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Showing results for tags 'ic1396'.
Found 42 results
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Hello all, I recently collected some OIII data for my previous attempt of the Elephants Trunk. I used a 2" Astronomik 12nm filter inside my TS Imaging Star 71, riding in my dual imaging rig. I knew it would be very difficult to point the TS71 correctly and frame the Trunk with the OIII filter blocking so much light, so I was lucky to have this method which put it spot on target. I added the OIII data as a "lighten" layer to the original blue channel, then used some "selective colour" etc (alignment was done with Registar). The new image is a bit dark, I know, but that is intentional and I think it works well if watched in low ambient light. C&C most welcome. Used Nikon D7000 & NexGuide on HEQ5 Pro. Ragnar
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Had a bit of a stab at processing some data from the night of the 21st/22nd Sept - this is the Elephant's Trunk in IC1396 in Cepheus. Tricky to process, but ultimately, this needs a load more data. It would really benefit from some HA data as well to drag the faint stuff up a lot and get a bit more contrast in the trunk. Usual story of weather not playing ball though - I've not had a clear night since Image details: L:R:G:B - 130m (13x10): 45m (9x5) : 35m (7x5) : 35m (7x5) - RGB binned 2x. ST2000XM on WO FLT110 at f5.6 - all processing in PI. The bright stars are a bit tricky to control here, and harder to deal with since the cores saturate so quickly. The flats applied well, though I had to resort to using the G flats for all RGB - there's an internal reflection on the R channel that I need to investigate and deal with. I thought I had an odd blue cast over the left hand side, but I think it's actually real data given the size and location (it ties in with other features). Alos first time using the new Photometric colour calibration tool in PI - it seemed to work quite well, but perhaps the brighter bluer stars need a bit of revisiting...? Thanks for looking SEE BETTER VERSION BELOW
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Finally managed to add some proper Ha to the previous version (which was a noisy mess of a thing!), so this is now: 7 x 600s and 14 x 900s (4 hrs 40 mins) of Ha 17 x 900s (4 hrs 15 mins) of OIII SII synthesized using a blend of 60% of Ha and 40% of OIII Nikon D5300a 2" Baader filters Skywatcher 80ED Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro 50 Bias and 30 Flats Guided with PHD2 and a finder-guider (QHY5) Captured with SGP Pre-processed in APP Post-processed in PS The extra Ha data has made a massive difference. So this one was much easier to process. Still not completely happy with the colours, I may tweak them a bit at a later date. But for now I think I'm pretty much done with this target, time to move on to a new one methinks! C&C welcome as always. Clear skies! https://flic.kr/p/GBb38M- 30 replies
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Here is an image I took last month, around 8 hours of data. Taken with an FSQ and ASI 1600M Cool camera
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Hello, Following my Ha Only version of the The Elephant's Trunk nebula I'm uploading this HaLRGB version of the IC1396. http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/257462-the-elephants-trunk-nebula/ For high res: https://www.flickr.com/photos/101543943@N04/22749472473/in/dateposted/ Hope you like it Haim
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From the album: Deep Sky II
After watching several hours of video tutorials on how to process Hubble Palette images, I made this result which uses the same data as my original attempt. The basic steps were: 1) create a Hubble Palette via PS clipping masks; 2) Adjust colours; 3) Remove NB stars via Stratton. 4) Use the Ha as a Luminescence layer (the OIII and SII where a bit noisy) - sharpen and apply High Pass Filter, reduce noise 5) Remove stars from Luminosity layer via Stratton. 6) Blend Luminosity into colour image. 7) Blend RGB star layer via PS Screen into image (this seemed to give a more natural effect than the alternative PS Lighten). -
Evening SGL, though i would share a image from a couple of weeks ago. My attempt at the Elephant trunk nebula (it is in there!) This is my first 'proper' attempt using some newly aquired aperture rings which are great, they make processing a star layer so much easier as you dont have to deal with the horrible star spike the EF200L produces! Only 2 hours 35 minutes of data here because at the moment i am using a ball head on a dual bar which is a pain to balance and an even bigger pain to frame, making re-framing a daunting task! I have now ordered a lens collar to make things easier. Hopefully the microfcuser i have right now is not too big to allow me to use it - i have a feeling it is! May have to replace it. Anyway, here ya go. Details at the bottom. Exposure details:30* 300 second subs, f2.8 (f4 with ring), ISO 800, calibration frames, 200mmCamera: Canon 600DaLens: Canon EF200L 2.8 IIMount: NEQ6Guiding: Orion Miniguider
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Can hardly believe it but we have had several clear nights up here recently. Here is Ha data captured with my ES 5" apo refractor and a Canon 60Da (18 x 25 min over the last two nights). So it is captured with a Ha sensitive DSLR. To the Ha data I have then added RGB data from October 2017 taken with a Canon 300mm f/4 lens (96 x 3 min) and the ES refractor (35 x 10 min), so totally 18 hours of bits and pieces of data. All with Canon 60D or 60Da cameras at ISO 1600. Ha was primarily used as Lum. Comments & Suggestions most welcome! Cheers Göran
