Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[timmdeeg]

Bode's Galaxy (M81), The Cigar Galaxy (M82), and the Garland Galaxy (NGC 3077) gathered from my back patio in March-April, 2023. I was able to sneak this acquisition in during the few clear nights within the last couple of months using my secondary astro-rig.

Congratulation to these beautiful images! The colors look very natural. These galaxies belong to my favorites, however I am still waiting for better weather conditions.

 

[collinsmark]

Arguably, this post belongs in one of the jokes threads. But it's so specific to the topic of this thread (if you're at all concerned with telescope optics), I put it here.

Crystal Ball

(Source: https://xkcd.com/2776/)

 

[DennisN]

I was out the other night trying to capture the Milky Way, and this time I succeeded for the first time .
I went out a bit outside of the city at a Bortle 6 site, but the site wasn't particularly good for this job, so another lesson learned. Next time I will probably go to a darker site at a beach and try to shoot over the ocean in order to get less light pollution.

In the meantime, here is one photo which shows three types of "disturbances" in one and the same photo: satellite, airplane and light pollution "dome" in the distance...

(quotes from PF members two years ago)

This kind of light streak, which I have sometimes seen in photos by others, are they satellites? Or could they also be airplanes?

Satellite

Yeah, that's either a satellite or a high-altitude plane. Here, transcontinental/transoceanic flights are high enough that I can't distinguish those from satellites.

Airplane navigation (clearance) lights blink on and off.

Airplanes typically show as dotted lines if the field of view is large enough with an exposure time is a second or so.

Cheers,
Tom

Magnified:

Satellite (probably):

Airplane (probably):

Since the first photo was only one unprocessed frame the Milky Way was very, very dim there.
Here's one processed in Sequator where the Milky Way is at least more present:

I'm far from satisfied with this photo, so I will try to process in other ways and in other software, probably Siril.

And a screenshot from Stellarium for comparison:

 

[Devin-M]

Remember to set your alarm clock for 5:17 AM tomorrow morning pacific time to see Jupiter emerge from behind the moon.

 

[Devin-M]

@DennisN I’d be happy to try and draw out some more clarity if you upload the RAW file here: https://u.pcloud.com/#page=puplink&code=cwlkZxnAbdImDSG8LT1xX8zffYkao7EUX

 

[Devin-M]

Occultation of Jupiter by the Moon
Photo By: Devin M
~5:20am PST 5/17/23, Redding, California
Nikon D800 DSLR on a 6" diameter Meade 2175mm f/14.5 Maksutov Cassegrain reflector telescope, Full Frame

In this frame grab from a video, Jupiter is still partially blocked by the moon:

Video PT 1 of 3:


Video PT 2 of 3:


Video PT 3 of 3:

 

[Devin-M]

Apparently the last occultation of Jupiter visible in the US was 1968.

 

[DennisN]

@ All PF astrophotographers, FYI:

@swampwiz posted a thread about a new, close supernova here:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/supernova-in-pinwheel-galaxy.1052633/

...and an article here: New supernova! Closest in a decade (EarthSky.org)

A new supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy, aka M101, is the closest to Earth in a decade.

[...]

It should remain visible to amateur astronomers with backyard telescopes for a few months.

[...]

The supernova – named 2023ixf – lies in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, near the end of the handle of the Big Dipper.

[...]

And a photo from the article above:

"Our friend Eliot Herman used the Utah Remote Desert Observatories to capture this image of the new supernova in M101 – the Pinwheel Galaxy – just hours after its discovery on May 19, 2023. See the bright spot by the yellow arrowhead? This is the closest supernova to us in more than a decade. [...]"

 

[DennisN]

@DennisN I’d be happy to try and draw out some more clarity if you upload the RAW file here: https://u.pcloud.com/#page=puplink&code=cwlkZxnAbdImDSG8LT1xX8zffYkao7EUX

@Devin-M :

Thank you very much for your kind offer!

I haven't yet tried Siril myself, but if you like to have a go at the RAW files (which are .ARW files), I've just uploaded them as a RAR archive (unencrypted) on the pCloud link you posted.

