Discussion - Upgrading our laptop so what does an astrophotographer need?

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In today's blog, a 5-minute read, I 

• outline requirements you might look for in a new laptop that you use ofr astrophotography

My old laptop is a dell XPS 13. Portable, lightweight, compact. It has done sterling service for the last eight years. It has travelled with us extensively; been dropped and generally thrown around in a rucksack and a motorhome. Its lid is covered with stickers collected over our travels. I am very, very sentimentally attached to it. 

I love my old laptop. I was heartbroken when I discovered that windows 10 updates will stop in October. I immediately sought to upgrade my old XPS but, alas, on reading up on the dell website, I discovered that my processor was one generation too old. An interent search on various forums confirmed my worst fears; those who had tried to migrate across to Windows 11 on this laptop had had nothing but problems subsequently. 

So, the boss and I decided now was the time to upgrade - but to what? 

Well, we travel a lot so a desk top is out. As is a large heavy laptop. Maggie decided that our new one should have specs that would allow me to continue my astrophotography journey for the next few years. I am slowly progressing towards PixInSight, Star exterminator etc - so it will need some grunt! We want something which will last us another eight years, so good reliable build quality.  I was dispatched to do some research.

My old laptop had an inbuilt graphics Intel card, 256 Gb storage drive and 8Gb of RAM. It has done amazingly well, hasn't it. 

After some thinking, here is my list of 'requirements' for my new laptop

• bigger screen - 14"
• still lightweight and portable; slim build
• non touch screen but with good high resolution and colour reproduction/contrast for photo editing (1920 x 1080 minimum) 
• haptic keyboard
• 32 or 64Gb RAM so I can work more quickly with Fits files and stacking
• a good CPU quad core (minimum) processor intel i7 or i9 is my preference, for speedy stacking, rendering, etc 
• fast NVMe SSD 1 TB drive 
• a Nividia RTX 3060 GPU graphics card 6 GB minimum
• at least four USB ports - thunderbolt 4 would be preferable; built in SD cartd reader as well 
• efficient thermal cooling technology; multiple fans which are QUIET!
• long lasting battery - at least 18 hours if possible 
• good after sales back up and service

Why all the high end specs stuff? Well, I use a DSLR and shoot in RAW. RAW images can be data intensive and stacking a hundred or so and all the calibration frames as well can be really draining on computer resources. My old laptop has struggled at times, especially when using SIRIL.  The CPU does all the grunt work and so I need something more powerful. Fast storage is a must when processing and editing all these files. And of course, the more programs I download in the future, the more memory space I will need so 1 TB seems to be the thing and within my budget - just! As well as editing thye photos, I also make YouTube videos and this is where the old laptop struggled - writing voideos to storage; video editing software etc. Laggy!  This should be so much more quicker with a faster SSD drive. 

What have I ended up with?

Another Dell XPS. No seriously, I looked at hundreds of diffrent laptops of various makes on-line and in store; but at the end, I kept coming back to two brands - Dell and Lenovo. I have used them both throughouit my teaching career and they have proven to be bomb proof as far as I am concerned.  

Dell were selling off the last of their XPS ranges and offering substantial discounts as they have introduced a new 'different' laptop range this year. Consequently, I paid precisely what I paid for the old one eight years ago but this time with a £500 discount on top and the extra warranties thrown in. 

The new laptop

Bigger screen and so much faster processing and a dedicated NVIVDIA graphics chip

And yes, the background is one of my milky way images taken down a local beach 

My new configuration specs are: 

• CPU - Intel Core Ultra 7 155H  12 core 3,85 Ghz processor 
• 32 Gb RAM
• fast NVMe SSD 1 TB drive 
• a dedicated Nividia RTX 3060 GPU graphics card 6 GB minimum
• 14" screen, slim, lightweight
• haptic keyboard
• non touch screen with high resolution
• battery that lasts 18 hrs
• ultra quiet two fans and four cooling vents 
• 2 year warranty extension
• 2 year battery warranty extension
• superior after sales technical support package

Basically, I got everything I wanted at a budget I could afford.  Having used the laptop for the last month, I have to say I am really impressed. It is blisteringly fast, lovely to use and rather stylish in design. The haptic keyboard is a revelation. 