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Given that we have infrequent clear nights in the UK, I'm always interested in exploring ways of increasing my imaging efficiency. So, recently, I acquired 7 30mins Ha subs of IC1396 but I noticed that quite a few of the subs had eggy stars (see below - I think it may have been windy). Rather than discard some of these, I'd thought I'd explore if I could somehow use these in an image stack but in a way that wouldn't erode image quality. After a bit of research and considering that I had only 7 subframes including quite a few dubious ones, I decided to use the Poisson Reject algorithm in CCDstack. A feature of CCDstack is that you can see which pixels are marked for rejection within an individual sub frame. This is useful since it allows you to experiment with different rejection strengths and visually see what is going to be rejected. So, since I had about 5 eggy subframes and I was keen that my stars should end up round, I decided to set it to 5 iterations which means that it can reject up to the 5 pixels in each 7 pixel stack. After a bit of experimentation of seeing which pixels where being marked for rejection, I also decided to instruct the algorithm it to reject about 1% of all the pixels within each individual subframe. I've put the stacked result in quite a high resolution below. Alan
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Since I've rather limited experience in processing NB data, I thought I'd experiment with trying to get naturally looking star colours with only NB data. I started with the traditional SHO palette, modified with the Bob Franke adjustments, see http://bf-astro.com/hubbleP.htm - whilst this yields pleasing colours on the Trunk, it also generated purple star halos, which also penetrated into the nebula and they did not look natural. I therefore parked this result and tried a bi-colour (HOO) approach. In my opinion, this led to less attractive Trunk colours but more naturally coloured stars. I blended the two results in an attempt to get the best of both approaches. The image was constructed with 30min unguided subs which seem to work well with my 3nm NB filters and generated a reasonable amount of detail. Processed in CCDstack, Pixinsight and PS CC and taken with a Esprit 150 on a GM1000HPS. Alan LIGHTS: Ha:12, OIII:16, SII:8 x 1800s. DARKS:30, BIAS:100, FLATS:40 all at -20C.
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From the album: DSO's
12 x 1500s Ha 12 x 1500s OIII Combined using a synthetic green channel- 1 comment
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Hi all, just posting some new pics I took the other night in Saint Barthélemy, at 1633 meters above sea level (very good seeing): M27: M31: IC1396: The usual problems arise: guiding, coma, and noise from the camera (especially visible in the M31, I think). These are pics from 30 73secs exposures at 800 ISO with darks and bias. I did not take flats... Do you think that would improve the noise problem? I'm hoping to construct a flatbox some time... And maybe acquiring a laptop to use for serious guiding. A guide scope would already be available from my astro club... Any thoughts, suggestions would be very welcome! :-) Gerhard.
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I used my new ASI1600MM mono camera for the first time back in November of 2016. The whole point of moving from my QHY8 colour camera to the mono was so that I could do narrow band imaging. IC 1396, the Elephant trunk nebula was a perfect first target and remains the best astro image I've taken to date. Here's the Hubble palette version I captured on my first outing with this great new CMOS camera After processing my data from my imaging session on M31 recently I found a folder of LRGB data on IC 1396 that I shot a couple of days before I received my narrow band filters back in 2016. It seems that in the excitement of attempting my first nb image I completely forgot about the LRGB data I had captured before the filters arrived. Today I processed that data and, while it doesn't compare in the slightest with the quality of the nb results, it did highlight a few things. Here's the result of the LRGB 4 hrs of data. Now, compare this to my best effort on the QHY8 colour image (I know others probably could've done better, this isn't a contest between the two camera's, it's a contest between my imaging expertise) My first reaction was I like the colour of the QHY8 image more - but - the only reason it's that colour is because, if you look closely at all the orange stars etc., it is clear I hammered the red channel to make it look that way - so I effectively "painted" the image - which is not good..... Here they are side by side and scaled Open that image up and have a good look at the one on the right - the QHY8 example - it's almost comical how much I pushed the red channel to make it look red...whereas the one on the left has a more "natural" feel to it with actual white stars haha. The other message I took home from this is that there are objects in the deep sky that are more suited to narrow band imaging - I could capture LRGB for weeks and not match the nb results on this object. So although the forgotten data has been processed, and I believe it's better than the QHY8 effort, it seems that the reason it was unprocessed is that I saw the results from nb and canned the LRGB lol! Nothing lost today, as Captain Mainwaring said when asked why he learned to play the bagpipes on his honeymoon in Scotland, "....it was cold...dark, there was nothing better to do..." LOLOL! David
