Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[Devin-M]

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

First I histogram stretched and cropped 20 RAW image files in Adobe Lightroom and exported them to 16-bit TIF files. Next I stacked them in Lynkeos to a 16-bit TIF. Then in Adobe Photoshop I copied the green channel and pasted it into the red and blue channels. Then back in Adobe Lightroom I did some final histogram stretching to the 16 bit TIF. Then back in Adobe Photoshop I did some final cropping and upscaled the image with interpolation before finally exporting as a GIF file. This was the camera I used but the tracking mount was turned off. Nikon D800 DSLR with a Nikon 300mm f/4.5 lens and a Nikon TC-301 2x teleconverter for effective 600mm f/9.

 

[bruha]

Ok, thank you I understand.
Lot of succes

 

[Devin-M]

ISS Flyover - Whiskeytown, California, USA - 7:54pm - 8:00pm 10/4/21 - 6 min, 100 iso, f/4, 14mm, full frame sensor, uncropped, eq mount, moonless Bortle 4

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/img-4506-gif.150765/

 

[Devin-M]

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/img-4509-gif.150766/

 

[Devin-M]

 

[Devin-M]

North America Nebula - RGB + Hydrogen, Sulfur, Oxygen Narrowband Composite

https://www.speakev.com/attachments/dsc_8781-median-2-2_blended-2-final-gif.151007/

 

[bruha]

Hello, I attach images of part Pleiades constellation (I think Electra, Celaehe, Taygeta, Maya) as captured saturday night by eyepiece CCD camera (software SharpCam captures).
Have lot of succes

 

[DennisN]

I saw a moon, I fetched my gear. It was very low on the horizon, so I had to walk around in the city a while to be able get a shot of it above the houses.

Here I experimented with ISO and shutter speed to try to get some clouds and moonlight in the same shot too. This obviously results in an overexposed Moon.

(Camera settings: f/8, ISO 1600, Shutter speed: 1/4 s)

Moon details:
(Camera settings: f/8, ISO 1600, Shutter speed: 1/1000 s, Stack: 10/40 photos)

I also tried my 400 mm tele lens on Jupiter for fun. After quite a bit of brightness edits in Photoshop,
three of the large four moons appeared as very small dots in the photo.

(From left to right: Jupiter, Io, Europa, Ganymede)
(Camera settings: f/8, ISO 2000, Shutter speed: 1/250 s, Stack: 12/50 photos)

(Gear used for all photos: Sony A6000 and Tokina 400 mm tele lens)

 

[collinsmark]

The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635).
Total integration time: 33.82 hours (Hubble palette [SHO narrowband])
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8) skies.

NGC 7635, also known as the Bubble Nebula, is an emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. The bubble is formed by the stellar wind from a young, massive, hot star radiating into a nearby molecular cloud. The hot, fast moving stellar wind clumps into the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the edge of the bubble much like how a plow piles up material in front of it as it moves forward. The excited atoms in the heated gas then emit light. The nebula is 7 light-years across and resides 7,100 light-years from Earth. The nebula was discovered by William Herschel in 1787, a prolific scientist who made all sorts of discoveries including the planet Uranus and infrared light.

According to myth and legend, Cassiopeia, sometimes called the "Vain Queen," is revealed to having laid hundreds, maybe thousands, of NGC 7635-shaped "eggs" in and around the far-away, fabled Hadley's Hope colony, in the mythical land of "LV-426." Some know the queen for making a regrettable boast touting that she and her daughter Andromeda were more beautiful than all the Nereids, thus angering the god Poseidon. But she is perhaps best known for getting blown out of an airlock of the orbiting vessel Sulaco during her epic battle with Lieutenant First Class Ellen Ripley, who was driving/wearing a loader at the time (Ripley had a Class II rating). After being ejected into the empty void of space, the queen was immortalized as the constellation Cassiopeia, for all generations henceforth to see and admire.

If science tells us anything, it's that The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) is almost certainly not about to hatch, releasing a stellar sized facehugger into the galaxy. Decades, if not centuries of astronomy and astrophysics tell us quite clearly that spawning galactic xenomorphs is not how emission nebulae probably work.

Acquisition and processing details:

SII: 939 x 40sec = 10.43 hours
Hα: 1170 x 40sec = 13 hours
Oiii: 935 x 40sec = 10.39 hours
Total: 33.82 hours

(40 second subs are arguably too short for narrowband at ~f/11, even for Bortle class 7 skies. But when I started the project I decided that until I get the tracking/guiding errors under control, I could accept the increased read noise by having a smaller percentage of subs thrown out. For the next project I anticipate longer subs.)

