Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49)

After imaging Jupiter on 11/21, I waited until around midnight to start imaging the Rosette.  This is one object that I imaged back in January when I first got my T3.  I didnt have the C6 yet, nor did I have the 300D.  This time, I imaged it with a modified camera at f/5.  The autoguider was a little unstable, and that might have been because my polar alignment might not have been perfect.  I had plenty of stars in the field.  It tracked good enough, however to do a set of 5 minute exposures at iso-800.

One thing that I've not done yet is post a single frame as taken from the camera.  This picture was converted to jpg from the raw.  I stacked 20 frames that look identical to this one to create the finished image.  I figured it would be interesting to see what a single unprocessed frame looked like in comparison to the finished product.

Here is the raw frame.

Can you see the Rosette in this image?  Its there, but it is really faint.  This is what I had to work with starting out.

Now, after stacking 20 frames, using a set of flats, darks and bias frames, and some heavy duty histogram stretching and some color balancing, this is what I finally ended up with.

Pretty crazy, huh.  As you can see, there is very little noise in this image, even in the dim areas.  There was a small amount of noise in the stack, but the software can get rid of small amounts of noise.  A single frame wouldnt have been near this detailed and smooth.

Jupiter

Worked on the collimation again, I was not happy with my planetary images.  I found the secondary inward too far, which I remedied.  Star testing using a 9mm eyepiece with a 3X barlow showed near perfect alignment, so I ran a couple of avi's of Jupiter.  These are a few of what I got.

 

 Notice on the last image, the moon, Ganymede, and the dark area going from the top right, down to about the center of the moon.  Yes, its pretty small, but it is definitely there.  This is the first time I've ever had the resolution to capture detail on one of the moons.

Equipment used:  C6NGT (6", f/5), cascaded, Celestron 2X barlow, then a Meade 3X barlow feeding into the QC Pro 4000.

Stacked in Registax, wavelet sharpened, increased color saturation, adjusted brightness and contrast.

Orion Awesome Autoguider First Light

Received my Orion Awesome Autoguider a week ago, but last night was the first clear night to try it out.  I must say, the name lives up to its performance.  Although the mini guider probably would have been adequate for my small setup, for the small amount more money, I figured I would just get the full size scope, in case I would ever upgrade the imaging scope.

My first image taken using the guide scope was of M33.  The guider was able to lock on some pretty dim stars, I believe to be dimmer than 7th magnitude.I had 3 to pick from in the field of the guide scope.  I did not have to re-aim the guidescope whatsoever, on 4 different objects. 

This is an image of the complete setup in operation.  As you can see, the wiring setup has doubled, but the guidescope is permanently connected to the main scope, so the scope assembly is torn down and set up as one piece.  The only additional steps I have to do is hook up the usb to the camera and the cable going to the guide port on the mount.

Now for a couple images taken with the guidescope and 5 minute exposures.  The first thing I learned after the imaging session was over was that 5 minutes at iso 1600 was too much for the brightness of my sky.  The next set of images that I take will be at iso 800, but of the same duration, hopefully that will bring the background brightness down enough for the stacker to handle the images better.  Using some careful processing, and by also using a bicubic stacking method in deep sky stacker, I was able to generate this quite acceptable version of M33.

I'm not sure if this is my best yet image of this object, but it's got to be close.  I was able to resolve the major emission nebulosity in the galaxy.  This image consists of 19 frames.

The next object I chose to photograph was M77 in Cetus.  This is a composite of only 4 frames.

M77 is in the center. the galaxy at the top is NGC 1055.  NGC 1072 is also in the frame, but it is too small to resolve.  M77 is 7 arc seconds across.  M77 has a really bright core, but if you look closely there is darker nebulosity around the core.  The stars near this object are dim, and are tiny pinpoints which is showing that the guiding worked very nicely.

The next object I imaged was the Pacman Nebula, but I only shot 3 frames.  It does not measure up to the last Pacman I took, but it is an acceptable image.

I believe if I had taken 10 - 15 frames of this, it would have been a VERY good image.

The final image I took was of the Crab Nebula, M1.  This would have been a good image, but somehow, the camera focus got disturbed.  I must have bumped the focuser or something like that.  I was able to enhance it and I got some detail, but it could have been better.

The 2 bright stars in this image, especially the red one above and to the left has a tiny dark hole in the center, indicating the focus was out a bit.  This object might have been better had that star had been a pinpoint.

All of these images were shot using 5 minute subs.  I believe this guider will let me get much more detailed images, and will really shine the next time I get to darker sites.

