spaceman_spiff

Date: 27/10/2017 Video recording taken from Affetside (just north of Bury), I get a good southern horizon and no houses causing unwanted air turbulence. Telescope: SW 150mm F12 Mak-Cass. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Mount: SW EQ5 pro with extension pillar. Camera: Canon EOS 550D in 60 frames/s movie crop mode, ISO 400, exposure 1/60s. I took 3 minute recordings (10800 frames). Processing: Movies were initially processed in Pipp, keeping the best 2000 frames and decompressing them. The decompressed frames were then passed to Registax aligned using 60-100 points. The best 90% of the frames (using the Registergraph) were kept and stacked. The final image was enhanced by amplifying the first three wavelets by 50, 10, and 2 respectively. Drizzle 2x was also used. Labelled image and location image are also given.

Imaging date: 23/03/2017. Reprocessing date 26/09/2017. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter (for removing light pollution). The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 18 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The data was reprocessed with PI and then GIMP. In this case, the final result produced by DSS and PI was similar apart from PI's background extractor which really helps flatten the image and remove residual LP. The calibration and registration performance looked similar, perhaps the small number of lights limits what software can do.

Date 23-24/03/2017. The Pinwheel galaxy (M101) was my second target of the night. It is a favourite of mine, being ever present and normally high in the sky. The gradient effect seen in my image of the Leo triplet is not present here because of the high altitude of M101. I spent the most time on M101 to try and coax as much detail from the edges of M101 and the other small galaxies in the image. Although faint, these smaller galaxies are viable, NGC 5477 is a small patch to the left (RA-) of M101, NGC 5473 is a dense patch in the top left of the image and NGC 5455 is a star like point of light just below (DEC-) M101. Weather: The sky was clear with good transparency and seeing. Wind was strong however and I lost quite a few frames because of vibrations. Temperature was about 3-5 degrees. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter (for removing light pollution). The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 64 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The data was reprocessed using PI. I think the white balance and field flatness has been improved.

Date 24/05/2017. Part of the North American Nebula reprocessed in Pixinsight Weather: Probably the best conditions I have ever had imaging, very still atmosphere and clear skies. The guide scope stayed on target the entire night. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter (for removing light pollution). The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 58 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: Calibration, registration, integration and basic image stretching all done in PI. Major improvements were achieved using the background extractor set to 0.5 deviation. Color balance was achieved using the color neutraliser function in PI. Further stretching and tweaking was done in GIMP.

Andromeda galaxy M31 taken on 15/08/2017. Taken from Bury. Weather: Clear skies and good seeing. Moon rising late so not intrusive but bad LP. The guide scope stayed on target the entire night. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter. The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 30 x 3 + 33 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. All images were taken with 15 second intervals to remove residual charge from the sensor. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Pixinsight. The final images were balanced to retain average white stars. I also used Gimp to add a selective Gaussian blur over a 5 pixel range to blend residual RGB noise and slightly increase saturation. Comments: My first whole image of M31 using two stacked images. The frames overlapped so the core of M31 received the full 63 frames worth of data. This is a good first attempt but I still need to work on getting faint detail from the edges.

IC 443 Jellyfish Nebula Date of image 23/11/2016. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 600D (astro modded). Telescope: SW Evostar 120 with Baader UHC-S filter. Mount: AZ-EQ6 guided using a ST80 synguider. Image details: Lights: 14 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min at ISO 800 (taken during cloud cover), Lights and darks separated by 15 sec intervals. Flats: 50 x 1/350s (taken from laptop monitor screen) at ISO 800, Bias: 50 x 1/4000 at ISO 800. The data has been reprocessed using PixInsight. I took advantage of the background extractor tool which vastly improved the quality of the image. I have a lot of LP to one side of the house which introduces a strong gradient in many of my images. PI gives me a way of keeping up with the rest of the astro imagers on SGL!

Soul nebula taken on 21-22/09/2017. Taken from Bury. Weather: Clear skies and good seeing. New moon but bad LP. The guide scope stayed on target the entire night. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter. The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 61 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. All images were taken with 15 second intervals to remove residual charge from the sensor. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Pixinsight. The final images were balanced to retain average white stars. I also used Gimp to add a selective Gaussian blur over a 5 pixel range to blend residual RGB noise and slightly increase saturation. Comments: Lots of H-alpha here but even after 3 hours of exposure, there is still noise present. This is about as much exposure I can get on one target before it moves behind the trees.