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After a bit of progress with bright galaxies and nebulae I took a deep breath and attempted to image the Elephant's Trunk Nebula with my little OSC CCD. 17 x 300 secs, no darks or flats, debayered and stacked in Atik Dawn, and about one hour's processing effort in StarTools. I know I should have orientated a long thin subject along the long side of the frame but after finally confirming the subject was in the FOV (I had to really stretch one 300 sec sub to be sure I had found the subject) I realised I would have to rotate the focuser 90 degrees, but my guide scope is attached to it and I was scared I would have to recalibrate and refocus so left it as it was. Now I remember why I like to image small, (relatively) bright DSOs. These faint nebulae are a real challenge, I am beginning to see the appeal of narrowband, just need a bigger mono CCD, filters, filterwheel etc, remind me how much can you take out of your pension pot? -
Sometimes the weather gods look on you kindly. A nice new Samyang 135mm turned up from that well known jungle supplier, I managed to assemble it to my Atik 428ex mono along with an Ha filter and got the spacing correct, and low and behold the skies stayed clear - all on the same day! I am sure there is room for improvement with the processing but this is IC1396 processed in PI; STF applied with HT, and a little HDRM + LHE to try to tease out some detail. Any help on improving the processing would be gratefully received - I really don't feel I get the best out of processing mono images. By the way this is 12x300s + 10x600s combined with HDR process in PI; flats, no darks and a master bias. Thank you for looking. Adrian
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Hello all, I've been capturing photons lately on the IC1396 with a Canon 300 F4 L lens on an ASI 1600 MMC. I did that for about last month during which I didn't take the camera and the filters off the lens. My balcony is pointed towards ~NEE so I can only see and image the sky between ~30 and ~140 degrees in azimuth and up to ~50 in altitude (with some tricks I can extend that). I shot the Ha sometimes also with the moon still up in the sky, sometimes without, when the trunk rose above ~25 degrees in altitude, the O3 above ~30 degrees and the S2 above ~25 too. In total I have 10h of Ha, 6h of O3 and 5h of S2 taken during 4, 3 and 2 nights respectively. Last night was a pain with the S2, the download from camera freezing twice and guiding going weird. Anyway, this was the last clear night, the forecast says that is going to be cloudy for a while and even if it clears, the moon will interfere so I won't get more data for a while. Perhaps I will switch to something else. All subs are 300s at gain 139 (unity) and cooled to -15C. All calibration frames. The O3 flats looked a bit weird so I took them twice and combined the 2 results. I can't really describe the final combination as it was more trial and error / like/dislike. The L is ~75-80% Ha and O3 and S2 equally filling the rest. The RGB was combined in StarTools and in GIMP, the layer combined in StarTools having a much higher percentage in the final blend. All processing done in StarTools and GIMP and the resizing/aligning was done manually in GIMP. I don't know if I missed something about the acquirement and the processing. The lens seems to have some element tilted, you can see some coma in the bottom-left corner and bloated stars in the top-right one. Better than no lens/scope though and at F/4 is quite fast. This would be my longest project and the most detailed one (highest resolution). I think I could get a better result from processing, but it takes ages at full resolution. Therefore I call this the final result (for a while at least). I'm also attaching the Ha, O3 and S2 channels. Comments and critics are welcomed. You can also follow the progress and the testing for this target at bin2x2 here: Thanks for looking and clear skies, Alex
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Hello, I've been trying lately to acquire some data on the Elephant's trunk nebula area. I managed 2-3 hours one week ago on Ha on more than one night, after 4AM. Pretty tough the following days at work. As it was more a test for the next months when it will get high enough at reasonable hours, the subs were binned and I also wanted to shoot S2 and O3 just too see what's out there. I did this this morning, but there seems to be much less S and O emitting compared to H. Bellow is the Ha image, the S2 and O3 are waiting to be processed, but I'm afraid I can't get anything usable just from 1h each. I'll share them later. Could anyone also maybe share their processed channels separately? I can only find the Ha as mono on the internet. My Ha details: ASI1600MMC, -15C, bin 2x2, Canon 300 F4 L, Optolong 7nm Ha filter, a bit over 2 1/2 hours in 180s subs, 300 gain. Tiff link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjcjJBR1RhWWpmNlU Thanks and clear skies, Alex
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Work in progress for now, just sorted the correct spacing for the flattner & the stars need sorting with the correct data. AZEQ6 mount, AA 80mm EDT @ 480mm fl F6. Atik 314L+ Guided using the DMK""618 with AA 10x60 finder 225 fl F3.75 Ha - 1.5 hours OIII - 45 mins S2 - 45 mins Just need to find a tut on the best process for adding correct star colours now, meant to be better weather Sunday night as well.
