Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[Devin-M]

 

[collinsmark]

View attachment 293346

@Devin-M, which forecast is that from? I can always use a new source.

Right now I rely on
https://telescopius.com
https://www.cleardarksky.com
https://forecast.weather.gov

But I'm not yet familiar with the one you posted.

 

[Devin-M]

ClearOutside.com is my go-to for astro-forecasts. Works like a charm. Green means it's a "go" for astrophotography. It also shows whether the moon is up at a glance (which for me is to be avoided for deep-sky astrophotography), gives the bortle rating, and if you click on the days it shows a whole host of other info like winds, temperatures, ISS flyovers, and warns you if you'll be risking dew formation if the outside temperature will be very close to the dew point (which I ignored once and my cameras were soaking at the end of the night-- I was wiping down the lenses every 20 minutes).

 

[Devin-M]

Wind gusts are predicted to be 18mph tonight with 10mph sustained so it's a no-go despite the clear conditions... but I did manage to test my scope this afternoon on some Eagles in lieu of the Eagle Nebula as the sun was going down...

 

[ondrejbruha]

Summer milky way over the scouts camp in Czechia.

Sony A7 + Samyang 18/2.8 + Sky Watcher Star Adventurer
Foreground: panorama from 5 images, every is median form 3 photos
Sky: Panorama from 4 photos
Software: Photoshop, PixInsight, PTGui

My website: www.ondrejbruha.com

 

[DennisN]

ClearOutside.com is my go-to for astro-forecasts. Works like a charm. Green means it's a "go" for astrophotography. It also shows whether the moon is up at a glance (which for me is to be avoided for deep-sky astrophotography), gives the bortle rating, and if you click on the days it shows a whole host of other info like winds, temperatures, ISS flyovers, and warns you if you'll be risking dew formation if the outside temperature will be very close to the dew point (which I ignored once and my cameras were soaking at the end of the night-- I was wiping down the lenses every 20 minutes).

I hear you.

There's an amazing number of things which have an influence, which I wasn't aware of until I started myself (e.g. weather, light pollution, the Moon (presence and phase), wind, temperature).

Recently I have planned some new potential good sites near me, where I can at best get down to Bortle 3.

And there are two interesting Bortle 2 sites reasonably near me, the two Danish islands Mön and Bornholm.

I find Mön particularly interesting since it's very sparsely populated, and I can reach it without taking any ship. There's also supposed to be very nice nature scenery there, e.g. Möns Klint. I am thinking about maybe going camping there for a week or two next spring or summer, and drive around the small island to take nature photos in the day, and doing astrophotography in the night. All depending on the weather, of course.

 

[Devin-M]

Wave interference effects on star light after passing between the slits of a bahtinov focusing mask...

 

[Devin-M]

I took this picture last night of "Casper the Friendly Ghost Nebula" also known as Messier 78 in moonless bortle 2 conditions near Shingletown, California, USA. It's a reflection nebula with a radius of about 5 light years and a distance of about 1350 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion.

This noisy image is a result of under-exposure (both of the individual frames and the overall total exposure time of all the frames combined) and overzealous histogram stretching (twice) in Adobe Lightroom. The individual frames were 90 seconds long and I ended up with about 40 of them (I think only about 26 were good enough to stack) or about 1 hour exposure total on a 2180mm f/14.5 scope (Meade LX85 M6 1800mm f/12 Maksutov Cassegrain) at 6400iso with a Nikon D800 DSLR at prime focus & Star Adventurer 2i Pro tracker.

view in WorldWideTelescope

 

[Keith_McClary]

Right now I rely on
https://telescopius.com
https://www.cleardarksky.com
https://forecast.weather.gov

Is there any place that analyses this data over time so we could look up which locations have how many hours of good conditions per year?

 

[collinsmark]

Is there any place that analyses this data over time so we could look up which locations have how many hours of good conditions per year?

I don't know of any. That would be nice though.

Maybe one alternative method is to look up where the nearest big observatory is. There's a good chance that if somebody put a big observatory there, they probably researched the viability of the location.