Date 04-05/09/2017. NGC6960, the Western Vail in Cygnus. Taken from near Mansonville, Southern France. Weather: Clear skies and good seeing but moon was almost full and produced a bright sky glow. The guide scope stayed on target the entire night. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter. The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 52 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. All images were taken with 15 second intervals to remove residual charge from the sensor. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Pixinsight. The final images were balanced to retain average white stars. I also used Gimp to add a selective Gaussian blur over a 5 pixel range to blend residual RGB noise and slightly increase saturation. Comments: This is my favourite image of the trip, despite the residual background glow from the Moon and the slightly offset positioning. I will be returning to this target back in England! Great colours and lots of fine detail. I am sure more detail can be got with further exposures.

Date 01/09/2017. Crop of M33, the Triangulum galaxy. Mansonville, southern France. Weather: Clear skies and good seeing. The guide scope stayed on target the entire night. Moon was out for some of the exposures. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter. The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 25 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Pixinsight. The final images were balanced to retain average white stars. I also used Gimp to add a selective Gaussian blur over a 4 pixel range to blend residual RGB noise.

Date 01/09/2017. Crop of M57, the Ring Nebula. Mansonville, southern France. Weather: Clear skies and good seeing. The guide scope stayed on target the entire night. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter. The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 52 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Pixinsight (my first attempt at using it). The final images were balanced to retain average white stars. I also used Gimp to add a selective Gaussian blur over a 5 pixel range to blend residual RGB noise.

My first attempt at Saturn taken around 13th June 2017 near Limoges, France. Weather clear no wind, seeing was not great. Scope: SW Skymax 150 (Mak-Cass) F/D=12 with a Televue 2x Barlow lens and a Baader fringe killer filter to remove any CA (not that there was much to speak of). Camera: Canon 550D in movie crop mode (60fps) Movies were 3 mins long (10800 frames approx). Processing: Pipp used to decompress images and select the best 3000. Registax used to stack and enhance the remaining frames. Comments: I was pleased with the result, perhaps I was secretly hoping for a bit more detail but even from France, Saturn is low in the sky. I have a number of processed images and I find this one the best (less artefacts from wavelets processing).

Date 24/05/2017. Part of the North American Nebula. Weather: Probably the best conditions I have ever had imaging, very still atmosphere and clear skies. The guide scope stayed on target the entire night. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter (for removing light pollution). The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 58 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Deep Sky Stacker. I set the star detection thresholds to values that caught about 60 stars. The final images were stretched in RGB and I then balanced the histograms to retain white balance. Luminance was tweaked to show faint detail. I also used Gimp to add a selective Gaussian blur over a 5 pixel range to blend the RGB noise.

Date: 13/03/2017 Image: A mosaic of panels covering part of the eastern limb of the Moon. The southern panels cover part of Mare Fecunditatis and Mare Spumans. The more northern panels cover Mare Undarum, Mare Margins and some of the crater Naper. These images were taken as the scope was cooling down to image Jupiter. As a result, the stacks are a bit soft and I may have pushed the wavelets a bit hard to show detail. Anyway, this is still an area of the Moon I have not imaged before so it is being added to the collection! Scope and optics and mount: Skywatcher Skymax 150 Maksutov Cassagrain (Fl = 1800mm, F/D = 12). The focal length was doubled using a Televue 2X Barlow giving a focal length around 3600mm and F/D ~ 24. I used a Baader fringe killer to remove residual chromatic aberration. The mount was an EQ5 Pro with an extension pillar. Camera: Cannon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode at 60 frames/s. ISO 100, exposure = 1/60 seconds. Each movie was about 4 minutes long. Processing: Movies were decompressed and filtered in Pipp, keeping the best 2000 frames, no image stabilisation was used. The decompressed file was then sent to Registax, frames were aligned and only the frames with > 90% quality were stacked, the number of used frames therefore changed for each stack. I then increased the Gaussian wavelets using 80 (1.3), 20 (1.15), 5 (1), altered the Gamma curve, aligned the RGB balance and stretched the histogram to cover 0 - 225. The mosaic was completed using Gimp.

