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18 hours ago, wimvb said:

Merry Christmas to you and yours. 

Your stay is turning out very productive. It seems to me that December sees a doubling of your year's output. 

Thanks Wim, and soon Happy New Year! Yes, I think I have soon doubled the 2019 output - weather here has been better that expected with about every second night usable for AP, and with f/4 and a pitch black sky I do not need 10 - 20 hours. Instead 3 hours of 90 s exposures get the noise down really low, so I can do two objects on a clear night.

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On 27/12/2019 at 04:31, MarsG76 said:

awesome collection of some familiar objects...

Thanks! Much appreciated comming from an Aussi. I am just barely on the southern hemisphere at 14° south so there are many of the obvious southern objects that are below the horizon here. I think I have now bagged the main ones suitable for 300 mm FL but maybe you have some suggestions? Everything below the Running Chicken is really too far south. I may also do what Dave suggested and go for some wider field shots of the Crux - Carina area with my wife's consumer-class zoom lens, but I am afraid what it may do to the stars.

So, I have started pointing upwards to objects I can see from Sweden but that are usually too low on the horizon for getting a good image. Here is the first one so far - it is a 2-frame mosaic (side by side with a bit of overlap) so I could fit in both the Witch and Rigel shining on her. 90 s exposures on the Witchhead and 30 s on Rigel. Totally 255 min. I could never get this deep on the Witch from back home, and I had almost no satellite trails that mess it up when shooting at it from Europe. I have tried to go as deep as I can on this faint object and I used a bit of Olly's @ollypenrice trick of bringing out that last part of deep dust from an "Equalize" layer in PS. It even brought out some Ha. One challenge was of course to tame Rigel. For the first time here I even had a gradient issue, but not from light pollution but from Rigel, so natural in a way. Gradient Exterminator in PS could not handle the blue band created by Rigel across the image so I hade to learn how to use Dynamic Background Extraction in PI. After some trial and error I think I made it do what I wanted it to do.

There are two oddities in the image that I do not know what they are (hopefully not artifacts): One centrally in the image and just above Rigel. Planetary nebulas of galaxies? Anyone know?

 

 

20191224_Witchhead_PS12 MosaicPS30smallSign.jpg

Edited by gorann
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5 minutes ago, gorann said:

Thanks! Much appreciated comming from an Aussi. I am just barely on the southern hemisphere at 14° south so there are many of the obvious southern objects that are below the horizon here. I think I have now bagged the main ones suitable for 300 mm FL but maybe you have some suggestions? Everything below the Running Chicken is really too far south. I may also do what Dave suggested and go for some wider field shots of the Crux - Carina area with my wife's consumer-class zoom lens, but I am afraid what it may do to the stars.

So, I have started pointing upwards to objects I can see from Sweden but that are usually too low on the horizon for getting a good image. Here is the first one so far - it is a 2-frame mosaic so I could fit in both the Witch and Rigel shining on her. 90 s exposures on the Witchhead and 30 s on Rigel. Totally 255 min. I could never get this deep on the Witch from back home, and I had almost no satellite trails that mess it up when shooting at it from Europe. I have tried to go as deep as I can on this faint object and I used a bit of Olly's @ollypenrice trick of bringing out that last part of deep dust from an "Equalize" layer in PS. It even brought out some Ha. One challenge was of course to tame Rigel. For the first time here I even had a gradient issue, but not from light pollution but from Rigel, so natural in a way. Gradient Exterminator in PS could not handle the blue band created by Rigel across the image so I hade to learn how to use Dynamic Background Extraction in PI. After some trial and error I think I made it do what I wanted it to do.

20191224_Witchhead_PS12 MosaicPS28smallSign.jpg

Amazing Witch Head....

 

See if you can capture the "Statue of Liberty" nebula.... it's between the Carina and Crux....

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34 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

Amazing Witch Head....

 

See if you can capture the "Statue of Liberty" nebula.... it's between the Carina and Crux....

Thanks! Good suggestion and I had been thinking about it but it then slipped my mind. Yes, it will come up here after midnight. I have both the Running Chicken and the Carina, on both sides of the Statue of Liverty but a bit too far apart for doing a mosaic. I would at least need too frames for that and it is a mess with a mount without computer or hand control.

Also need the weather to be on my side for my last week here. Right now the weather reports keep changing from day to day, or hour to hour....

Edited by gorann
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10 minutes ago, MarsG76 said:

Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere tropical climate...

 

At least there are no major forest fires nearby - I hope you are ok here you are. Your sky must be rather hazy now.

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7 minutes ago, gorann said:

At least there are no major forest fires nearby - I hope you are ok here you are. Your sky must be rather hazy now.

I'm OK... I'm near the coast so it's mainly clear as the haze tends to pass north or south of me... some haze but not too bad.

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I'd missed this thread but it's a real thriller on many counts, notably for the images and the location. Both are rather mouth watering! But the performance of the travel kit is also pretty inspiring. Great thread, Goran.

Now off to Google jumping snails...

:icon_mrgreen:lly

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Beautiful witch looking at Rigel, Göran. You nailed that one.

3 hours ago, gorann said:

There are two oddities in the image that I do not know what they are (hopefully not artifacts): One centrally in the image and just above Rigel. Planetary nebulas of galaxies? Anyone know?

The one above Rigel looks like a PN. There's also a very small galaxy a bit further up, and maybe a few more barely visible.

