Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[Devin-M]

The problem is I can balance the camera on the right ascension axis but not the declination axis. Pointing the camera to the north star, I get it perfectly balanced on the right ascension axis, but then when I adjust the declination it’s no longer balanced on the right ascension axis, so after I adjust the declination and get it pointed ball-park toward the target I then have to rebalance on the right ascension axis, if that makes any sense.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Orion nebulae, 400/2.8 lens DX crop, about 7600s integration time:

 

[chemisttree]

Orion nebulae, 400/2.8 lens DX crop, about 7600s integration time:

View attachment 277558

Very green but good detail. I wonder what white balance setting would enhance the reds? Or is that due to a sensor insensitivity in H-alpha?

 

[Andy Resnick]

Very green but good detail. I wonder what white balance setting would enhance the reds? Or is that due to a sensor insensitivity in H-alpha?

Ha! I can't tell it's green b/c color-blind. I try and use the histograms to white-balance but clearly didn't finesse that operation well.

 

[chemisttree]

Wow, I can’t imagine how I would do that just by histogram data!

 

[Andy Resnick]

Here's another go at it: I went back to the original 32-bit fits file and adjusted the levels. The color is better corrected and now I can clearly see the Trapezium cluster (200% crop):

 

[bruha]

Hello, it is beautiful, as I now see, I managed catch just this cluster previously (shape is similar to me).
What is position of this cluster within whole Nebula..?
Thank you and lot of succes

 

[DennisN]

Orion nebulae, 400/2.8 lens DX crop, about 7600s integration time:

Here's another go at it: I went back to the original 32-bit fits file and adjusted the levels. The color is better corrected and now I can clearly see the Trapezium cluster (200% crop):

Beautiful! The level of detail is stunning.

 

[chemisttree]

Hello, it is beautiful, as I now see, I managed catch just this cluster previously (shape is similar to me).
What is position of this cluster within whole Nebula..?
Thank you and lot of succes

The trapezium is located in the bright core of the nebula.

 

[bruha]

Ou, thanks -it is explained that I can manage in not very good light pollution condition just these.,

 

[DennisN]

NASA has published a fairly significant e-book on smartphone astrophotography. It’s free!

Thank you! I've downloaded it. Perfect info for me, and it's probably a great read during cloudy times .

I've read almost the entire e-book (I skipped some parts), and I thought it was very good! It gave me quite some food for thought. And it was interesting to learn a little more about how camera sensors work. Thanks again.

 

[Devin-M]

I did some imaging of the Triangulum Galaxy a couple of nights ago... still working on processing it but here's what the North Star diffraction pattern looked like through the 72mm Bahtinov focusing mask when in focus... (cropped, nikon d800, nikkor 300mm f/4.5 + tc-301 2x teleconverter, 1600iso, 10 sec, sky watcher star adventurer 2i pro pack equatorial mount)

 

[Devin-M]

It was pretty tough to image since this was close to the horizon looking towards town in a Bortle 5/6 area & I was almost directly under a really bright street lamp...

Triangulum Galaxy - 2.73 million light-years distance

It was 3min x 41 exposures although my stacking software rejected 22 of them for satellites, wobble, etc... (so 19 x 3min = 57 minutes exposure time out of 2 hours total was used), 600mm f/9 (300mm f/4.5 nikon lens + tc-301 2x nikon teleconverter), bortle 5-6, rollei astroklar 72mm light pollution filter, 1600iso, sky watcher star adventurer 2i pro pack equatorial mount, d800 full frame dslr (image cropped), 25 darks + 40 flats. the darks are taken with the lens cap on (75 minutes) which maps out the non-random sensor noise and the flats are taken towards a light with a white plastic bag stretched over the lens on auto-exposure which maps out the light fall-off around the edges of the lens and the dust. focus was achieved by taking test shots through a 72mm bahtinov mask prior to the main exposures. 2 seconds delay after mirror flip up mode turned on to eliminate mirror flip vibration. photo sequence remotely triggered by the equatorial mount through a phone app. raw images were converted to 16 bit tiffs in adobe lightroom with all noise reduction turned off, then stacked in starry sky stacker on mac os, many more global adjustments made in adobe lightroom to the resulting tif (contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, noise reduction, color temperature, etc), with some final tweaks to the levels, curves, saturation, cropping etc in adobe photoshop. plate solving done with nova.astrometry.net/upload light pollution levels were determined via lightpollutionmap.info suitable atmospheric conditions were determined in advance via clearoutside.com and shot planning was done with stellarium.org:

Center (RA, Dec): (23.454, 30.608)
Center (RA, hms): 01h 33m 49.046s
Center (Dec, dms): +30° 36' 29.389"
Size: 71.8 x 47.9 arcmin
Radius: 0.719 deg
Pixel scale: 1.68 arcsec/pixel

Full frame looked like this:

Individual 3 minute exposures looked like this:

I’m not sure how much degradation occurred due to light from the street lamp nearly falling onto the lens if not for the lens hood (a second street lamp was partially blocked by a tree but shone onto the lens through the leaves)...