Name of RAR archive: "Milky Way from DennisN to Devin-M.rar" (ca 1.9 GB)

I hope you can unpack RAR files... the reason I stored them in a RAR archive was because there are three different folders for the different file types:

1 - Light Frames (x25, 6s, f4, ISO 3200), i.e. the actual photos
2 - Dark Frames (x10, 6s, f4, ISO 3200), i.e. the noise signature photos
3 - Calibration Frames (x21, 1-8000s, f4, ISO 3200), i.e. the calibration/bias photos

(note: no flat frames, I haven't yet done flat frames, it's on my to do-list )

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

Gear & Settings Info:

Camera: Sony A7R
Lens: Sony FE 35mm f/2.8 (Sony Zeiss Sonnar T* FE 35/2,8 ZA)

Settings: (Frame type: exposure time, f-number, ISO)

Light Frames: 6 sec, f/4, ISO 3200
Dark Frames: 6 sec, f/4, ISO 3200
Calibration Frames: 1/8000 sec, f/4, ISO 3200

Cheers!

 

[Devin-M]

I will edit these. PS I think bias only affects the flat frames, but you may want to double check.

 

[Devin-M]

Actually, could you do about 10 flat frames? Just stretch white plastic bag over lens with a couple rubber bands and point at sky during daytime (not at sun) such that the exposure ends up about 50% grey. Histogram will look like a peak in the middle.

 

[DennisN]

Actually, could you do about 10 flat frames? Just stretch white plastic bag over lens with a couple rubber bands and point at sky during daytime (not at sun) such that the exposure ends up about 50% grey. Histogram will look like a peak in the middle.

@Devin-M :

Ok, I just did some flat frames (20) and uploaded them as a RAR archive ("Milky Way from DennisN to Devin-M - Flat Frames.rar", 701 MB) on your pCloud link.

I hope I did it right :

Gear: Same camera and lens (of course )
ISO: Same (3200)
f: Same (4)
Exposure: 1/8000s with a paper* in front of lens, to get correct exposure
Focus: Same (Infinity)

I had to read up on flat frames, and I read this article:

How to take Flat Frames for Astrophotography (AstroBackyard)

* I tried with a plastic bag first, but it seemed to thin, since the photo got overexposed even on the shortest exposure time:

So I tried with a paper in front of the lens instead (taped onto the camera):

Cheers!

 

[Andy Resnick]

Test cropped image from a large stitched-and-stacked image of the Virgo supercluster ( I think that's what it is...), this crop is centered on Markarian's chain and neighborhood:

It's ok, but the seams are unacceptable. Tests like this help me diagnose stacking problems (here, it's insufficient blending of the substacks) but also keep me motivated to see large projects through to the end.

Deets: total integration time is about 20 hours @ 400/4, 13s subs, but it's spread over the whole region which covers about 5 FoV of a full-frame 35mm sensor. This crop is close to a single FoV.

 

[timmdeeg]

It’s really nice and includes the Great Galactic Face.

 

[timmdeeg]

https://mapstr.com/place/JNuKeafrwog

During a trip in the south of Malta we came along a historic tower - the Ghar Lapsi Tower - and I imagined stars looking down on it. At night it took us a half hour from Valetta to arrive at the tower.

Unfortunately fainter stars were missing due to dust coming from the desert Sahara, so only SQM 19.

Sony A7iii with FE 1.8 / 14 GM
stacked with Sequator - processed with Siril and LightZone
May 18. - 18x25s ISO 200 no guiding

I have no great experience to process such images. Which would you prefer? I think the second looks more natural. Both are a slight crop.

 

[Devin-M]

Unfortunately fainter stars were missing due to dust coming from the desert Sahara, so only SQM 19.

Sony cameras are known to use a spatial filtering algorithm that removes stars (and by design hot pixels), known in the astrophotography community as “star eater” cameras…

https://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/SonyA7S/sonystareater.html

 

[Devin-M]

Source: https://www.lonelyspeck.com/sony-star-eater-and-how-to-fix-it/

Improvements in the Sony a7III​

The below section is an excerpt from my a7III review.

The a7III exhibits a similar, but different characteristic noise filtering as previous generations. The filtering reduces noise and diminishes the brightness of small dim stars in an image for exposures of 4 seconds or longer. An easy way to see the effects of star-eater on the a7III is to simply compare a 3.2s exposure (left) with a 4s exposure (right):

A comparison between a 3.2s exposure and a 4s exposure makes apparent that the a7III still has some built-in noise reduction that affects stars.

https://www.lonelyspeck.com/sony-star-eater-and-how-to-fix-it/

 

[timmdeeg]

Thanks, I wasn't aware of the "star eater" issue.

