Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[Devin-M]

There’s actually 2 3 4 geostationary or geosynchronous satellites inside the 3rd circle (lower, right), for a total of 4 5 6.

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/img-0939-gif.147805/

 

[Devin-M]

does anyone have a clue what this object is? I highlighted 2 objects with short white lines above the objects. The one on the left side I believe is a geostationary/geosynchronous satellite, the one on the right is dimmer, more diffuse, takes up a larger area, not traveling parallel to the geostationary satellite, seems to be moving a little quicker... these are 30 second exposures.

 

[collinsmark]

Welp. This turned out better than expected. Taken Friday night from my back patio. Jupiter is at opposition this week (the peak of opposition is August 19-20th), so now's a pretty good time to get out and see it. Acquisition and processing details below.

Figure 1. Jupiter

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF (telescope)
Tele Vue 4x Powermate (basically a 4x Barlow lens)
ZWO Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC)
ZWO filter wheel with Astronomik RGB filter set
ZWO ASI290MM (monochrome camera)

Software:
FireCapture
Autostakkert!
Registax
WinJUPOS
Gimp

Midpoint timestamp: 2021-08-14 07:20.3 UT
Total integration time: 9 minutes, 50% of frames kept, no normalization.

So, this image was taken on Friday night, but it really started by my throwing away all the data taken Thursday night, which was garbage due to inadequate dew management. About a terabyte of data down the drain. "I don't need a dew shield," I had said, "I've got my active dew heater strap going. That should be enough," I told myself. "I'll be fine." I was an idiot.

So anyway, back to Friday night. This time I set up with proper dew prevention (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Telescope

Using FireCapture software, I took several sequences of alternating Red, Blue, and Green filters, 1 minute videos per filter, 18 minute sequences. In other words, I would capture RGBRGBRGBRGBRGBRGB, where each letter corresponds to a 1 minute, uncompressed video. I only planned on processing 9 minutes of video data, but these 18 minute sequences give me some flexibility to choose the best 9 minute window within any given sequence. In-between sequences I re-leveled the ADC and refocused. Five sequences were taken. About 2/3 of a terabyte of Jupiter data was captured that night.

By a stroke of luck, the best seeing for the evening occurred somewhat early (before Jupiter crossed the meridian), when the Great Red Spot (GRS) was visible. I'll take that!

All the videos were processed using Autostakkert! software, keeping 50% of frames, no normalization.

I should note that Autostakkert! gives the option to output an additional, sharpened image, with a "conv" in the filename, in addition to the regular, unsharpened image. Regardless of what Dylan O'Donnell might suggest for his workflow (), I don't suggest using the "conv" images in your subsequent processing; they are only a quick-and-dirty sharpening meant for evaluation purposes. Wavelet sharpening such as Registax does a much better job. That said, the Autostakkert! produced "conv" images are a great at helping you choose which outputs to keep and move forward with, and which outputs to throw away. My point is once you decide which files you want to keep (and by all means use the "conv" images to help you choose), don't use the "conv" images for further processing; use the unsharpened images moving forward.

So anyway, after evaluating all the processed data, I chose a 9-minute window in my third sequence, centered around 07:20.3 UT, for further processing. This window includes 3 images with the Red filter, 3 with the Green filter, and three with the Blue filter, alternating RGBRGBRGB.

I then individually sharpened the images using Registax wavelet sharpening, keeping the same settings for each of the three images of a given color filter, although the settings were different for different color filters. (To be clear, all the images are still black-and-white at this point, it's just that 3 images were taken with the Red filter, three with the Green filter, and three with the Blue). I was fairly aggressive on the sharpening in this step, knowing that the noise would be reduced a little bit in the upcoming WinJUPOS derotation combination step.

You may be asking, "why did you start with nine, 1 minute videos instead of three, 3 minute videos?" That's because Jupiter rotates really fast; it's day only about 10 hours. Any video over about a minute or so will begin to blur when processed due to Jupiter's rotation.

