MarsG76

On 31/08/2020 at 19:31, tooth_dr said:

A master with the 40d Mariusz  excellent work. 

When I cooled my 40D and reached around freezing on the sensor on nights when it 20C, the quality of my subs increased substantially... to the point where I'm wondering about exactly how much improvement would I have with a cam like the ZWO 1600MM/2600MC on my gear in the real world situation... is it really worth the few thousand $ expense?

I mean my 1800 second NB subs are almost noise free now... I dither all subs and so really the only improvement in the real world would be time taken to capture the same about of photons per sub.. ie a sensor with 35-40% vs 80% QE .. but exposure time is of no bother as I have a lot of clear nights and a permanent setup that works nearly flawlessly resulting in round stars at 2032mm focal length. I can set it up after/before work nights, start the subs exposures, forget about it while it does its thing all night while I sleep... The only thing I'm short on is processing and actual eyepiece observation time.

On 31/08/2020 at 20:19, MarkAR said:

Worth a try, halo's can be really difficult. Another option is to try and soften the halo's so they aren't so defined.

I might try (when I get some time to play) and remove the stars again, this time from this final version image that I posted and deal with the halos in that way... perhaps adding the RGB stars from my short exposed subs to keep them tight....

Thank you all for the kind comments...

Saturn is a little soft but that Mars is awesome....

14 hours ago, MarkAR said:

Pretty good. There's some star halo that detracts a little, not sure if it's down to processing or filters. 

Also worth inverting the image and doing SCNR on green to reduce the purple tinge.

Overall though, the pillars have come out well.

Those star halo's are much better than they were during the initial combining of the SHO channels.... but now that you mention it, when I get a bit of time, I might do Starnet++ on each channel and perhaps add the RGB stars... might make the stars tighter and improve the overall image?

Hello all,

This is my latest image of the Eagle nebula (M16/NGC6611) in the constellation Serpens, this time imaged through narrowband filters using my 8" Celectron SCT, at F10 - 2032mm focal length, with my astromodded and active cooled Canon 40D DSLR.

The second image is a cropped and rotated version to emphasize the famous "Pillars of Creation" part of the nebula, made popular by the HST image of the same name.

The color channels are SII, HAlpha and OIII as RGB, and color balanced to remove the heavy green color cast created by the strong Hydrogen Alpha signal.

The total exposure time spent on this image was 20 hours and 57 minutes consisting of the following subs exposures:

RGB: 13x15s, 19x30s, 17x60s, 12x90s, 17x120s, 15x180s

HII: 2x600s, 9x900s, 4x1200s

OIII: 1x600s, 8x900s, 1x1200s, 11x1500s

SII: 2x500s, 14x1800s

All at ISO1600.

Clear Skies,

MG

Top sketches...

7 hours ago, maw lod qan said:

Excellent image! I have to ask. Is that what they call the pillars of creation close to the center?

Yes, that's the "pillars of creation".

23 hours ago, Adam1234 said:

Superb image 

Thank you

Thank you all for the kind comments.

Great image.

Hello All,

Sharing with you my natural color image of the Eagle nebula.

This project is a WIP as I'm working on exposing narrowband to emulate the Hubble image of the Pillars of creation, but I assembled the 2 hours of 15, 30, 60, 120 and 180 second subs which I exposed through the UV/IR filter for the natural color stars to use in the narrowband image.

This has been exposed through a Celestron 8" SCT at F10 with my modded and cooled Canon 40D, tracked on a CGEM and guided with PHD2. The Hardware control and subs aquisition was carried out by APT 3.63.

CS

MG

19 hours ago, Miguel1983 said:

Oh i do, love it !

Only thing is i've should have made it for two setups as you see i've added a pier in the garden already, but i'm guessing it will never be enough in this addictive hobby 😆

Thats right, it's never enough or finished until every celestial object is imaged and observed... twice

What a fantastic observatory.. I have a small obsy setup and I love having it but this one is a dozen levels above it... you'll love having the convenience of the obsy... well done.

Which ever eyepiece focal length you decide on, have a look at the televue eyepieces... the 31mm Nagler Type-5 is a nice wide EP and the 11mm Nagler Type 6 is more close up but are 82° FOV and the Ethos 17mm is 100° FOV, so eventhough it magnifies more, you still have the wide view, just that the object is bigger.. actually you can't see the edges on that EP unless you really try and look for it... these eyepiece along with a 2" Powermate are what I use 99% of the time and nothing else (in my arsenal o'oculars) comes close to the views delivered by my Televue kit.... They're a bit more expensive but IMO they're worth it.

Thank you for the kind comments everyone.

Hello

Just sharing my latest Jupiter image.... Jupiter with two of its moons, Ganymede and Callisto, imaged with a Skyris 618C CCD through a 8" SCT at f33.

Jupiter imaged taken on 17 July 2020 @ 15:56UTC.

CS,

MG

Hello All,

sharing with you my latest complete image, the War and Peace Nebula, NGC6357.

NGC 6357 is about 5500 light years away in the constellation Scorpius near the better known NGC 6334, AKA the "Cat's Paw" or "Bear Paw" nebula.

This nebula was also given the name War and Peace Nebula because of its appearance in infrared images, the bright western part resembles a dove and the eastern part looks like a skull.

This photo was taken through a Celestron C8 8" SCT at f6.3 (1280mm focal length), tracked on the CGEM and exposed using a full spectrum modded and cooled Canon 40D DSLR.

Total exposure time through the SII, HAlpha and OIII filters was 40 hours.

Clear Skies

MG

On 13/07/2020 at 04:36, ollypenrice said:

Good stuff. I think the nebulosity is a great success. The stars, though, as is often the case with SCT deep sky images, are pretty large. Of late I've been seeing what happens when I use Starnet++ to de-star an image and then paste the original linear data on top of that in Photoshop's blend mode lighten before stretching that top layer till the stars begin to appear but in smaller size. It's quite simple and might work well with this data.

Olly

OK, I played with Starnet ++ and it definitely has potential. Definitely a tool I'll be using in the future, especially with capturing and adding RGB color stars to my Narrowband imaging.

It very easy to control the intensity and color of stars and now, thanks to your tip, I can process stars and nebulosity/DSO separately.

Attached is my result after a quick play after work. I tried to not be too rough with the stars but they do look more "delicate" IMHO.

Thanks Olly.

On 13/07/2020 at 04:36, ollypenrice said:

Good stuff. I think the nebulosity is a great success. The stars, though, as is often the case with SCT deep sky images, are pretty large. Of late I've been seeing what happens when I use Starnet++ to de-star an image and then paste the original linear data on top of that in Photoshop's blend mode lighten before stretching that top layer till the stars begin to appear but in smaller size. It's quite simple and might work well with this data.

Olly

Thank for the tip... I'll give Starnet++ a go... perhaps thats my next step in AP, star bloat control.

Hello astronomers,

Sharing with you all my latest rendition of the Swan/Omega Nebula - M17, imaged for 15 hours & 43 minutes during multiple nights between 26 June and 2 July 2020.

This was imaged through SII, HAlpha and OIII filters using my Celestron C8 8" SCT @ f6.3 with the astromodded and cooled Canon 40D DSLR, all riding on a CGEM.

These images are combined using the same data except one is SHO, Hubble Palette, style and the other is HOO to emulate natural color using the narrowband data.

Clear Skies,

MG

fantastic.. hopefully it'll still be visible toward the end of july when we can see it down here.

That is very awesome.. a permanent setup is a very comfortable way do do a lot more astronomy....

Great write up of you adventures to an old "stomping ground"... and a great result for a first after such a long break.

Very nice looking piece of gear....