going to play ball. At least I will know what to do next time 😁 Cheers Nico
Here's a time-saver for Deep Sky Stacker and comets: If you have an unbroken sequence of light frames, you can sort by time then select the comet in the first and last frames. DSS will interpolate the position of the rest of the frames for you. If there's a break in the sequence (like manually repositioning the camera or pausing to refocus) you'll need to select the comet in the last frame before the break and the first afterward. Same if you uncheck a (bad) light frame, that causes a break in the sequence and you'll need to select the comet in the frames on either side. Better than one by one!
That was a fantastic video / tutorial. Thankyou. P.S the darker version looked better for me
Nice video, Nico! I have a question: I took 50 lights with 2min exposure (tracked DSLR), dark and bias frames, marked the comet on all of them on DSS but after stacking, all I get is a weird smudge where the comet should be but the stars stack perfectly. I tried the comet only mode, its better but still not perfect. What can it be? I also tried stacking only 10 lights but the result is barely better...
Was the tracker not aligned enough?
Thanks!
Hi João, I'm not sure, but you definitely aren't the only one having trouble with DSS and this tutorial - lots of comments from people who aren't having good luck with it. Maybe it has something to do with the stacking mode (like average, median, kappa sigma clipping) I think I had mine on kappa sigma clipping. Tomorrow I hope to investigate stacking comet images in SIril (also free) and maybe that will be a good alternative.
Hi Nico,
Thanks for the detailed tutorial. I was trying to shoot this comet with an equatorial mount that can track the comet. I took several shots with long exposures and the stars did become sort of trailed, and when I tried to stack the pictures in DSS, it tells me that only 1 frame will be stacked. This does make sense since there is only one non-blurry object in each frame and the software would encounter some problems when aligning. May I ask if there is a solution to this type of stacking?
Great video :) How did you guide near Polaris? PHD2 complained about too big adjustments to make to RA and stopped guiding each time. Any issues like this in your session, any tips? Thanks :)
EDIT: For the record, i continued unguided with less than optimal but decent results.
I didn't have that problem so I'm not sure. It's a curious error message since you would think the adjustments to RA would actually be quite small when you are close to the pole, not big. I wonder if you changed the calibration step size to a smaller value and re-calibrate if that would help.
@@NebulaPhotos Thanks for the suggestion. I did change the step size, but to larger values, which didn't help. Going to try change it to smaller values in one of the next clear nights, preferably after full moon. Maybe it's also because i have set PHD2 to analyze and adjust to RA perdiodic error (don't remember the caption of the setting, it's on my RaspberryPi, which i don't have here now).
Been pretty nasty weather here for the last two weeks. Finally clear tonight, so I'm setup and running two hours of integration on C/2022 E3 (ZTF)
That's great help. Can you also do a walkthrough of stacking with different softwares like WBPP or APP? because I've been trying those two and they are producing start trails those are very hard take out in processing on Pixinsight.
Great video!
Chicago area here: Finally have clear nights this whole week after 2 MONTHS. But mother nature says the catch is it has to be 5F out. I did get some pictures but can't we catch a break this winter?
Thank you so much for this video! I'm stacking my frames right now, I am having one issue though. When I get to stacking parameters there is no comet tab for me in DSS 4.2.6. I can only find the comet tab in settings under "stacking settings" on the left under the options section of DSS. I do not believe it's actually effecting the stack when I change it there, as I have tried stacking the same data without selecting anything there and with selecting "Stars and Comet Stacking" under stacking settings with the same bad results. Does anyone know how I could go about getting the comet tab to show up in "stacking parameters" instead of just in "stacking settings"?
I think I actually figured it out 😂 I had clicked on a dark frame and it was previewing that when I clicked "stack checked pictures" I wouldn't have assumed that that would have caused the "comet" tab to go away, but when I clicked and previewed a light frames that had the comet nucleus selected, the "comet" tab appeared in "stacking parameters"! Hope that helps anyone else who may have been a bit confused lol.
@@BlakeTheSavage Having the same issue, I found that I didn't have a Reference frame selected. Sort your file list by Score, right-click the highest scored frame and make that one the Reference. After that, the Comet tab showed up.
Nice job!! Love your channel. I wish that we astronomers get away from calling comets "dirty snowballs " as we have found no water or ice on a comet.
Hi Nico,
There is great anticipation that Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks might become visible in the same sector of the sky during totality of the 8 Apr solar eclipse, together with Jupiter and Venus. Will you be doing a feature on photographing this once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon or if not, provide some technical guidance on capturing it with a camera ? Thanks.
Yes, starting about 13 minutes in to my latest video I discuss it and show some planning tips using stellarium: th-cam.com/video/zfL0phpISAM/w-d-xo.html
Watching this again preparing for C2023 Tsuchinshan-Atlas. Hopefully the weather will get better soon but the autumn in northern Germany is not very kind to astrophotographers :(
Great video sir. One question, if the comet is moving faster than the stars? Do you still guide on the stars? In other words, do you use multi-star guiding on the stars or do you manually select the comet as the "guide star" and guide on the comet itself?
