spaceman_spiff

This is a mosaic of the Moon's terminator at about 6 days old. Telescope: SW 150mm F12 Mak-Cass. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Camera: Canon EOS 550D in 60 frames/s movie crop mode, ISO 400, exposure 1/60s. I took 3 minute recordings for each image (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 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 80, 20, and 5 respectively. The Gamma was reduced to 0.8. Comments: In this attempt I wanted to cover the terminator region with two layers of images to give a bit more coverage of the sunlit side of the terminator. I unfortunately missed a bit in the southern region (it is difficult to keep track of what you have covered). Stitching he mosaic together proved very difficult, some frames would fit perfectly with fames one side but would be completely out of alignment the other side. I tried tilting and rescaling the images but I gave up and posted the result here!

A single image of Neptune taken on 28/12/2016. Camera settings: Cannon 550D . ISO 1600, exposure 15s. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Telescope: SW Skymax 150, 1800mm FL F/D = 12. Mount: SW EQ5 Pro. Processing: No processing! Comments: A single exposure just to see if I could get neptune's colour. Happily I did.

A stacked image of Mars taken on 28/12/2016. 89.9% illumination. Camera settings: Cannon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode at 60fps. ISO 400, exposure 1/80. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Telescope: SW Skymax 150, 1800mm FL F/D = 12. Mount: SW EQ5 Pro. Processing: Frames uncompressed and quality filtered using Pipp. I extracted the best 2000 frames from ~4mins of footage (14400 frames). I then aligned and stacked the best 40% of the remaining 2000 frames in Registax. The stacked images was sharpened using the wavelets function. Comments: Once Venus went behind the trees, Mars was my next target. Like Venus, this is my first attempt at imaging the planet. Because of its distance from Earth (1.62 AU) any detail of its surface is beyond the resolution of the scope but it was still good to resolve pits disk.

A stacked image of Venus taken on 28/12/2016. 58.1% illumination. Camera settings: Cannon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode at 60fps. ISO 200, exposure 1/160. With a Baader fringe killer filter. Telescope: SW Skymax 150, 1800mm FL F/D = 12. Mount: SW EQ5 Pro. Processing: Frames uncompressed and quality filtered using Pipp. I extracted the best 2000 frames from ~4mins of footage (14400 frames). I then aligned and stacked the best 40% of the remaining 2000 frames in Registax. The stacked images was sharpened using the wavelets function. Comments: Venus was the first planet I had ever viewed in a telescope when I got my first scope. This is my first attempt at imaging the planet. I added a Baader fringe killer filter to remove/lessen any chromatic aberration but some was still present (even in a Maksutov telescope). Overall I am very happy with the result, no cloud detail is visible but I was not expecting any! In future I may try some narrowband filters to help bring out any cloud detail.

The California nebula (NGC 1499). Date of image 28/11/2016. 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: ~40 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 43 x 3min at ISO 800 (taken at the end of imaging), Lights and darks all 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. Temperature ~-2 to -4 deg. Image was precessed in DSS. Stacking was in median mode. Star detection 30%. Colours have been stretched and saturation is 30%. No drizzling. As before, the weather was excellent. No clouds and very dry on the ground. There was also no wind and the seeing was very clear - the stars were really very still that night. Comments: I was planning on making a mosaic of two frames to cover more of the nebula. Unfortunately the batteries on my auto guider died and I had to resort to 30 sec subs for the other stack. I don't have the darks for that, I'll get them soon! As in previous images, I'm getting a strong gradient towards the lower end of my images. In the image of M81/82 I found that this is most likely to be caused my local lights. I could try some further processing to remove it or alter the scope to remove unwanted light. The latter seems like a more robust solution. The Ha red shines through here giving the impression of a thin, sparse nebula that dissipates steadily into space.