 

[chemisttree]

Thanks for the complete workflow description! Very nice.

 

[Devin-M]

Thank you. I think most of the glow in the full frame image is from the street lights, because I did flats. I can only point away from street lights from my house to the south and east, otherwise I'll have to set up some sort of streetlight blocking system.

 

[bruha]

Hi, sun green filter, (but not see much more than without filter

 

[Devin-M]

I just ordered one of these to try to balance my camera+lens on the declination axis of the equatorial mount... will see how it goes...

Flashpoint Single Focusing Rail Fine Control, for Macro Photography
https://www.adorama.com/mcfrss.html

 

[chemisttree]

...

Hi, sun green filter, (but not see much more than without filter

Looks like the focus is a little off.

 

[bruha]

Yes, (I thin problem could be that heavy mount stood on old wooden and shaking floor

 

[bruha]

Hi, I understand that this device .its just for camera use? (not for adjust camera with telescope)

have nice day

 

[bruha]

Hi still one image (mybe little beter), at least more alike I found on net...

 

[davenn]

Hi still one image (mybe little beter), at least more alike I found on net...

yes definitely better focussed

Hopefully in a couple of years we will start seeing the Sun looking like the second image

 

[bruha]

 

[Devin-M]

Sunflower Galaxy - 29.3 million light years
72min of 2hr exposure - 36 x 2min - 1000mm f/10 - Bortle 2
Nikkor-Reflex focal 500mm f/5 + Nikon TC-201 2x teleconverter on Nikon D800

Center (RA, Dec):	(198.965, 42.031)
Center (RA, hms):	13h 15m 51.710s
Center (Dec, dms):	+42° 01' 51.521"
Size:	32.2 x 21.5 arcmin
Radius:	0.323 deg
Pixel scale:	1 arcsec/pixel

 

[Devin-M]

also fyi, the macro focusing rail works very well for getting the camera and lens balanced on the declination axis...

 

[DennisN]

I saw a couple of nice public lectures from the Royal Institution yesterday about black holes.
They covered many different aspects. A couple of things that are staggering is e.g. to imagine such massive objects as supermassive black holes spinning at such astounding speeds, and also the amount of energy released (and power) when black holes merge. It is mindblowing .

There was a series of nice comparison pictures and animations in the first lecture at 35 m 42 s and onwards.

The Physics of Black Holes - with Chris Impey


Q&A: The Physics of Black Holes - with Chris Impey


Black Holes and the Fundamental Laws of Physics - with Jerome Gauntlett

 

[Devin-M]

This little dongle will be my savior...

With my 600mm f/9 and 1000mm f/10 setups, its practically impossible to tell sometimes where I’m pointing through the view finder because the picture is so dark with such high aperature #’s, so I got a USB to Lightning adapter for transferring photos directly from my DSLR to my iphone photo library. From there I simply upload a test shot for plate solving to:

http://nova.astrometry.net/upload

...and it tells me exactly where I’m pointed. No more shooting for an hour and a half only to find out I was pointing at a completely different area of sky than intended.

Last night I had brought out my laptop, downloaded a pic from camera to laptop then airdropped to phone then uploaded to nova.astrometry.net/upload but my computer froze (literally, no pun intended) and wouldn’t restart til plugged in (I was a 30 minute drive from home in a bortle 2). I was about to order an inverter for my car to power the laptop but then I thought, why bother if I can go straight from DSLR into the phone.

It was almost sheer luck I was able to successfully aim the 1000mm setup at the sunflower galaxy last night without using plate solving.

 

[Devin-M]

another upgrade to help w/ pointing... green laser w/ telescope mount attached via macro focusing rail:

 

[chemisttree]

another upgrade to help w/ pointing... green laser w/ telescope mount attached via macro focusing rail:

View attachment 278343

Hmmm... Not how I imagined you would use that!

 

[Devin-M]

I will have 2 macro focusing rails... one for the laser and one to balance the whole camera on the declination axis via the lens mounting point.

