How long can I expose for astrophotography on an 8-inch Dobsonian without star trails?
Asked 5/5/2016
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I’m shooting through an 8-inch GSO Dobsonian (1200mm focal length) with a Nikon D5500 and a UHC filter. I want to image the night sky and stack the results using light, dark, and bias frames. Is it better to take 50–100 exposures around 20–30 seconds each, or use shorter exposures around 8–10 seconds and stack more of them? My main concern is avoiding star trails with this telescope setup.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
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In order to determine the longest shutter time you can use without getting star trails you must calculate the angle of view (AoV) your images have with the setup you are using. With a camera attached to a telescope there are several variables that will affect the angle of view shown in the resulting images.
This is a little difficult to calculate because the focal length of a telescope is different than the focal length of a camera lens when calculating angle of view. About the closest analogy that might be used to explain the difference is that with each different eyepiece one uses on the same telescope you are doing pretty much the same thing as attaching a camera with a different sized sensor to the same photographic lens. A more powerful eyepiece has the same effect as a smaller sensor by showing only the center of the entire field of view projected by the telescope's primary lens or mirror. With a camera mounted there is also the consideration of the amount of vignetting (if any) caused by the adapter tube between camera and telescope being narrower than the camera's field of view.
The narrower the field of view the shorter your maximum exposure time per frame can be before the Earth's motion causes the stars, as seen through the non-tracking telescope, to trail. The larger you intend to display your final image for viewing also reduces the maximum shutter time, as blur that isn't noticeable at smaller display sizes can become quite noticeable at larger display sizes.
Also, the longer you shoot sequential frames the more must be cropped from the edges of the first and last frames when stacking them to show only the sky common to both of those frames and all others taken in between them. This results in a higher sensor size to viewing size magnification ratio because less and less of the total sensor area is used as the time difference between the earliest and latest frames gets larger.
With cameras that use the 35mm film format or a FF sensor, the general rule of thumb is to use a shutter time of 600/focal length (Tv=600/FL) when the intended display size is about 8x10 inches. So a 24mm lens (84º diagonal AoV) would allow a shutter time of 25 seconds before star trails would begin to be noticeable in an 8x10 print. Note that a 16x20 print would halve the shutter time to 12 seconds. A 4x5 print would double the shutter time to 48 seconds. A 100mm lens (24º diagonal AoV) would allow a shutter time of only 6 seconds for an 8x10 display size. A 600mm lens (4º AoV) would allow a shutter time of only 1 second.
As you can see from the above examples, translating the 600/focal length rule to angle of view means that for a single frame you can use about 1 second of exposure time for each 4º of diagonal angle of view (Tv=AoV/4) when you are planning to view the resulting image at about 8x10 inches.
Originally by user15871. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user15871
10y ago
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With an 8-inch Dobsonian at 1200mm, star trailing is usually limited by your field of view and, more importantly, the fact that a Dobsonian is normally not tracking. At that focal length, even small Earth-rotation movement shows up quickly, so shorter exposures are generally safer if you want round stars.
Stacking many frames can improve signal-to-noise, but it does not remove star trailing that is already present in each individual exposure. So first determine the longest single exposure your setup can handle before stars elongate, then use that as your maximum and stack as many frames as practical.
Between your two options, shorter exposures with more frames are more likely to avoid trails. If 20–30 seconds shows elongation, drop to 8–10 seconds or whatever length keeps stars acceptably sharp.
Light, dark, and bias frames can help calibration and noise reduction, but they won’t fix motion blur from trailing. The practical approach is to test a few exposure lengths, inspect star shapes at 100%, and choose the longest exposure that still gives acceptable results.
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