Once you have sharpened images you can use WinJUPOS to combine even a few more images together using WinJUPOS's "De-rotation of Images" tool. This tool warps indivdual images in a way that mimics Jupiter's rotation, and then combines them together into a single image, synchronized to the target timestamp.

By the way, recall that I used FireCapture to initially capture the raw data in the form of uncompressed videos. Firecapture has a setting that automatically puts the midpoint timestamp of each video in the filename, as part of the WinJUPOS file naming convention. I keep this same filename convention all through the processing (all through Autostakkert!, Registax, etc.) That makes it really easy to keep track of exact time the videos were taken, and WinJUPOS automatically sets up the time by reading the images' filenames. So using the WinJUPOS naming convension of all your files makes the workflow really easy. And again, it all starts with checking a single checkbox in FireCapture's filename settings.

If you're new to WinJUPOS, there is a bit of a learning curve, but then it's really easy to work with once you get the hang of it.

So at this point in the process, I now have three monochrome images, one taken with the Red Filter, one with the Green, and one with the Blue. I then used WinJUPOS's "De-rotation of R/G/B frames" tool to combine the three images into a single, color image. Note that I didn't really do any de-rotation in this step, since all the de-rotation was done in the previous step. But I did use this WinJUPOS tool to combine the three images into a single, color image.

In images submitted in my previous posts I used Gimp combine the three channels into a single, color image, but this time I used WinJUPOS. I think the team at WinJUPOS might have made some improvements in this area since last year, because it worked great this time.

Then I went back into Registax for a second time, and gave the color image one final round of wavelet sharpening.

To end the processing, I used Gimp for final adjustments (color curves, contrast, saturation, etc.)

 

[Devin-M]

I think I figured out which satellites those actually are. I was shooting near Shingletown, CA at about 11:09pm on 7/28/21.

I suspect some of the satellites are:

-AT&T T-16 (Norad 44333)

-SES-11 Echostar 105 (Norad 42967)

-Galaxy 30 (Norad 46114)

-USA 134 (Norad 25019)
[classified payload]

-USA 227 (Norad 37377)
[classified payload]

 

[Devin-M]

I took this shot back on 7/28/21 along with the Milky Way photo. I didn't post it at the time because it didn't turn out nearly as good as I was hoping, but it's still interesting enough to post.

Some of the reasons it didn't turn out well...
-I waited until it was right next to the horizon because I was shooting the milky way earlier
-I under exposed the raw frames
-Since it was so poor anyway I didn't bother stacking or using the darks and flats I captured

Antares Nebula
300mm, f/4.5, 60 sec, 800iso, single shot, full frame sensor, moonless bortle 2, shasta county, northern california, usa

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/img-0955-jpg.148487/

https://www.speakev.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.speakev.com/attachments/5596149-jpeg.148488/

 

[DennisN]

Figure 1. Jupiter

Magnificient! That's probably the best "amateur" photo I've seen of the planet!
Congratulations!

Edit: Maybe you could consider suggesting it to APOD?

About a terabyte of data down the drain. "I don't need a dew shield," I had said, "I've got my active dew heater strap going. That should be enough," I told myself. "I'll be fine." I was an idiot.

 

[Devin-M]

 

[bruha]

Hello, I attach two Jupiter images (low and higher exp) and three Saturn images (one without and two with blue filter). SV Ebony eyepiece camera on Skywatcher telescope 1000 x 200 mm.

 

[Devin-M]

wildfire smoke… it’s been impairing my observing conditions… the new normal is driving around with a portable air filter…

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/smoke-gif.148647/

 

[collinsmark]

This is my most ambitious astrophotography project thus far: a time-lapse video of Jupiter.



Processing was essentially the same as most of my last posts, except this time, the back-end parts such as the WinJUPOS derotation, instead of being done just once, I had to do it hundreds of times. I do think the end result is worth the effort, but it did take a lot of effort. If you're looking to do this sort of thing yourself, make sure you enter into it with a lot of patience and free time. To be frank: it took a lot of work.

