I’m curious how many hours you spend on one specific target each evening before moving to a different one on that same evening (because any additional frames you take the further away from zenith start to degrade your integration)?
What metrics do you take into account before you’ve decided it’s not “worth it” to spend time on more frames in a given evening and decide to return to that target instead the NEXT evening?
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Hi Meg,
Usually if the weather allows it, in the Summer bewteen 5 to 6h. In the Winter around 8-9h. If I'm doing monochrome, I'll do the same per filter.
But this is in my best nights and if the weather is my friend. If don't, about 3h to 4h in the Summer and 5h to 6h in the Winter. And there are days that I do 1h to 2h. But my record was 6h45min this current Summer and I did about 9h straight last Winter.
Regards,
Cesar
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about quality degrading further away from the zenith, this is not much of a problem when doing monochrome narrowband, of course, unless I'm imaging something barely visible on the horizon, which I would never do. when I think it's not worth it to continue, it's because the DSO just looks "bland" on the subs, but this is a false feeling that I shouldn't follow; the big difference is when you have the 20hrs of data stacked up - in a lot of cases, that's when you'll see the real beauty and processing potential; I'm focusing now on one object, and I shouldn't image any other object until this one is finished, that's the way I think, and it requires a lot of self control because I feel like going to 10 different targets the same night and doing live stacking; I have an EAA addiction  I don't spend one night using more than one filter (anymore, unless, I'm doing a narrowband project and need maybe 1-3hrs of RGB data for stars, which can be taken in one night) so, the approximate hours I spend on one target, including bad subs, these days, is about 5-6hrs, maybe 7hr if I rush to set up at dusk and after trashing bad subs (because of dawn approaching or bad guiding), I usually end up with about 5 hours of useable data
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Most of my images are taken over multiple nights…. Usually I will image a target from 45° altitude until 45° altitude. In winter, for a target at -26° Dec, that's about 7hrs, in summer, perhaps shorter depending on the length of astronomical darkness.
I RARELY spend less than 1 full night on a target, my average integration time on Astrobin is about 8.7hrs, and recently, my images have been heading towards 14~30hrs.
I will almost always have 1 or 2 images on the go - largely because I will have targets that I can focus on during moonlit nights (narrowband targets, or bright star clusters etc) and on moonless nights, I can focus on my primary project (regardless of if its narrowband or broadband light…)
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I image a target from -3.5 to +3.5 hour angle, so up to 7 hours.
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Because of my restricted view of the sky (trees) and the fact that I would rather poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick than go portable. The most I can get is 4 hours. I'm shooting narrowband under Bortle 8 so as others have mentioned, altitude isn't a huge factor. If you do have sky access from horizon to horizon, I see no reason not to max out the available time as everything is automated anyway. Super long integrations aren't the badge of endurance that it used to be but it does pay off and is so much worth doing.
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I’m 4 years into the hobby. I continue to stick with OSC. I started out doing 2-3 targets a night…often just 16-32 subs per target. This is a period of rapid skill development for a beginner and repetition is probably more important than quality.
As I admired others’ images, it was easy to note the long acquisition times. “But that’s so boring!” Of course, after trying it, it’s not so boring after all.
That being said, I didn’t suddenly start exposing for 30 hours. At the moment, my best stuff is hovering around 4-5 hours, or however long it takes for 120 subs. The max has been perhaps 9 hours (2-3 nights), which is significant for OSC.
Moving to mono would triple that because I’d use one filter per session for most targets. At the moment, I do not have the patience for that, nor the increased time in calibrating and processing. I tend to seek instant gratification.
That being said, my patience is growing, and so will the exposure time.
As I “use up” all the obvious targets cataloged in the sky, I’ll move to dark nebula and try to improve on the worse of my previous work. There may be a point where I’ll work on one target per season, gathering a bajillion subs and eliminating the worse ones. The result will likely be something more breathtaking, and it would be a sign of Astro maturity.