Sadly the weather hasnt yet played ball and so I have yet to use SIRIL on it but I suspect it will be far faster than what I have been normally used to.  I'll let you know! 

Lightweight, compact, and yep, sadly decorated already

A tradition that neither of us know where from, but we decorate the lid of our laptops with 'sticker's picked up during our travels! I know - a sad desecration of a besautiful piece of technology. 

We are heathens! 

Postscript:

I have had the laptop for just over a month now and have started some basic processing in Siril, Affinity Photo and GraXpert. The new laptop is blisteringly fast - around five times faster on just about everything I have asked it to do thus far. Take basic OSC preprocessing scripts in Siril. Old laptop, could take up to 25 minutes. Same data on new laptop - five minutes flat. Stacking data in affinity photo - old laptop - 35 minutes; same data new laptop - 6 minutes.  It really is an impressive beast. Moreover, it doesn't overheat, the fans don't get noisy. 

Basically, absolutely loving the new laptop and chose the right specs! Can I use it out in the field for guiding? No idea as I use an ASIair mini linked to my smartphone - but much hunch? Suspect so! 

Planning tutorial: beginner's guide to planning your first milky way photograph shoot

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To help you find information quickly on this blog, you can

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Beginner's guide to taking and post editing milky way photographs 

This post is in two parts:

• PART A - a cheat sheet to help your decision making on the night or on a reccy  - see below

• PART B - sharing my post editing workflow for milky way images  - see next post here at https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/12/editing-tutorial-guide-to-how-i-post.html

Part A - a cheat sheet to help your decision making on the night or on a reccy

Below you will find three images which you can print screen and assemble onto an A4 sheet and then print off:

Copyright PlymouthAstroBoy

Based on own thinking and learning from two different 'free' on-line courses by 

Kristina Rose Photography and Dan Zafra Photography

The sheet is straight forward enough to use - it takes you through a series of questions/decisions. At the end you should have a clear picture of WHAT ytou want to achieve and HOW you are going to achieve it. 

Let me know if you find it useful and whether there are changes you would recommend - drop me a comment in the box at the end of the post. 

Whilst the sheet above is a good prompt on the night or during a reccy - there are other things to consider and I wrote a series of posts some time ago about other aspects:

• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first.html   EQUIPMENT 
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_19.html  PLANNING 
  
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_20.html  SETTINGS 
  
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_5.html  COMPOSITION 
  
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_21.html  STACKING and TRACKING
  
• https://undersouthwestskies.blogspot.com/2025/02/beginners-guide-to-taking-your-first_22.html  SELFIES 

A recent effort from along my milky way photography learning journey

Wembury Church South Devon 

Imaging tutorial: Beginner's guide to using a DSLR camera and/or GoPro for taking star trail photographs

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The Weather has been pants hasn't it. Everytime there has been a clear night recently, it has always coincided with a full moon; or I have had other pressing family commitments and so haven't been able to get out at night. 

So I am severely curtailing my ambitions for my landscape astrophotography over the next few months. What I would like to walk away with at the end of October is the following:

• a circular star trail landscape photograph of my local church
• similar photo of Windy Cross (A Granite cross and little leat waterfall) on Dartmoor 
• a star trail photo of Rame Head chapel

On the milky way landscape photo front, my ambitions are to obtain by end of October:

• Dartmouth Day mark 
• Start Point Lighthouse
• Rame Head chapel
• Wembury Church
• The Great Mewstone at Wembury Point 
• a better image of Bigbury Island under the milky way alongside one of the huge beach tractor as well

So, to the focus of this blog post. Star trails on a DSLR and/or GoPro. 

Funds are tight. I cannot afford another DSLR body at the moment. My two other cameras are a GoPro Hero 9 and a Sony HX-90 digital compact.  I think the trails will be easier to do on the GoPro, but I am open to that belief being challenged. 

