The "No EQ" DSO Challenge!

[happy-kat]

My thought for my location is to balance my heavy lens based on say a 45 degree angle as an average.

[The Admiral]

3 hours ago, SilverAstro said:

Absolutely ! We often comment about the gear that is now available to the umble amateur and remarkable comparisons with images by famous astronomers ( and their institutions) of yesteryear. But wouldnt it be great if we could detect the expansion of the universe from our back yards with an AltAz,  that is what set me off on my quest , , , well actually it was your amazing pic wot done it really !

May your thingies always remain resolvable

PS Thinks, didnt note what magnitude those globs were , , , > >

Thank you sir, you're too kind.

I've gone back to the StarTools output TIFF, and I think I'd have to say the optical aberrations would probably limit the observation of V1, never mind its magnitude! Still, it's a thought. It would be interesting to know what magnitudes those globs were, just for reference, though.

I've attached two TIFFs, the first a heavily cropped up-rezed image of the region in question, and one where I've just applied a heavy contrast enhancement using curves. Make of them what you will

Ian

ST v2 crop2 rezup annot.TIF

ST v2 crop2 rezup contrast.TIF

[The Admiral]

23 hours ago, SteveNickolls said:

Here's the results of imaging NGC 1499 (California Nebula) over the last two nights. I manged to take 90 images on Monday and 90 last night but heavy dewing resulted in only adding 35 light frames to those of Monday. Still 125 minutes of imaging albeit at quite low altitude range (between 14 and 30 degrees) and local light pollution. The images were taken with my Canon 600D DSLR, piggybacked on the Startravel 102mm refractor and Synscan Alt-Az mount. The images were taken at a FL of 200mm (ISO 800) and together with x50 bias and x50 flat frames were stacked in DSS and subsequently processed with StarTools. No dark frames were used.

Cheers,
Steve

That's a nice image there Steve, that nebula really has substance (if that's not a contradiction in terms!).

Ian

[The Admiral]

20 hours ago, Nigel G said:

I tried un checking the box.

Not much difference in it, if anything a little harder to reduce the noise level.

Hmm

Hmm indeed!

Ian

[The Admiral]

6 hours ago, parallaxerr said:

Scope balance/weighting.

Guys, when seting up for Alt/Az imaging, are you biasing the weight of OTA and camera one way or another? I have read the EQ guys weight towards the East, I'm guessing to keep the mount geartrain loaded in the direction of tracking.

Thus, I assume biasing the weight toward the objective end is preferable as the Alt axis is driving up when pointing East? Would you bias toward the rear when pointing West?

To be perfectly honest, I don't really take too much notice. I don't have a lot of leeway on the dovetail anyway, and I know roughly where the balance point is and aim to put it close to the alt axis. It's not as though you can release a clutch on a Nexstar and see exactly where the balance point is. To my mind, it's better to be slightly out of balance than exactly balanced, because then the load will be carried on just one or other part of the cog tooth, if you see what I mean, but so long as it's consistent I can't see that it matters which. Other views may differ!

Ian

[The Admiral]

6 hours ago, Filroden said:

Well, you asked for something in red...

Here's my limited attempt at NGC281, Pacman Nebula. It rose above my mount's altitude limited very quickly (I'd not taken into account my cables so by 21:10 it was already too high at about 59deg). Still, I got 24 mins of L and between 11 and 12 mins each of RGB. To try and compensate I created a super luminous frame using data from L and RGB. It was a little better than L on its own, so I went with it.

Anyway, here's my attempt, including an annotated version.

It's a little noisier than I'd like but I can't complain for 24 mins of L data. Hopefully I can get another clear night before the moon comes up and it rises above my limit.

And just for Ian, a cropped version with some minor Photoshop tweaks.

That's a lovely image Ken, a lovely star field with small tight stars. Thanks for the cropped version! Actually, on my PC screen it it's not so essential because I can see sufficient detail, but on my tablet it helps these tired old eyes. I think I prefer the un-cropped image for colour though.