(Regarding the mount and its tracking issues: There was a moment where I wanted to take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. That said, I admire its purity. A survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. I can't lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies.)

Equipment:
Telescope: Meade 10" LX200-ACF on equatorial wedge
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM
QHY off-axis guider
Astronomik narrowband filters (SII, Hα, Oiii)

Software:
Nighttime Imaging 'n Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PixInsight (Ripley version)
Topaz Labs Denoise AI

I'd better get back, 'cause it'll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night.
Mostly.

 

[DennisN]

The Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635).
Total integration time: 33.82 hours (Hubble palette [SHO narrowband])

Gorgeous!

I'd better get back, 'cause it'll be dark soon, and they mostly come at night.
Mostly.

 

[Devin-M]

NGC 7635, also known as the Bubble Nebula

Stunning results! well worth a poster print!

SII: 939 x 40sec = 10.43 hours
Hα: 1170 x 40sec = 13 hours
Oiii: 935 x 40sec = 10.39 hours
Total: 33.82 hours

Yikes… that’s why I’ve recently commissioned the “Goldman Array…” 3 Nikon D800’s with 300mm f/4.5 lenses and 2x teleconverters… so I can capture through all 3 narrowband filters concurrently…

RGB (48x 60s 3200iso 600mm f/9):

Ha (18x 600s 6400iso):

OIII (26x 600s 6400iso):

SII (10x 1200s 6400iso):

North America & Pelican Nebulas - RGB-SHO Composite (12hrs data in 7hrs in one night):

 

[DennisN]

that’s why I’ve recently commissioned the “Goldman Array…” 3 Nikon D800’s with 300mm f/4.5 lenses and 2x teleconverters… so I can capture through all 3 narrowband filters concurrently…

Impressive and ambitious!
I can't make out from your pictures of the gear if the three trackers are connected together.
Do the trackers run independently or are they synchronized, I wonder?

 

[Devin-M]

Impressive and ambitious!
I can't make out from your pictures of the gear if the three trackers are connected together.
Do the trackers run independently or are they synchronized, I wonder?

They aren’t “synchronised” unless you mean they all rotate at the same speed… Each is a standalone tracker. I did have to connect 2 of them to the same usb battery since one of the batteries wasn’t working properly. Since they are on the cheap end of trackers (Star Adventurer 2i Pro - ~$425) I have to point each of them manually. This is made more difficult by the fact that the narrowband filters make both the viewfinder and live preview totally dark and impossible to use. So the only way that I can reliably aim is by trial and error with online plate solving. First I roughly aim and then take a test shot. Then I transfer that test shot to my phone. Then I upload that test shot to http://nova.astrometry.net/upload for plate solving. This tells me where I am actually aiming so I can then adjust and repeat until I’ve achieved acceptable aiming. I wrote a bit more about my first run in a different thread…

I think tonight went well. I got RGB as well as narrowband Hydrogen, Oxygen and Sulfur data of an emission nebula at 600mm f/9 with 3 cameras running concurrently in a single session. I was on site at about 7:45pm had all 3 narrowband cameras up and running by around 11:30p and let them run until 3am, so that’s over 9 hours of narrowband data in just over 3 hours. I set up one camera with no narrowband filter first to capture rgb, and once this was up and running I got the 2 other cameras capturing narrowband. Once those two were up and running I reconfigured the RGB camera for Hydrogen Alpha and as I mentioned from 11:30p til 3am all 3 cameras were capturing narrowband. I left the cameras running dark frames on the way home and will continue to let the cameras capture more dark frames while I sleep. The settings I chose were pretty extreme on the narrowband… 10 minutes per exposure at 6400iso for the hydrogen and oxygen filters and a full 20 minutes of open shutter per exposure on the sulphur filter. Haven’t had a chance to look at the data but I do know they were in pretty decent focus as I used a bahtinov mask to focus every camera, and again after switching from RGB to Ha. The most troublesome thing that happened was I had very slow internet on my phone for plate solving to confirm aim. Also one of my USB batteries powering the mounts kept shutting off so I ended up running 2 mounts off a single USB battery pack (fortunately it had 2 output ports). Also next time I’ll remember to switch camera batteries when switching from RGB to Ha as I think the Ha session may have ended a little early from the camera battery running out of juice at some point. All in all I deem the mission a success (having not yet seen the actual data). Will begin processing data tomorrow…

 