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Skywatcher Esprit Pro 150 teamed up with Atik 460ex and Baader narrowband filters. I don't have a massive amount of data for this, especially in S2 and Oiii, but wanted to move on to another target as I have just acquired a colour 460ex. The Esprit delivers really crisp images, really sharp edges to the bright parts of these emission nebulae, and this is something I have been looking for for some time. As a die hard reflector fan I have to grudgingly admit that I actually prefer imaging with this refractor at this focal length. I'm really looking forward to using the 150 with the 460ex OSC, I think they will be nicely suited. I'll upload the full size to astrobin later, but here's a 30pc preview for now, just a little murderated by the forum compression Thanks for looking Tim
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Having waited patiently for the first sign of a nebula being visible from my back garden and coupled with the fact that I have recently acquired an Ha filter. I decided last week was the first real opportunity to attempt imaging my first narrowband image. Now I know this is way too early to be imaging Nebula so this was simply a test to get to grips with focusing, post processing NB images and other technical gremlins. Happy with the outcome even though it is woefully short on exposures meaning it’s a bit noisy. The 3nm Chroma Ha filter seems to be performing well especially as the Elephant Trunk nebula is at a painfully low elevation of 26 degrees and pointing straight through the light dome created by London. It has however at least given me confidence that when the Nebulas come back in a few months’ time I should be able to have a good crack at them from my location. 5 x 600 Secs Flats, Darks and BIAS Processed in PixInsight
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From the album: The Next Step
Over a couple of nights managed to get 4 hours worth of Ha data (12 x 1200s); about an hours extra data was lost due to Satellite trails.© AJG 2014
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From the album: Deep Sky III
In an attempt to capture both detail and LRGB colours I mapped RED to (0.5*SII)+(0.5*HA), GREEN to (0.2*HA)+(0.8*OIII and BLUE to OIII - I then blended an LRGB image with the NB result via the Pixinsight script NBRGBCombination. The image represents about 25 hours integration time. -
From the album: Deep Sky II
Yet another reprocess after taking on board comments. Changes are: 1) Star halos were reduced or removed. I discovered that when I had imported the image from CCDstack into PS I hadn't paid attention to the pixel values of the stars. On the previous reprocessed image, the brighter stars turned out to have a pixel value of over 200, making them very difficult to colour. If you do attempt this you get halos. I also used the smudge tool set to colour and a brush set at 40% opacity to clean up some halos. 2) Reduced colour artifacts - on the previous image I discovered that I hadn't blurred the colour starless image sufficiently. As a consequence I produced many colour artifacts. This version incoporates an additional Gaussian Blur 4 and a Dust and Scratches radius 24 and threshold 16. 3) Allowed some green into the image which I think helps in the transition from the gold/red to the darker colours. 4) Slightly reduced the overall colour contrast. I noticed that one side benefit of the halo reduction was that I obtained increased resolution in the starfield, for example the very bright blue star was revealed to consist of several stars. -
Clouds, clouds and rubbish seeing have been the order of the day here. Finally managed to get something over the past three nights. Seeing was not great and the target hid behind the trees until 00.30 so not too much time to get anything before the dawn started to appear. Taken with WO-ZS71 and 428ex this is 8 x 600s of Ha, OIII and SII - processed in PI and PS with some creative use of colour. I'm pretty sure there is more wrong with this image than there is right about it. As ever advice and comments always welcome. Not expecting to get anything else now until August. Thanks for looking. Adrian
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This is an evolution of an image containing my RGB data (http://www.astrobin.com/266253/) to which Ole Alexander Ødegaard (aka Xplode) kindly allowed me to add his Ha data (http://www.astrobin.com/264601/). So, a mix of 5" apo refractor and 12" Newtonean attached to Canon DSLRs (a mono modded 6D for the Ha). Altogether 4 hours. I have posted the data previously but this version is quite different since I now used the Ha data as an extra luminosity layer, which sharpened the stars and emphasizes the nebula a bit more (although for the "head" of the nebula I only used the RGB data as it somehow looked better). I did have to try different tricks to shrink the stars in my RGB data to fit with the tight stars in the Ha data (to avoid coloured rings around them). I ended up using several rounds of Astronomy Tools star shrink action and Dust & Scratches in PS on the RGB data. The result is far from perfect so please do not zoom in too much. I think this image has a christmasy feeling to it for some reason. So a Merry Christmas to you all (and particularly Ole Alexander) from Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. This is a place absolutely free from light pollution and mostly free from clouds so it is slightly frustrating not to have brought any AP stuff. Comments and suggestions most welcome!