M81 and M82, Bodes Nebulae. Date of image 28/11/2016. 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: 72 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 43 x 3min at ISO 800 (taken at the end of imaging), Lights and darks all 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. Temperature ~-2 to -4 deg. Image was precessed in DSS. Stacking was in median mode. Star detection 45%. Colours have been stretched and saturation is 30%. This is also 2x drizzled. The weather was excellent. No clouds and very dry on the ground. There was also no wind and the seeing was very clear - the stars were really very still that night. Comments: As a change from my current MO of imaging strange, dim and exotic objects rising in the east, I thought I would go back to the classic galactic pair M81 and M82. This is the first shots of M81/82 where the star forming nebula in M82 can be seen I can also see the faint filaments in the outer arms of M81. In M82, the red star forming region crossing the main axis of the galaxy is just about seen but it is not very distinct. I wanted to see if the funny gradient I am seeing in my images is because of nearby lights to the east. M81 and M82 are to the North East and then later rise high so there was less chance of catching any ground lights. Looking at the image, there is still some gradient towards the bottom (-Dec) part of the image but this is much less than for objects in the east. Conclusion: probably neighbourhood lights. Solution: I have some spare flocking material stored somewhere. I could flock the inside of the dew shield. I should also try to check that I am stretching the images by the same amount to make better comparisons.

NGC 1333. Date of image 24/11/2016. 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: 28 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. Image was precessed in DSS. Colours have been stretched and saturation is 30%. This is also 2x drizzled. The weather was poor that night. Clouds kept interfering with guiding and I got just over 1h of imaging. Despite a clear weather forecast! There was also a noticeable amount of wind that was affecting the tracking. I also forgot to lock the RA and DEC clutches which couldn't have helped matters. Overall I had a very frustrating time. Comments: My first attempt at this nebula. I was actually planning on going back to the IC 443 which rises later but clouds prevented that. As before I was able to capture about 35 darks at ambient temperature (about 4-6 degrees) which will come in useful later. The target was much fainter than I was expecting and the dark nebula around it will need a lot of frames to show detail. Given the current weather, I doubt I will be able to achieve an excellent picture here. I also still have an issue with an increasing gradient right to left. I may try imaging an object to the north away from neighbours lights to see if that is the problem.

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 weather was not great - no clouds during the first 40mins of imaging, then they rolled in and never cleared until morning. Comments: My first attempt at this nebula. I will need to target i again to reduce the noise. I did have time to capture 50 dark frames at the correct ambient temperature. Some of my previous images have suffered from a directional line-like noise. It has been suggested that this is caused by improperly calibrated darks. So here I set to test this by taking proper darks. After processing, the image is noisy - but this is not directional, meaning the darks worked and I just need more frames. There is also a strong gradient in this image, not sure what from but I tend to get this when imaging targets at low altitudes. Tonight is predicted to be clear...another chance for more data!

Date of image 2011/2016. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode 60fps. ISO 100 exposure 1/60s ISO 6400. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 MakCass. No filters were used and the camera was at prime focus. Mount: EQ5 Pro. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star. Each frame was taken from about 4 minutes of video (~14400 frames). Processing details: Pipp is used to convert .mov to avi and filter high quality frames (the best 2000 frames are retained). The converted movie is the processed in Registax with 1 alignment point. I use the Registergraph to keep only the frames within 100-90% of frame quality. I stack the frames with 2x drizzle (0.5 pixel). I then alter the first 3 wavelet settings (80.4, 20.2, 5.4) I then alter the gamma curve to 1.4. Comments: This is my first attempt at Uranus and overall I'm pretty pleased. I first tried to image the planet using a 2x Barlow but it was too dim and I could't see it reliably on the camera screen to keep it centred. I removed the Barlow and could image it fine. If I go for Neptune I think I will drop the frame rate and increase exposure since I cannot hope to get any detail apart from the planet's colour. The pale blue-green hue really makes this planet unmistakable. I thought I saw Titania as well, I did take some longer exposures just to see where Uranus was on the sensor. I may have picked up some of its moons there.

