Friday night at DSC.
Nikon D70 150sec at ISO 800 F3.5 Dark Subtracted
(http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10046/dsc_aug08.jpg)
nice one mark - you can see who's not using red lights... :-(
Mark, Looks lovely, I was just about 20 miles away about an hour ago on my way there when i realised I'd forgotten my power tank so had to head back to get it, but now Im here, the weather is looking so awful, I've decided to stay in, the satelite says it'l clear up later, but im not sure if I believe it this time, it's just blanket grey all over :(
Ahhh, well, there's always the next one !
My only image from DSC because as those who were there know I had Motor Failure problems with my scope** which meant I couldn't track after the first attempt and I had intended to practice polar alignment, a longer exposure and barlow lens, but I never got that far.
I think this is a slight improvement from my previous Jupiter and I do detect a possible red spot on this.
I did 5 fps this time and a minutes frames instead of the 15 second I think I did last time. I wasn't however able to make any improvement in processing. So 5 fps 379 out of 383 frames, 25% gain (that's all I remember).
(http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10047/Jupiter_1_8_08_%28red_spot%29.jpg)
** Am hoping the problems with the scope were due to power failure (batteries).
Carole
(See that (http://forum.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/Themes/oas/images/buttons/modify.gif)Modify link above?)
Quote from: Carolepope
... I do detect a possible red spot on this.
Yes, that's definitely the Great Red Spot - well done - it's a clear image. I hope you manage to sort out your frustrating motor failures.
Nice detail Mark. From this you can conclusively see that Chris is causing the most light pollution in the group, second only to London !
Carole, I always have problems with jpegs - is it a feature or a dust bunnie. Luckily in this case it appears to be the Great Red spot so well done. That's a very good image especially considering the low position of Jupiter and your woes on the day.
I got this, not very good but maybe next time....
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3123/2731620070_6484d2f4ce_b.jpg)
Is this the same image that you showed us on your laptop at DSC Chris?
The colours looked stunning on the lap top but not quite the same on this posting.
Still a fabulous picture though.
Mark, many thanks for all your help with my electrical problems, and thanks for offering to adapt my old lead so I can use it off the 12V battery. Let me know if you spend anything on it and I'll re-imburse you.
Thanks
carole
How was sunday night, as I mentioned I got to within 20 miles when I realised i'd forgotten my power tank and had to turn back, did it clear up at all?
Hi,
Sunday night was not goo so we remove the contents from three bottles of win, so you did not miss much.
Carol, I swapped the colour channels around from the image you have a look at, hence the change, but this is not the finished item that will take some more time to do, so I'll post a finished image next week, also this is not as good as what I can achieve with the setup, so if its clear next weekend I'll be back in the field to finish it off.
Chris
Chris, what is causing those little blue dots with a red & green squares underneath?
hot pixels, no darks from this, as i said it really is a raw image, will be better next time.
QuoteI had Motor Failure problems with my scope**
Quote** Am hoping the problems with the scope were due to power failure (batteries).
Just found this on the web today, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.
QuoteMUF (motor unit failure) - this usually indicates bad power connections or low supply
voltage.
Carole
Carole are you still using rechargeable batteries in your ETX ?
Rechargeable batteries do not have quite the same power as standard alkaline batteries especially when trying to drive a motor.
Still, it sounds like Mark will sort you out with a "serious" power supply lead.
Hope you get sorted OK.
Nice pics everyone, wish I could have made it :(
Hot Pic? two blue dots over the green look a bit like Mick Mouse......have you discovered the Disney nebular?
Seriously though, great image considering the intermittent cloud and dewing.
Phil
Hi Mick,
I didn't really want to bore every-one with all this but since you asked the question
QuoteCarole are you still using rechargeable batteries in your ETX ?
At home I use mains, I sometimes use rechargeable batteries at observing evenings, but as I was going to camp with my 12V battery, and as I had tried running the ETX off it when we did a public Moon and planets evening (because I forgot to charge the AA batteries) and it worked OK that evening, I had assumed it would again and did not trouble to re-charge the AA batteries in time for camp.
