The Astro-Imaging Thread

[YNM]

Gorgeous ! Better than my eyesight's "extremely diffuse blob" report

Coming in late on the discussion above about trackings / mountings : ofc logically the best one would be equatorial ones ! But bizzarely, most modern (or largest) telescopes are alt-az, thanks to the advance of computers...

So whichever tracking you have, as long as the image isn't a streak then it's totally fine !

WRT poll : that's too obvious

Edited October 21, 2016 by YNM

[_Augustus_]

The Moon, shot with a phone through my 32mm Plossl and my ETX-90:

Edited October 21, 2016 by _Augustus_

[YNM]

What's the OTA focal length or f/D ?

Edited October 22, 2016 by YNM

[Green Baron]

Center of M31.

This is my first (serious) try with an autoguider and a ccd cam. It took me a few days until i figure everything out. Unfortunately there was (and is) a problem with the camera (a used atik 420) i do not understand. It should take colour pics. It shows colour pics on screen but saves only black and white, only one channel it seems. That why it looks a little blurry me thinks.The capture program that comes with the camera is ... rudimentary ... and i am very friendly here :-/

This is the whole field of view due to the tiny chip the camera has. Have to get myself a focal reducer ...

Apo 115/805mm (f/7), 5*16min light, 5*16min dark frames, 10*bias, stacked with dss. Guided with a no-name guiding cam and phd2 on a losmandy g11. This is just the stacked image, i didn't do any homework with it.

 

[_Augustus_]

On 10/22/2016 at 5:15 AM, YNM said:

What's the OTA focal length or f/D ?

90mm f/13.7 Mak-Cass. No tracking.

[kurja]

1 hour ago, Green Baron said:

This is my first (serious) try with an autoguider and a ccd cam. It took me a few days until i figure everything out. Unfortunately there was (and is) a problem with the camera (a used atik 420) i do not understand. It should take colour pics. It shows colour pics on screen but saves only black and white, only one channel it seems. That why it looks a little blurry me thinks.The capture program that comes with the camera is ... rudimentary ... and i am very friendly here :-/

This is the whole field of view due to the tiny chip the camera has. Have to get myself a focal reducer ...

Apo 115/805mm (f/7), 5*16min light, 5*16min dark frames, 10*bias, stacked with dss. Guided with a no-name guiding cam and phd2 on a losmandy g11. This is just the stacked image, i didn't do any homework with it.

 

It's an OSC camera? Your picture looks like it hasn't been debayered / demosaiced; you need to do that to the raw data of your image before it can be viewed in color. An auto-processed (color) thumbnail or is sometimes available and some programs also auto-process raws for preview, which might confuse things at first. Usual work order is to calibrate with raw, demosaic, then align and integrate.

Sorry if this was a stupid comment, but to my eye your picture looks exactly like what I'd expect an un-debayered image to look like.

[Green Baron]

RGGB, GRGB, GRBG, .... a pictures genetic code :-)

@kurja, i owe you one, stupidity was on my side. So here is the colour version, still just stacked and unprocessed.

Seems like i didn't hit the focus 100%ly ... still practicing :-)

Edited October 31, 2016 by Green Baron

[YNM]

On 10/31/2016 at 9:07 PM, _Augustus_ said:

90mm f/13.7 Mak-Cass. No tracking.

Ah, the perfect ones for planets and moons then ! (high f/D means less "bright" compared to similar magnification on a smaller f/D)

[ProtoJeb21]

The wonders of a Christmas Eve sky!

Some stars of the Hyades Cluster.

Aldebaran, NOT Alderaan.

An almost magical view of the Pleiades. But it isn't magical, because this is science, and science rules out magic. 

Betelgeuse! Betelgeuse! Beetlejuice Betelgeuse!

FULL ALBUM HERE: http://imgur.com/gallery/M3DiN

[_Augustus_]

Processed an older photo of the Moon:

Edited December 26, 2016 by _Augustus_

[Jonfliesgoats]

I just bought an expensive, used telescope for my daughter.  Are you guys getting these images from your homes, or are you traveling to dark-sky locations to do this?

Follow-on question: If you are working from your house, how are you countering light pollution?  

