spaceman_spiff

Date of image 02/09/2016 The heart nebula. 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: 49 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. This image was taken to connect my previous attempts at this nebula, with the overall goal of making a mosaic. In the interval between this and my last imaging session, I cleaned the objective and aligned the T-mount which removed the elongated stars that plagued my previous images. The weather was excellent - no clouds until a huge bank of cloud stopped the session at about 12:30am. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colours. I reduced the vignetting in the corners by using flats taken from distant cloud cover, I was careful this time not to nudge the camera so the flats were perfectly aligned with the light frames. As well as altering the T mount grub screws, I also placed 2 small shims in the focuser opposite the locking screw which corrected noticeable focuser tilt. The image is showing lots of faint nebulosity with a clear boundary to the nebula on the right :-). I will try to make my mosaic asap.

Date of image 16/08/2016 The heart nebula. 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: 85 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min 0 sec at ISO 800 (from dark library), Lights and darks separated by 30 sec intervals. Flats: 100 x 1/1250s (taken from cloudy sky) at ISO 800, Bias: 50 x 1/4000 at ISO 100. The image is a bit washed out in the corners, the moon was full which didn't help things. The weather was excellent - no clouds, continuous shooting all night. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colours. I reduced the vignetting in the corners by using flats taken from distant cloud cover, this worked but I nudged the camera and the dust bunny in the bottom left was left un corrected in this image. I will place a small shim in the focuser to try and correct the tilt in the focuser, hopefully this will correct the one corner that shows elongated stars. I like the small details in the frame, such as the intricate texture of the H alpha and the small open cluster of stars in the bottom left.

Date of image 14/08/2016 The heart nebula. 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: 76 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min 0 sec at ISO 800 (from dark library), Lights and darks separated by 30 sec intervals. Flats: 50 x 1/40s at ISO 800, Bias: 50 x 1/4000 at ISO 100. This was quite a difficult target in light polluted skies for a broadband filtered camera. Despite this, I was able to pull out quite a bit of detail. I am glad that I framed the nebula correctly (fitting in the open cluster as well as the vail of gas on the left). Very little of this detail is visible from the individual frames. A broad sheet of cloud interrupted imaging for about an hour but because of the almost unobstructed view I had of this nebula I was able to get more than 4 hours of exposures. There were no clouds after 00:00. Auto guiding was very stable, as before, the RA axis seems a bit sloppy, often with negative corrections, I checked the tracking rate but it was sidereal. The mount was east-heavy balanced and I reduced the RA aggressiveness of the auto guider around 20%. Processing was done in DSS, I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colour channel histograms. The red was stretched considerably more than the green and blue channels to really bring out the H alpha detail. I still have vignetting in the image (this image was cropped), but I do need to redo the flats of distant cloud rather than a monitor screen, perhaps this will solve the issue.

Date of image 08/08/2016 Sunspot 2573 and 2574 near the east limb of the solar disk. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode. Exposure 1/1000s, ISO auto mode, 60 fps. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 Maksutov no filter. Mount: EQ5 pro. Clouds limited the recording to about 5 minutes in total. The movie length taken here was about 2m:00s. Turbulence was ok during the recording. As before, I was lucky with the focusing and I didn't alter it much during the recording. Polar alignment was good. Processing was first done with Pipp, which decompressed the .mov files and rejected 60% of bad frames. I then pass the uncompressed .avi to Rigistax, where I align, reject the remaining 90% of frames leaving about ~200 frames and then stack the result. The stacked image is then processed with the first wavelet strongly increased relative to the other wavelets. The gamma curve is adjusted to increase contrast. The final image is then cropped to reeve the grainy (poorly sampled) edges.