It failed initially using the 12V and the guys thought it could be because I didn't have a proper connection and was running it from 12v through the invertor and then through the mains lead which was converting it back to 12V again. So after it failed twice using this method, I switched to the AA batteries which as I said I had charged up 2 or 3 few weeks ago but had not done so immediately prior to DSC and they worked OK until aligning the 2nd star and then I got a Motor Unit failure again.
I am hoping that it is because the 12V method was unsatisfactory (but why did it work OK for a whole evening once before) and the fact that the AA batteries were also flat.
Only one way to find out and that is to have a session using the mains.
If all is well, then hopefully Mark's adaptation to my old mains lead will hopefully be the answer.
If I still get the same problem on the mains I am in trouble.
Carole
M16 from Tuesnoad on Friday night.
10 subs of 5min at ISO 800. That's all I could manage before the clouds rolled in.
Modified Canon EOS 350D on Celestron C11 at F6.3
Image has been stacked, dynamic range scaled then binned to 1/3 size before cropping.
I had no filter in place so this image also contains an infra-red component - I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
Ambient temperature was 18C.
(http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10046/eaglefinalv3.jpg)
Nice to see the final image Mark, looks great to me, nice round stars and lots of detail. Was very difficult to see what you had got on the DSLR LCD screen but as usual you have done a good one.
Carole
Sundog at Tuesnoad.
7:20pm on Saturday 2 August. Most of us saw it - just before we sat down to one of Mike's wonderful Chillies.
Nikon D70, 18mm at F13.
ISO 800 because I'd stupidly left it at a high setting.
(http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10046/sundog.jpg)
Hi all,
Here is a image of Jupiter with the ol' faithful Toucam, (still need to learn the processing bit :-?)
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3111/2733591062_5175a2c852.jpg)
This also has captured the transit of Europa to the top left, but there seems to be something below to the right of the Red Spot any ideas?
I didn't know whether it was another moon or a shadow of Europa or something else?????????? ;)
Tony G
Contrail casting a shadow on Cirrus(?) clouds at Tuesnoad.
We saw this a few minutes before the sundog on Sat 2 Aug at 17:17 BST.
Nikon D70. 24mm at F16.
(http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10046/contrail.jpg)
Tony,
That's a great image of Jupiter. You should be very proud of that one!
Mark
Wow, some gorgeous images here, Loving Mark's M16 especially, the colour is so much more varied than I've been able to capture so far, when you say the image is binned, what software are you doing this in?
Would love to have seen that sundog, could have ticked that off of my 50 things to see list in Sky at night magazine this month
Daniel,
Binning done in IRIS - it's the only way to reduce image size because it sums adjacent pixels into a single pixel - thus reducing noise as well.
Mark
Great images, Tony & Mark, glad someone managed to get something of the lovely sky between the cloud passes.
Clouds look good to me, Mark.
Mark & Tony,
Very good, I suppose all the moaning we did about the cloud was not as bad as it could have been eh!
Chris
Great pictures guys ! The sundog shows up very well, a great photograph. The Jupiter image is amazing considering how low it is with the GRS showing up really well. I do think there's more detail in that image John, try processing it a bit more ...
That eagle image is showing a lot of the surrounding nebulosity Mark and it looks to me like it's been very well processed, very smooth and little if any noise.
Quote from: RobertM on Aug 05, 2008, 09:19:51....I do think there's more detail in that image John.....
Tony
Robert it's easy to confuse Tony & me..... :lol:
Anyway - Mark - I love the M16 it looks very smooth & great detail (Can you explain your focus technique again please). Only comments I have is that stars look a little bloated but I guess that may be down to IR component...? Considering how low down this is it's a great result - Is there any chance you could post a full sized crop of the centre? The guiding looks like it was spot on which amazes me considering PHD kept loosing the guide star...
Tony - You Jupiter shot is fantastic - I am not sure that the satellite transit is Europa - according to SMP it is Io but I may have timings wrong etc. Anyway I love the image & like Robert says there is probably more that you could get out of it... Well done anyway it's a real decent picture of Jupiter.
Carole - Your Jupiter image is good considering all the equipment issues you were having - well done.
Chris - Your veil image looks like it has tons of detail in especially the Ha raw that you emailed to me. I can't wait to see the final result when you have had a chance to put it all together.
Love all the cloud shots etc. We seemed to be blessed with Sundogs at DSC - I remember taking some images a few camps ago.
