don4l

Superb detail (especially in the bottom left of the image).  I've never noticed those structures before.

Well done.

Best image of NGC2841 that I have seen! 😁

Well done.

My memory seems a bit fuzzy about the actual landing and "small step..." moment.  I seem to remember more about the launch, and flight for some reason.  

I do seem to have a much clearer recollection of the shooting of JFK.

Does anyone know why Siril won't register without the date?

Is there somewhere that I can put the date?

I've got some Canon files (CRW and jpeg) that I would like to stack.

I love the middle image. 

Last night's settings for me (which were spot on) :-

Canon eos250d,  50mm at 2.8, ISO 800, 8second.

There was the tiniest amount of star trailing, so maybe ISO1600 at about 5s might have been a bit better.

This is a single jpeg straight out of the camera, downsized for display:-

[Edit]  The tricky bit was focusing.  I've got an App on my phone which allows a 10x "live view" zoom.  I'm not sure how I would have done it without this unless I had a pc directly connected.

I saw it for the first time last night too.

I have tall hedges and trees on my northern horizon, so I only had a tiny area at the back of my garden where I could get line of sight. 

I missed Hale Bopp 24 years ago, and I was worried that if I didn't see this one, then I might never get the chance again.  Anyway,  I've now seen a comet with my own eyes - very happy.

Last night I managed my first ever naked eye sighting of a comet.  I also took some shots with a Canon EOS250d with a 50mm "nifty fifty" lens at F2.8, ISO800 - (expecting to have to do some stacking and processing).  I was very surprised how the images turned out.  This is a single jpeg, straight from the camera and brightened a bit.  

The funny blue light is from a neighbour who has some incredibly bright LED lights.

I do like the way the colours have come out.  Very nice indeed.

8 hours ago, ApophisAstros said:

What would happen if you put a EFW with narrowband filters on a OSC, would you get the best of both worlds or just no benefit?

Roger

Only a quarter of the pixels would pick up any Ha, and that would be through the red filter on each pixel.

I bought my first mono camera after spending 10 nights trying to image M16.  The first 20 minutes with the mono/Ha filter combo picked up a much, much better signal than my old EOS300 had in 10 nights.

I didn't try the Ha on the EOS,  but I'm fairly sure that it would have been mediocre at best.

18 hours ago, Swoop1 said:

Very nice @don4l

I love the fact that it is b&w as well. Colour will look fabulous but sometime black and white does it for me.

Your post has made me think about this.  I completely agree that mono images can be very nice.

I've decided that another row above and below this image will produce a much nicer result than a (probably) failed attempt at colour.  I've had a quick look at the pane that would be below the Tulip, and there isn't much there.  However,  even if there isn't much of interest, I suspect that the overall image will look much better.  This will be my project for the next couple of months.

5 hours ago, Merlin66 said:

Just interested in your comment...

I use plate solving and just open the wcs.fit image in CdC to display it....

What editing do you have to do??

ASTAP, Astronomy.net and Elbrus all prefer to work on simple calibrated images.  When I try to display these in CdC I have to play with the display settings in (Settings -> Pictures -> Background) to get the image to display properly.   So, I produce "stretched" images in CCDStack.  These will display very nicely in CdC, but CCDStack strips most of the FITS header.  To replace the fits information, I open the solved image in ASTAP and copy the header info from the FITS window.  I then open the stretched image, and use Ctrl V to paste the header into the stretched image.

All images then display properly with the CdC image settings at "default".   This also allows me to put colour images into CdC.

8 hours ago, JonCarleton said:

Anyone using ASTAP for stacking?  I installed it to take a look.  Good feature set, but the UI isn't exactly self-explanatory.  I'm wondering now if it worth the time to explore.  I mean, I'd have to read instructions and stuff just to get a start.

I'm a great fan of ASTAP, but I don't use it for image processing at all.

It is a fantastic plate solver, annotator and asteroid finder.  It is also very good for manual editing of the FITS header, which I have to do to display my images in Cartes du Ciel.

I think of it as a Swiss army knife for astrophotography.

Are ther other stars in the shot?  How did they look?

Arcturus is very bright, and several things could make it look "wide".  A bit of haze in the atmosphere could make it "glow", for example.

This is a mosaic that I put together using Affinity Photo.  It only took about two hours to produce the mosaic, and I am still learning how to use the software.  This job would have taken me a couple of evenings using Gimp. (Panels never align properly, and there are gradients which clash between panels).

The two left hand panels are about 30 mins each, the rest are 70 mins.  Most of the data was gathered binned 2 x 2.  I hope to gather another 120 mins OIII per panel to produce a colourful panorama,  but who knows how long that will take.  Possibly years!

