pietervdv

Always great to see nice B/W images like this. This is a very handy reference image to pick some potential new targets from! 

Pieter

Very nice, I really like b/w images like this. 

Pieter 

Very nice, I'm impressed you got so many in a single night! 

Pieter 

Very nice! Was there any sign of the nebulosity in the lum channel? 

Pieter

If you pan around in the Simbad sky survey catalogue around Eta Carina, should not be so hard to find I reckon? Can't help you with the exact coordinates. To be honest, I was never a fan of this Hubble picture. To my feel it is overprocessed. Looks like to much deconvolution was done on the nebula. Maybe it's just me... 😉

Very nice! This an often neglected area in Orion. 

I tried this myself last year but gave up due to poor weather. 

Pieter 

Looks amazing Tom! Such a wealth of details, could look for hours at this. Hats off for your persistence and patience to produce such a huge image! 

On to Cygnus now! 😉

Pieter 

Thanks all for taking the time to look and comment!

Pieter

That looks fantastic! 

1 hour ago, Laurin Dave said:

That's very impressive Pieter..  as are the images on your website. From Les Granges?  

Dave

Thanks, that is correct!

Pieter 

Hi all,

Making a deep Abell1656 has been on my bucket list for some years; and now I finally made an attempt at it. I escaped the fuss of Christmas and New Year's celebrations to enjoy a great week in Southern France Provence for imaging. The weather was great with 4 out of 6 crystal clear 12 hour long nights. This is the first result; a long haul in Luminance on this impressive Galaxy Cluster. I did not bother with colour as I feel it does not add much. 

Equipment: Homebuilt 10" f/3.8 Astrograph with Wynne corrector on a Mesu200 mount

Sensor: ASI-1600MM-Cool cmos -20°C

Exposure: 10 hrs (5 min subs)

Filter: Baader Luminance

Capture and Calibration: Sequence Generator Pro and Astro Pixel Processor

Thanks for checking it out,

Regards,

Pieter

Very nice, pioneering work! 

Great pic! I really like how you hunt down all these faint nebulae. You put in a lot of hours, but the results are clearly showing and bring something off the beaten track. Exactly what I would (try to) do if I had a remote observatory! 

Regards, 

Pieter 

Outstanding, what a nice structure! This is added to my bucket list... 😊

Pieter 

Thanks all for taking the time to look and comment. I took into account some of @vlaiv his great feedback and improved the seams of the mosaic. I also overlaid an old M31 taken some years ago and tried to reduce the burnt core. I improved the contrast in the spiral arms ever so slightly...

Perhaps not perfect, but time to put this one to rest.😀

Here is a new link for the Full size

Thanks & regards,

Pieter

1 hour ago, vlaiv said:

Really remarkable images (both scaled down version and full size).

Hope you don't mind me noticing following, but really that is in my view something that is robbing your work of perfection. If it were not for those small details, I would really consider above images perfection in AP.

You are slightly oversampled (at 100% large image does not render stars as pin points, but rather there is softness to them - which means slight oversampling. There is also issue of "fat" diffraction spikes which means atmosphere was not playing ball and there is no detail to justify such resolution). Going with lower sampling rate will improve SNR further - which is great already, this is probably the best rendition of this galaxy that I've seen (not talking about M31, but this little fella):

This is first time I've clearly seen bar in this galaxy and how it's twisted.

Going with lower pixel scale would give you additional SNR and smoother background while all things would still be visible in the image.

Second thing is obviously edge correction of your setup. It is fast newtonian astrograph and sure it's going to suffer some edge softness on larger sensors, but in this case, it sort of hurts mosaic because overlaps can be easily seen, like this:

also, not sure what software you used, stitching is not quite perfect - as this part shows:

And the third one is obviously blown cores of M31 / M32.

I'm aware that I might be considered too harsh with my comments since you produced some splendid images, but I do really think that above things can be easily rectified (add a few filler exposures for the cores, be careful about stitching / blending part and do bin of your data in software) and then you will be closer to perfection in your work.

Thanks for your comments, I don't mind at all as they are all 100% correct. I appreciate you taking the time to comment in such detail! The pic is indeed a bit over sampled and the seeing in Provence can be pretty bad at times. 

The small defects during stitching indeed need some more attention, I'll sit down for that to rectify that. I stitched the panels manually in PS as my pc nearly went up in flames when I fed the mosaic to APP. 