Ian

[Filroden]

2 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

That's a lovely image Ken, a lovely star field with small tight stars. Thanks for the cropped version! Actually, on my PC screen it it's not so essential because I can see sufficient detail, but on my tablet it helps these tired old eyes. I think I prefer the un-cropped image for colour though.

Ian

Thank you. I agree. I think I introduced a green tint on the cropped version which wasn't obvious on my PC but is clearer on the phone screen. 

I also realised I hadn't checked my individual subs for the Soul Nebula. I took them after 22:00 and knowing now my mount starts to lock above 59deg and I didn't like my image because of its trails...

Well, no surprise but there were many bad subs so I've removed them and am reintegrating them now. 

[SilverAstro]

6 hours ago, The Admiral said:

I've attached two TIFFs, the first a heavily cropped up-rezed image of the region in question, and one where I've just applied a heavy contrast enhancement using curves. Make of them what you will

Thanks, very interesting, yep I agree not there , yet , just a few more stacks or the right time ! You came very close, there is a negative pic from the 2.5m Newton on the AAVSO site, https://www.aavso.org/sites/default/files/images/m31_v1_int_r_0.jpg here is a blink of it reversed with your enhanced :-

 

Edited October 5, 2016 by SilverAstro

[SilverAstro]

9 hours ago, The Admiral said:

It would be interesting to know what magnitudes those globs were, just for reference, though.

I have not found a comprehensive list yet, but this site  http://www.astronomy-mall.com/Adventures.In.Deep.Space/gcm31.htm  has a list of the brightest 75 ( he gives a Bibliography, sadly nothing on-line though)  and of those I marked only these are in there.

G96 15.5 2.7"
G144 15.5 2.8"
G156 15.6 2.5"
G213 14.7 2.5"
G233 15.4 2.6"
G101 16.0 2.7"
G134 16.0 2.7"

less than mag 16 is quite respectable though   ?

 

[The Admiral]

Thanks for all your work SA, this is all very fascinating. Just look at those point-like stars from the 2.5m Newtonian! But then, there's a world of difference between a 2.5m Newtonian and an 'umble 102mm . Still, I think I must have been very lucky with the seeing that night.

A bit of digging around and I came across the attached paper by the American Association of Variable Star Observers, AASVO, which I guess you've already seen, which makes for interesting reading. I see that the magnitude varied between about 18.3 and 19.5.

The outreach program was quite demanding of observing, I quote:

"Such observations would be non-trivial to plan at a ground-based observatory; an
adequate ephemeris would require at least two cycles be observed with good signal to noise,
and a sufficient number of observations per cycle to adequately detail the light curve. For
this star, that would require at least 60 days of coverage, with observations every 2-3 nights
at least. For this reason, the AAVSO observer community was asked to provide coverage of
M31-V1 for several months prior to the planned HST visit in December 2010 and January
2011."

Still, they got 11 participating observers. So yes, it does seem that there is a role for us amateurs, but given our weather conditions and the multiple sessions needed using an Alt-Az mount, trying to get data on variables which have periods of days does look distinctly difficult. Mind you, if you've got enough aperture and a sensitive camera I guess it might be feasible. But then, folks with that sort of investment wouldn't dream of using an Alt-Az mount!

Thanks again, Ian

 

 

Hubbles Cepheid in M31.pdf

Edited October 6, 2016 by The Admiral

[happy-kat]

There is a new member who bought the virtuoso mount and is interested in variable star study which I gather from links on that thread can be done using binoculars.

[The Admiral]

15 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

There is a new member who bought the virtuoso mount and is interested in variable star study which I gather from links on that thread can be done using binoculars.

Well Herzy, I don't know anything really about variable star monitoring, but I guess it will all come down to its magnitude as to whether it is accessible to amateurs. I can't help thinking that the brighter ones have already been studied in depth, so I'm not sure what can be added to our scientific understanding by amateurs with basic gear. Equally, I could be totally wrong!

