Wide Fields and Tiny Stars with SX-825

[Dom543]

We spent a couple of nights camping in the Eastern part of Washington State, where the air is dry, the sky is cloud free and no artificial lights can be seen as far as eyesight can reach. We are now back in Seattle, back to work. As time permits, I will post a couple of captures made during the trip. One image at the time.

Earlier, in the SX-825 first light thread http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/249914-sx-825-with-lodestarlive-available-and-working/. I said that the #1 improvement one gets from the SX-825 is the higher, near HD resolution. And the #2 benefit are the tight tiny stars resulting from the anti-blooming circuitry included in this camera.

After this trip, I may have to revise the order. This time I was using a shorter focal length 135mm FL lens for wider views and we were absolutely stunned by the tiny pinpoint stars that we were able to achieve. True, it takes considerable effort and patience to accurately focus such a fast lens by hand. Feather touch is not enough here, one needs an angel's touch. But this is a result of the fact that at f/2.0, the range of accurate focus is measured in microns and has nothing to do with the camera.

Anyway, once properly focused, the stars are stunning and opening up entirely new possibilities and a whole new range of objects for real-time camera assisted observing. So I start the images with a type of capture that I have not seen before in "video" astronomy.

This is the (Small) Sagittarius Star Cloud in the Southern Milky Way.

The image included in this thread has been reduced to 30% of its original size to save space.

To serve justice to the object, please look at the full size image here http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3893/gallery_26379_3893_569868.jpg

You may have to look at the image in a darker room. As this was my first attempt to capture a star cloud, I had no experience to properly gage the best brightness setting. Out in the dark of the night everything on the screen looks very bright.

This is a live stack of three 30sec exposures. Two red H-alpha frames and one all-spectrum luminance mean stacked together in LodestarLive (a.k.a. StarlightLive). Starfields alone would not normally require H-alpha. But the wide field also captured a whole smorgashboard of other objects and I wanted the emission nebulae to also show.

A shortlist of the objects included in the image is as follows.

1.Emission nebula IC4701, the round object on the top. This is a faint object that is not frequently photographed and usually lost in the glare of its more famous neighbor, the Omega/Swan nebula less than a degree away.

2. Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, M24 taking up most of the image. This is a precious little window through the dust close to the galactic center allowing a peek into the cross section of our home galaxy near its densest core.

3. Dark Bok modules Barnard 92 & 93 imbedded in the star cloud. (Actually blocking the view of the star cloud.)

4. Emission nebula IC1283-84 (Shapless 2-37), the round object towards the lower left of the image. There are also two adjacent reflection nebulae NGC6589 & 6590 nearby. But in the image only their central stars are visible, as the H-alpha filter cuts out their blue light.

I would also like to point out that taking this images was also an extreme stress test of the stacking algorithm Paul has built into LL and progressively refined. It is extremely difficult to stack the tiny stars with the accuracy required, when even a single pixel shift between the frames would show up. Fuzzy nebulae and larger blob stars are much more forgiving. Not mentioning that there are thousands of stars on the images that all need to be placed accurately on top of their earlier copies. All-in-all, the stacking algorithm passed the test with flying colors. Thanks to Paul for all his efforts that he put into it to reach this degree of sophistication and accuracy.

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[xtreemchaos]

thats a lovely image mate,theres a lot of stars. thanks for posting. charl.

[cfpendock]

That camera really is pretty incredible.  It would be interesting to see some longer exposures of very faint objects.....

Chris

[MarsG76]

great shot... stars definitely look pin point sharp.

[Dom543]

North America and Pelican Nebulas with SX-825 monochrome camera and LodestarLive.


This image file has been reduced to 30% of its original size. Please look at the full size, full resolution image here http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3893/gallery_26379_3893_501942.jpg.

1x60sec red H-alpha + 1x60sec all-spectrum luminance frames mean-stacked together.
This is my first try of the new multi-spectral capabilities of LL that Paul has pre-announced here http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/249745-lodestar-live-multi-spectrum-preview/. I am beta testing a test build of the next release.

