EAA as a byproduct of AP

[aparker]

I've been playing around a bit with trying to take good enough images with my Ultrastar to enable composition of "real" astrophotos.  I am using Starlight Live to drive the captures (since it is available and familiar) which means I can also live stack my frames as they roll in, which is good for QC purposes and to have something to do besides read (astrophotography involves a lot of waiting, I've found).  Any, below is a live stack (so it counts as EAA!) of 12x3 minutes on M27, through a 7nm Astronomik Ha filter.  Please excuse the zillions of hot pixels, I was not using dark subtraction for the live view; all the darks will get subtracted when I actually process the images (look for me on the Imaging/Deep Sky forum if interested).

[aparker]

If interested, I put a quick draft of the processed Ha frames here: 

Alex

[DoctorD]

Hi Alex

Thanks for sharing - and good luck with your astrophotography journey.

I often capture my whole session then stack the best captures afterwards - something to do on the long cloudy dark nights that we seem to have too many of - Astrophotography as a by  product of EAA

CS

Paul

[Astrojedi]

Alex,

This is a good way to get best of both worlds. I have tried it but never got around to post processing the captures due to limited time. Which was one of the reasons why I transitioned from AP to EAA in the first place couple of years back. The other was that due to my obsession with imaging and post processing I was feeling more and more disconnected with the night sky. I was learning more about image processing vs. the universe.

But I have been thinking about imaging again and 'real time imaging' could bridge the gap although it significantly reduces the number of objects I can observe in a night in exchange for quality.

Hiten

[aparker]

30 minutes ago, Astrojedi said:

The other was that due to my obsession with imaging and post processing I was feeling more and more disconnected with the night sky. I was learning more about image processing vs. the universe.

 

One of the things I do like is getting out and experiencing the night sky and environment.  While taking the above images, and a bunch of Oiii, I sat in my yard (at my dark sky spot in New Hampshire) from 10:30 to 1AM, looking up at the stars, listening to bullfrogs and owls and coyotes, and in general experiencing nature at night, which not many people do any more.  I really like this aspect of observing.  In the summer.  Come winter, I'm wishing for a remote control observatory!

 

[stash_old]

18 hours ago, aparker said:

One of the things I do like is getting out and experiencing the night sky and environment.  While taking the above images, and a bunch of Oiii, I sat in my yard (at my dark sky spot in New Hampshire) from 10:30 to 1AM, looking up at the stars, listening to bullfrogs and owls and coyotes, and in general experiencing nature at night, which not many people do any more.  I really like this aspect of observing.  In the summer.  Come winter, I'm wishing for a remote control observatory!

 

As W H davis the poet ,who lived in UK and USA as a Hobo(tramp) said:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Totally agree on the "come Winter"

[Astrojedi]

19 hours ago, aparker said:

One of the things I do like is getting out and experiencing the night sky and environment.  While taking the above images, and a bunch of Oiii, I sat in my yard (at my dark sky spot in New Hampshire) from 10:30 to 1AM, looking up at the stars, listening to bullfrogs and owls and coyotes, and in general experiencing nature at night, which not many people do any more.  I really like this aspect of observing.  In the summer.  Come winter, I'm wishing for a remote control observatory!

 

I could not agree more. I almost always sit out in the yard while imaging and observing. Thankfully unlike New Hampshire the winters are milder here in San Diego so I can still get out once in a while.

I feel we have gotten so disconnected from such natural experiences that they now seem 'unnatural' to quite a large percentage of the population now.

[Paul81]

That is a superb M27!

The ability to dabble with AP is one of the reasons I put in the export to FITS feature in SL - its quite reasonable to play with the exposures during the daylight hours / cloudy nights and see what the plethora of AP techniques and tools can pull out of the data.

I'd be interested in seeing your post-processed result to see how it fairs against the live stacking / viewing :-)

Paul

[RobertI]

You've picked up the very faint outer nebulousity if I am not mistaken which is very impressive. 

I know this isn't the point of your post, but I think that EAA and imaging is definitely converging with 'quick imaging'. Look at the non-eq DSO Challenge thread, where they are producing images in short exposures, with modest equipment, without guiding or EQ mounts. Not dissimilar to EAA except we process live on the night. The new EAA cameras like the Ultrastar seem to be allowing us the best of both worlds.

[aparker]

6 hours ago, Paul81 said:

That is a superb M27!

The ability to dabble with AP is one of the reasons I put in the export to FITS feature in SL - its quite reasonable to play with the exposures during the daylight hours / cloudy nights and see what the plethora of AP techniques and tools can pull out of the data.

I'd be interested in seeing your post-processed result to see how it fairs against the live stacking / viewing :-)

Paul

Hi Paul,

One thing that I have definitely found is that it's hard to beat the SLL X^0.25 transform as a stretch.  I have trouble getting to something equivalently good in nebulosity using Bezier curves.  I wish I had a way to one-button that transform a la SLL.  OTOH, stacking using Drizzle in Nebulosity is a sure-fire success, where I still run into some issues live stacking with SLL on some subjects (esp globular clusters or fields with one very bright star).

Here is my quick process of the same data as are live-stacked above:

I still need to re-process with a subset of the darks.  I shot them first and I think the camera was still too cool for the first few.  Hence a few hot pixels not removed.  Or I may try out the Bad Pixel Map feature in Nebulosity finally...

 

[aparker]

11 hours ago, stash_old said:

As W H davis the poet ,who lived in UK and USA as a Hobo(tramp) said:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Totally agree on the "come Winter"

That's a great poem.

 

[nytecam]

Yep Alex 36m [12x3m] is definitely AP !  The AP Guro here said [in the past] 20m is min for AP so you're well inside that base but who cares  ;-)

Nice image BTW !

Nytecam