Date of image 08/08/2016 Sunspot 2571 near the middle of the solar disk. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode. Exposure 1/1000s, ISO auto mode, 60 fps. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 Maksutov no filter. Mount: EQ5 pro. Clouds limited the recording to about 5 minutes in total. The movie length taken here was about 1m:30s. I was noticing turbulence near the end of the recording, probably caused by the telescope tube heating up. I have since covered the scope with aluminium foil to reduce the heating. I actually got lucky with the focusing and I didm;t need to alter it much had a number of attempts at this SS because of cloud is issues with focusing. Polar alignment was pretty good considering I used only a compass. Practice makes perfect! Processing was first done with Pipp, which decompressed the .mov files and rejected 60% of bad frames. I then pass the uncompressed .avi to Rigistax, where I align, reject the remaining 90% of frames leaving about ~200 frames and then stack the result. The stacked image is then processed with the first wavelet strongly increased relative to the other wavelets. The gamma curve is adjusted to increase contrast. The final image is then cropped to reeve the grainy (poorly sampled) edges. I like the granulation here and the detail in the small spots.

Date of image 06/08/2016 Sunspot 2571 near the middle of the solar disk. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode. Exposure 1/1000s, ISO auto mode, 60 fps. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 Maksutov no filter. Mount: EQ5 pro. Clouds were present and did interrupt imaging, atmospheric transparency was good, but there was turbulance especially when the Sun was moving closer to nearby trees. I had a number of attempts at this SS because of cloud is issues with focusing. Polar alignment was pretty good considering I used only a compass. Processing was first done with Pipp, which decompressed the .mov files and rejected 75% of bad frames. I then pass the uncompressed .avi to Rigistax, where I align, reject the remaining 95% of frames leaving about ~150 frames and then stack the result. The stacked image is then processed with the first wavelet increased relative to the other wavelets. The gamma curve is adjusted to increase contrast. The final image is then cropped to reeve the grainy (poorly sampled) edges. I like the granulation here and the very small faint spots, these were only visible after stacking and processing the frames.

Date of image 06/08/2016 Sunspot 2572 near the western limb. Hardware details: Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode. Exposure 1/1000s, ISO auto mode, 60 fps. Telescope: SW Skymax 150 Maksutov no filter. Mount: EQ5 pro. Clouds were present and did interrupt imaging, atmospheric transparency was good, but there was turbulance especially when the Sun was moving closer to nearby trees. Polar alignment was pretty good considering I used only a compass. Processing was first done with Pipp, which decompressed the .mov files and rejected 75% of bad frames. I then pass the uncompressed .avi to Rigistax, where I align, reject the remaining 95% of frames leaving about ~150 frames and then stack the result. The stacked image is then processed with the first wavelet increased relative to the other wavelets. The gamma curve is adjusted to increase contrast. The final image is then cropped to reeve the grainy (poorly sampled) edges.

Date of image 29/07/2016 The Packman nebula NGC 281. 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: ~40 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min 0 sec at ISO 800 (from dark library), Lights and darks separated by 30 sec intervals. Flats: 50 x 1/50s at ISO 800, Bias: 50 x 1/4000 at ISO 100. I have been trying to capture this nebula for a while now because Cassiopeia is really well placed for a full nights imaging. Atmospheric transparency was excellent, no clouds after 00:00. Auto guiding was reasonably stable, but there was quite a lot of corrections in the RA axis, I used some east heavy balancing and reduced the RA aggressiveness of the auto guider. I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colour channel histograms. I stretched the red, green and blue channels by about the same amount to try and show the subtle difference in colour. I have noticed some darkening round the edges of the image that could be vignetting or a result of the smaller stack size in these regions. What ever it is, it was not corrected by the flats. I actually like the subtle tones in colour throughout the nebula - I didn't think I caught this detail looking at the individual frames. I didn't want the H alpha red to overpower the other emissions so I stretched the colours accordingly.

Date of image 17/07/2016 Star field near the Cocoon Nebula. Centre of picture: RA 21h, 51', 57.77''; DEC +48, 39', 0.01''. 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: 25 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min 0 sec at ISO 800 (from dark library), Lights and darks separated by 30 sec intervals. Flats: 50 x 1/50s at ISO 800, Bias: 50 x 1/4000 at ISO 100. I was trying to capture the Cocoon nebula but got confused by a set of stars that looked like the stars at the centre of the nebula. I was about 1 degree higher in declination from the target. Atmospheric transparency was good, no clouds. Auto guiding was reasonably stable. I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colour channel histograms. I stretched the red, green and blue channels by about the same amount to try and show the subtle difference in colour.

