M88 5/7/10-5/8/10

Now that summer is approaching, we are starting to get more opportunities to do deep sky imaging.
The following was taken over two nights from Port Gamble, Washington – A fairly dark site that is near sea level.

M88 – Galaxy
30 exposures, with 6-minute subs at ISO 1600
Imaging scope:  Celestron C11 on CGE Mount
Filters/Reducers:  Baader UV/IR filter, Celestron f/6.3 focal reducer
Imaging camera:  Canon XS/1000d with heatmirror replace with Baader filter glass
Guide scope:  Vixen ED80SF
Guide camera:  Imaging source DMK21AU04.AS
Captured with Nebulosity
Guided with PHD
Stacked in DSS

Processing in Fitswork
* high/low cutoff to separate DSS stacked image into four layers
* iterative gaussian shapening on each layer
* wavelet NR on background layer
* add all layers together once sharpening completed
* star reduction
* rough histogram adjust

Color and exposure adjustments in Raw Therapee
* color boost/shift
* color NR
* exposure adjust, highlights adjust, midtones adjust

Final processing in Gimp
* final levels
* final crop
* star rounding (using Astronomy plugin)

I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out how to process this data.  Really an education for me and I have learned a tremendous amount about image processing from this project.

Note that there are several smaller galaxies (aka fuzzies!) present in the photo.  The irregularly-shaped object in the center right of the picture is Galaxy IC 3476.

Enjoy!


M101 4/10/10 2:12am

Still very cloudy here in the great northwest.  We had a break in the clouds yesterday, and I took it as an opportunity to do some deep sky and planetary imaging from our home in Seattle, Washington.  Here are the results!

Subject:  M101 (aka The Pinwheel Galaxy)
Location: Seattle, Washington USA
Date and Time: April 10, 2010 2:12am
33 light frames @ 4 minute subs for 132 minute total exposure time
Modified Canon 1000d DSLR (heatmirror replaced with Baader filter glass)
Orion Skyglow Imaging Filter
Celestron C11 on CGE Mount
Guiding with PhD Guider using Vixen ED80SF and Imaging Source DMK21AU04.AS


Mars 2/11/10 9:09pm

There have been precious few opportunities for us to do astronomy here in Seattle for the past few months. A new baby in the family, and three months of almost constant overcast weather have impacted the amount of real telescope time we could put in. A few nights ago we had an unusual (and temporary) window in the clouds, so I took my C9.25 and shot a few sets of Mars video.

Seeing was average, with a persistent fast high-altitude atmospheric distortion. Transparency started out good but increasing got worse throughout the evening as clouds moved back in. Later in the evening this meant I did not have enough light at 1/60 second exposures and had to go to 1/30 second exposures. Unfortunately, the result was that the images later in the evening were not as sharp.

Notice the blue haze to the right and left of the planet surface. This is the evening haze on Mars, which is part of the normal weather pattern.

You may be wondering why this image is so much better than my previous efforts. Equipment and procedures were essentially the same. On 11/14 at 6pm Mars was only 8.8 degrees in size, and it was at 60 degrees above the horizon. The difference in size is due to Mars being close to opposition right now. Opposition essentially means that Mars is the closest to Earth that it gets for now. Weather also plays a factor and a night of steady seeing makes a big difference.

Location: Seattle, Washington USA
Date and Time: February 9, 2010 9:08pm (5:08 UTC)
Mars apparent diameter: 13.7”
Mars altitude above horizon: 53 degrees
3500 frames each R,G,B
Imaging Source DMK21AU04.AS @ 30fps with 1/60 sec exposures
Televue Powermate 2.5x
Astronomik Type IIc R,G,B filters

The following is one of other images of Mars I took later the same evening. As I mentioned earlier, the conditions degraded throughout the evening. This image was taken with the same setup as above, but with 1/30 sec exposures. You can see the effect of the slower exposures as the image is blurred along the direction of the wind (up/down relative to Mars) in the upper atmosphere.


Mars 11/14/09 6:00am

Here in Seattle we have had about four weeks of uninterrupted clouds. Last Saturday morning the Clear Sky Chart predicted clear skies around 4am PST – a perfect opportunity to image Mars.

Friday night I set up the scope, and Saturday morning at 3:50am I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock. Nice clear skies outside. I started setting up the scope and doing the collimation of the mirrors. Collimation is an important detail – especially for imaging planets. It needs to be dead-on or your images will turn out distorted. You do this by focusing the telescope on a single star in a section of sky near the planet you want to image. You then adjust the orientation of the secondary mirror on the telescope to cause the “airy disk” to appear perfectly concentric. I just about had collimation done and it clouded up again. Shoot!