Date 24/03/2017. The Globular cluster (M92) was my final target of the night. This image uses the same data as the previous stack of M92, except I only processed the central portion and enabled 2x drizzle. I also tweaked the colour balance to really show the different star colours. Weather: The sky was clouding up near the end of the night. Seeing was good. Wind was still strong (9-12mph) and I lost quite a few frames because of vibrations. Temperature was about 3-5 degrees. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter (for removing light pollution). The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 64 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Deep Sky Stacker. I set the star detection thresholds to values that caught about 30-40 stars. The final images were stretched in RGB and I then balanced the histograms to retain white balance. Luminance was tweaked to show faint detail. 2X drizzle was enabled. I also used Gimp to add a selective Gaussian blur over a 5 pixel range to blend the RGB noise.

Date 24/03/2017. The Globular cluster (M92) was my final target of the night. I normally spend time imaging M13 (just to the south of M92). However, I decided to dedicate the rest of the nights imaging to this lovely little globular cluster. It is quite a dense cluster that consists of two types of star (either pink white or jade green), I tried different RGB colour balances to bring out this difference. Also, the small and faint galaxies NGC 6332 and NGC 6336 are viable in the top right (RA+, DEC+) and top middle of the image repectively. Weather: The sky was clouding up near the end of the night. Seeing was good. Wind was still strong (9-12mph) and I lost quite a few frames because of vibrations. Temperature was about 3-5 degrees. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter (for removing light pollution). The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 28 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Deep Sky Stacker. I set the star detection thresholds to values that caught about 30-40 stars. The final images were stretched in RGB and I then balanced the histograms to retain white balance. Luminance was tweaked to show faint stars. I also used Gimp to add a selective Gaussian blur over a 5 pixel range to blend the RGB noise.

Date 23-24/03/2017. The Pinwheel galaxy (M101) was my second target of the night. It is a favourite of mine, being ever present and normally high in the sky. The gradient effect seen in my image of the Leo triplet is not present here because of the high altitude of M101. I spent the most time on M101 to try and coax as much detail from the edges of M101 and the other small galaxies in the image. Although faint, these smaller galaxies are viable, NGC 5477 is a small patch to the left (RA-) of M101, NGC 5473 is a dense patch in the top left of the image and NGC 5455 is a star like point of light just below (DEC-) M101. Weather: The sky was clear with good transparency and seeing. Wind was strong however and I lost quite a few frames because of vibrations. Temperature was about 3-5 degrees. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter (for removing light pollution). The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 64 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Deep Sky Stacker. I set the star detection thresholds to values that caught about 30-40 stars. The final images were stretched in RGB and I then balanced the histograms to retain white balance. Luminance was tweaked to show faint detail.

Date: 23/03/2017. My first deep sky imaging session for over 4 months! I really had to take my time setting up since I was quite rusty with everything. I have had my eye on the Leo triplet for some time now and I took this as my chance. Unfortunately, it was much lower in the sky than I imagined when looking at Stellarium so I only had about 1 hour of imaging time before it was out of view. Another factor that night was the wind, I lost many frames because of movement, the guider did a reasonable job but I may have set it with too low aggressiveness - it took some time to get the camera back on target after the wind had disturbed the scope. Optics and camera: Skywatcher Evostar 120 F/D=8.33 (Achromat) with a Baader UHCs filter (for removing light pollution). The camera was a IR-filter removed Canon 600D. Settings: 18 x 3 minute lights, 50 darks from library, 50 flats taken recently and 50 bias frames. ISO 800. Mount: Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 with extension pillar. Processing: The Lights and calibrations frames were processed using Deep Sky Stacker. I set the star detation thresholds to values that caught about 30-40 stars. The final images were stretched in RGB and I then balanced the histograms to retain white balance. Luminance was tweaked to show faint detail. The halo around the Hamberger galaxy (NGC 3628) is within the image but too close the noise to show without ruining the image. I should also say that there is a slight gradient in sky background towards the bottom (-dec) part of the image that I have attributed to glare from neighbours houses. Overall, I'm very happy to be imaging the Deep black stuff again!