Ian

[Filroden]

15 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

Well Herzy, I don't know anything really about variable star monitoring, but I guess it will all come down to its magnitude as to whether it is accessible to amateurs. I can't help thinking that the brighter ones have already been studied in depth, so I'm not sure what can be added to our scientific understanding by amateurs with basic gear. Equally, I could be totally wrong!

Ian

You can study variables with the naked eye. I did a project over about three to six months when I was at uni where I visually estimated the magnitude of Delta Ceph using the two nearby comparator stars from Central London (though I had to go to Regents Park or other open spaces to see it). When plotted and reduced, my results were very close to that measured with much more sensitive equipment. Like us though, I had to stack many observations to achieve what good equipment could have achieved with relatively few observations.

I think Ian's right. Anything we could study with our equipment has probably been studied in depth before so it would only be for curiosity rather than science. Mag 16/17 is probably at the limits of our equipment in our locations. We'd need really good seeing or some way to compensate for seeing if we were using measurements of photographs to determine relative magnitudes, good guiding (or consistently bad guiding!), and we'd probably need the star to exceed a single pixel? All probably beyond our equipment.

Not impossible, but it probably has to be of real interest to you to pursue given the time investment.

[SilverAstro]

4 hours ago, The Admiral said:

 those point-like stars from the 2.5m Newtonian! But then, there's a world of difference between a 2.5m Newtonian and an 'umble 102mm .

Quite so ! I did think last night that it sorta emphasized your 'blobs' and would you be unhappy, then decided that instead you would be pleased to be compared with a 2.5m professional jobbie and to be seeing with a 0.102m much of what it is showing  ! So yes, a jolly big pat on the back, and it has kept me off the streets and outa mischief as well

Yes, saw the AAVSO project, not had a chance to fully read it yet ( a lot going on domestically yesterday and it was 2am before I got back to posting those cluster magnitudes!) but I was a bit surprised that so few participated (when compared to how many variable observers of quite obscure variables there are in aavso and the bavso)

All the more reason to do an SGL version ??

 

[The Admiral]

49 minutes ago, SilverAstro said:

I did think last night that it sorta emphasized your 'blobs' and would you be unhappy

Not at all, I'm perfectly aware of my and my equipment's limitations. It does rank as one of my better achievments though . And having been made aware of what my image contained, I was both surprised and pleased!

49 minutes ago, SilverAstro said:

 I was a bit surprised that so few participated (when compared to how many variable observers of quite obscure variables there are in aavso and the bavso)

But then I think the "No EQ" thread is a bit of a niche one, and doesn't have the broader appeal! I did post my image on the DSO imaging thread as well.

Ian

Edited October 6, 2016 by The Admiral

[parallaxerr]

Woohoo, bits have arrived Bahtinov mask, Baader SCT to 2" click-lock, Baader MPCC and Nikon T-ring.

Should have camera mounted to scope tonight, just hope there are no focussing issues. Should be OK for spacers if I need out-focus but in-focus is the main concern, however, the website I took the MPCC recomendation from didn't mention any issues with the WO ZS66 so fingers crossed.

 

[SilverAstro]

1 hour ago, The Admiral said:

 It does rank as one of my better achievments though . And having been made aware of what my image contained, I was both surprised and pleased!

A very fine achievement indeed, we dont normally look this deep into images posted on SGL, a bit cruel even ! but actually if you blow up to pixel scale and measure the diameters they are not wildly different.

Anyway, V1 isnt there so I'll shut up about it in a minute ( I promise ! lol ) but one last comparison that shows how close you came : the stars marked 1 & 2 are very similar in magnitude to V1 and there is a suspicion that you got 1 perhaps 2, however they are similar to adjacent noise bumps marked in red, so not statistically significant ! More interesting though is that you deffo got number 3 and that is only slightly brighter than V1. So I think that you were just unlucky to not catch it at max when we might have been discussing a similar little bump ?

and there is a whole autumn and winter season at hand for you 

and it turns out we have amongst us a resident Delta Ceph archetype expert @Filroden ready to do the maths

 

Edited October 6, 2016 by SilverAstro
It helps to include the pic !