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1 minute ago, ollypenrice said:

I'd missed this thread but it's a real thriller on many counts, notably for the images and the location. Both are rather mouth watering! But the performance of the travel kit is also pretty inspiring. Great thread, Goran.

Now off to Google jumping snails...

:icon_mrgreen:lly

Thanks Olly!

I am off to dinner - I am a bit out of touch with most SGLers timewise. The is a slim chance for imaging tonight but tomorrow night looks a bit more promising. I hope you liked the little bit of Ha that my OSC managed to find around the Witch - I remeber seeing your magnificent version of it. At a really dark sky like this an OSC does quite well.

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3 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Beautiful witch looking at Rigel, Göran. You nailed that one.

The one above Rigel looks like a PN. There's also a very small galaxy a bit further up, and maybe a few more barely visible.

Thanks a lot Wim - yes I am quite pleased with it and that my second frame with Rigel kind of lifted it all even if there is not much more than a big blue star in that one.

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2 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Now off to Google jumping snails...

It's very interesting reading with some unexpected possible effects of global warming. Göran was so kind to point me towards a few links. 

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58 minutes ago, gorann said:

Thanks Olly!

I am off to dinner - I am a bit out of touch with most SGLers timewise. The is a slim chance for imaging tonight but tomorrow night looks a bit more promising. I hope you liked the little bit of Ha that my OSC managed to find around the Witch - I remeber seeing your magnificent version of it. At a really dark sky like this an OSC does quite well.

It's the first thing I noticed, that Ha. Very good that you picked it up.

And, bless me, my first click when Googling jumping snails found you right away! 

On the face of it a less gymnastic animal would be hard to imagine... :icon_mrgreen:

(There's an English joke about a Council road builder who, late in the day, stamps on a snail and kills it. When an outraged lady asks him why he performed such a gratuitous act of cruelty he replies, 'I'm sick and tired of the damned thing. It's been following me round all day.'

Olly

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5 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

It's the first thing I noticed, that Ha. Very good that you picked it up.

And, bless me, my first click when Googling jumping snails found you right away! 

On the face of it a less gymnastic animal would be hard to imagine... :icon_mrgreen:

(There's an English joke about a Council road builder who, late in the day, stamps on a snail and kills it. When an outraged lady asks him why he performed such a gratuitous act of cruelty he replies, 'I'm sick and tired of the damned thing. It's been following me round all day.'

Olly

The reason you found it immediately is that we are pioneers on snail exercise. No one else have ever done it since most snail species refuse to exercise for obvious reasons, just like Council road builders. Such an unusual field of research that even the New York Times picket up on it and made that little story out of a video we filmed here a few years ago. Fortunately, we do not only do research on jumping snails, but it is a very good excuse to get to this island😎

I attach a paper describing the research in a slightly more serious way, since ocean acidification is a bit serious.

Physiology 2016.pdf

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2 minutes ago, gorann said:

The reason you found it immediately is that we are pioneers on snail exercise. No one else have ever done it since most snail species refuse to exercise for obvious reasons, just like Council road builders. Such an unusual field of research that even the New York Times picket up on it and made that little story out of a video we filmed here a few years ago. Fortunately, we do not only do research on jumping snails, but it is a very good excuse to get to this island😎

I attach a paper describing the research in a slightly more serious way, since ocean acidification is a bit serious.

Physiology 2016.pdf 533.92 kB · 0 downloads

Academia can, indeed, be a small world. While reading a book about cephalopod intelligence last year (Other Minds, Peter Godrey-Smith)  I came across a reference to research by a childhood friend of my father's, Peter Dews. I'll do my best with your paper but I'm afraid I'm a chemistry ignoramus.

Olly

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1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

Academia can, indeed, be a small world. While reading a book about cephalopod intelligence last year (Other Minds, Peter Godrey-Smith)  I came across a reference to research by a childhood friend of my father's, Peter Dews. I'll do my best with your paper but I'm afraid I'm a chemistry ignoramus.

Olly

I have heard of that book. The sad story about cephalopods is that they only live for about two years, even the biggest ones. Maybe that is why they need to be so intelligent, having to learn everything very quickly before they die......

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Clouds prevented imaging last night but there is hope for tonight. Meanwhile I have improved (I think) the processing of my first image from here, the Large Magellanic Cloud. I used Olly's @ollypenricetrick to get more Ha visible by using Selective Color in PS, chosing red, and turning cyan all the way down. I al oturned down cyan for the magentas. Both adjustments made quite a difference. Then I brought out more of the fainter parts of the galaxiy using curves, which made the Tarantula nebula more clearly attached to the cloud.

 

20191220 LMC PS33smallSign.jpg

Edited by gorann
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I now spent a few more hours on processing the Eta Carina Nebula, finding more details in the core and dust around it (using the same methods as for the LMC). I think it got better😎. Saturday night is BBQ night here on the research station 🍻🥩🍷🍷so I hope I do not trip over my tripod in case it clears up and I have a go at a new object, probably the Statue of Liberty Nebula, but right now the weather report is not very promising🙄

20191225 EtaCarina PS18smallSign.jpg

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53 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

The LMC is gorgeous! Such colour and luminosity.

Olly

It really is. And considering that this was captured with a photographic lens and a Star adventurer. Astrophotography is as real estate, about three things: location, location, and location. 

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50 minutes ago, wimvb said:

It really is. And considering that this was captured with a photographic lens and a Star adventurer. Astrophotography is as real estate, about three things: location, location, and location. 

Indeed. (For one thing you do need the LMC to be above the horizon!!! :BangHead:)

Olly

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