Time Lapse video of comet 168P/Hergenrother

A few days ago, I imaged 168P/Hergenrother and today I created a time lapse video using the frames I had stacked to produce the image I created a still with.  Deep Sky Stacker for some reason didnt like the comet too much, as it still tried to leep the stars round.  I therefore attempted a time lapse video using the 21 frames I had taken.

It really wasnt as difficult as I thought.  I'll explain what I did to create the video.

First, I opened the frames in Deep Sky Stacker.  I used no darks or flats, although one could use calibration frames.  I just chose not to use any.  There is a setting in DSS to "Create a registered / calibrated file for each light frame.  Its located in Settings > Stacking Parameters > Intermediate Files.
I let DSS stack, and it added a tiff of each light frame in the source folder.  When DSS was done, i discarded the stacked image and closed DSS.

I then opened photoshop and loaded the first frame in it.  Created a new action.  I ran some simple processing - curves and levels, some sharpening - nothing too complex, cropped, and finished by saving as a jpg.  The cropping works because the frames are all aligned.

I then ran a batch process on all of the frames using the action I created.  It created a numbered sequence of jpg's, all cropped and nicely enhanced.

I moved all the finished jpg's to a different folder.  Then I loaded the first jpg in Virtual Dub. It made a video out of all the files in the folder.  I copied the frames several times back to back, appending to the original video, so the sequence repeats 6 times in this video.  Set the frame rate for 10FPS, so it will run slow enough to see it move, but not so slow for it to chop.

After it finished, I uploaded the video to youtube and ended up with this:


Now you know how to create an aligned video of a small celestial object.  This method should work for small objects, such as a distant comet, the outer planets, or possibly an asteroid as it moves thru space among the stars.  The longer the imaging session, the farther the object will move.  Being this video was experimental, the number and duration of the imaging was really too short to do a project such as this.  I didnt even think of doing a video until someone from my local club did the same thing with a 3 hour duration.  Theirs came out really cool, so I thought I would see if I could figure out how to do it, and I'm pleased with the results.  I want to do more of these using images of other objects.

Recent Images

We've had a few clear nights in the past couple of weeks and when conditions are good, I'm outside with the telescope and cameras.  I'm going to share a few here, as my facebook friends all seem to like what I've taken.

This image of Jupiter was taken on October 1 at 0926Z.  Seeing appeared to be pretty decent, but a little bit of coma was detected still during a star test around the time this was taken.    I had just had the optics adjusted with a laser collimator, but I have yet to fine tune on a star before this was taken.  I have since tuned out the remaining coma, but I have not has the chance to image Jupiter again after this was taken.

One week later, on 10/8, I imaged the Iris Nebula.  It seems that everytime I've imaged this object in the past, its always been done during a bright moon.  This time I imaged it on a moonless night.  It seems there is a bit more nebulosity than I've captured previously.

After imaging the Iris, I thought I'd take a crack at Andromeda.  I did not spend a lot of time on this, but it seemed to come out pretty decent.

 

 On 10/9 I imaged 2 emission nebulae.  The first is the Wizard Nebula, NGC 7380 in Cepheus.  NGC 7380 is actually an open cluster, but it is surrounded by nebulosity.

This is a very dim object.  I am surprised to have gotten anything at all from my light polluted sky.  I used 3 minute exposures at iso 1600 with the Digital Rebel on this one.

Just after imaging the Wizard, I thought I'd try the Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia.  This image fared a bit better.

Although not as deep as I probably could have gotten with 3 minute shutter, I switched back to 2 minutes after imaging the Wizard.  I just wasnt sure what kind of quality I was getting with the 3 minute exposures.  I will have to attempt 3 minute exposures on this one sometime.

Then on 10/11, at 5AM I imaged the Horsehead again.  I wanted to see the difference between what I could get at home versus what I got from Cherry Springs.  I was surprised actually when I processed this one, as there really wasnt that much difference.  I just wonder how much better my Cherry Springs image would have been had my mount been working properly.

The Triangulum Galaxy (Messier 33)

Among some of the images that I took from Cherry Springs was an under exposed image of M33.  There were a number of images I wasnt happy with, but after working on the image some, and using calibration frames that I made after the fact, I was able to produce this image of M33.

I spent several hours processing this image, and I think it paid off.  Most of the frames (30 or so) were only 1 minute frames.  The only things I had going in my favor is that for a galaxy, this one is on the bright side, and I had the dark skies at Cherry Springs.