I ended up doing work email for about an hour and a half while I waited for a clearing. I really wasn’t expecting it to clear, what with the rainy weather lately. I wasn’t ready to give up yet either, so I decided to hang out and see what the weather did. Luckily, around 5:45 PST the sky managed to clear up. Now with only 20 minutes before sunrise, I had a decision to make: Do I do finer collimation or do I shoot video? I decided to bag the detailed collimation and shoot the video.

What you see here is actually my first Mars photo. I’ve photographed Jupiter before, but never Mars. Note that the white area at the top of Mars is the polar ice cap.

Here are the image stats:

Scope: Celestron 9.25″ Schmidt-Cassegrain
Camera: Imaging Source DMK21AU04
Optics: Celestron 3x barlow, Astronomik type 2C R,B filters
3500 frames R 1/30 second exposure at 30fps, 1000 frames B 1/5 second exposure at 7.5 fps
RsGB technique

Image taken at 6am PST from Seattle, Washington USA

mars_091114_rgb2_3

I used the “synthetic green” technique as described by Damien Peach in this article: http://www.damianpeach.com/marscolour.htm

Note that Mars was only around 8 arc seconds across (apparent diameter) at the time this photo was taken. To compare, the photos of Jupiter that I took earlier were around 45 arc seconds in apparent diameter. On the plus side, Mars is about 61 degrees above the horizon vs 25 degrees for Jupiter. A higher altitude in the sky means less atmosphere to look through, and the result is a clearer image.


NASA LCROSS Impact Site: Pre-Impact Image

Here’s a photograph I recently took of the expected impact site of NASA’s LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite). The satellite is expected to impact the surface of the moon at around 4:30am this Friday morning.

Link to NASA’s LCROSS Observation Campaign

Photo Details:

Camera: Imaging Source DMK21AU04.AS
Date Taken: 9/10/06 21:01 PDT
Filters Used: Astronomik type 2c red filter, 1/2 variable polarizing filter
Barlow: Televue Powermate 2.5
Telescope: Celestron 9.25 Schmidt Cassegrain
Exposure: 30fps with 1/60 exposures. 5000 frames

NASA LCROSS Cabeus impact site - pre-impact

NASA LCROSS Cabeus impact site - pre-impact

Should the weather here in Seattle be good (weather report not so promising), I plan to image the impact.


New Faint Fuzzies!

Laura and I had a great imaging session this last weekend, and the result is three new photos of deep space objects (aka “Faint Fuzzies”).

The first is spiral galaxy NGC 7331. Note that the “faint fuzzy” spots above NGC 7331 are actually several other galaxies 10 times farther away:

Next up is NGC 7635 aka “The Bubble Nebula”:

And finally we have IC 5146, aka “The Cocoon Nebula”:

I’ll post more details on these photos (details on the photographic subject, how the photos were taken, etc.) in the next few days.

For now, enjoy!


Jupiter 9/1/09 12:25am

Here’s my latest best Jupiter shot. Getting more detail now on the dark red bands and cloudy areas.

This was shot using the Orion Starshoot Autoguider using Astronomic type 2c R,G,B filters.

R,G: 450 frames at 10fr/sec, 100ms exposure

B: 225 frames an 5fr/sec, 150ms exposure

Note that all of these above image sequences were recorded using the gain boost and noise reduction features of the camera. I feel that this image has less detail than some of my earlier images, so I’m not going to be using gain boost and noise reduction going forward.

Jupiter 8/31/09 12:25am PDT


The Sea of Tranquility 8/31/09 11:33pm PDT

This is my first attempt at lunar imaging and processing. Processing these large frames takes quite a while! This one took me several hours to complete using Registax.

This area of the moon’s surface is known as the “Sea of Tranquility”. In this photo are the locations for both the Apollo 11 and 17 moon landings.

You might also want to take a look at http://www.google.com/moon/ for a map of the locations of the apollo moon landings.

Sea of Tranquility 8/31/09 11:33pm PDT


Jupiter 12:25am 8/24/09

After spending much time working to modify my Philips SPC900NC webcam to be a B+W camera, I decided to spend some time chasing down a rumor that the Orion Starshoot Autoguider can be used for image capture.

Well, it turns out that it can.

I would like to confirm that I have successfully done a Jupiter capture using my Orion Starshoot Autoguider! Note that this requires the latest drivers from astrosoft.be. That said, it does not require firmware modification to the SSAG.  Initial results are very promising, and it looks as if it does provide for better imaging than my B+W modified SPC900NC.

The attached capture was taken from Seattle, WA using a Celestron 9.25 SCT with a Powermate 2.5x, Astronomik Type IIc LRGB filterset (only RGB used). Jupiter was at approximately 26 degrees at the time the shot was taken.

Capture was done using QGVideo at 640×480 at 10fps with 100ms exposure times. I shot 45 seconds for each RGB, then stacked in Registax and wavelet + Lucy Richardson Deconvolution in astraimage.

Jupiter 12:25am 08/24/09