A Productive Evening

Winters in Ohio are a tradeoff.  You get a lot more telescope time in the evening, but it's not clear out very often.  Tonight was actually mediocre, I guess the correct term would have been 'mostly clear'.  We had a little bit of decently transparent skies, but most of the time, there were thin high clouds overhead.  Fortunately they weren't so thin that it prevented me from imaging.

The first object was something I had imaged before with the Canon T3 a year ago.  The Canon really did a good job with this object, and I dont think this image is really any better, but it served as a warmup to better things to come later in the evening.

NGC891 which has been called 'The Outer Limits Galaxy', due to it being part of the opening credits in the TV show, The Outer Limits.  It is a galaxy that is located about 30 million light years away in the constellation Andromeda.  It is a spiral galaxy viewed edge-on, and is thought to resemble the Milky Way if viewed from this angle.  The size and brightness is about the same, and the Milky Way has a dust lane similar to this galaxy.

This was imaged with the Orion Starshoot G3 monochrome behind red, green and blue filters, 5 of each.  No luminance frames were shot because there were clouds moving in at the time this was finishing up.   I actually thought my night was going to be cut short, but a half an hour later, the sky cleared.

When NGC891 was finished, I slewed the scope towards Jupiter and came inside to process the above image.  I happened to look up at the VPN screen of the laptop, and I could see Jupiter on the edge of the autoguider, saturating the screen.  I centered the object, threw in the barlows and the webcam and shot a couple series of Jupiter.  Trouble is, I shot them too dark, so they were a bit noisy.  I did get some decent stacks, this one being the best:

It didnt turn out too bad actually.  I had wished that I had taken this at the correct exposure, it really would have been exceptional, but its not a BAD image.

When I finished up taking Jupiter, I noticed that Orion was clearing the trees.  I threw in my hydrogen alpha filter in the CCD and skewed over to the Horsehead, IC434.  IC434 is much dimmer than I thought.  I've imaged this a number of times, wide field with the DSLR, but never imaged it in Hα.  What a treat this turned out to be!  I framed it using a 2X drizzle at 60 sec exposure, rotated the camera to get more of the nebula in the frame and went ahead and shot 5 - 10 minute exposures and 1 15 minute exposure.  10 minutes really isn't enough exposure time for this object - it really is pretty dim.  15 minutes is better, and even longer exposures wouldnt be a bad idea either.  I honestly can not figure out how people have been able to see this through an eyepiece!  It really is a dim object.

When I stacked this, I was blown away at the detail.  I think I was a little bit out of focus too (not much tho).  The detail in the ionized hydrogen was more than I expected.

I was so impressed with this image, that I thought I would go with a 2nd processed picture, not quite so bright, and add star spikes to the brighter stars in the field.  I did the spikes in a separate layer and changed the opacity so as to not overdo the spikes.  I think this image is really pretty.  This might be one I may just have printed.  Trouble is, I didnt drizzle this image, but perhaps a bicubic resize will look good.

Well, there you have it, a good night of imaging.  I wish we had more of these, but it might be clear again tonight, and if it is, you might see another post tomorrow.  Until next time....  Clear Skies, all!

A Couple Forgotten Images

I forgot, but I also was able to capture a couple objects that I had forgotten about.  The first image is a deep M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra.  I imaged this using 15 minute frames, and was able to capture the outer halo. 

This image was done in narrowband, Hα and OIII, with the Hα mapped to red and OIII mapped to blue and green.  The Hα was stretched slightly to help bring out the outer halo, but it was obvious in the raw unstretched frames.  I took this image on 9/18/2013.

The other object I would like to share was taken on 10/27/13.  This object, NGC206 is a star forming region and cluster located within the Andromeda Galaxy.  Taken with the CCD with no filtering, the area of interest is just left of center.  The galaxy core is off the screen towards the bottom right.  Some stars are resolved in the cluster.  Not bad for resolving stars 2.5 million light years away....

This was imaged with no filters, so it is black and white.  I didnt care as far as how pretty the picture was, I was more curious to see if I could image this object with any detail.

Latest Images

OK, I admit it... I've been bummed because of the weather we've had for much of the summer.  I have been imaging, but perhaps once every couple of weeks.  Either its just been cloudy, or the evenings have started out cloudy and cleared late at night, and I've just been too tired to do anything with the scope.  I like to set up before the sun goes down, but if it's cloudy, I dont bother.

We have had a few good nights, and I've gotten pictures that I've been too lazy to post here.  This is one reason I put up the facebook page - you'll see many pictures just hours after I take them.  The blog usually goes into more detail about the objects that I image, so the two kinda go hand-in-hand.  If you have a facebook account, I suggest you like the page that that is linked on here to get the full story and a sneak preview of what I'm doing.

Now on with the images I've missed...

First, I'll start off with a Hubble Palette of NGC7380, the Flying Horse Nebula.

This is the one and only image that I've taken using  Oiii, Hα and Sii.  Sii is mapped to red, Hα to green and Oiii to blue.  all 10 minute exposures, 5 each.  This was imaged on 9/5/2013.