Assigning the H-alpha frame to the red channel makes the nebula displayed red. Adding the all-spectrum luminance frame allows the stars to be in their natural white. There is some balancing needed that I am still learning. Please note again the tiny stars that are not overwhelming the nebula and are stacked with pinpoint accuracy by LL. (Actually, focusing was not quite accurate here, unfortunately.)

The image was taken with a Samyang 135mm f2.0 lens from Umtanum Ridge on the East (dry) side of the Cascade Mountains (about 120 miles East of Seattle).

Clear Skies!
--Dom

[laudropb]

Very nice images. Thanks for sharing.

[Paul81]

Amazing results Dom! 

The wide field view in EAA is brilliant, its really nice to see the objects framed - this was something I also liked about Marks video on the other post using his Sony camera.

I bet focus was a nightmare - the images look razor sharp to me and must have been a thrill to see live during capture!

When I have been playing with multi spectrum (using your data) I quite like to flick between the view of the object taken with the different filters - its amazing what details the eye picks up on.

[Dave In Vermont]

Wow! Beautifully done there, fellow New Englander! Keep going, please.

'ta,

Dave

[Dom543]

Thank you all for the positive comments and likes.

Here are two different captures of parts of the huge Sadr (Gamma Cygni) nebulosity complex.

They are taken with the same equipment and technique and from the same location as the earlier images on this thread.

First the Northern part.

The image file posted here has been reduced to 30% of its original size. Please see the full-size, full resolution capture here http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3893/gallery_26379_3893_696544.jpg.

Next the central North-South axial section

The image file posted here has been reduced to 30% of its original size. Please see the full-size, full resolution capture here  http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3893/gallery_26379_3893_723007.jpg.

The Easter egg near the bottom of the image is the often photographed Crescent Nebula. This time in the context of its wider surroundings.

Two earlier captures of the Crescent nebula alone are also included in my SX-825 gallery here http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3893/gallery_26379_3893_309233.jpg and here http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3893/gallery_26379_3893_353719.jpg.

The two images included in this post are also meant to illustrate the effects of different color saturation settings.

I believe that the paler saturation of the second image is more favorable to show finer detail.

The more heavily saturated nebulosity of the first image  jumps out better  from the background. Especially its fainter parts.

Saturation is also a matter of taste...

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[Martin Meredith]

Tremendous captures, Dom! The H-alpha + Luminance approach is really paying off. You get a real feeling of depth or separation of layers for the stellar and nebular parts. For myself, I prefer the slightly muted version.

I bet the entire kit for these shots is pretty light? I wonder if it would make a travel setup with something like the Star Adventurer mount. For wide shots like these GOTO is probably not very important.

Martin

[DonBoy]

Dom, great captures.  I do notice vertical column error in several of the images.  The early firmware for the Atik414 color had these same artifacts, but a firmware update fixed it.  I wonder if this is the same situation for the SX825.

Don

[PeterW]

Woah, goodie goodie! The gamma Cygnus region is huge, more frames needed and the stitch together. Looking very interesting, simple and fast to get good "visual" results!

Peter

[Dom543]

Thank you for the comments and likes.

Paul:

I fully agree, color (aka multi-spectral decomposition) adds a whole new dimension to out observing experience. It also adds to our understanding of what is going on out there. (Oxygen?, Hydrogen?  Their relative proportions? or Reflections or absorptions by dust? etc...) There are various ways to look at and appreciate this added dimension. One can look at colors superimposed, as we usually see them or one can look at the spectral slices (aka colors) separately or as a sequence stretched out in time. Earlier this spring, when I was playing with multi-color narrowband captures, I was thinking of making movies of the sequences. I am looking forward to resuming this experimentation now using the much more powerful tools that you have build into LL.

Martin:

You are right. the setup could be fairly light. In reality, I am currently using a heavy CGEM. Mostly because this is the only halfway decent mount that I have in Seattle that can track well unguided for about 90 seconds. We also lug around a 10" SCT and I have 3 camera lenses mounted on a cross dovetail bar so that I can match the optics best suited for a given object. As things are in life, we lugged around all this stuff but ended up using only one of the ligtest lenses...