Copyright: Wheal Owles by Simon Torr

So, here are my tips for using your DSLR to gain star trail images:

*source of some information: Peter Zelinka Star Trails tutorial

** I haven't yet shot any star trail images so these are my PLANNED INTENDED settings for future shoots 

Firstly equipment! You will need:

• DSLR
• dummy battery and power bank OR several spare batteries
• Stable tripod with good ball head
• Intervalometer
• wide angle lens - in my case my samyang 14mm. If you want curves - try a 24mm lens, for lines, try 50mm
• Fast SD card - you will need a class 10 UHS class 3 memory card, minimum 32gb - better 64gb

Secondly, what settings do we use? 

1. apply the 300 rule and go for 90% sky coverage in your landscape photo 
2. do one foreground shot at the start or end of your session - so that you can merge it with your stacked star trails in post editing
3. settings:  ISO 1600+ to get lots of stars and dense bright trails; ISO 100 - 800 to get fewer stars and bigger gaps between individual trails with better star colours. In an urban sky - try ISO 400 to 800 at F/4 to F/5.6
4. If light conditions are too bright - reduce ISO and open up the aperture - try F/4
5. shutter speeds - 20 to 30". However, if you use a very low ISO you can increase your shutter speed to 60", 120" or even 180", capturing more light, a cleaner image with less noise and grain. 
6. White balance 3000 - 5200K. I will be probably starting at 3600K. Don't use 'auto'
7. LNR off
8. use an intervalometer. Here it gets tricky. You will either use a 1" delay between your shots or the length of your shutter speed + 1" more. And you need to experiment first before you go out for the night. Peter Zelinka's tutorial really explains it well and you can access it here https://www.peterzelinka.com/startrails
9. I set my intervalometer to take around 3 hrs worth of shots minimum, but that's just me. 
10. set your DSLR to evaluative metering
11. Direction - face north = circles; S = downward arcs; E or W = upward arcs

So what about settings for your GoPro? Mine is a Hero 9

• Night Lapse mode
• FOV - wide
• shutter speed 30" - if in urban environments - then shorten it
• Interval - auto
• ISO 100 - 200 (or 100 min to 800 max)
• If using Protunes - Flat colour and WB of 4000 - 5500K
• shoot in RAW images
• collect 3 - 5 hrs worth of images

Equipment: 

• stable tripod
• spare batteries and/or powerbank and cable
• GoPro camera

Above is an outline of how I go about getting my star trail images. The next step is how to post edit them ad for that I use a program called Starstax.  Having not yet taken any star trails, I won't go into using StarStax until I have used it myself. 

Postscript update:

How am I progressing with star trail imagery?  

I think fair to say, not as well as I might have hoped. 

Here is my first ever star trail shot taken on a motorhome site in Dubrovnik in October 2025. 

So, what's gone wrong?

1. I was shooting on a night with a huge amount of light pollution - bright campsite lighting, rising full moon and light aura from nearby port
2. motorhomes constantly coming and going on the site caused headlight and red brake light reflections in the clouds above 
3. wrong settings in camera - ISO was too high at 800
4. poor processing in starStax - first time I have used it; ditto in Affinity Photo.

Next time: 

1. ensure there is no light pollution
2. choose better settings on camera particular ISO, shutter speed and interval between shots 

Have you got a star trails shot to share with us? Have you got any tips to help us take better star trail photos? What can we do to combat light pollution when doing star trails? 

If so drop us a comment in the box below. 

Until next time, clear skies, have fun and take care out there. 

Imaging session - IC1396 and the Elephant Trunk's nebula.

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This is my first attempt at IC 1396, a large emission nebula which is a region of ionized gas that glows due to the energy from nearby stars, particularly a very bright, massive star (HD 206267).

It is two nights worth of data as outlined below taken over two nights when there was a full moon, so to be honest I am pleasantly surprised that anything showed up at all!

IC 1396 has a magnitude of 3.5 and is in the constellation Cepheus, approximately 2,400 light-years away from Earth; a vast and complex area. Its most prominent feature is the Elephant's Trunk Nebula (IC1396A), a concentration of interstellar gas and dust forming a dark, finger-like structure. The entire IC1396 nebula spans over 3 degrees and has a near hollow and gas-poor interior and a complex of dark nebulae threaded throughout the perimeter. Many of the dust structures are aligned so they appear to radiate away from the stars in the nebula’s core.