About the blown cores, I understand what you mean. But I often find it looking too flat & manipulated when the cores are dimmed. Personal taste I guess... 

Thanks, 

Pieter 

Hello all,

I have finally processed my imaging data from this summer's (August) visit to Southern France; there I joined my trusted imaging companions Frans Kroon and Maurice Toet for a great week.

I'd set my sights on a 6 panel mosaic of M31; each panel is exposed for 2 hours, so 12 hours in total using a Luminance filter. Some nights were plagued a bit by high clouds so I had to deal with mild gradients and noise in some panels.  My processing skills are also a bit rusty, but I hope I managed to make it look ok. 😀 I did not do any major processing on it, mere stretches and curves and stitching the panels together.

I always have a preference for b&w as it reminds me of the works of the early astrophotographers (another explanation is; I am lazy and don't like to tweak endlessly behind a computer😎 )

Equipment: Homebuilt 10" f/3.8 Astrograph with Wynne corrector on a Mesu200 mount

Sensor: ASI-1600MM-cool cmos -10°C (it was T-shirt weather all night long)

Exposure: 6 x 2 hrs (5 min subs for all 6 panels), totaling 12hrs.

Filter: Baader Luminance

Capture and calibration: Sequence Generator Pro and Astro Pixel Processor.

You can find the highest res version on my website, the full size is 68 MP.

Full res M31

Thanks for checking it out,

Regards,

Pieter

I imaged this object myself last year and my effort pales next to your image. Especially the outer ha nebulosity is ultra faint. Hats off! It's a superb shot! 

Pieter 

Martin,

It looks fantastic! Good to see you are liking your asi-1600!

Best regards,

Pieter

Thanks all for taking the time to look and comment! 

11 hours ago, apophisOAS said:

 Nice image, going to try it myself.

Just wondered about the wooden tripod , i have always wondered about flexure and expansion and contraction in hot/cold weather does this happen?

Roger

The Berlebach Planet is made from Ash wood and extremely stable, it can carry 120 kg without breaking a sweat. Been very happy with it. 

Pieter

Hello all,

Last week I collected some o3 data from Southern France during my annual astro imaging field trip with 2 other imaging friends. The o3 shell in WR134 is very faint and could use even more exposure time. The HA data was made from my badly light polluted home locating in Belgium. I included a pic of my setup I drove 1000 km to get there.😀

Equipment: Homebuilt 10" f/3.8 Astrograph with Wynne corrector

Mount: Mesu 200

Sensor: ASI-1600MM-cool cmos -10°C

Exposure: 14 hrs (5 min subs); unity gain setting

Filters: Astrodon 5 nm H-alpha / Baader 4,5nm OIII  7 hours for each channel.

Channels assembled as HA:O3:O3

Thanks for checking it out,

Best regards,

Pieter

Very nice! There is no o3 component in the planetary nebula? Only h-alfa? 

Regards, 

Pieter 

Looks amazing and has your signature touch! (as usual off course 😊) 

Pieter 

8 hours ago, Adreneline said:

Very nice Pieter - excellent result.

I would be very interested to know the gain and offset you used on the 1600; I have one myself and I am still very much at the experimenting stage.

Adrian

Thanks! I have it set at the unity Gain setting. Seems to work well for me, never tried any other settings. 

6 hours ago, DaveS said:

Oh yes, I do like that, works well in HOO.

As an aside, how are you finding the Baader 4.5nm [OIII] filter? I've been thinking about the "enforced" series of NB filters for a new wheel, as I cannot afford Astrodons in 2" size (Or any size for that matter)

Thanks! I like the filter very much, I had a Baader 8,5nm o3 in the past and this one is a huge improvement. I still need to do some more testing, but I have seen some halos around very bright stars. A fault that plagued their old o3 filter. 

Pieter 

Hello all,

It's been kind of slow on the imaging front the last year; however during the last 2 weeks I gathered some data on the Pickering's triangle. It's a 2 pane mosaic; totaling 16 hrs of exposure time. It is my first bi-colour image, so go easy...

I made some 100% crops that show some interesting details. No major post processing, just levels and curves and combining the channels.

Equipment: Homebuilt 10" f/3.8 Astrograph with Wynne corrector

Sensor: ASI-1600MM-cool cmos -10°C

Exposure: 16 hrs (5 min subs)

Filters: Astrodon 5 nm H-alpha / Baader 4,5nm OIII

Channels assembled as HA:O3:O3

Thanks for checking it out,

Regards,

Pieter