I’ve always guided on the stars. I think guiding on the comet’s nucleus is only really required at high focal length with long exposures (say 1000mm and 5 min. Subs). And guiding on the stars also allows you to add the stars back in from the same imaging run.
Dude .. I left NH .. mainly cuz I love astrophotography..( and hate shoveling, falling, walking and driving in snow.. ) so I moved to Southern Arizona .. building an observatory .. but if you're out this way.. drop me a note.. Bortel 3 backyard :) ..
Hi Nico, any recommendations for stacking software on Linux? And also some Photoshop equivalents? Again, superb video! 🙂
Yes, Siril and GIMP. I just release part 2 which covers these software (both free and linux compatible): th-cam.com/video/Z-iqu2IaTTU/w-d-xo.html
You answered my question, that's a POLEMASTER underlung on the vixen bar. Is the AM5 mount home position in line with it's Polar alignment ?
Correct, when you start polar alignment, the AM5 should be in home position with polemaster in line. Both ADM and Buckeye Stargazer make accessories for attaching the polemaster to the dovetail like this.
My first tracker was original SKYWATCHER SA. As everyone knows polar alignment was tough at best. I found a DIY retrofitter,, who made 3d accesories. ASTROKRAKEN.FR. French engineer. He built a very sofisticated mount from scratch. Anyway I bought a bracket for that SW SA that allowed a POLEMASTER to be mounted. Yah, I know pricey (more than tracker) but the Qhyccd POLEMASTER is awsome! I now have SA GTI. I made a fixture allowing me to place it in the "objective" hole on its built in polar scope. This way I can continue to use it if I the added laptop isn't too much of a hassle. Too bad POLEMASTER doesn't have an ANDROID App. I use a tablet with my ASIAIR.
N.I.N.A. (Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy) has a very cool plugin called 'Orbitals'.
On one hand, as it knows the location of the comet at any time, you can just tell a GoTo mount to slew and center the comet and then do a framing to your likening.
On the other hand, it also knows the shift rates for RA and Dec. This comes in very handy as it can sync these values to the 'comet tracking' feature of PHD2. This allows you to guide on a star as usual, but will keep the comet centered while the stars move/trail.
Unfortunately, the max shift rate PHD2 can handle is 5000arcsec/hr and the comet passed that rate already.
I think Siril has a much faster routine for Comets and works on Mac. Maybe you like to make a tutorial on that? Anyway great video!
I tried it but I had very questionable results with either an elongated nucleo or trailed stars 😟
The stars will be trailed in one of the pictures, but you can combine with a stars picture to get a good result. I've made a tutorial here: th-cam.com/video/Z-iqu2IaTTU/w-d-xo.html
I tried all 3 Comet stacking options, and used shift click to select the comet, but I don't know why my final stacked image is not a single bright ball as it's expected? It looks like a tracked star; while all stars are pin point sharp. I took 120 images at 30 sec long with ED80 and DSLR camera.
Thank you for the video.
To me, Stars and Comet stacking always fail. The resulting image does not show any color of comet.
Have you ever used the comet tracking in PHD? I'm curious if it gives an different results. I'd try myself, but you know....clouds for weeks. 😥
Great video!! My DSS stack is completely black, with only a few stars visible, and no matter how many s-curves I put on it, it won't show any details. I took out my darks, and it works normally, showing the data and details. I've tried multiple dark stacks from different days, and they all give a black output. I have 17 nights with 17 different objects, each with decent data, and I can't process them :( I don't know what to do. Any ideas?
In that case, I'd probably just go without the darks for now - they make a bigger difference in the summer months, so should be fine to stack and process without them.
@@NebulaPhotos I'll give it a try, thanks!
@@NebulaPhotos Last night, I took my first comet images and wouldn't have known about the comet functions. I'm excited to give this a try today!
Im having the same problem
i tired to manually stack about 10 mins of exposures and couldn't get the tail. ill have to try this
Hey Nico. As usual, I got a question. So I have a clear sky after midnight Fri night/Sat morning. I have some generic lenses. I have a Canon T3i and I have a 75-300mm, a 55-200mm, a Nifty Fifty, and an 18-55mm. I also have the Star Adventurer 2i Pro. Which lenses would be appropriate to get the full comet in frame? How long is the integration time before it starts looking fuzzy or having star trails? How would I make a time lapse of the comet moving? Thank you in advance for your advice. Great video!
Hi Nikko.. at what bortle sky was made your pic ?... very nice
Bortle 3, first quarter moon
Heya Nico, Ive been struggling with this one and keep getting a double nuclei when trying on dss, this is the first commet Im trying to photograph, untracked sadly at 105mm.
Here is hoping I get more clear skies!
👍👍👍👍
What’s the best way to do a Timelapse of the comet? Do you polar align?
Yes, polar align. To make the time-lapse, calibrate and register (star align) your images as you normally would and then turn those images into the timelapse, and you will have an image where the comet moves and the stars stay still. If you have pixinsight, the blink process has a cool utility that makes the timelapse for you if you download ffmpeg.
@@NebulaPhotos thank you so much, and thank you for getting me into this hobby. Absolutely love your videos.
Would there be a way to stack it well just using Starry Sky Stacker for Mac? I don’t have a Windows machine so can’t use DSS…or do we just live with the fuzzy 😂
I don’t think starry sky stacker has a comet mode, but Siril does, I might make a video on that
A quick question please, I know you mentioned about not using light pollution filters/narrowband which makes sense. Would an Optolong L Pro be something that could be used because its more of a galaxy/broadband filter? I'm in more of a Bortle 5/6 area and wondered if that might help. Would be using it with an ASI 533 MC Pro. Thanks for the useful tutorial :)
From Bortle 5/6, I would suggest that you do NOT use the L Pro for capturing the comet. It blocks a lot of the green and yellow spectrum that make up the colors of the comet.
@@NebulaPhotos That's great, thanks very much for the reply. If I can get a cloud free night I'll give it a go unfiltered with my Redcat 51.
I don';t get asked if I want to save the images this could be crucially where I am not having any success, how do I make sure it asks?
I didn't catch it in the video - did you focus your scope with a Bahtinov's mask on an actual comet, or the stars, like usual? Asking because a comet is significantly closer to Earth than stars are.
If the comet nucleus is bright enough it may work to focus on that, but a star with the mask will work just as well if not better. There is a certain point where everything is at 'infinity' focus for a telescope, and both the comet and the stars are at the same 'infinity' focus, so it doesn't matter which you focus on.
Okay, but I believe (not sure though) that for planetary imaging one cannot focus on the stars for a perfect focus on the planet. Am I wrong on this one?
@@rimantasri4578 A Bahtinov mask works best with a 'point source'. All stars are point sources meaning they are so far away we can't resolve any surface detail. A planet is close enough that with sufficient resolution, we can resolve them as disks rather than points, and yes in this case a Bahtinov mask won't work perfectly on them. You can absolutely still focus on the stars with a Bahtinov mask and then slew to a planet and have perfect focus as they are both at infinity focus for any lens/telescope.
@@NebulaPhotos thank you for an explanation!
Do you need to take calibration frames when using a star tracker? Also are your DSLR recommended settings the same if using a star tracker?
Yes, it is best to always take them.
Is there a Siril tutorial for the comet? I can't use DSS
Just finished it: th-cam.com/video/Z-iqu2IaTTU/w-d-xo.html
@@NebulaPhotos Thanks so much, worked like a charm!!!
Hi. May I ask where you got the angular looking spacer in between the main scope and dovetail bar? Thanks.
It is part of that clamshell system holding the telescope. It was supplied with the Askar FRA300 Pro telescope instead of more traditional telescope rings. Not sure why they went with that design, but I've not had any issues with it.
👍👍
I'm like super new to this, how many images do you recommend taking since you have to manually align in DSS. Or is it just a matter of how much work do you want to do?
I think 20 minimum is a good starting place, and I'm not sure if more than an hour of data is advisable since the comet moves so much. I would need to experiment more to say for sure.
Hi Nico, I'm trying to decide which lens to use on my Nikon Z, either a prime 105 mm f 2.8, or my 100 to 400 at 400mm f/5.6. All things being equal, which would you choose? I'll be attaching camera and lens to my star adventurer. Thanks!
The 105mm f/2.8 I think. Might be hard to get the long tail with the moon light, but it's worth a shot
hi nico, after you pasted the starless version, it will be some trail mixed with stars photo, any idea to fix that?
Maybe mask them out or clone-stamp - I did notice them, but had to finish the video because I was under the wire to get it out
Is it possible to capture it now?
Clouds in Calgary can't see anything, haven't been able to look at stars for a month!
hey Nico. After excruciatingly selecting the comet in all 840 frames, I got...... a black and white image. The stars have a faint trail on them even though I selected the comet and stars option, and I can't get any color out of my image, no matter how much I boost the saturation and vibrance. I can't get a starless layer either, because all my stars have faint trails on them. Am I just stuck? is there a workaround or a solution or do I have to re-do everything?
Try the Comet only mode. Others have reported this issue and have said doing the two stacks separately has helped. Not sure what's going on. Might also be an issue with the stacking method (average vs. median vs. kappa sigma clip) I believe I had mine on Kappa sigma clipping which helps get rid of star trails (mostly).
@@NebulaPhotos how would you combine the two comet bound and star bound stacks together?
@@keyswitches9269 Try 'lighten' or 'screen' blend mode in the layers panel in Photoshop or GIMP
How does the process differ if you’re using mono? Do you do the full process for each filter? And then what?
Just process the RGB normally and combine them, then do the comet processing part. If you use PixInsight, Alaskan Astro recently released a tutorial for mono comet processing with PI.