This sounds like an improvement though:

As you can see, the 8s a7III (right) shot looks a lot better than the star-eaten a7S Bulb shot (left). The a7S Bulb shot (left) shows some weird color shifted or blocky looking stars that appear a little bit defocused as a results of the old a7S’s spatial filtering (star-eater) in Bulb mode. The a7III shot shows more dim stars and stars appear markedly sharper than in the old a7S Bulb shot. Stars look “normal” in the a7III shot. This result is great news for astrophotographers looking to get the a7III.

I'm not sure if I can expect more if under such conditions I can see only a few stars with the naked eye.

 

[DennisN]

A new video by Nico Carver which I think is worth posting because it is unusual;
he talks about psychological issues here which can affect astrophotographers (and photographers in general):

Pixel peeping (which can lead to unnecessary dissatisfaction) and GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome)*.

Confession: I've become a pixel peeper (Nebula Photos)


* GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) and LBA (Lens Buying Addiction) are concepts in photography which I can identify with . Here is a short video which describes it: LBA and GAS - a journey (Simon's Utak).

 

[Borg]

Today's APOD is pretty awesome!
Moons Across Jupiter

 

[timmdeeg]

After clear sky has been very rare for quite a long time we now had some nights with SQM > 20 for about 3 hours, so I took the chance to capture M51 with surroundings and Hickson 68 with NGC 5371 (upper right corner).

M51 surroundings
Galaxy - Distance Mly - remark (source Wikipedia)

NGC 5198 - 116
NGC 5173 - 112
NGC 5169 - 113
NGC 5229 - 20 - Typ LSB, Low Surface Brightness Galaxy
IC 4284 - 822 - Redshift 0,06, radial velocity 18317 km/s
IC 4285 - 998 - Redshift 0,07, radial velocity 22241 km/s
IC 4282 - 619 - Redshift 0,04, radial velocity 13758 km/s
IC 4263 - 125
IC 4257 - 16 - Dwarfgalaxy
IC 4277 - 95

Sony A7III un-modified
UNC 200 f/4 Newton auf HEQ5 - guiding mit StarAid
stacked with mit DSS, processed: Siril and LightZone

M51 - June 9 2023 - Lights 42x180s ISO 800 - 14 Flats

Hickson 68 - June 12 2023 - 33x300s ISO 400 - 14 Flats

 

[neilparker62]

Messier 7 from my DSLR Camera. ESO Image for comparision. My image is a 'zoomed' extract from a much wider view between the tail of Scorpius and Alnasi in Sagittarius.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Can't believe it's already time to image summer constellations! Here's M57 imaged @800/8 (nikon D810+ nikkor 400/2.8 + 2x tele) for 12.5 hours, 10s subs, stacking with AstroPixelProcessor:

And a 200% zoom, IC1296 is also visible.

 

[neilparker62]

Re Pixel Peeper video on GAS. Well it's just me and my Canon camera! Re previous image of Messier 7, here is the wider view between the tail of Scorpius and Alnasi in Sagittarius. Alnasi is peeping out from the leaves of the tree at centre right. A wispy M7 is at centre left a little lower.

 

[neilparker62]

4th July 4:36am. Happy Independence Day to all my American colleagues.

Tail of Scorpius. M7 visible at upper right. Note binary star system at lower center next to the leaves. There's apparently another such at left but this pair are several light years apart so not a binary star system.

Corresponding view in Stellarium Mu Scorpii in focus.

 

[neilparker62]

2023/07/14 / 01:28:51

Scorpius setting. The binary pair of Mu Scorpii is clearly distinct (if you zoom in) as is the closely spaced pair (non binary) comprising Zeta Scorpii. Pi Scorpii, Dschubba and Acrab form the crown of Scorpius and are all just above the leaves. Omega Scorpii is the pair of stars just above and to the left of Acrab. Antares is a "marker star" for Johannesburg since it passes directly overhead. Corresponding labelled view from Stellarium follows this pic.

 

[neilparker62]

Labelled view of the same area of sky from Stellarium.

 

[DennisN]

I still haven't made up my mind about getting a star tracker and/or telescope for astrophotography, but yesterday I went into a second hand store and came out with this thing :

If I understood correctly it's a Sky-Watcher Capricorn-70 EQ1, a refractor with focal length 900mm and a 70mm aperture (f/12.8), on a manual equatorial mount.