Date of image 12/11/2016. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode 60fps. ISO 100 exposure 1/60s. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 MakCass. No filters were used and the camera was at prime focus. Mount: EQ5 Pro. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star. Each frame was taken from about 4 minutes of video (~14400 frames). Processing details: Pipp is used to convert .mov to avi and filter high quality frames (the best 1200 frames are retained). The converted movie is the processed in Registax with 100 alignment points. I use the Registergraph to keep only the frames within 100-90% of frame quality. I stack the frames with 2x drizzle (0.5 pixel). I then alter the first 3 wavelet settings (80.4, 20.2, 5.4) I then alter the gamma to 0.8. The mosaic was patched together using the Gimp. Comments: The Moon was getting near (357400 Km) to its close approach to the Earth. I was busy showing my wife different parts of the Moon so I didn't run a systematic sweep across the surface, good fun btw. My next task is to image the whole Moon, about 4 hours of imaging I think. I also aim to leave enough overlap to crop the frames and remove the less sampled edges of the frames.

Date of image 10/11/2016. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode 60fps. ISO 800 exposure 1/640s. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 MakCass. No filters were used and the camera was at prime focus. Mount: EQ5 Pro. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star. The stack is taken from about 5 minutes of video (~18000 frames). The details of processing are the same as the first attempt image. I may have tweaked the gamma but that is the only difference. Comments: The image still shows the Lunar southwestern region but moving slightly east, showing the Hainzel A, C (the double crater), Capuanus (infilled to the right) crater and the Palus Epidemiarum. This is final image stack of the night because the Moon was now already behind branches of a nearby tree. I assume that this is what is reducing the clarity of the image . Overall, I really enjoyed going Lunar! I will be great fun comparing the same features under different lighting (terminator) conditions. I also don't need to faff about with guiding or stay until 4am to finish a set of subs!

Date of image 10/11/2016. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode 60fps. ISO 800 exposure 1/640s. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 MakCass. No filters were used and the camera was at prime focus. Mount: EQ5 Pro. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star. The stack is taken from about 5 minutes of video (~18000 frames). The details of processing are the same as the first attempt image. I may have tweaked the gamma but that is the only difference. Comments: The image shows the southwestern region of the Moon including the Shiller and Hainzel craters. Shiller is right on the terminator and the ascending its rim on the left just catches the Sun's rays. This image is showing a region slightly further north than the previous capture (see location map). I Look forward to trying Lunar imaging again to see the effect of different atmospheric conditions on the final image.

Date of image 10/11/2016. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode 60fps. ISO 800 exposure 1/640s. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 MakCass. No filters were used and the camera was at prime focus. Mount: EQ5 Pro. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star. The stack is taken from about 5 minutes of video (~18000 frames). The details of processing are the same as the first attempt image. I may have tweaked the gamma but that is the only difference. Comments: The image shows the heavily cratered southwestern region of the Moon. Lots of deep craters, very hard to pinpoint the the location of the image when looking at a detailed Lunar map (such as the Lunar societies atlas). This image is showing a region slightly further north than the previous capture (see location map). The image is of similar sharpness to the previous image. Maybe this is as sharp as the atmosphere will allow this time round.

Date of image 10/11/2016. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode 60fps. ISO 800 exposure 1/640s. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 MakCass. No filters were used and the camera was at prime focus. Mount: EQ5 Pro. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star. The stack is taken from about 4 minutes of video (~14400 frames). The details of processing are the same as the first attempt image. I may have tweaked the gamma but that is the only difference. Comments: The image shows the heavily cratered southwestern region of the Moon, centred on the fantastic crater Clavius. Being on the limb of the Moon means that deep shadows increase the contrast in this area. This makes for a good target for a new be like myself. The image is a bit sharper than the first attempt, perhaps the telescope is getting closer to ambient temperature.