A little earlier (8/23/13) I imaged NGC7635, the Bubble Nebula in Cassiopeia.  I also did this in narrowband using 10 minute exposures.  This was shot in Hα and Oiii only.  I created 2 images, one a "realistic" and a false color version.

 

Here is the "Realstic" version, Hα mapped to red and Oiii mapped to blue and green.

The false color image, with the Hα mapped to blue and Oiii mapped to red and green with different histogram stretching applied to the red and green.  I also took a few star cluster images that evening, but there was haze, and the clusters were far to the south, and were not real impressive.

On 9/10/13, I got an impressive Hα of NGC6888, the Crescent Nebula.  I imaged this one before using 5 minute subs, but this time I used 10 minute subs and the image showed far more nebulosity.

I'm VERY happy as to how this one turned out.  It is one of the deepest images that I've seen of this object.

Then, on 9/28/13, I went to an astronomy club meeting, and the weatherman called for clear skies, so I imaged the Helix Nebula (NGC7293) with an audience present.  This one came out very nice also.

This too has been in narrowband.  Hα mapped to red, and Oiii to Green and Blue.

Also imaged Jupiter on a couple of occasions when the sky cleared late.  this was the best one.....

I have yet to get the more interesting side, showing the Great Red Spot.

Oh, and on 10/1/13, I imaged NGC6946, the Fireworks Galaxy which came out pretty good using LRGB.

On 10/18/13 a penumbral lunar eclipse occured, of which I got a picture towards the tail end of the event.  Note the bottom right is slightly darker, and the moon has a yellowish tint.  I did no color enhancement, only a little sharpening in Photoshop.  I took this using the Canon T3 and 70-300mm zoom at 300mm, f/9.

OK, I think this brings us pretty much up to date.  I did do some imaging, but not a great amount, being this post covers about 2 months or so.  The weather hasnt been that great, a clear night here and there, and its been like that all summer.  I hope this winter, this trend changes.

Messier 17

The Swan Nebula, or the Omega Nebula, depending on its orientation.

Imaged it using LRGB, first time in doing so.  However, I was running out of time, as clouds were moving in.  The evening I imaged this, I first took a set at Oiii, which was not my intent, so I had to start again using Hα.  The image consists of 1 hour of Hα luminance, and only 10 mins each RGB color.

 

I found it very difficult getting the colors right.  The bottom image was a second attempt, although some like the top one better.

M16, Hα & Oiii

I've imaged M16, the Eagle Nebula last year with the dslr.  This time, I used the CCD with Hα and Oiii.  If I had a Sii, I could have dome a hubble palette.  There was very little Oiii signal in this object.

Scope:    Celestron C6N
Mount    Celestron CG5
Camera  Orion Starshoot G3
Filters    Celestron Oiii, Orion Hα 7nm
Exposures  5 X 5 minute Ha, 6 X 5 min Oiii
Processing  Deep Sky Stacker, color combining and post processing in Photoshop CS5


This is the original size of the image put out by this camera.

If  I were to image this again, I think I would do an RGB with an Hα luminance.

Although this is a low resolution camera, I like imaging with this over the DSLR, as the exposure time is much less.  The sensitivity is much better than the DSLR.  The vignetting is almost nil, and with the exception of about a dozen hot pixels, the noise is way better.  I could never have taken a picture this clean with a total of 10 frames with the DSLR's, let alone get the fainter nebulosity on the bottom of the image. 

The following is the monochrome Hα image.

No brightening of this image was performed.  Noise reduction in the dimmer areas was done, and the star sizes were made slightly smaller, but generally, this is what I ended up with coming out of DSS.

M82 with the CCD

I imaged M82 the other day, when it was rather low in the northern sky.  It was cloudy to the south, where I wanted to image.  Ursa Major was totally in the clear, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I imaged this using Ha for the red channel, and wideband green and blue to fill in the other colors.  The Ha was unaffected by the light pollution, as I was able to easily pick up the starburst region which I have never gotten before. The star spikes are artificially added using Carboni's astro tools.

What is interesting with the CCD is that very little post processing is required after these images are taken.  Very little histogram stretching is required.  The hardest part is combining the colors properly, but the detail appears pretty much as you see it here, after the channels are combined.  With the dslr, I'd have to stretch the histogram massively to get this, and even then, the starburst area does not show up.

I really need to take notes on the next DSO I image and write down the post processing workflow.  You wouldnt believe how simple it is, once the colors are combined and corrected, however, because the color levels are never correct when theyre taken, its difficult to know when they're right. 

To summarize, when Iprocessed this, I combined the colors, got rid of the nasty gradient on the green and blue, because of the light pollution, got the color balance close.  Did some very minor histogram stretching, a little bit of noise reduction.  Reduced the star size... sharpened, and here it is....

This is the unprocessed Ha stack with the only modification being done was to set the black point.  This is a stack of 5 frames.  No noise reduction, no histogram stretching...This is just as you see it coming out of DSS, except the black point was set in photoshop.  This was used as my red channel in the above image.