Also, YouTube's compression algorithm took a toll. Here's a frame from the video before sending it to YouTube, for comparison:

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF (telescope)
Tele Vue 4x Powermate (basically, a Barlow lens)
ZWO Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC)
ZWO filter wheel
Astronomik RGB filter set
ZWO ASI290MM (camera)

Software:
FireCapture
AutoStakkert!
RegiStax
WinJUPOS
GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)
Topaz Sharpen AI GarageBand (for the music)
CyberLink PowerDirector (to combine images into video format)

Acquisition and processing details:

Atmospheric seeing conditions were quite good that night, not necessarily excellent, but at least pretty darned good.

Exposure time was adjusted in FireCapture to keep the frame rate as reasonably high as possible, and the camera gain was adjusted to keep the right-most side of the histogram curve between 1/2 to 1/3 below saturation. 781 GB of raw data taken between 07:28 and 09:53, 2021-08-16 UT, in the form of 1 minute long SER video files, alternating between physical Red, Green, and Blue filters (438 files total, 146 for each color filter). About every ~18 minutes, I re-leveled the ADC and checked focus.

AutoStakkert! was used to process each SER file, producing a TIFF image file for each. 50% of frames were stacked, no normalization.

RegiStax wavelet sharpening was used on each TIFF file, to produce sharpened images.

WinJUPOS "De-rotation of images..." tool was used to produce frames for each 30 second real-time interval (from 07:28 to 09:53 timestamps) based on the nearest 3 (sometimes 4) images from the previous step, for a smooth progression, maintaining continuity. This was done separately for each of the physical Red, Green, and Blue filter sets of images.

WinJUPOS "De-rotation of R/G/B frames..." tool was used to combine the images in the previous step into color images. No actual "de-rotation" was done in this step, since that was done in the previous step, however, the tool was used to combine the three sets of monochrome images into a single set of RGB color imges.

Used python scripts (plugins) in GIMP to adjust contrast and saturation of all images from the last step. (I had to write the saturation one myself. Fortunately, I found the contrast one online, and used that as a reference.)

Topaz Sharpen AI was used for a final sharpening/denoise step. At this point, there were 291 color images, each corresponding to a real-time 30 second interval, ready for the video (9.7 seconds of video at 30 fps).

Threw together some music in GarageBand.

CyberLink PowerDirector (plus some text and stuff produced in GIMP) was used to make the video out of all of that.

 

[DennisN]

This is my most ambitious astrophotography project thus far: a time-lapse video of Jupiter.

Stunning and impressive! Congratulations again!

I do think the end result is worth the effort, but it did take a lot of effort. If you're looking to do this sort of thing yourself, make sure you enter into it with a lot of patience and free time. To be frank: it took a lot of work.

I can imagine!
I think I've posted a similar project a couple of people did with Jupiter quite some time ago, but I can't find the post at the moment.

 

[DennisN]

I got a link from a friend to this site with cool gear for mobile astrophotography: TrailerDomes.

 

[bruha]

Hello, I send two Jupiter images from yesterday, this time with mobile camera {Huawei Y6} adapted to eyepiece 8 mm {telescope skywatcher 600 x 200mm].

 

[Devin-M]

14mm, f/2.8, 400iso, 120sec, full frame sensor, moonless bortle 2, shasta county, california, usa

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/img-3033-gif.149501/

 

[bruha]

Hello, I send three Saturn images again made with mobile camera {Huawei Y6} adapted to eyepiece 8 mm {telescope skywatcher 600 x 200mm] and little GIMP corrected.

 

[Devin-M]

in my last image I'm seeing what appears to be a cloud of dust drifting away to the left from a meteor entry... upper middle frame...

 

[bruha]

still saturn -these two are better.. I hope

 

[Andy Resnick]

One of the panoramas I have been working on within the Cygnus constellation- this one is in the neighborhood of γ Cygni, centered on the Crescent nebula (NGC 6888), using my 400/2.8 lens:

Everything (stacking, corrections, mosaic assembly) was done in Astro Pixel Processor, the original is 13781 x 15138 pixels.

