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jl694

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Everything posted by jl694

  1. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 5 January 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 187 x 20s @ ISO400 with relevant dark, bias and flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and noise filter applied with Fitswork. Location: London, England The fifth in my short exposure experiment. I had trouble finding the target so developed a new method for finding DSOs. I simply point the telescope roughly at where I think the DSO lies, then I take a very short exposure, 5s @ ISO6400, and upload the jpeg to Astrometry.net. This tells me where the telescope is pointing and I can make approximate corrections with the motor handset. The process is repeated until the DSO comes into the field of view. Now I can find faint DSOs within 10-15mins all from the warmth of the indoors thanks to two 10m RJ11 extensions cords and a 10m USB repeater cable I acquired cheaply.

    © James Luis

  2. jl694

    Astrophotography

    A collection of all my successes in astrophotography, in chronological order to illustrate my progress. For better quality versions, please head to my Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/111922926@N08/sets/72157639770941174/ Any comments you have would be greatly appreciated.
  3. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 29 December 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 310 x 20s @ ISO400 with relevant dark, bias and flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and noise filter applied with Fitswork. Location: London, England The fourth in my short exposure experiment. This was a particularly interesting one as I was imaging the very faint Horsehead Nebula. I was happy with the detail that I could bring out in the final image, but I admit it took a lot of work in the processing stage.

    © James Luis

  4. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 29 December 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 246 x 20s @ ISO400 with relevant dark, bias and flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and noise filter applied with Fitswork. Location: London, England The third in my short exposure experiment.

    © James Luis

  5. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 28 December 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure:284 x 20s @ ISO400 with relevant dark, bias and flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and noise filter applied with Fitswork. Location: London, England The second in my short exposure experiment. I was very pleased with this image as it not only revealed the obvious M101 galaxy that I was aiming for, but it also contains contains a number of fainter galaxies.

    © James Luis

  6. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 28 December 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 187 x 20s @ ISO400 with relevant dark, bias and flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and noise filter applied with Fitswork. Location: London, England Frustrated with having to discard most of my images due to vibrations affecting the EQ3-2 mount, I decided to take only short exposures so I could keep 90+% of my data. 20s exposures were chosen and this was the first result.

    © James Luis

  7. jl694

    M45 The Pleiades

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: Taken over several nights around the end of November and early December Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 107 x 45s @ ISO400 with relevant dark, bias and flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and noise filter applied with Fitswork. Location: London, England This was another attempt at imaging the Pleiades, this time with more subs, a lower ISO speed and with a coma corrector. A light pollution gradient made this object difficult to process without losing the faint nebulosity.

    © James Luis

  8. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 29 October 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 21 x 75s @ ISO100, 26 dark frames, 30 bias frames, 18 flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted with GIMP Location: London, England I was relatively pleased with this first attempt at capturing the Orion Nebula. My exposure time of 75s meant that some trailing was occurring, which I didn't pick up during the acquisition. However, the nebulous detail was still stunning. Again, my recurring problem of removing the gradients arose.

    © James Luis

  9. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 10 November 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 24 x 70s @ ISO400, 21 dark frames, 20 bias frames, 11 flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and colours tweaked with Fitswork Location: London, England This is just a zoomed in version of the previous image.

    © James Luis

  10. jl694

    M57 Ring Nebula

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 10 November 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 24 x 70s @ ISO400, 21 dark frames, 20 bias frames, 11 flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography Tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and colours tweaked with Fitswork Location: London, England I tried again at imaging the Ring Nebula, this time with a longer exposure to obtain more signal and a better focus achieved using the Live View function on the camera. In addition, the coma corrector prevented the smeared stars of the previous attempt.

    © James Luis

  11. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 9 November 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 89 x 45s @ ISO100, 36 dark frames, 60 bias frames, 42 flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted and mild Gaussian blur noise reduction applied with GIMP Location: London, England This was my first attempt at processing the Horsehead nebula data. Using GIMP and its meagre 8-bit processing this is the best I could manage.

    © James Luis

  12. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 9 November 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 89 x 45s @ ISO100, 36 dark frames, 60 bias frames, 42 flat frames Processing: Exposures captured with Astrophotography tool, raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and colours tweaked with Fitswork Location: London, England At a later date I used Fitswork and its ability to deal with 32 bit TIF files to process the data of the Horsehead Nebula. The improvement is remarkable. The colours are more natural and the image less grainy.

    © James Luis

  13. jl694

    Star Trails (44m18s)

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 30 October 2013 Equipment: Canon EOS 1100D, Canon EFS 18-55mm lens Exposure: 2658s @ ISO100 at focal length 18mm with f/3.5 I improved upon my previous photo of star trails with a longer exposure. The light pollution at low altitudes is very prominent and explains why I have such trouble with gradient in my prime focus images.

    © James Luis

  14. jl694

    Cassiopeia

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 28 October 2013 Equipment: Canon EOS 1100D, Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens, EQ3-2 dual-axis motor drive Exposure: 6 x 300s @ ISO 100 with focal length 18mm and f/3.5 Processing: Curves adjusted with Canon Digital Photo Professional, background removed and curves tweaked with GIMP I wanted to try the DSLR driven on the equatorial mount. I pointed virtually straight up to the zenith and took 6 x 5minute exposures, along with dark and bias frames. I could do longer frames without stars trailing, up to 15 minutes in fact. However light pollution became untameable at these exposure times. In addition, dew became a problem. Dirt formed on the lens, creating unappealing marks in the images which were not easy to deal with as I neglected to take flat frames. One thing I really like about this image is that M31 appears nicely in the lower left corner.