Look for the reddish star which is Mu Cephei, also known as Herschel’s Garnet Star. The tenth brightest star in the constellation Cepheus, with an average apparent brightness of 4.08, it has a radius 1,260–1,650 times that of the Sun and is one of the biggest stars ever discovered; situated at a distance of about 2,840 light-years from Earth.

IC 1396A, better known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula, is a dark nebula formed by an irregular pillar of dust many light-years long. Pressure from bright stars in the core blows dust from that area leaving behind a darker region at the centre of the nebula while compressing dust around the edges, which drives new star formation. As a result, up to 250 young stars- all less than 100,000 years old, have been detected in infrared images taken of the Trunk region. The Trunk itself is about 20 light-years long. It is the first image in which I have ever captured a strong star formation area of the heavens above.

Imaging equipment used:  Canon 800D DSLR, Zenithstar 61ii refractor scope, EQM-35-Pro mount and guiding with ASIair mini, RVO 32mm guide scope and ZWO 120mm mini guide cam.

Data acquisition: two nights of same data collection – ISO1600, lights 25 x 300”, 10 darks, 10 biases and 15 flat frames. Full moon at 96%+ on each night. Location – two different sites in Cornwall.

So, what do I think about the images?

They were quite hard to process. I use SIRIL, GraXpert and Affinity Photo and somewhere along the way I tend to over saturate the colours and incorrectly process the background sky. I have overstretched the images resulting in star over-bloating as well. So, these are very much a first effort.

Am I pleased with them? Yes. Sort of. I am pleased I captured the data on very bright moonlit nights from two separate locations. The post editing? Well, as always, it is a work in progress isn’t it. 

Report card?  Considerable effort, showing some good acquisition skills but clearly more focus required in post editing! B+

These are the minimally processed first effort images 

First effort 'over-cooked' images

So a third effort will be necessary over the next few days

What do you think I could do to improve the processing further? Let me know in the comment box below. Thanks 

My most recent re-edits.....progress is slow! 😅

Imaging session - IC 1318 The Sadr region

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The Sadr region, known as IC 1318 or the Gamma Cygni Nebula, is a diffuse emission nebula that surrounds the star Sadr.  Around 5000 light years away from Earth, the area also includes the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888) and The Butterfly Nebula as well - which is really IC 1318. You can see a dark thin dust alley and then two glowing cosmic wings either side of it - hence 'The butterfly'. 

The nebulas glow comes from nearby stars releasing streams of charged particles known as stellar winds; these ionise the gases causing them to emit light. 

Sadr is a yellow-white supergiant with x12 the mass of our sun and x 150 its radius. It lies at the centre of this stunning Hydrogen II emission region. 

So, acquisition details? 

This is the result of two nights worth of data, processed in SIRIL and Affinity Photo. 

Equipment used: 

• Astro-modded Canon 800D
• Samyang 135mm F/2.8 lens
• EQM-35-Pro mount
• ASIair mini with RVO 32mm guide scope and ZWO 120mm mini guide cam
• Optolong L-enHance filter clip in eos

Acquisition times:  on each night 

• 35 x 240" subs
• 10 darks
• 10 biases
• 20 flats 

I find post editing difficult. There is so much to learn and I am never sure whether I am getting the final image right in terms of tone and look at the end of it all! 

But, here are my three attempts thus far in the order I did them: 

So, this one is fairly good. I like it but I felt I could have done a slightly more aggressive black point adjustment to get the background sky darker; taking care not to blow out the stars

😧From one extreme to another. Second go and I overcooked it - too much saturation, vibrance and contrast. Back to the drawing board! 

And my third effort - a halfway house. Better sky, better colours, not oversaturated but lost the stars! 

Have I ever told you this post editing alarkey is hard work? 

Postscript:

I have downloaded and been using Siril 1.4 with Veralux hypermetric Stretching. I have also reworked my workflow to include some of the Seti Astro Cosmic Clarity Suite Pro. 

So here is exactly the same data used above - here is the new image: 

Which of the images above do you prefer and why? Have you used the new python script Veralux Hypermetric Stretch - what did you think of it? 

As always, drop me a comment below with your views, tips, observations for further discussion. 

Clear skies, stay safe out there and have loads of fun.

Steve