I frequently visit second hand stores but almost never see telescopes from well established manufacturers, so I thought it would be fun to try this out. I got it for merely $50 .

Also, I haven't used an equatorial mount before, so I think it will be good to get some experience with one.

Now I will clean it, and also clean the dusty optics of it, which I think will go smoothly since I've got some experience of servicing camera lenses .

 

[pinball1970]

Hubble, https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2023/hubble-views-a-galactic-monster

 

[collinsmark]

Markarian's Chain together with M87. Markarian's Chain proper is in the upper left of the image, and M87 is in the lower center. They all can be seen, from Earth, in the constellation Virgo. Captured from my back patio.

Before I begin, let me state that acquisition and processing of this image was a mess. Some troubles were self induced, and some not. This project spanned from February though July of 2023.

There was about 2 months straight of cloudy skies at night. Straight. Every single night. What started as an early morning target ended up as an early evening target with nothing in between. Bounding that were weeks on either end of only a few minutes to a few hours of clear skies. And just to put things in perspective, I ended up with way more flat frames than light frames for this project.

Then, when processing the data, I came to realize that all the R, G, and B subframes were all slightly overexposed yielding saturation artifacts in the brighter stars. Ugggh. What have I done!?! Well, too late to collect more data this year. A redo will have to wait.

Figure 1. A bunch of dumb galaxies.

Below is a slightly cropped area showing just the Markarian's Chain region.

Figure 2. Markarian's Chain.

I think M87 turned out pretty interesting though. If you're not familiar with M87, do you remember a few years ago where the Event Horizon Telescope project released the first direct image of a black hole? That's the supermassive black hole at the center of M87.

It goes without saying that my little 80 mm refractor is not going to resolve the black hole. But surprisingly, it was able to resolve the relativistic jet spewing forth from M87's central, supermassive black hole. See Fig. 3. That jet coming from the center of the galaxy was actually captured with my wimpy little 80mm, backyard scope. The image is from the same data as the above image(s), only heavily cropped and contrast adjusted.

Figure 3. M87.

The M87 jet is often used as an example of "superluminal motion," where if you were to naively calculate the speed of the jet [or particular parts of the jet] using simple, Newtonian physics, it would appear to be moving faster than the speed of light. Of course, it's not. It just naively "looks" that way because a) it is moving pretty darned fast in the first place, and b) a significant component of the jet's velocity vector is in our direction. It only ends up being measured as moving slower than light speed once you do your due diligence and take the physics of special relativity into account.

Equipment:
Explore Scientific 80ED-FCD100
Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Orion Field Flattener for Short Refractors (most data)
Orion 0.8x Focal Reducer for Refractors (some data)
Off-axis guider (OAG) with guide camera
Optolong L-Pro filter
Baader Hα 3.5nm Ultra-Narrowband filter
ZWO LRGB filter set
ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro main camera

On some rare, clear nights, it seemed my telescope sparked the curiosity of nearby passing clouds. They, of course, would call their cloud friends over to check out what all the hubub was about.

Software:
N.I.N.A.
PHD2 guiding
PixInsight with RC-Astro plugins

On one rare, clear night, there was even a helicopter with a searchlight circling overhead for some reason.

Integration:
Location: San Diego
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8 ) skies.
All subframes binned 1x1, stacked with drizzle algorithm
L-Pro: 320×120s = 10.67 hrs
Hα: 56×600s = 9.33 hrs
R: 142×180s = 7.10 hrs
G: 172×180s = 8.60 hrs
B: 183×180s = 9.15 hrs
Total integration time: 44.85 hours.

 

[DennisN]

But surprisingly, it was able to resolve the relativistic jet spewing forth from M87's central, supermassive black hole. See Fig. 3. That jet coming from the center of the galaxy was actually captured with my wimpy little 80mm, backyard scope.

Wow, that is so cool!

Edit:

On one rare, clear night, there was even a helicopter with a searchlight circling overhead for some reason.

Of course. The reason must have been to disturb your work.

 

[Andy Resnick]

current state of a panormanic view of constellation Cygnus:

Original is about 8k x 8k pixels- roughly a 2 x 2 array of individual stacks taken with Nikon D810 + 105mm @ f/2 mounted on Losmandy GM-8, 30s subs. Images stacked and post-processed in APP. SNR and color are good, but the background is still too nonuniform. Hopefully a few more imaging sessions will be enough to smooth it all out.