 

[DennisN]

still saturn -these two are better.. I hope

Many of your latest photos of Saturn look very sharp and nice to me. Are you taking multiple photos and then stacking them in a stacking software?

Maybe you already know this, but I want to say there's also the possibility to film a planet, and then produce a photo by stacking the frames of the film automatically. When I was using my mobile phone, I got better results when filming than taking photos (perhaps because there were more frames to stack in the films). When I did this I selected the maximum resolution and maximium fps (frames/second) possible for recording video in the app OpenCamera.

 

[Devin-M]

So here’s a closeup of what I think is a meteor entry turning into a visible cloud of dust… each frame is 2 minutes so this spans about 10 minutes… can anyone think of a different explanation? spaceship coming out of hyperdrive?https://www.speakev.com/attachments/c182a72b-7379-43df-8720-52e7cc88887c-gif.149567/

 

[bruha]

Hello, thank you
my images are just simple single photos- last two are made by PRO mode of standard camera within Huawei mobile. (adjusting just ISO and exp. time) and little sharpening and denoising in GIMP.
But thank you for advice, next time I will try this procedure.
Thanks and lot of succes

 

[bruha]

Hallo, can I ask how you generate photo sequence from the recorded film {with Open Camera] as you mentioned ?
Thank you

 

[DennisN]

Hallo, can I ask how you generate photo sequence from the recorded film {with Open Camera] as you mentioned ?

For that I use a software called PIPP (Planetary Imaging Preprocessor). Downloadable here.

Stacking:

For stacking I currently use AutoStakkert. Downloadable here.

If you haven't stacked images before, here's a very brief guide for using AutoStakkert:
https://www.astrokraai.nl/tut/guide_dennis_put.htm

There are more guides available here: https://www.autostakkert.com/wp/guides/

AutoStakkert can also take a movie clip directly and stack it. I currently don't remember exactly which video formats it supports (e.g. mp4 etc), so when doing this it's a good idea to check that the camera is recording in a suitable video format.

Good luck!

 

[bruha]

Thank you very much and good luck you to

 

[Keith_McClary]

meteor entry turning into a visible cloud of dust

Would that have been in sunlight?
altitude of between about 80 to 120 km

 

[Devin-M]

Would that have been in sunlight?
altitude of between about 80 to 120 km

I'm not sure it would be in sunlight, it was about 11:21pm on 9/5/21 in Shasta County, California, USA

Here it is processed at a bit higher resolution... This is 6 frames so spans 12 minutes.

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/img-3077-gif.149668/

 

[Andy Resnick]

Here's the other panorama in Cygnus I've been assembling, this one of the North America Nebula and surroundings:

This is nearly a 2 x 2 mosaic using a 400/2.8 lens (full frame), original size is 9334 x 8985 pixels, all stacking and post-processing done in Astro Pixel Processor.

 

[Andy Resnick]

I'm not sure it would be in sunlight, it was about 11:21pm on 9/5/21 in Shasta County, California, USA

Here it is processed at a bit higher resolution... This is 6 frames so spans 12 minutes.

<snip video>

I'd be interested in seeing what the 'difference image' video would look like. By 'difference images', I mean post-processing the video file so that each frame (say frame 'i') is the difference between frame 'i' and frame 'i-1'. It's a quick and easy way to get rid of static features and emphasize changes that occur from one frame to the next.

 

[Devin-M]

I'd be interested in seeing what the 'difference image' video would look like. By 'difference images', I mean post-processing the video file so that each frame (say frame 'i') is the difference between frame 'i' and frame 'i-1'. It's a quick and easy way to get rid of static features and emphasize changes that occur from one frame to the next.

Here you go:
https://www.speakev.com/attachments/1-gif.149732/

 

[Devin-M]

I’m not sure whether I’m seeing infrared light activating the red pixels directly from the hot dust and gas or light pollution from the ground reflecting off the dust or perhaps a combination of both…?

 

[collinsmark]

The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) is a planetary nebula (nothing really to do with planets though) some 650 light-years away, in the constellation Aquarius. It's composed of the remnants of a dying star that was once quite like our Sun.