My first attempt at Lunar imaging! Date of image 10/11/2016. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640X480 movie crop mode 60fps. ISO 800 exposure 1/640s. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 MakCass. No filters were used and the camera was at prime focus. Mount: EQ5 Pro. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask on a bright star. The weather was good but the Moon was not visible for long before it moved behind trees. Next time I will set of the scope round the other side of the house. Processing was done first using Pipp. This converts .mov files to usable avi format and also performes quality filtering of the frames. I set it to keep the best 25% of the frames. I also make sure that pipp does not do any auto alignment of the frames as this messes up Registax. I then align and stack frames (the best 10% of the original 25%). The final image is sharpened by tuning the first two wavelet layers. Comments: Overall I am quite pleased with my first attempt. Features Such as Sinus Iridium and the Mare Imbrium show good detail. The image is not as sharp as I was expecting but this could be down to a number of reasons., but I suspect the telescope was not fully cooled to ambient temperature. I had to rush the imaging before the Moon disappeared behind trees.

Date of image 02/11/2016 Owl Nebula (M97, NGC 3587). 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: ~30 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min at ISO 800 (from dark library), 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 weather was excellent - no clouds during the whole night. I was imaging this after 3am and the sky was exceptionally clear. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned and stretched the colours. There is a small amount of aberration (probably caused by some tilt in the sensor) because the nebula is near the edge of the frame. The green comes out very strongly here and there is a tinge of H alpha round the edges. As always, more subs means more detail.

Date of image 02/11/2016 M 108 Galaxy near the Owl Nebula. 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: ~30 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min at ISO 800 (from dark library), 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 weather was excellent - no clouds during the whole night. I was able to image until tiredness got the better of me. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colours. This target is a kind of default goto object since it rises after many other objects of interest for me. I tried to image this and the Owl nebula in a single frame, which put M 108 at in the corner of the frame. As a result there is a small amount of aberration (probably caused by some tilt in the sensor). It might be better for me to centre the galaxy in the frame and lose the Owl nebula.

Date of image 02/11/2016 Flaming Star Nebula (C31, IC 405) 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: 49 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min at ISO 800 (from dark library), 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 weather was excellent - no clouds during the whole night. I was able to image until tiredness got the better of me. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colours. The Flaming Star Nebula is very well placed at the moment for me to image. It is also a good test of my camera's H alpha sensitivity so I may add to this stack later on.

Date of image 02/11/2016 M33 Triangulum Galaxy 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: 35 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min at ISO 800 (from dark library), 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 weather was excellent - no clouds during the whole night. I was able to image until tiredness got the better of me. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colours. I want to continue capturing frames on M33 because it contains a wealth of detail.

Date of image 02/11/2016 A small planetary nebula (NGC 2371) in Gemini. Processed using DSS. 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: 35 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min at ISO 800 (from dark library), 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 weather was excellent - no clouds during the whole night. I was able to image until tiredness got the better of me. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colours. I have just solved a problem of overcorrecting flats caused by the interval between flats being too short (1s), this lead to heat build up and possibly undischarged electrons on the camera's sensor. I increased the interval to 10s and the problem disappeared. The nebula was quite small so I only stacked a crop of the frames and I then drizzled the image to bump up the pixels.

Date of image 10/09/2016 The Crab nebula (M1). Processed using DSS. 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: 15 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min 0 sec at ISO 800 (from dark library), Lights and darks separated by 15 sec intervals. Flats: 100 x 1/1250s (taken from cloudy sky) at ISO 800, Bias: 50 x 1/4000 at ISO 100. The weather was ok - high level clouds throughout the whole night interrupted by thick lower level clouds at about 2:00am. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colours. I had a big problem with flats when processing this image. For some reason, the lights were 'flatter' (i.e. had more uniform illumination) than my flats. This lead to over-correction when applying my flats. I am not sure what happened to cause this change in my lights but the scope was pointing near my neighbours bright garden light, maybe scattered light caused this issue. The image is showing detail within the nebula - the nebula is smaller than I thought so I used 3x drizzle to reduce the pixel size. I need more exposures on this target, still lots of nose to fight (especially in the green channel). I stretched the colour channels about the same amount here.