OTA Tak FSQ 106 at F3.6 on EQ6 with G3 16200 camera and Chroma 3nm filter.

The Veil is very good in OIII, and you can get nice images at almost any focal length.

2 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Donal,

Blending RGB with Ha is tricky and try as I might (and boy I tried), I just could not also add the luminance. This is the first astro photo where I've used Affinity, but only light touches. Usually 95% of my processing is with ImagesPlus and maybe 5% PS, but I decided to give Affinity a go instead of PS. It took a little experimentation, but I'm gradually learning how navigate it.

Cheers, Geof

I've been following lots of the youtube tutorials, and they do seem to be very good.  There is very little Astro related material, but I am learning a lot about image processing in general. In particular, i am finding it very good at cosmetic stuff, like removing gradients, background noise reduction, and selective sharpening.  I can already do these jobs in Gimp, but they are much, much easier in Affinity.  Another area that I've had success with is in colour tweaking narrowband images.

Your problem with adding the Lum may simply that there isn't any more "information" that it can usefully add???

The image has a lovely natural feeling.  I've never done a proper RGB / NB image, but I am certainly going to give it a go.

I've also been playing with Affinity Photo, and I've now bought a copy.   I'm still using Gimp for some tasks,  but Affinity is now my main processing tool.

As my imaging improves, I notice that I am getting fussier about "darkness" "transparency",and "seeing".

Two years ago I did a Ha survey of Cepheus under fairly thick haze.  The data was good enough to show me potential targets, including the "dark" areas.  It most certainly was not good enough to share in public.

Last night the conditions were similar, but there was no point in setting up.

I've been gathering OIII data this last week.  I have a strong suspicion that in a year or two, I won't bother with OIII for about a month either side of June 21st.

11 minutes ago, Spitfire said:

What a terrific image. Great wide field and I can't see the join!

Can you give me more info on the filters you have used......bandwidth and maker?

Geoff

They are Chroma, 3nm.

They make a huge difference.  The Ha makes it quicker to get clean data, but the OIII makes it possible to capture data that just isn't possible  with a 7nm or 12nm in a light polluted area.

3 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Wowsers!   That is something else.  I would love to produce an image like that, honestly that is just my cup of tea the ways it's been processed

Thanks Adam.  I *think* that it came out this way is that I wanted to emphasise WR 134.  Immediately after stacking,  the OIII was given two different stretches.  A gentle one for the Green, and a more agressive one for the Blue.  I also gave the Ha a much more gentle stretch than I usually do, to keep the red down a bit.

Mind you, the two halves still came out looking completely different, and I used the Channel Mixer in Affinity to balance the two halves up a bit.

9 minutes ago, x6gas said:

Encouraged by the Masteclass articles in Astronomy Now and Nik's StarGaZine talk I'm also trying Affinity Photo, by the way.  There are a couple of stumbling blocks (for example it seems that sample points only report the values for a single pixel and not an average of a number of pixels) but it does seem very capable.

I suspect that there are a few areas where it is lacking.  I don't think that it has a sensible RGB combine, for example.  I'm finding the "live adjustment" layers very useful.  It is also much, much faster than the Gimp on my machine.

BTW, good spot on the "garish" Crescent.  In my defence,  I was just learning Affinity when I produced the image.  The Crescent itself was taken with my Tal, and I turned up the brightness a bit because it is sort of centre stage.  The image is definitely more "art" than "science".

Thank for the very encouraging comments.

I was a bit worried that people might think that it was too garish, even though I liked it myself.

These two panels were meant to be part of a larger mosaic that I haven't finished yet.  I'm posting now because I've been playing with Affinity Photo, and I'm very pleased with the results.  Previously, I wasn't able to balance up the colours in both halves at all.  This version might not be to everybody's taste, but the balance between panels is much better than I have ever managed before.  I've now purchased a full copy of Photo, and I will be using it in future.

The left hand pane has 80m Ha and 100m OIII.  The right side, 60m Ha and 130m OIII.  @rodd's superb image has prompted people to ask where WR134 is, so I've highlighted it in the "finder" image below.

The data was acquired last summer with a G3 16200, Tak 106 at F3.6, on an EQ6.

Hopefully, I should get more data over the next couple of months so that I can extend, and do a more traditional RGB with the NB blended in.

Lovely image.

(I have an old Atik16hr, and it is as good as the day I bought it.  Another camera of similar vintage has suffered terribly - probably from cosmic ray at a guess.)