Better yet, find a contact a local astronomy club. There's a good chance they might even have unique access to darker sky locations. For example, here in San Diego there's the SDAA that has access to a location out in the desert, well away from the marine layer, in the middle of nowhere, where the sky is dark and the weather is usually favorable. (I've never been out there yet due to laziness, but it's there.)

 

[Devin-M]

Is there any place that analyses this data over time so we could look up which locations have how many hours of good conditions per year?

I found this (Sunniest Cities in the World):

https://assets3.thrillist.com/v1/image/2832143

Top 3 areas are Arizona, Egypt and Chile…

There’s also this map of Europe and the US…

 

[collinsmark]

The Phantom Galaxy (M74) in the constellation Pisces. The galaxy is about 32 million light years away. Imaged from my back patio. Total integration time: 59.78 hours. Bortle Class 7 skies (maybe 8).

Figure 1. Phantom Galaxy (Messier 74)

I started the first night of imaging by warming up some fish tacos in the back of the fridge that were about to go bad. I also cooked up a batch of off-brand fishsticks to go with the half-empty bottle of tarter sauce that's been in the fridge since the before times. This will become important later.

The Phantom Galaxy (M74) is arguably called the "phantom" because it is perhaps the most difficult of the Messier objects for amateur astronomers to observe, due to its low surface brightness.

A few hours into the first night of imaging, my gastrointestinal system started making all sorts of noises. There were high pitched screeches, baritone groans, and even some falsetto squawks. It was like an opera going on in there!

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF on a equatorial wedge
Optec Lepus 0.62x focal reducer
Astronomik RGB filters
Astronomik Ha filter
Optolong L-Pro filter
ZWO ASI1600MM-COOL monochrome camera

Software:
Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PixInsight
Topaz Labs Denoise AI
GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

Before the first night was over, my digestive tract released several gaseous, ethereal, fish taco phantoms into the realm of the living. Although mostly invisible, they made their presence known and continued to linger around for what seemed like forever.

With the Phantom Galaxy's (M74's) low surface brightness, it took about 13 clearish nights to get this image. You might think that with nearly 60 hours of integration time, that it would turn out better. But keep in mind that I'm imaging from Bortle Class 7 (maybe 8) skies, and that's not even counting the neighborhood glare, of which there's plenty.

Here is an image of the telescope struggling with the Phantom Galaxy (M74). That glow in the sky isn't twilight: this snapshot was taken around 10 PM (22:00), roughly.

Figure 2. Telescope struggling with all the light pollution

The "Little Phantoms," as I came to call them, continued to hang around as the nights passed. They would float around and play games and curiously inspect the telescope. Inquisitive little things, they were. I think by the end, they quite interested in astronomy, and even offered to help out, in whatever strange way they could.

Integration:
L-Pro: 28.85 hours
R: 7.46 hours
G: 8.55 hours
B: 5.78 hours
Ha: 9.15 hours
Total: 59.78 hours

By the end of the imaging, I encouraged the Little Phantoms go out into the world on their own. They grow up so fast! They were reluctant at first. Then I put in a Star Wars movie, Episode I (the one where Anakin was a kid), and that seemed to convince them. We agreed that they are always welcome to come back to visit anytime in future seasons, particularly when the Phantom Galaxy (M74) is revisited. And we'll always have the fish tacos.

 

[Devin-M]

Stunning results! I love how you captured the very faint outer regions and the red h-alpha regions. Great work.

Edit: It's funny you posted this today as I had started to consider asking how you were coming along with this project...

 

[Devin-M]

I see what appears to be quite a few background galaxies / extended objects in there as well... it looks like about 4 of them in the upper right corner, one to the left of the bright star on the bottom right corner, one at the bottom in the center, and possibly another one on the far left side below the top left corner.

 

[DennisN]

Before the first night was over, my digestive tract released several gaseous, ethereal, fish taco phantoms into the realm of the living.

So it wasn't only light pollution you were fighting against.