Captured between 2021-08-27 and 2021-09-13.
Total Integration time: 7.81 hours

This is the first deep-sky object I've imaged in around 11 years. Technology has sure changed. I'm getting used to some new software and new equipment (well, new to me anyway). Plenty of mistakes were made, and plenty of lessons learned.

The Helix Nebula presents several challenges for me. I live in very light polluted skies (Bortle Class 8), and the Helix Nebula is not particularly bright, even though it is considered a "bright," planetary nebula.

From my vantage point, when not blocked by obstacles, it is fairly low to the horizon in the South-Southwest [in the direction of Mordor]. That's right where there's a ton of glare from neighborhood lights and also the same direction as the city skyglow [and let's not forget about evil forces and fiery Mt. Doom in Mordor]. Even with a telescope and an appropriate eyepiece, I probably couldn't even see it visually without of a long exposure camera [unless of course I slipped on the precious and entered the wraith-world, but that brings about its own issues].

In addition to the light-pollution, I also faced a broken-record's worth of coastal eddies that boosted the marine layer (resulting in clouds and haze); smoke from regional fires (I'm not even making that one up); [a gang of orcs]; guiding problems; the frustration of switching mid-project from a cheap guide-scope to an off-axis guider (OAG); [a nazgûl, but fortunately just the one (1 out of 9 max)]; tracking errors (oh, god the tracking errors -- my scope's gears could use a tune-up); A freak downpour that's practically unheard of in San Diego, California [or Hobbiton, The Shire], and some software compatibility weirdness.

------- Acquisition and processing details -------------

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF (telescope)
Optec Lepus 0.62 Telecompressor
Astronomik RGB filters
Astronomik narrowband filters (SII, Hα, Oiii)
ZWO ASI1600MM (camera)
(various guiding equipment, not mentioned here.)

Software:
Nightime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PixInsight
Topaz Denoise AI
Gnu Imaging Manipulation Program (GIMP)

Something of note is the flat frames were taken using a couple of white T-shirts (undershirts), a 14" embroidery ring, and a cheap, portable artists' "light box" used for sketching/tracing. The neat thing about that is the most expensive part was the bag of T-shirts.

The breakdown of filter integration is as follows (this only includes the "good" subframes, which were only about 50% of the total):
SII: 2.64 hours
Hα: 1.82 hours
Oiii: 1.58 hours
R: 0.56 hours
G: 0.56 hours
B: 0.65 hours
If you're wondering why there's so much more SII instead of Hα or Oiii, it's because the SII night was the about the only night the weather was cooperating.

Most of the processing was done in PixInsight. I'm brand new to PixInsight, so I'll spare you the details, since my workflow was all over the place. Suffice it to say, after calibrating, integrating, stretching and some color corrections, the color channels were combined using the PixelMath process in the following way:
Red Channel: 0.2R + 0.8Hα
Green Channel: 0.2G + 0.8Oiii
Blue Channel: 0.2B + 0.8SII

I think it came out okay, all things considered. But I look forward to improvements when I revisit the Helix Nebula in the coming years. [And I think all-in-all, the Dark Lord Sauron would be pleased.]

 

[Devin-M]

That’s a very very nice acquisition and worth a poster-print. I just got my first large size astro-print mounted on the wall yesterday…

 

[Devin-M]

I did some saturn imaging last night with a 300mm f/4.5 nikon lens + tc-301 nikon 2x teleconverter for effective 600mm f/9 with 1000iso and 1/160th second exposures on a nikon d800 full frame sensor dslr, no tracking, exposures 7 seconds apart..

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/dsc_3510-2-gif.150133/

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/dsc_3510-gif.150134/

20 images stacked and enlarged via interpolation:

 

[Devin-M]

this is what I get after converting just the green channel to monochrome with 20 stacked 16-bit tifs (600mm f/9 1/160th sec 1000iso):

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/saturn_stacked_mono_green2-gif.150147/

 

[bruha]

Hello, it is very nice, which software you use for green channel converting?
Thank you