[Green Baron]

Both, house and drive. The place here can be pretty dark but my neighbour loves nightly illumination.

I did Andromeda from up the mountain and M45 from the patio. Will install something against the light to earn my reputation as a crazy foreigner . But first the weather must improve.

In principle there is not much you can do. Lots of flatfield images, experiment with filters, post processing all may wor to an extent. Best is really to beat it and go to a dark and high place, for viewing and of course imaging.

[Jonfliesgoats]

We had software that could cut through haze on some video processing applications. I wasn't sure if something like that existed for amateur astronomers.  

Having an excuse to take a long weekend somewhere dark is actually a little nicer.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Can one do valuable amateur astronomy, like finding comets, etc. with an amateur telescope?  Is that something that went away in the 60s?

[Green Baron]

1 hour ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

We had software that could cut through haze on some video processing applications. I wasn't sure if something like that existed for amateur astronomers.  

Having an excuse to take a long weekend somewhere dark is actually a little nicer.

Well, you could take a look at the documentation of Fitswork or PixInsight. Everything you do to flatten a picture or filter out noise lowers the level of detail. Not that much a problem with moon and planets but DSOs and nebulosities will suffer greatly.

Yeah, well, amateurs do participate in finding new comets/asteroids, it so happens. But i fear that the necessary equipment exceeds the financial possibilities of most of us .... (well, it exceeds mine :-)).

 

 

[_Augustus_]

5 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Can one do valuable amateur astronomy, like finding comets, etc. with an amateur telescope?  Is that something that went away in the 60s?

You can study asteroid occultations assuming you have a driven scope and CCD camera and know where to find the occulted star, but comet hunting, unless you're one of those guys in Japan with giant binoculars, is a no-go.

[_Augustus_]

9 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

I just bought an expensive, used telescope for my daughter.

Follow-on question: If you are working from your house, how are you countering light pollution?  

Imaging stuff besides the Moon and planets requires thousands of $ for good results.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Hmm.  I am still learning about the system, but apparently it can orient itself to known stars and celestial objects. Perhaps we can track satellites?

[_Augustus_]

10 hours ago, Jonfliesgoats said:

Hmm.  I am still learning about the system, but apparently it can orient itself to known stars and celestial objects. Perhaps we can track satellites?

No. GoTo scopes can't even find satellites.

What scope?

[Green Baron]

Aaah, i wouldn't be that apodictic about it, maybe the one or the other is that fast. It's not "press that button and it works automagically" but i have seen tracks of the ISS done with an upper class amateur mount, but it was tuned with special motors. The guy pointed just at the right spot when it came over the horizon. He used a 15.000 funds telelens, though. My jaw was still in the grass when he had long packed up :-)

Main problem is indeed to point at the right spot at the right time, you have only fractions of a second when the station appears and if you loose it it's gone. I can imagine that something like that could be done with satellites too, but who cares, there are so many beautiful natural objects :-)

But i think @Jonfliesgoats must find the right setup for "normal" imaging before doing stunts like that. Though i'd love to see the outcome :-)

Edit: showing off my stuff with the brand-new ccd cam, set up for hopefully a successful shooting tonight:

There is an assembly error hidden in the photo. Hint: it is not photographic :-)

 

Edited December 31, 2016 by Green Baron

[_Augustus_]

2 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Aaah, i wouldn't be that apodictic about it, maybe the one or the other is that fast. It's not "press that button and it works automagically" but i have seen tracks of the ISS done with an upper class amateur mount, but it was tuned with special motors. The guy pointed just at the right spot when it came over the horizon. He used a 15.000 funds telelens, though. My jaw was still in the grass when he had long packed up :-)

Main problem is indeed to point at the right spot at the right time, you have only fractions of a second when the station appears and if you loose it it's gone. I can imagine that something like that could be done with satellites too, but who cares, there are so many beautiful natural objects :-)

But i think @Jonfliesgoats must find the right setup for "normal" imaging before doing stunts like that. Though i'd love to see the outcome :-)

Edit: showing off my stuff with the brand-new ccd cam, set up for hopefully a successful shooting tonight:

There is an assembly error hidden in the photo. Hint: it is not photographic :-)

 

Is that an 80mm apo piggybacked on a 130mm apo on a Losmandy G11?