    © James Luis

  15. jl694

    Star Trails (26m45s)

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 28 October 2013 Exposure: 1605s @ ISO100 with f/3.5 and Long Exposure Noise Reduction turned on I took this photo of star trails by picking the lowest possible ISO (100) and leaving the camera shutter open for 26 minutes and 45 seconds. Raw file was processed with Canon Digital Photo Professional

    © James Luis

  16. jl694

    Cassiopeia

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 13 October 2013 Exposure: 30s @ ISO1600 with f/3.5 I decided to take some wide field shots with my Canon EOS 1100D with its stock 18-55mm lens fitted on an old telescope tripod using a dovetail bar I had adapted myself. To focus I took short exposures of some bright stars at a high ISO speed, then zoomed in digitally to examine the size of stars.

    © James Luis

  17. jl694

    M31 Andromeda Galaxy

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 23 September 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Skywatcher 0.9x Coma Corrector, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 18 X 120s @ ISO100, 27 dark frames, 30 bias frames ,17 flat frames Processing: Raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted, background removed and colours tweaked with GIMP Location: London, England With a good polar alignment with polar scope and by balancing the mount properly, I found I could achieve 120s exposures without star trailing. Of course, on this mount the majority of exposures had to be thrown out due to vibrations or planes flying overhead. This was my first successful image using the coma corrector. I noticed that exposures needed to be longer in order to get the same level of brightness as those without the corrector.

    © James Luis

  18. jl694

    M101 Pinwheel Galaxy

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 7 September 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 48 X 45s @ ISO800, 34 dark frames, 30 bias frames ,18 flat frames Processing: Raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted and background removed with GIMP, (using heavily Gaussian-blurred layer subtraction), mild Gaussian blur applied in Fitswork to reduce noise Location: London, England

    © James Luis

  19. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 14 September 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 43 X 45s @ ISO800, 33 dark frames, 30 bias frames ,16 flat frames Processing: Raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted and background removed with Fitswork Location: London, England In a single sub I couldn't see anything of the galaxy but its core, which was still remarkably faint. Stacking allowed me to stretch the curves to pull out all the detail.

    © James Luis

  20. jl694

    M45 The Pleiades

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 7 September 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 48 X 45s @ ISO800, 34 dark frames, 30 bias frames ,18 flat frames Processing: Raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves initially adjusted with Deep Sky Stacker, curves tweaked with GIMP Location: London, England I was impressed by the amount of nebulosity in this exposure, but the coma problem was still evident.

    © James Luis

  21. jl694

    M57 Ring Nebula

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 7 September 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 110 X 45s @ ISO800, 34 dark frames, 30 bias frames ,18 flat frames Processing: Raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta with hot pixel cleaning enabled, curves initially adjusted with Deep Sky Stacker, light pollution gradient removed and colours saturated with Fitswork Location: London, England This image has two problems. The focus was slightly off. After this I began to use the Live View function at 10x magnification of the Canon 1100D to focus on the brightest star I could find. Additionally, stars were smeared towards the edges of the image, convincing me to invest in a coma corrector, and also to think properly about how to collimate my Newtonian.

    © James Luis

  22. jl694

    M31 Andromeda Galaxy

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 26 August 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 101x 15s @ ISO1600, 51 dark frames, 50 bias frames, 55 flat frames Processing: Raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves initially adjusted with Deep Sky Stacker, light pollution gradient removed with Fitswork, curves tweaked with GIMP Location: London, England This image highlighted the problem of light pollution gradients in my images, a problem I still contend with regularly here in suburban London.

    © James Luis

  23. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 7 August 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 101 x 15s @ ISO1600, 28 dark frames, 22 bias frames, 34 flat frames Processing: Raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted with Deep Sky Stacker and GIMP Location: London, England A vast improvement upon my first attempt, helped by an increased sub exposure, greater number of subs, lower ISO and the inclusion dark, bias and flat frames.

    © James Luis

  24. From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 2 August 2013 Equipment: Skywatcher Explorer 150P, EQ3-2 with dual-axis motor drive, Canon EOS 1100D Exposure: 31 x 2.5s @ ISO6400, 12 dark frames, no bias or flat frames Processing: Raw files (cr2) stacked with Deep Sky Stacker Beta, curves adjusted with Deep Sky Stacker only Location: London, England This was my first crude attempt at prime focus astrophotography which I have uploaded for posterity to show how far my techniques have progressed.

    © James Luis

  25. jl694

    Widefield of Orion

    From the album: Astrophotography

    Date: 27 February 2013 Equipment:Canon PowerShot SX150 Exposure: 15s, f/3.4, ISO200 Location: Fife, Scotland This was one of the first attempts I had at astrophotography. After playing around with the shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings on my Canon PowerShot SX150 digital camera, I managed to take this exposure. I was amazed by the amount of detail I could pick up with just a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. The success of this image is the reason I decided to pursue prime focus DSLR astrophotography.

    © James Luis

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