[bruha]

Hello, it is from before yesterday-for moons visible..
lot of succes

 

[Andy Resnick]

It's going to be cloudy for the next week (or so) here, so this may be all I can get of Andromdea (M31) this year:

Deets: 800/8 lens, D810 sensor, 16.6 hours total integration time (10s subs) @ ISO 125. RAWs stacked in Astro Pixel Processor. For me, this object is a little tricky to image because it barely fits within the frame. Stopping down the lens from f/5.6 dramatically reduced both chromatic and monochromatic aberrations, resulting in good acutance and well-controlled color across the sensor (for a change). I'm somewhat confused by what appear to be open clusters around the periphery (1:1 crops):

It's as though the clusters are within M31 instead of the Milky Way, but that can't be right since I can resolve individual stars within the clusters. Any guesses?

 

[Keith_McClary]

clusters are within M31

NGC 206 - The Great Star Cloud in Andromeda ?

 

[Devin-M]

NGC 206 - The Great Star Cloud in Andromeda ?

Interesting link. It shows huge clusters of stars can look like individual stars at that distance...

 

[Keith_McClary]

Speed Bump by Dave Coverly for October 31, 2021

 

[bruha]

Hello, I attach image of Alcyone with neighboring star within Pleiades (eyepiece camera SV EBONY and Newton scope 1000 x 200 mm).

 

[collinsmark]

The Silver Sliver Galaxy (NGC 891). This galaxy is about 30 million light years away in the constellation Andromeda. It's an unbarred spiral galaxy, and would look very similar to our own galaxy, The Milky Way, if we could view our own galaxy edge-on from a distance.

It's sometimes called the "Outer Limits Galaxy" because it was the first of several galaxies rolled during the closing credits of the original Outer Limits television series.

It was discovered by William Herschel (who made all sorts of discoveries) on October 6, 1784.

Silver Sliver Galaxy (NGC 891)

Integration:
Astronomik Hα: 231×90sec = 5.78 hours
Optolong L-Pro: 641×60sec = 10.68 hours
Astronomik R: 109×60sec = 1.82 hours
Astronomik G: 109×60sec = 1.82 hours
Astromomik B: 110×60sec = 1.83 hours
Total integration time: 21.93 hours
Bortle Class 7 skies

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF on an equatorial wedge
Optec Lepus 0.62 focal reducer
filters (see above)
ZWO ASI1600MM-COOL monochrome camera

Software:
Nighttime Imaging 'N Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PHD2 guiding (goes without saying)
PixInsight
Topaz Labs Denoise AI

Success in astrophotography is the sum of all problems encountered, all problems identified, and any solutions that happen to be found. Even if a problem doesn't have a solution, I still consider it a success because it might point to a solution later on down the road. That, and because thinking about it any other way is maddening. There are always so, so many problems when attempting astrophotography that if you don't embrace the problems themselves you are doomed to lunacy and despair.

Mid-way through this project I found a solution/workaround to a problem that has been haunting me for months (triple success!). As anybody following my posts will know, I have been battling guiding and tracking errors (success!). I thought it was probably my old LX200 mount. It turns out it wasn't: it was N.I.N.A. stomping all over PHD2's pulse guiding commands.

I now have experimental proof of this. I'm not sure if the root cause is with N.I.N.A., PHD2, or my ASCOM driver, but whatever the case, it seems that when N.I.N.A., polls the mount asking "are you still here? And btw., what's the current Altitude, Azimuth, Right Ascension, and Declination?" it stomps on PHD2's guiding commands, making many of those pulse commands useless. (Success!)

The workaround (success!) is after the target is all centered and framed up nicely, is to disconnect the mount from N.I.N.A., and then start guiding with PHD2 such that PHD2 is the only thing connected directly to the mount. N.I.N.A., can still be connected to PHD2, the focuser, filterwheel, and whatnot; but just not the mount. Then start the imaging sequence.

Using this workaround means that I have to give up slewing to new targets automatically in the middle of a session, but that's OK, because I usually stick to a single target for several days anyway. I can still do all the plate solving and stuff before the sequence starts (just not mid-sequence). Dithering is not affected, since N.I.N.A. doesn't need to be connected to the mount in order to dither; it just needs to be connected to PHD2. Also, PHD2 keeps track of the mount's declination automatically, so N.I.N.A. not being connected to the mount does not adversely affect guiding.