Don:

Very helpful suggestion, thank you! I was thinking of contacting SX about those vertical bars. But being in a time crunch, no concrete steps have materialized. I need to re-settle from Seattle to Boston at the end of next week. I wanted to use the little free time that I have for more playing and less worrying for the moment. But I will see if updated firmware is available. I am also using an older version of the SX drivers. Not the ones that came with the SX-825.

Peter:

You are right about the Gamma Cygni complex. Before learning how to stitch, Lazy Dom's first approach would be to mount the camera on his 85mm lens. Hoping that that would cover it all...

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[PeterW]

Microsoft ICE... The lazy stitchers friend! Wonder how many dark nebulae you grabbed as well... Who needs a scope!

Peter

[Carl Reade]

So is this what is seen live or near live at the scope? It looks like imaging with an imaging camera then processed and not really video?

[Dom543]

Carl,

Yes, what you see on these images is exactly what I saw on my screen 2' from the scope at night, when I hit the "Save" button.

For a 30sec exposure the screen refreshes every 30sec with the new frame captured. The new image can be the most recently captured frame or, if one checks a checkbox, a stack of a number of recent captures. Stacking improves image quality, happens in real time and requires no intervention form the observer (other than checking aforementioned checkbox). While watching what we are observing, one can move sliders to modify brightness, contrast, color saturation and other parameters of the on-screen display. As said, one can hit the "Save" button at any time and then whatever one is seeing on the screen is saved as a file on the hard drive.

This is all what we do and what we are having fun doing.

One thing I, personally, am not doing is worrying whether others call this "video", "imaging", "processing" or whatever.

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[Carl Reade]

Thank you Dom that is what I wanted to clarify. Don't get me wrong both video and software cams do the same thing in a different way, one internally the other externally. I just like to know what the cams are capable of as plug and play.

Carl

[Dom543]

Rose of the North with Elephan't Trunk - IC1396

The file if the image has been reduced to 30% of its original size. Please see the full-size image in full resolution here http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3893/gallery_26379_3893_199536.jpg

The bright star in the upper right is Barnard's Garnet Star.

I believe that this palest pink provides the best detail and reflects the essence of the swelling gas cloud that the nebula is.

Better than the pure black and white version and better than the more saturated ones.

But for those, who like pinker roses, I also include a version 0.5 up on the color saturation scale. Same data, different slider setting.

1x90sec red H-alpha + 1x90sec all-spectrum luminance frames live mean-stacked in LodestarLive.

Taken with Samyang 135mm f2.0 lens and SX-825 mono camera from Umtanum Ridge, WA.

Earlier this year I took images of the same objects with my Lodestar x2c camera and they can be seen here http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3729/gallery_26379_3729_94400.jpg

The entire Rose was taken with an 85mm f2.8 lens and the Elephant's Trunk separately with a 300mm f2.8 lens.

With the more sensitive Lodestar 60sec exposures were sufficient but the square pixels indicate that that image has been stretched to the max.

I believe that the Lodestar image is at full resolution. The two captures have only been cropped on the sides to fit in one post.

Another possibly interesting comparison is between this full image of the Rose in this post and the Elephant's Trunk by itself, captured two weeks ago with this same SX-825 camera but with a 300mm f2.8 lens. Despite of the slower lens, that image also required only 60sec exposures. http://stargazerslounge.com/uploads/gallery/album_3893/gallery_26379_3893_6263.jpg

More detail in one image vs. the perspective of the trunk being its natural context in the other. The obvious choice is "Let's have them both".

This concludes the posting of my captures from this trip. Four objects from a three day trip sounds like a meager harvest.

Two of the nights we got engulfed in the heavy smoke of the tragic forest fires that are scorching the entire Inland-West of the US.

The third night on Umtanum Ridge was crystal clear but also shivering cold. That's when all the captures were taken.

Clear Skies!

--Dom