[Green Baron]

The guidescope is an ed80/480, not an apo in a strict sense. The apo is a fine 115/805 tmb design with an lzos lens i got used from someone who gave up and the mount indeed is a g11 (no goto).

 

[_Augustus_]

53 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

The guidescope is an ed80/480, not an apo in a strict sense. The apo is a fine 115/805 tmb design with an lzos lens i got used from someone who gave up and the mount indeed is a g11 (no goto).

 

Neat! Are you on Cloudynights?

[ProtoJeb21]

Last night I got my FINAL astronomy images of 2016! I spent most of the time observing the Orion Nebula. While there appeared to be some excess moisture in the sky that night, the nebula still was an absolutely gorgeous sight. I managed to get some images showing the gas and dust around the Trapezium - a first for me.

After the Orion Nebula, I continued to observe targets around the constellations Orion, Monoceros, and Gemini. First was the blue supergiant Rigel in Orion. However, after a few images, I went to check out an unusually bright object south of Monoceros. It was not Sirius, but appeared to be around magnitude -1, so I didn't think it was Procyon either. Whenever I tried to find it, however, all I got was this pair of stars:

I gave up on the "nova" and went sky-sweeping in Monoceros. My efforts paid off with a cool looking open cluster. First is the original image, and the second is an edited version:

My night ended off with the search for Castor and Pollux, the two brightest stars in Gemini. Sure, they were bright, but I still had trouble locating them with my finder scope before imaging them. Once I finally called it a night, I had taken 40 photos. The link to the Imgur album with the BEST images from last night is below:

http://imgur.com/gallery/4pttP

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, a quick question. I really want to get rid of the image noise in the star cluster photos. However, if I make copies and stack them, it won't work. Instead I'm thinking of another method: make copies, but tweak every image so that its mostly like the edited one shown above. That way each image used for compression is slightly different and won't result in something so close to the original. Would this work? (Tagging @Green Baron)

[_Augustus_]

1 hour ago, ProtoJeb21 said:

Last night I got my FINAL astronomy images of 2016! I spent most of the time observing the Orion Nebula. While there appeared to be some excess moisture in the sky that night, the nebula still was an absolutely gorgeous sight. I managed to get some images showing the gas and dust around the Trapezium - a first for me.

After the Orion Nebula, I continued to observe targets around the constellations Orion, Monoceros, and Gemini. First was the blue supergiant Rigel in Orion. However, after a few images, I went to check out an unusually bright object south of Monoceros. It was not Sirius, but appeared to be around magnitude -1, so I didn't think it was Procyon either. Whenever I tried to find it, however, all I got was this pair of stars:

I gave up on the "nova" and went sky-sweeping in Monoceros. My efforts paid off with a cool looking open cluster. First is the original image, and the second is an edited version:

My night ended off with the search for Castor and Pollux, the two brightest stars in Gemini. Sure, they were bright, but I still had trouble locating them with my finder scope before imaging them. Once I finally called it a night, I had taken 40 photos. The link to the Imgur album with the BEST images from last night is below:

http://imgur.com/gallery/4pttP

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Also, a quick question. I really want to get rid of the image noise in the star cluster photos. However, if I make copies and stack them, it won't work. Instead I'm thinking of another method: make copies, but tweak every image so that its mostly like the edited one shown above. That way each image used for compression is slightly different and won't result in something so close to the original. Would this work? (Tagging @Green Baron)

A couple nights ago I tried some wide-field shots with my Pentax P30T film camera. It has a 35-80mm zoom. I did exposures of 15 seconds at 35mm and 10 seconds at 80mm. I used the camera fixed on a tripod.

I will go get the film processed and digitized in the coming week.

My Edmund Scientific 6" Super Space Conqueror apparently has a working drive. I have to get an adapter to use it with my portable car battery. I may build a piggyback mount for my camera to ride on the scope, or even try some primitive pictures directly through the telescope.

Here's an outdated pic of me with the Edmund (I have tweaked the balance of the scope and swapped out the finder since I took this) from earlier in the month, December 3, which was the first time I used it.

The scope is 50 years old.

Edited January 1, 2017 by _Augustus_