StarlightLive Multispectral and HDR Captures

[Dom543]

Crab Nebula M1 in Hubble Palette

This is my first attempt to use the Hubble palette.

2x90sec Sii to red + 3x45sec Oiii to blue + 3x45sec Ha to green channels. All mean stacked together. I left H-alpha to be the last as it often overwhelms the other components. This way I had the option to delete the last frame from the stack had Ha been too strong.

I thank to Martin Meredith for calling my attention to the fact that this nebula has sufficient S-II content to be promising as a tri-component narrowband target.

M1 is a bit too small for the Lodestar on my C-11 SCT. So I cropped the original capture to 70% and then enlarged the result 140% in MS Paint back to the original frame size.  The side effect is some graininess but, I think, it's still better than a tiny object in a big field of black.

Optics used: Celestron 11" SCT with two x0.63 focal reducers spaced about 100mm apart.

 

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[Dom543]

Witch Head Nebula Multispectral

Despite its monochromatic "blue only" appearance, this capture would not have been possible without the multispectral capability of StarlightLive. It was made of 5x60sec exposures assigned to the blue channel + 1x60sec assigned to the red and green channels. Without the last frame stars would be blue. All frames were captured with the same blue filter and focused on blue. I find blue nebulas to be the most challenging.  A blue nebula is reflected starlight. So there is no way to tone down the stars while keeping the nebula. The other challenge is that with refractive optics, like the 135mm Samyang camera lens used here, blue light focuses at a different point than the rest of the spectrum. Keeping the same blue filter and the same focus position also for the red and green channels was the trick to get around this.

This is actually my favorite capture since I re-started astronomy in January after a long job related break. This is partly due to the challenges involved but also to the fact that I have been wanting to take this capture for over a year now. Last year, when my blue filter arrived, Orion was already setting early. Then this year, when the opportunity finally came, I spent an entire night with this girl. Starting to like her more and as I understood her better and better. Earlier for example, I tried to exclude the bright star behind her head. Now I realized that that was her magic crystal that she also wears to jazz up her hairdo...

For comparison I also include my best capture from last year. That was taken with no filters, no multispectral capability and with a slightly slower lens.

The difference between the two captures is entirely the fruit of Paul's efforts to include the multispectral capability into LodestarLive.

Thanks Paul!

--Dom

[DoctorD]

Hi Dom

Fantastic work - M1 looks amazing in the hubble pallete.

Looking forward to seeing more!

 

CS

 

Paul

[Dom543]

Thank you All for the positive comments and likes.

After I posted some more challenging captures, here is an easy one that can be done very quickly and doesn't even require filter change.

Pleiades with Blue Filter

5x3sec exposures with a blue filter assigned to the blue channel + 1x3 sec with the same filter assigned to the red and green channels. As said in an earlier post, without the red and green component the stars would be blue not white. Focusing should be done with the blue filter on. The blue filter does make a substantial difference. Without it only a small amount of nebulosity is visibe unless one blows the stars way out of proportions.

Equipment used: Lodestar x2 mono camera with StarlightLive software, Nikkor 180mm ED camera lens, Baader blue filter.

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[Dom543]

Andromeda Galaxy

When I was able to return to astronomy in January, after several months of absence, I set out to re-learn the skills on the simplest and most familiar objects. The Andromeda Galaxy was an obvious candidate, especially as it was soon to disappear for the next six months. I used my Lodestar camera, as it requires shorter exposures and is easier to attach to the optics, than the SX-825. Here is what the monochrome Lodestar x2 attached to the Nikkor 180mm lens yielded for M31.

This image is made using the "arsinh" dynamic range mapping option. This is crucial, as the "linear" option yields an ugly large blown out center. HDR in the title of this thread refers to the use of these nonlinear tone mapping functions.

The above capture is monochrome and devoid of any multispectral features. I was curious, if by adding a red-infrared component one could also capture additional detail. As the image below shows, the answer turned out negative. I cannot notice much difference between the two captures. But as the sepia toned image evokes childhood memories of my first encounter with the Andromeda Galaxy on the pages of a popular science weekly (printed in sepia), I include it below.

2 or 3 of the frames were captured with a clear luminance filter and the rest with a 630nm red and IR pass filter.

Clear Skies!

--Dom

[nytecam]

Great work Dom ! Keep 'em coming ;o)

Nyte

[Dom543]

Triangulum Galaxy

3x30sec exposures assigned to all channels and dispalyed with the "arsinh" HDR option of StarlightLive.

Equipment used: Lodestar x2 mono on a Nikkor 300mm ED lens at f2.8 with a clear luminance filter.

This is probably the last image posted here from in this batch of captures, all made around the January and February new moons. I apologize for the dragged out process of posting them. When I shot the captures, I had no fast internet connection and now I am on a business trip in California. Every evening in the hotel I pull out one or two images from the haystack on my hard disk and post it. I have at least a dozen of captures of each object saved with various settings and exposure times.  I tend to have a hard time to decide which one to post. In this case I picked this one for the fluffy feeling of the galaxy, while still displaying a hint of its spiral structure.

Thank you all for the comments and likes. Thanks to Nytecam for discovering the real-time observing potential of Lodestar and thanks to Paul for giving us LodestarLive/StarlightLive.

Clear Skies!

--Dom

 

[laudropb]

Lovely set of images. Well done.

[RobertI]

That's an amazing image for 3x30 secs. I have enjoyed these posts, thanks.

rob