 

[Devin-M]

This is a single 10 minute exposure at 3200iso with no filters of the Wizard Nebula also known as NGC 7380 in Bortle 2 conditions... I shot this while waiting for Messier 78 to come above the horizon the other night, which was my primary target. Of the 12 or so 10 minute exposures I got this was the only one that came out with anything close to round stars, so I'm definitely butting up against the inherent limits of using a relatively cheap star tracker like the Star Adventurer 2i Pro... it's definitely not intended for 10 minute un-guided exposures at 2180mm focal length, so this picture is not very great but still not quite worthy of the trash-heap... I actually should have had the Ha filter inserted and this probably would have let me then composite just the nebulosity with some much shorter 30 second exposures I had gotten just for the RGB of the stars, but since I didn't put in the filter there's no way I can separate the nebulosity from the over-exposed stars in this picture and do a composite. In hindsight I should have recognized how badly these 10 minute exposures were coming out and cut my losses and swiveled to M78 much sooner and then I would have gotten a couple extra hours on that target which probably would have resulted in much less noise. After assessing these photos I think If I'm shooting straight RGB with no filters of a typical nebula in bortle 2 conditions, then 2 minutes per exposure at 6400iso seems like it may be the sweet spot when considering the weaknesses of the tracker on longer exposures, and the amount of noise to signal I get at 6400iso f/14.5.

view in WorldWideTelescope

The "Little Phantoms," as I came to call them, continued to hang around as the nights passed. They would float around and play games and curiously inspect the telescope. Inquisitive little things, they were. I think by the end, they quite interested in astronomy, and even offered to help out, in whatever strange way they could.

I get something similar when I image in the driveway, but instead of "Little Phantoms" they carry the ignominious title of "Dumpster Kittens..."

 

[Keith_McClary]

Sunrise and moonrise.
(From here.)

 

[Devin-M]

 

[bruha]

 

[Keith_McClary]

Comet Leonard, before dawn, 16deg alt, near Serpens (towards Hercules) .
Cloudy here .
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/c...comet-leonard-in-the-predawn-sky-this-weekend

EDIT: I happened to wake up at 5:30AM and could see a star from my bed, so I went out in -6C and found it with binocs.

 

[collinsmark]

Phantom Galaxy (M74), reprocessed. It's from the same data as my last post (post #1517), but with a little bit of improved PixInisight-fu.

 

[bruha]

 

[Andy Resnick]

Finally got a break in the clouds- it's been over a month- so I made sure to maximize my imaging time, sleep be damned :)

Finishing up NGC 891 for the year: 800/8.0 lens, DX format, 4.8 hours @ ISO 64:

The fainter galaxies are starting to clearly appear- some structure is now visible (1:1 crop):

As NGC moves out of view, the Pleiades are rising- 800/8.0, FX format, only 3 hours (so far) @ ISO 64:

It's not obvious on the downscaled image, but stopping down the lens also produces great 'starburst' patterns:

And then Orion is ascending: 800/8.0, FX-ish format, 1 hour @ ISO 64:

The image is a little stretched because I wanted to also image NGC 1999, just visible at the bottom left (here, 1:1):

Meanwhile, I can still keep the Trapezium from blooming:

Last, a blast from the past- I found an ISS flyover time-lapse I took on 4/2/20, right as we went into lockdown; I had other matters on my mind at the time and forgot I even took this:



This was taken at 800/5.6, 1/2000 s shutter speed and ISO 640 (I think). When I image the Space Station, I begin by consulting this site and find out what the maximum magnitude will be. Then, once I get set up, I set the camera ISO according to a star that's about the same magnitude- the shutter speed must be fast to reduce motion blur, I've found 1/2000s works.

 

[bruha]

 

[bruha]

Hi, watching your Pleiades, I remember my Pleidases attempt by CCD eyepiece camera with Newton 1000/200 mm. I attach both as illustration of zoom field difference. (on your image is marked cca my zoom view.

 

[Devin-M]

This was taken at 800/5.6, 1/2000 s shutter speed and ISO 640 (I think). When I image the Space Station, I begin by consulting this site and find out what the maximum magnitude will be. Then, once I get set up, I set the camera ISO according to a star that's about the same magnitude- the shutter speed must be fast to reduce motion blur, I've found 1/2000s works.

