Deep Sky Bonanza

[PatG]

Hi All,

Latest captures from the Orange Skies of Camberwell. All taken on brief session last Friday - 29th January. These were taken with a WO Megrez 72 plus Lodestar C / Lodestar Live:

Horsehead Nebula - 5x30s sum stacked

Flame Nebula - 1 x 30s

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy - 5 x 28s median stacked

M81 Bode's Galaxy - 5 x 35s median stacked

M82 - 5 x 35s median stacked

The Leo Triplet - 6x28s median stacked

I think I had a Astronomiks HA filter on for the HH and Flame nebula but cannot recall for certain.

Nice to see Leo Triplet in a single FOV, can just about make out some spiral structure in M66 and central dust lane in NGC3628.

This is only my 3rd session with the Lodestar/Lodestar Live combination so still getting acquainted with it but pleased with results considering the local LP and size of scope used.

Regards

Pat

[Martin Meredith]

Excellent Pat! Amazing to think of picking up the Horsehead from where you are.

Have you tried stacking more and briefer exposures? What mount are you using? 

Martin

[Dave In Vermont]

Just amazing! More proof for my hpyothesis that the future of amateur-astronomy will be in the video-astrophotography world. Small aperture + inexpensive gear = Colour imagery!

Here comes the New Wave,

Dave

[PatG]

Martin - Thank you for the feedback - yes it is incredible that some of these deep sky objects are within reach from such an urban location. I recall hearing the 11pm chimes of Big Ben during that session.

I have not done a great deal of stacking yet but will experiment with some stacks of shorter exposures next time. Mount wise, I am using a Losmandy G11 with Gemini 2 GOTO which I link up to a laptop via Ethernet from inside the house.   

Dave - Thank you also. Indeed electronically assisted / video astronomy could mean a renaissance in amateur astronomy. It definitely opens the door to so many more observing opportunities. Bring it on!

Regards

Pat

[Nathan_Pembs]

Amazing what you've managed to pick up, esp the Horsehead. Makes me wonder how VA would be in my dark skies (compared to London)

[PatG]

Thanks Nathan - no doubt, given dark skies - VA can deliver very impressive results indeed.  

[nytecam]

Well done Pat of Camberwell within sound of Big Ben   Even I in SW London a few miles further out can't claim your level of LP ...and you're coping remarkably well.  Keep up the good work. 

Those that live under darker skies have no comprehension of what real LP is like.  Advise like .."What you do is centre the galaxy/whatever in the finder..." ...no you don't - apart from the brighter stars and maybe M42 and M31 fuzz they're not visible in the finder. 

But if you're camera savy like EAA users, it's difficult to understand why the vast majority of amateurs peer through EPs where imagination is probably more important than reality of what's on the laptop screen to share with others. The Horsehead is probably the most challenging object for visual observers but routine for us as you have proved.  So be it

[alkrith]

Just amazing! More proof for my hpyothesis that the future of amateur-astronomy will be in the video-astrophotography world. Small aperture + inexpensive gear = Colour imagery!

Here comes the New Wave,

Dave

Had a go last night with the Phil Dyer camera using the !50 p Skywatcher . Tweaked a frame from the video . Having a lot to learn about photo editing , however enjoying the learning curve. Here is an image of M 82.

[PeterW]

Oi mytecam, I bagged the horsey by eye from near you, ok my eye had some help! Hints of barnards loop and the seagul last night, the monkey head and rosette were very good indeed.

I would like to join the video crowd but I need to sort out mount alignment (Polaris is behind a wall), till then I will just have to inensifier everything

Cheers, good shots!

PEterW

[nytecam]

Oi mytecam, I bagged the horsey by eye from near you, ok my eye had some help! Hints of barnards loop and the seagul last night, the monkey head and rosette were very good indeed.

I would like to join the video crowd but I need to sort out mount alignment (Polaris is behind a wall), till then I will just have to inensifier everything

Cheers, good shots!   PEterW

Oi Pete - you should post this on the deepsky 'truely' visual forum but you might get a roasting as I think you've used an IMAGE-INTENSIFIER gadget plus camera lens and maybe an Ha filter too to see the HH etc so it;s ok here on the Video/EA Forum - hehe.  

I get riled when video uses proclaim "No processing whatso ever.." when we know ALL images are "processed" either in-camera [via a multitude of prior camera settings] or in camera controlling/display s/w.  Lets come clean on this.

[f15p5]

Nyte,

By your reasoning all images are processed, even visual by the brain. I think most would say processing is using software like nebulosity, photoshop etc to enhance the raw image from the camera. All imaging devices have settings, I would not consider setting them to take an image processing, but using a histogram or other software to manipulate the raw image as such. I think this reasoning is because images can be enhanced by hours of software manipulation to hardly be recognized as from a raw image from the camera. So while your technically correct, I think the difference is to distinguish between the quality of the raw image/camera and the skill of using software after the fact to fix the image. Just my opinion.

Richard

[DoctorD]

Hi Richard

Where would the realtime processing offered in Lodestar Live fit in your definition.

To me, this has simply separated the sensor from the processor. Even my modest SDC435 has a dedicated image processor to get the best from the data recorded by the CCD.

Unless we are looking at RAW data from the chip I'd agree with Nytecam that pretty much every camera used for video astronomy or electronically assisted viewing has been processed.

I like to make the differentiation between "live" processing as the data comes in compared to the hours of post processing that may be needed to extract the most from an Astro photograph.

Not that any of this really matters - in the end we do this for our own satisfaction. [emoji2]

Clear skies

Paul

[f15p5]

Hi Paul,

Not really sure, sort of a grey area for me. I think we tend to think of an imager as a package, Miloslik for Mallincams, AstroLive for Astro-Systems, Lodestar Live for Lodestars and so on and on. What we typically see are the results of those combinations (and others). Maybe we need 3 definitions? Raw (does not exist in the most strict sense) so perhaps your idea, Live and post? I'm lazy though and tend towards thinking of the camera and capture software as a unit, any thing else is processing (or post processing). Now I never have tried to just hook up to a monitor with no computer so I am ignorant about that. I don't know how you capture images that way other than using another imager or recording device? So it's hard to compare apples to apples when you are introducing more variables. To be honest I really never think about it much, I just try and enjoy whatever I'm doing without getting to bogged down technical mumbo jumbo. I'll leave that to much smarter people than me.

Richard

[PeterW]

I have been posting quietly in the eyepiece forums... The only EP you need....

He he!!

Peter