Here's a few 1:1 crops of the Veil Nebula East (NGC 6992 and 6995); North America Nebula (NGC 7000) and Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) and a region centered on the Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101), which is located near Cygnus X-1.

 

[neilparker62]

Here's a few 1:1 crops of the Veil Nebula East (NGC 6992 and 6995); North America Nebula (NGC 7000) and Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) and a region centered on the Tulip Nebula (Sh2-101), which is located near Cygnus X-1.

Genesis 26:4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.

In light of your pics, a big ask even for the Almighty !

 

[DennisN]

The Pleiades and the Milky Way revisited

1. The Pleiades

In the autumn last year I tried shooting the Pleiades from a park inside the city (Bortle 8-9) just to see how it would go, and here's the result:

The Pleiades

The Pleiades (crop): some of the blue reflection nebulae inside the cluster can be seen here, along with some magenta fringes around the stars left after post-processing.

The Pleiades (crop), with labels, matched with the help of Stellarium. When I looked at the image the three stars close to the star Alcyone (inside the green rectangle) caught my eye. I clicked on them in Stellarium but they had no designation. I checked with Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcyone_(star)#Companions) and maybe the three stars are these? :

The Catalog of Components of Double and Multiple Stars lists three companions: B is 24 Tauri, a magnitude 6.28 A0 main-sequence star 117" away; C is V647 Tauri, a δ Sct variable star; and D is a magnitude 9.15 F3 main-sequence star. V647 Tau varies from magnitude +8.25 to +8.30 over 1.13 hours.

The Pleiades in Stellarium, with labels.

Info:

Date: 25 September 2022
Camera: Sony A6000
Lens: Tokina 200mm f/4.5 @ f/4.5
Camera settings: ISO 3200, 1.3s exposure
Light frames: 506 (506 * 1.3s = ca 11 minutes integration time)
Software used: Sequator, Photoshop2. The Milky Way

I've taken the time to learn how to use Siril too, and I like it.

@Devin-M : I've now tried stacking the shots of the Milky Way we talked about before in Siril, and my result was pretty poor. It could partly be due to my processing, but I think it is mainly due to the site I shot it at, i.e. the Milky Way brightness was low in comparison to the present light pollution. So maybe it is a waste of time to try to process these shots .

Milky Way, stacked with Siril:

I don't know why these "rainbow artifacts" appeared. Maybe I did something weird in the post-processing in Photoshop.

Milky Way, stacked with Deep Sky Stacker:

I like that different colors in the Milky Way appeared in this image. I think I added quite a bit of saturation in the post-processing in Photoshop.

Detections by astrometry.net:

(details for the Milky Way shoot is here)3. Telescope maintenance

My newly aquired Sky-Watcher Capricorn-70 EQ1 has been serviced, and all the optics have been cleaned with lens brush and then lens cleaner fluid and lens cloth. I was happy that it was very easy to disassemble and assemble it, much easier than a camera lens actually.

I took a look at Saturn some nights ago with the telescope, and it looked good. I'll probably try to take some shots with a camera attached to the telescope soon.

Sky-Watcher Capricorn-70 EQ1 disassembled:

I took a look inside the tube and saw there are flanges/ridges/rims inside the tube (I don't know what these things are called), but according to my understanding these are there to cut off the extra unwanted light from e.g. internal reflections inside the tube.

And the inside of the tube looked good, painted in a very matte black color.

Inside the Sky-Watcher Capricorn-70 tube.

The focusing mechanism:

 

[collinsmark]

I took a look inside the tube and saw there are flanges/ridges/rims inside the tube (I don't know what these things are called), but according to my understanding these are there to cut off the extra unwanted light from e.g. internal reflections inside the tube.

If you're curious, they're called the baffle (or baffles). It's a weird word, because sometimes each of the ridges are individually called a baffle, and then collectively referred to as "baffles" (plural). But most of the time, all the ridges together are collectively called the "baffle" (singular).

It's also sometimes used as a verb or adjective describing the process of tapping more threads than technically necessary on the inside of tube rings and/or tube extensions/adapters, where it's called "baffling" or being "baffled."

You're right on the mark regarding its purpose.