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I shoot the entire duration of darkness and a half hour on either side on a single target. I try to time them so I get more time on zenith and to the west where my skies are darker, but I don't even get that picky. They are fair game to me as long as they aren't too low to the horizon. I generally shoot 15-30 hours per target, so one filter per night for several nights. The only time I shoot multiple targets in a night is for remarkable conjunctions or comets. I should get more analytical and maximize target time at zenith, but I run three rigs, so just getting them all on a target and running is my current threshold for success.
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I am using Voyager and there these decisions are taken by what is called the Target Manager. What I do is put in the constraints for each target, and there's a lot of constraints to choose from. After a couple of months of use, the constraints that I have been using most are altitude (minimal 30°) and what they call 'moon avoidance lorentzian', an algorithm that includes both moon-phase and angular distance to the moon. Together with target priority settings this has given me enough flexibility to plan my targets. In a 7 hour night, this may hit two to three different targets, each imaged somewhere between 2-4 hours.
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Vitali:
I image a target from -3.5 to +3.5 hour angle, so up to 7 hours. |
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Alex Nicholas:
Most of my images are taken over multiple nights.... Usually I will image a target from 45° altitude until 45° altitude. In winter, for a target at -26° Dec, that's about 7hrs, in summer, perhaps shorter depending on the length of astronomical darkness.
I RARELY spend less than 1 full night on a target, my average integration time on Astrobin is about 8.7hrs, and recently, my images have been heading towards 14~30hrs.
I will almost always have 1 or 2 images on the go - largely because I will have targets that I can focus on during moonlit nights (narrowband targets, or bright star clusters etc) and on moonless nights, I can focus on my primary project (regardless of if its narrowband or broadband light...) Would you mind sharing with me your process for calculating this? I’m a relative newbie and would love any insight on apps/ software that helps with efficiency.
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Many factors determine how much time one can use on a specific object in an evening. The maximum amount of time for a target in an evening is determined by its Declination and your location. I think for anyone, it's hard to spend more than 8 hr on a target in an evening. We typically want to observe a target when it's sufficiently high on the sky (above 30 deg, or 40 deg, depending on target and person). This sets the 8 hr maximum length. When you have multiple projects and multiple targets, you may want to sequence them and optimize the imaging condition to be even higher above (50 deg, for example). This leads to even better image quality, but this prevents very long integration on a single object within a night.
So there are many considerations. I never dare to think that I can complete an object in a night. My imaging for any target is always split into multiple nights in order to optimize the imaging conditions.
In terms of total integration, you will need experience. How much time is needed strongly depends on your imaging condition and your personal desire on how deep to go. For the imaging condition part, there might be formulas. But it's really a question of how deep you want to go, and no one can answer this for you. Even I am often uncertain about how much time I should spend on an object. My way of finding out is to first get some moderately deep images (like a total of 4 hr of integration in one filter in just one night), calibrate and stack them and see if they are deep enough. Then I decide if I want to add more integration (and how much more).
Hope this is helpful.
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That's a very sensible approach. Since you would have to go another 8 hours to increase SNR x 2, it seems that the first 3 or 4 hours are the most important with diminishing returns after that.
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Last night was forecast clear 8 till 4 So one hour  |
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If I have clear skies, I image around one hour post sunset to one hour before sunrise. We have a lot of forest fires again this year, and it wrecks the transparency, but I image anyway and try to pick brighter objects. If I can shoot the same target the entire night(rare due to obstructions), I will. Otherwise, I usually pick two targets, one that is above 40 degrees
, which I image for a few hours, and then switch to the second one once it gets to 40 degrees. But it depends on the target a bit too.
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single target for me ~ 3 hrs per night. I cannot leave my gear out as I am not on my property so…. Only out when I am awake. Presently 9:30 Pm - 1AM is my time frame. OSC color right now. I will get linger exposures in the winter as the sun goes down earlier.
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