The quality of your ISS video is stunning. Would you mind describing the mount and setup process you use for aiming?

 

[Andy Resnick]

The quality of your ISS video is stunning. Would you mind describing the mount and setup process you use for aiming?

Thanks!

Acquiring these timelapses is all about the planning and less about the equipment- a 400/2.8 nikkor with a 2x tele is my lens, a Nikon D810 is my camera, and my tripod- a regular (center post-less) tripod- has a Wimberley gimbal head. By putting one leg of the tripod 'through' the other two, the tripod allows the camera to view straight up.

The setup is also straightforward- once I know the ISS path and maximum brightness (both available on the heavens-above URL), I set up in a field and practice-track the ISS a few times to get the choreography down. As I said earlier, I set the camera focus and ISO by imaging a star with the same brightness as the (maximum) for ISS.

Tracking is 'easy', once I sight the ISS. I do tend to lose tracking as ISS passes directly overhead, when I step around the tripod to reposition myself and take my eyes away from the viewer. Imaging is RAW, but be mindful of the data transfer rate- it's easy to get excited, take a bunch of photos and fill up the camera memory buffer early in the flyover, will then have to wait until the buffer clears while ISS is getting closer to prime imaging location. The good news is that the fast shutter speed required means I don't need a remote shutter release or other mirror-up vibration delay, I can just aim and shoot normally.

When I'm done, I have about 100 images to crop, center, and assemble into an AVI.

How does that sound?

 

[DennisN]

I've just serviced one of my 400mm tele lenses myself (I had bought one which was in need of servicing). It was a bit scary, but after a while it was quite fun (I've learned quite a few things about servicing by watching good youtube videos on the topic¹).

Anyway, yesterday I decided to try the lens on the Moon, even though it was not quite a clear sky.
And it was also the first time I used a connected intervalometer with the camera. Since my camera has Wifi I could to this before with an app on my phone (which is pretty cool), but I got fed up using the app because I found it a bit annoying, and my hands also got cold when fiddling with the phone . I can use the newly acquired intervalometer with my gloves on now, which is nice.

Here are the results:

With some more contrast:

Gear: Sony A6000 and a Tokina RMC 400mm f/5.6 tele lens.
Settings: f/8, 1/1000 s exposure, ISO 1000.
Processing: Stack of the best 50% of a total of 165 photos.
Software used: PIPP, AutoStakkert and Photoshop.

In the future I'm thinking of trying to improve further by shooting at optimal conditions, and also take many more shots for the stacking.

I'm also on the lookout for a decent teleconverter (M42 mount) to increase the focal length so I can get closer to the target(s) in the future.

Edit:

¹ Here's one good youtube video on servicing lenses:
ESSENTIAL Maintenance Tips For Vintage Lenses! (Zenography)

 

[ladimir1000]

very interesting!

 

[bruha]

Hello ,just for fun.. Jupiter on early evening sky- Tenerife island (I never noticed Jupiter so bright before..)
Lot of succes and happy new year..

 

[DennisN]

Hello ,just for fun.. Jupiter on early evening sky- Tenerife island (I never noticed Jupiter so bright before..)
Lot of succes and happy new year..

Cool!

Lot of succes and happy new year..

And the same to you!

By the way, The James Webb Telescope will be launched in less than thirty minutes! The launch can be seen live here.

 

[Keith_McClary]

Comet Leonard by someone at SkyGems:

 

[pinball1970]

I saw this and had to copy it. I thought all you telescope guys would get a kick out of it. It's 6 half hours (I skipped a lot) but there is some interesting stuff. His kit calibration and comments about viewing Webb.
Easier to see than Hubble?
16.49 he points to Webb (a suggestion from a viewer as he is streaming)

 

[DennisN]

16.49 he points to Webb (a suggestion from a viewer as he is streaming)

Very cool! Some time after the launch I wondered if any astrophotographer was trying to capture JWST.

 

[DennisN]

A new stack from the previous photosession...

This time a color composition of the stacked final image and the surrounding clouds and moonlight
(clouds & moonlight shot at f/8, 1/15s exposure and ISO 1000).

Full:

Cropped: