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Oscar:With newts, these are my favorite type of stars https://www.astrobin.com/dosgf6/J/ diffraction spikes = proper telescope  Sadly I have a C6 and a mediocre 72ed. |
4.79
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Thanks Craig, appreciate it. For my stars i do some tricks to make them "fit" the rest of the image nicely. Subjective of course. First and foremost i think its best to separate stars with StarXt only after the first round of stretching, at least for galaxies. Before all this i run BXT with the appropriate settings, if the starfield is busy i use a higher setting for stellar sharpening to enable a harder stretch without blowing out the brighter stars. For stretching usually i do an Asinh stretch first which will help bring out star colours nicely, this is followed by a hyperbolic stretch of some kind (specific only per target/image) to make the fainter stars presentable. After this i run StarXT and continue to stretch both the star layer and starless layer separately. Arguably the most important part is the kit and how it functions. The mirror in my ONTC appears to be very good and so working with stars is easy, but another very important factor is to make sure the scope is well ventilated and cooled to ambient temperatures. That means a fan is not really optional with an aperture of 8" or more, without one stars can have that soft fuzzy look to them which will make them stick out like a sore thumb. Of course its also important to image the target only when it is highest in the sky. Less atmosphere in the way = better stars (and image overall). |
9.03
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This is what I strive for,  What I hate is fake diffraction spikes, such as ones added with software. At the click of a button a mediocre 51mm refractor image can become an award winner. It takes a lot of effort to keep a newtonian in collimation and I feel adding spikes to a refractor is sandbagging. Adding diffraction spikes is simply adding elements to an image and not in the spirit of photography, in my opinion. Dan |
8.11
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Dan Brown: I would agree. If you really want diffraction spikes and you are using an optical system that doesn't create them, just tape a fake one to your dew shield. At least that way it is a real diffraction effect. |
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8.11
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Too add to my thoughts above. If you you are adding diffraction spikes via software you really are cheating because you are not having to deal with the reduction in contrast that comes with a real obstructed aperture. You can't have the contrast that an unobstructed aperture provides and diffraction spikes as well. It's just not an honest image.
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7.22
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TiffsAndAstro:Oscar:With newts, these are my favorite type of stars https://www.astrobin.com/dosgf6/J/ 2 crisscrossing strings taped on the front would work |
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8.11
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Oscar:TiffsAndAstro:Oscar:With newts, these are my favorite type of stars https://www.astrobin.com/dosgf6/J/ Crisscrossing strings and a paper disk in the middle! |
9.55
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I'd say that Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe and Matt Damon are very good looking stars. Jodie Foster and Emma Thompson are also among the best looking stars.  |
11.18
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Tony Gondola:Jon Rista: Thanks. ....which point? O_o |
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11.18
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The current IOTD for today, i think has pretty nice stars. Not perfectly round, which I think most imagers would agree is probably one of the most significant aesthetic star quality factors. But this image has a good diversity in star size, color, and intensity: https://www.astrobin.com/full/pfolta/D/ To me, size in an astrophoto does matter, as it helps add that third dimension. Sure, with technical perfection, most stars would be true points. But we don't have perfection. Further, there are differences between stars, and if we neutralize those differences in images that do not totally eliminate the stars (which is for other entirely valid aesthetic purposes), my opinion is we lose something. I like seeing the differences in stars, and I think maintaining those differences as realistically as possible helps us understand the nature of the region of space we are imaging or observing. |
1.20
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TiffsAndAstro: Diffraction spikes = poor-man's light-bucket. The examples I posted earlier were from an AP 300mm Maksutov. This is the nearest to optical perfection you could wish for. But it does come at a price. Newtonians are not in the same league, even after all the fiddling with AI software. A large CDK comes closer. |
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8.11
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MaksPower:TiffsAndAstro: I think that part of the problem is that most Newtonian astrographs really aren't that well optimized optically. To really do it well, the secondary should be as small as possible and sized to the sensor. The vanes should be very thin, not thick and 3 vanes or curved would be better than 4. Of course these are thigs you can modify or build from scratch if you roll you own so to speak. |
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7.22
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MaksPower: prove it; the images you linked don't prove your point |
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MaksPower:TiffsAndAstro: Deleted |
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1.20
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Oscar:MaksPower: 'kay... Two from the master himself - Roland Christen.... perfect round airy disks, without being blown out (overexposed). Before the days of software tools like BlurXterminator and deconvolution. He also imaged the Einstein Cross - Huchra's lens - with it and resolved 4 of the quasar images. I have yet to see any scope match that under 20" aperture, with or without diffraction spikes.   |
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7.22
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MaksPower:Oscar:MaksPower: Alright, but to straight up say a scope with diffraction spikes equals a poor-man's light bucket doesn't make much sense; that sort of resolving capability is useless for most APers because our skies are crap in terms of seeing (at least, mine anyway); I'd much rather get a newt that can be F/5 or F/4 and be more matched to my seeing limitations in resolving power this thing is just for guys with big wallets and observatories over the clouds and besides, I can just put some crisscrossing paracord on that Mak and get diffraction spikes; is that then a poor-man's light bucket? |
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8.11
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The spider vanes in the Newtonian design do not reduce resolution, just contrast. Under the same seeing conditions I would expect the resolving power of both designs, if of similar aperture, to have the same resolving power. Both systems are diffraction limited. This is fundamental and a non-argument.
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1.20
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'kay… sure, I know the theory very well, my first degree is a BSc in physics, and I've built a few scopes in my time. z Bootes… at 0.8 arcsec - you could drive a truck through that gap. Show me a 10" newtonian that can match any of those images, out of camera. No BlurX, no sharpening. Even a 16" anything for that matter… it isn't that easy. |
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MaksPower: Balderdash. I can easily split Z Bootes with my tenner. Good seeing is the only pre-requisite. |
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Sure so can my 10”. But the point of this thread was the best looking stars. Those are as near as it gets to perfection - correctly expose with color, and no fiddling in post. And stars don’t have spikes.
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My tenner got no spikes and neither have the stars.
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8.11
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MaksPower: I don't know how anyone with a BSc in physics can say that. It's all down to the seeing. Macs of any design are not magic, they have slightly better contrast than a typical Newtonian but not as good as a refractor. They do suffer from varying degrees of chromatic aberration depending on the design although that tends to be small. This all reminds of back in the day when people would pay crazy amounts of money for the little 3.5" Questar, quoted in the ads as "The best telescope in the world". Yes they were nice but not magic. A good 4" refractor would do better and a good 6" Newtonian would leave it in the dust. |
2.39
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I like the spikes that spiders produce, but I am not a mirror man, so... I have been using Seti Astro's NB to RGB stars tool and it produces what I think are some great, colorful stars. In BlurX I add 15% on average to the halo to create more space for the color and reduce the star by 15%. And that's my 2 cents.  |
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The moment you start using BlurX and the rest it’s all artificial - you may as well pull out the crayons and watercolours. Pretty picture perhaps but little to do with reality. You could pick any DSO you like and paste a bunch of randoms dots over it and very few would have a clue whether that was the real star field, or not. With AI few will even know what’s real vs what’s not in a few years time. You won’t even need a rig - just type in “make me an image of <favourite object>” and it will fake it, complete with pinpoint (artificial) stars. |
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Owch!
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