Date of image 17/07/2016 Star field near NGC 281. Centre of picture: RA 0h, 57', 21.07''; DEC +57, 53', 58.5''. 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: 25 x 3min at ISO 800, Darks: 50 x 3min 0 sec at ISO 800 (from dark library), Lights and darks separated by 30 sec intervals. Flats: 50 x 1/50s at ISO 800, Bias: 50 x 1/4000 at ISO 100. Atmospheric transparency was good, no clouds. Auto guiding was reasonably stable. I increased the saturation by 30% and manually aligned the colour channel histograms. I stretched the red, green and blue channels by about the same amount to try and show the subtle difference in colour.

Date of image 24/07/2016 Equipment: Phone camera, ISO, aperture and exposure settings were set to auto. My wife (SNova) took this snap of the main stage at the Blue Dot Festival at Jodrell Bank. We stayed to watch some acts after helping out demonstrating at The Science in Music stand, tiring but great fun! I found it apt that while thousands of people were enjoying the music in front of the iconic Lovell Radio telescope, Mars and Saturn were hanging in space just next to the stage. I wonder how many people noticed these other worlds as well.

Date of image 20/07/2016 Equipment: SW Skymax 150 (f12) at prime focus with a home-made Baader solar film filter (full aperture). The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 pro. Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode set at 1/640s exposure ISO800, the frame rate was 60fps. This photo was edited by my wife (she goes by the alias of SNova here!). We were just playing about with the settings on Registax - the only true way to learn! It was difficult to bring out the structure of the Faculae without producing significant ringing artefacts at the limb. SNova did bring down this effect using the de ringing tool without the smoothing being too obvious. Good job! The total movie duration was about 3 minutes. The best 40% of frames were selected and decompressed by Pipp, Stacking and editing was done with RegiStax 6. I can't remember the number of alignment points. I think about 100 frames made it into the final stack. The weather was good with some turbulence. Tracking was OK considering the crude PA.

Date of image 22/07/2016 Equipment: SW Skymax 150 (f12) at prime focus with a home-made Baader solar film filter (full aperture). The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 pro. Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode set at 1/1000s exposure ISO1600, the frame rate was 60fps. I chose a higher ISO setting because I had read that this noise will actually decrease quantisation error when stacking 8-bit/channal frames. I am very please with this pic, it shows the same sun spot grouping I have photographed over the past week but now it is close to the solar limb, faculae are clearly visible. I also like the fact that the curvature of the limb also gives a sense of perspective for the Sun spots. Weather was ok, there was a lot of turbulence in meaning focusing was even more difficult that on devious days imaging. I took several movies each time slightly nudging the focus and this was the best result. The total movie duration was about 5 minutes. The best 25% of frames were selected and decompressed by Pipp, Stacking and editing was done with RegiStax 6. I used about 40 alignment points. I think about 400 frames made it into the final stack. I did not ramp up the wavelets because I was getting ringing effects at the limb. I also do not like that bloated look that features get when wavelets are overdone. The telescope was not tracking well here, I kept adjusting the azimuth but I did not have a lot of time to get a great PA,

Date of image 20/07/2016 Equipment: SW Skymax 150 (f12) at prime focus with a home-made Baader solar film filter (full aperture). The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 pro. Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode set at 1/500s exposure ISO400, the frame rate was 60fps. I wanted to capture the same Faculae I shot yesterday to see how they progress in time. The weather was good, there may have been some think high level cloud but this did not effect the quality of the frames. The total movie duration was about 5 minutes. The best 40% of frames were selected and decompressed by Pipp, Stacking and editing was done with RegiStax 6. I used about 20 alignment points. I think about 700 frames made it into the final stack. I did not ramp up the wavelets because I was getting ringing effects at the suns horizon. I also did not like the smoothen effect of the de-ringing feature in Registax. The telescope was tracking well. Focusing was done by trial and error (by slowly tweaking the focus and watching 15 seconds of live view). I don't think the focus was as good as yesterdays shot. I am now thinking of attaching a scale onto the focus knob to fix the exact position of good focus.