[Nigel G]

Ken, Nice Pacman image , some good detail there and decent colours.

Steve, The Californian nebula looks good, I wonder how that would turn out with a modded camera.

Well done guy's

Here's an interesting thing. Last night I took about 45 minutes worth on M33 between the clouds. with darks and flats, the image was not that good (not as nice as my first attempt a while back) so I thought I'd try stacking all my data together. The first batch was around 45 minutes of 30s taken with my 1200D the second batch including the flats darks and bias came from my wife's  1300D. There was around 30 degree change in the frame rotation between the sets of images so quite a big crop ( if you leave any stacking artefacts in the image its very difficult to process)

The result was the easiest one of the 3 to process with a better result which has really surprised me. Also I finally processed a stack of M31 I've had knocking around for a while, heavily cropped.

Still struggling with colours

Nige.

PS. spare parts for my 1200D are coming within the next week, fingers crossed.

[The Admiral]

50 minutes ago, parallaxerr said:

Woohoo, bits have arrived Bahtinov mask, Baader SCT to 2" click-lock, Baader MPCC and Nikon T-ring.

Should have camera mounted to scope tonight, just hope there are no focussing issues. Should be OK for spacers if I need out-focus but in-focus is the main concern, however, the website I took the MPCC recomendation from didn't mention any issues with the WO ZS66 so fingers crossed.

That's good news, hope you don't have any hitches!

But more importantly, I can't help noticing how clean and clear your desk is .

Ian

Edited October 6, 2016 by The Admiral

[Filroden]

5 minutes ago, Nigel G said:

Ken, Nice Pacman image , some good detail there and decent colours.

Steve, The Californian nebula looks good, I wonder how that would turn out with a modded camera.

Well done guy's

Here's an interesting thing. Last night I took about 45 minutes worth on M33 between the clouds. with darks and flats, the image was not that good (not as nice as my first attempt a while back) so I thought I'd try stacking all my data together. The first batch was around 45 minutes of 30s taken with my 1200D the second batch including the flats darks and bias came from my wife's  1300D. There was around 30 degree change in the frame rotation between the sets of images so quite a big crop ( if you leave any stacking artefacts in the image its very difficult to process)

The result was the easiest one of the 3 to process with a better result which has really surprised me. Also I finally processed a stack of M31 I've had knocking around for a while, heavily cropped.

Still struggling with colours

Nige.

PS. spare parts for my 1200D are coming within the next week, fingers crossed.

Thank you! I think it's my best yet. I spent a little longer getting the masks right. Also, I've since read I shouldn't be using a super bias (a process you can run to turn an ordinary bias into one that estimates what a 1000+ bias would look like). It seems the process preserves vertical detail but destroys any other structure in the bias so I've taken a new master bias today with 256 images and it looks much better. I also took the time to take a fresh batch of 60 darks which show the hot pixels much better than my previous attempt.

I love your M31 core. You've captured some great detail coming out of and around the core.

As to colour, it's there in the halos but it looks like the stars have been highlight clipped during process so their cores have all gone white. Is there a way to protect that stars during development? I do a masked stretch on my images which helps protect the brightest parts of the image from over-exposing. It does lead to an initial low contrast image but with masks I can then start to bring back some contrast. Maybe there's something similar in StarTools.

I'd I'll never get tired of seeing M33. It's just about the right size for our field of views and bright enough for us to capture a lot of subs over time and really bring out the detail in the arms.

Fingers crossed you can repair the 1200D and have a modded camera soon.

[parallaxerr]

28 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

But more importantly, I can't help noticing how clean and clear your desk is .

Haha, I wish that were the case. It took me a good 5 minutes to clear a space to take that photo

[The Admiral]

2 hours ago, Nigel G said:

Here's an interesting thing. Last night I took about 45 minutes worth on M33 between the clouds. with darks and flats, the image was not that good (not as nice as my first attempt a while back) so I thought I'd try stacking all my data together. The first batch was around 45 minutes of 30s taken with my 1200D the second batch including the flats darks and bias came from my wife's  1300D. There was around 30 degree change in the frame rotation between the sets of images so quite a big crop ( if you leave any stacking artefacts in the image its very difficult to process)

The result was the easiest one of the 3 to process with a better result which has really surprised me. Also I finally processed a stack of M31 I've had knocking around for a while, heavily cropped.