Discovering this workaround was a big deal to me. (Success!) Before, my guiding/tracking errors, while usually tolerable, would sometimes veer off into ±4-5 ARCSEC peak, every few minutes for no apparent reason. But then when I disconnected N.I.N.A. from the mount before starting the sequence, "High-Ho Silver," the guiding is almost always within around ±1 ARCSEC peak, with an RMS error of only around 0.5 ARCSEC.

It's as if Andromeda and the Lone Ranger had some sort of evil lovechild that gobbled up the guiding errors. All praise the Andromeda & Lone Ranger demon spawn!

My silver-haired compatriots will recognize the Lone Ranger as the fictional masked hero of the American old-west, who, together with his horse "Silver," would defeat the villains, save the day, and leave a silver bullet as his calling card. The Lone Ranger harkens back to fictional time where even the bad guys wore masks.

So in summary, the Silver Sliver Galaxy was a very successful project. And to boot, while imaging this galaxy, not a single werewolf attacked for some reason (not necessarily a success!).

 

[Devin-M]

Flying Bat Nebula - Ha-RGB Composite - 300mm f/4.5 on 35mm sensor
12x20min (4 hrs) 6nm Ha Filter @ 6400iso
60x1min (1hr) RGB (no filter) @ 3200iso

100% Crop

Orion + Assorted Nebulas Ha Filter - 24mm f/2.8 on a 35mm sensor
12x5min (1hr) @ 6400iso

100% crops

 

[Devin-M]

https://www.speakev.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.speakev.com/attachments/img-4-bw-jpg.152184/

 

[DennisN]

A team has announced they have directly observed an exoplanet (in infrared):

Article 1: Infant Planet Discovered by UH-Led Team Using Maunakea Telescopes (keckobservatory.org)
Article 2: Jaw-Dropping Direct Image Shows a Baby Exoplanet Over 400 Light-Years Away (ScienceAlert)

Quote from article 1: "A direct image of the planet 2M0437, which lies about 100 times the Earth-Sun distance from its parent star. [...]"

 

[bruha]

Hello, I attach Andromeda galaxy from yesterday made by my friend (camera on drive mount)

 

[Andy Resnick]

The Silver Sliver Galaxy (NGC 891). This galaxy is about 30 million light years away in the constellation Andromeda. It's an unbarred spiral galaxy, and would look very similar to our own galaxy, The Milky Way, if we could view our own galaxy edge-on from a distance.

Thanks for posting this one! I was unaware of NGC 891. The weekend was moonless and clear over here, I was able to devote some camera time imaging this object in between M31 (trailing away) and M45 (rising):

800/8 lens, D810 DX format, 2.2 hours @ ISO 125:

and a 1:1 crop:

Something very unexpected (to me), this region of sky is *full* of galaxies, some examples follow:

 

[DennisN]

For those who use cameras and lenses for astrophotography:

I just read two blog articles which I found interesting:

How To Easily Focus On The Stars (Astro Pills)
- in which he among other things describes how to make a cheap focusing aid (for lenses with shorter focal lengths) from a frying pan splatter screen . He also provides some focusing tips if you don't have or get your Bahtinov masks to work for you.

Budget Astrophotography With Legacy Lenses (Astro Pills)
- those of you with more knowledge may already know all of it, but personally I found the section about Chromatic Aberration Index and Which Legacy Lenses Should You Get? very interesting and useful.

 

[bruha]

Hello, I attach next Andromeda attempts-original and Gimp corrected.

 

[DennisN]

Hello, I attach next Andromeda attempts-original and Gimp corrected

Attempt? I would call it a success!
I like the right one, A, the most.

I've been thinking about trying to do Andromeda too soon, but I want to get out of the city for that. And it's been very cloudy here lately too. But hopefully I will get a chance to do it soon.

 

[bruha]

So lot of succes
-this one was made from balcony house(Prague suburb) by camera Sony
135 mm focal length with drive mount.

 

[Devin-M]

Moon
1800mm f/12 1/640th sec 1600iso aps-c sensor crop

 

[Devin-M]

Saturn
1800mm f/12 50x 1/320th sec 6400iso 100% crop

 

[Devin-M]

last night with the new 1800mm f/12 telescope:

 

[bruha]

Hi your moon is beautiful .
I attach still one Andromeda image corrrected in special astroediting software.

 

[Devin-M]

Thanks to some helpful suggestions from @collinsmark with regard to "wavelet sharpening" and atmospheric dispersion correction I was able to clean up the Saturn image a bit and get it considerably sharper:

 

[bruha]

Hello, here is moon attempt from yesterday. (nowadays is moon almost full).