Date of image 20/07/2016 Equipment: SW Skymax 150 (f12) at prime focus with a home-made Baader solar film filter. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 pro. Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode set at 1/640s exposure ISO400, the frame rate was 60fps. I wanted to capture the same sunspots I shot yesterday to see how they progress in time. There is a clear change in structure especially in the dole spot which is elongating north-south. The weather was Ok but interrupting clouds did ruin some frames. The total movie duration was about 5 minutes. The best 25% of frames were selected and decompressed by Pipp, Stacking and editing was done with RegiStax 6. I used about 20 alignment points. I think about 300 frames made it into the final stack. I did not ramp up the wavelets because I was getting ringing effects at the suns horizon. I also did not like the smoothen effect of the de-ringing feature in Registax. The telescope was tracking well. Focusing was done by trial and error (by slowly tweaking the focus and watching 15 seconds of live view). I don't think the focus was as good as yesterdays shot. I am now thinking of attaching a scale onto the focus knob to fix the exact position of good focus.

Date of image 19/07/2016 Equipment: SW Skymax 150 (f12) at prime focus. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 pro. Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode set at 1/1000s exposure ISO400, the frame rate was 60fps. I wanted to capture some solar detail near the limb of the Sun, I saw these light spots so I thought of capturing those. I did not ramp up the wavelets because I was getting ringing effects at the suns horizon. I also did not like the smoothen effect of the de-ringing feature in Registax. The total movie duration was about 5 minutes. The weather was great for solar imaging. The best 25% of frames were selected and decompressed by Pipp, Stacking and editing was done with RegiStax 6. I used about 15 alignment points. The telescope was tracking well. Focusing was done by trial and error (by slowly tweaking the focus and watching 15 seconds of live view).

Date of image 19/07/2016 Equipment: SW Skymax 150 (f12) at prime focus. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 pro. Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode set at 1/1000s exposure ISO400, the frame rate was 60fps. The total movie duration was about 5 minutes. The weather was great for solar imaging. The best 25% of frames were selected and decompressed by Pipp, Stacking and editing was done with RegiStax 6. I used about 15 alignment points. Some first comments: The telescope was tracking well, I tried to keep the target in the frame for the entire movie exposure. Focusing was done by trial and error (by slowly tweaking the focus and watching 15 seconds of live view).

Date of image 19/07/2016 Equipment: SW Skymax 150 (f12) at prime focus. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 pro. Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode set at 1/1000s exposure ISO400, the frame rate was 60fps. The total movie duration was about 5 minutes (the weather was cloudless!). Decompressing .mov files was done with Pipp while frame stacking and processing was done with RegiStax 6. Some first comments: The mount was tracking badly but did improve after some fiddling with the PA axis. I tried my best to properly focus but turbulence makes this quite difficult. The image has a slight red tint, I may modify it to equalise the RGB channels.

This is my first attempt at solar imaging in white light. Date of image 12/07/2016 Equipment: SW Skymax 150 (f12) with a TeleView 2x Barlow lens. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 pro. Camera: Canon 550D in 640x480 movie crop mode set at 1/60s exposure ISO400, the frame rate was 60fps. The total movie duration was about 2 minutes (clouds were very frequent and heavy). Stacking the frames was done with RegiStax 6. I may have overdone some of the wavelets as well (I'm still getting used to Registax!). Some first comments: The telescope was tracking reasonably well considering I only did a rough PA and the FoV was so small. I tried my best to properly focus but in the 1 minute of imaging I may have not got exact focus. The image shows some stacking artifacts probably because some frames used cut off the sun spot.