Still struggling with colours

Nige.

PS. spare parts for my 1200D are coming within the next week, fingers crossed.

Nice ones Nige! Plenty visible in the arms of M33, and your M31 core looks nicely processed, revealing stars within it. I don't know about you but I find it quite hard to predict which images are going to be the easier to process in ST.

Hope all goes well with your re-reassembly!

Ian

[The Admiral]

Last Monday I had a go at imaging M33 (Ken, you're to blame for that ). The trouble is, I'm not good at this late night thing, so I didn't really image at the best times. Still, this is what I got.

I was debating whether or not to image using my 0.79x reducer/flattener, but in the end I went with the native FL as I reasoned it would cover more of the sensor and thus require less cropping. Put it in to DSS and it threw up scores of between -5.25 and 567! With my reducer they normally top the 2000's, but hey ho. So I stacked all with a score >50 (234 x 30s subs), and after doing what I could in ST, I was just not happy. The image looked a bit out of focus, though it has to be said that individual subs looked fine. So this time round, I went through the subs one-by-one and weeded out those where I thought there was a bit of trailing. That brought it down to 199 subs. I registered and stacked those, and this is the result of that. It was quite interesting going through them in time order, because they started out with a coffee colour at about 8.30pm and ended up a dark grey by 11.20pm. I really needed to have started and finished imaging later. Perhaps I'll have another go in a few weeks time, when it is better placed earlier in the evening, and use my reducer. Let's hope for some clear skies when the Moon's not up! I feel that I'm pushing the data a bit too hard here, but needs must! Not sure what to do about magenta stars, always get them*.

Ian

*Edit. I've found I can either reduce their saturation to zero, or turn them blue, in Lightroom.

Edited October 6, 2016 by The Admiral

[Filroden]

8 minutes ago, The Admiral said:

Last Monday I had a go at imaging M33 (Ken, you're to blame for that ). The trouble is, I'm not good at this late night thing, so I didn't really image at the best times. Still, this is what I got.

I was debating whether or not to image using my 0.79x reducer/flattener, but in the end I went with the native FL as I reasoned it would cover more of the sensor and thus require less cropping. Put it in to DSS and it threw up scores of between -5.25 and 567! With my reducer they normally top the 2000's, but hey ho. So I stacked all with a score >50 (234 x 30s subs), and after doing what I could in ST, I was just not happy. The image looked a bit out of focus, though it has to be said that individual subs looked fine. So this time round, I went through the subs one-by-one and weeded out those where I thought there was a bit of trailing. That brought it down to 199 subs. I registered and stacked those, and this is the result of that. It was quite interesting going through them in time order, because they started out with a coffee colour at about 8.30pm and ended up a dark grey by 11.20pm. I really needed to have started and finished imaging later. Perhaps I'll have another go in a few weeks time, when it is better placed earlier in the evening, and use my reducer. Let's hope for some clear skies when the Moon's not up! I feel that I'm pushing the data a bit too hard here, but needs must! Not sure what to do about magenta stars, always get them*.

Ian

*Edit. I've found I can either reduce their saturation to zero, or turn them blue, in Lightroom.

That's stunning. You really captured the Ha regions in the arms. I made the same mistake as you. I started imaging when it was still not quite astro-dark and it was also lower in the sky giving a double whammy of background but as the night went on my images also improved. It's so tempting to just start imaging as soon as you're aligned and it looks dark but I guess 30 minutes back inside with a coffee might make the night last longer!

[Nigel G]

I had an hour to spare this afternoon so I bunged together a video of my images with some dodgy music for something to listen to and a couple of un published images. have a look if you want, best viewed full screen and lights out  From my YouTube channel

Sorry

Nige.