 

[Devin-M]

Heart Nebula - IC 1805 - Sharpless 2-190 - 7500 light years
2hr exposure - 60 x 2min - 12800iso - 600mm f/9 - Moonlit Bortle 2 (2/20/21)
Nikon focal 300mm f/4.5 + Nikon TC-301 2x teleconverter
Nikon D800 w/ Star Adventurer 2i Equatorial Mount

Finally had a successful evening after many cloudy ones... I drove 30 miles to a Bortle 2 east of Redding, California, USA. The only downside was the moon was out and definitely affected the pictures. Tried out attaching the green laser to the camera for the first time and plate-solving with the plug from dslr to iphone ( http://nova.astrometry.net/upload ) -- I'd say it was revolutionary. I didn't even look through the viewfinder or at the live view at all. I figured out on the Stellarium app my phone where I wanted to point the camera, then aimed the green laser (after syncing the laser and camera on the north star), then took a test shot, downloaded to phone, plate-solved and adjusted till aim achieved. It was far easier than trying to look through the viewfinder and figure out where I'm pointed. Focused through Bahtinov mask, 40 darks & 40 flats. Took photos of the Heart Nebula and the Great Galactic Face in Markarian's Chain of galaxies.

Center (RA, Dec): (38.105, 61.368)
Center (RA, hms): 02h 32m 25.087s
Center (Dec, dms): +61° 22' 04.363"
Size: 2.52 x 1.68 deg
Radius: 1.513 deg
Pixel scale: 4.72 arcsec/pixel

 

[Devin-M]

Great Galactic Face - Markarian's Chain - M86 - M84 - NGC 4388 - NGC 4387 - 52 - 65 million light years
2hr exposure - 60 x 2min - 12800iso - 600mm f/9 - Moonlit Bortle 2 (2/20/21)
Nikon focal 300mm f/4.5 + Nikon TC-301 2x teleconverter
Nikon D800 w/ Star Adventurer 2i Equatorial Mount

Center (RA, Dec): (186.432, 12.801)
Center (RA, hms): 12h 25m 43.624s
Center (Dec, dms): +12° 48' 04.830"
Size: 40.6 x 27 arcmin
Radius: 0.406 deg
Pixel scale: 1.68 arcsec/pixel

 

[Oldman too]

Great detail on your info, thanks!

 

[DennisN]

I used 1/503 sec and the ISO that made that work on the moon.

I will definitely try with various settings the next time.

Moongazing/moon photo session:

Last evening/night I photographed the Moon and tried various new camera settings (shutter speeds 1/500 s and 1/1000 s at ISO 50, 100 and 200), along with new stacking settings and new editing in Photoshop.

Even though I only used my small monocular (diameter 40 mm), I got very pleased with the result.
It became the best photo of the Moon I've taken so far.

I guess I understand now why this hobby can be so addictive; over a long period of time you try, change things and then try again etc, in order to improve the results. And this time, when I saw the finished photo I felt very satisified. The next time I will try the same using my cheap 70 mm telescope instead of the monocular.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gear used: 40 mm monocular, tripod, LG G4 phone.
Photo settings: ISO 100, 1/1000 s shutter speed, DNG (uncompressed)
Stacking info: 25 stacked photos (50% of the photos), Drizzle 1.5 incl. Sharpening and 50% mix in of the original photos.
Software used: Open Camera (Android) -> PIPP -> AutoStakkert -> Photoshop
Photoshop edits: (1) increased contrast (2) Shadows/Highlights: increased highlights and increased midtone contrast (no editing of "Shadows") and (3) slight increase of vibrance

Here's the monocular I used, with a very technically advanced stray light shield made of black paper fastened with masking tape :

 

[Devin-M]

Markarian's Chain (of Galaxies) - M86 - M84 - NGC 4388 - NGC 4387 - 52 to 65 million light years
2hr exposure - 60 x 2min - 12800iso - 600mm f/9 - Moonlit Bortle 2 (2/20/21)
Nikon focal 300mm f/4.5 + Nikon TC-301 2x teleconverter
Nikon D800 w/ Star Adventurer 2i Equatorial Mount

I wanted to do a bit more processing than normal before posting this image. I edited out all the foreground stars so almost every point of light in the above image is an entire galaxy.

Full Frame w/ Stars:

Center (RA, Dec): (186.947, 12.897)
Center (RA, hms): 12h 27m 47.179s
Center (Dec, dms): +12° 53' 47.830"
Size: 3.01 x 2.01 deg
Radius: 1.810 deg
Pixel scale: 5.65 arcsec/pixel