John
John,
Yes, I think the IR component has caused extra star bloat. I'll post a full-size crop of the centre tonight.
As for guiding, M16 is my very first image where I have guided using a newly built lead from the parallel port straight into the ST-4 port of the mount. The guiding is now far more positive than when I used the lead that went from the serial port to the handset.
PhD beeps a warning when the signal to noise ratio of the guide star drops below 3 but luckily this only happened for brief intervals on M16.
My DSLR focusing technique is as follows:
1) If you don't have a scale on your focusing knob then create a makeshift one - my makeshift one has 9 marked positions.
2) Roughly focus the camera by eye through the viewfinder on a brightish star
3) Now slew to some faintish stars
4) Move the focus knob back 4 gradations on the dial.
5) Take an exposure of 36 seconds whilst continuosly slowly slewing the scope and every 4 seconds move the focus knob to the next position.
6) Examine the star trails on the image (but not the saturated ones). Those star trails will allow you to determine which position of the focus knob gives the sharpest results.
7) Set the focus knob to this new position
Repeat steps 4-7 until satisfied!
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/the_shelleys/photos/SlewFocusing.jpg
Why do I have to do this?
1) Because the USB 1.1 (or 1.0?) port on my laptop is extremely slow to download images direct from the camera.
2) It also means that no laptop is needed at all (except for guiding).
I do the same thing for widefield work with a lens because the infinity setting on some lenses is not always completely accurate.
Mark
Fantastic image of Jupiter Tony, makes mine look a bit pathetic. You have also explained what the blob on the upper ring is on mine which is too small to see, so I must have got the moon in transit as well. I'll look it up on Starry night to see which one it is, and of course I remember now only being able to see 3 moons and had assumed one was behind, but in fact it was in front in transit.
What settings did you use?
Mark, the pictures of the sun dog and clouds are good, you have a very good camera there. I think the one of the sun dog is upside down as I remember the Sun was below the sundog and it was a ring above it. Most of the clouds are actually the remains of the plane trails (or whatever there correct name is).
Carole
Cool - thks for that Mark. I like the idea of not having to use a laptop to focus - Like you say for widefield work you can be laptop free....
From the picture you posted in the sixth image into the right correct focus then?
Thks, John
Excellent pictures guys. We were pretty lucky with the weather considering.
John, yes, the 6th section the left is the one in focus
Carole, the sundog image is definitely not upside down - the arc really does curve away from the sun which is below it. You can even match clouds between the sundog and contrail images to prove it.
Mark, I did not realise that you were downloading to the camera & not using the laptop.
And you are so patient, not wanting to keep looking to see how each image is coming along!!!!
I am amazed that you just left PHD & did not re do the guide star after it was beeping so much & the image is still in focus!!!
Chris,
looking forward to seeing the Witches Broom after you have processed, I am sure it will be great!
Hi all,
Despite all the moaning about the weather and clouds, we have some fantastic images posted here, and seeing we only had a small window of oppotunity on Friday and Saturday, people did take the chance and like I've already said, produced great images.
This should be encouraging for people who are 50/50 in thinking of coming down from the light polluted skies of London, and seeing the dark skies we do have, if only for a few hours at a time, which make the winter DSC a definate, with the long dark clear (cold) nights which are occasionally warmed up with a communial meal of something spicy (or not,depending on taste), and a bottle or twenty of wine, cider and whiskey (you missed another chance, Mick ;))
It's a great weekend for imaging, and also visual observing, which usually happens when one thing or another goes badly wrong, and also a good place to get advice on different aspects of astrophotography like 'Why is my colour webcam only imaging in B/W'
Thanks for turning the saturation down John. :oops:
Keep up the great imaging everyone ;)
Tony G
PS................ Lovely Veil Chris :o
Tony - Agree with you totally even though I didn't take my kit this weekend. It was great just to chill out & walk around & talk to people & see all different scopes/ imaging setups etc. & of course do some visual stuff (mainly eyeball & bino's as I think most scopes were being used for imaging). Did you get a chance to check your satellite transit yet - I'm not sure it is Europa.
What's the deal with the 12-inch Dob - It's a shame it wasn't there? Would have been ideal for doing visual stuff in between clouds etc.
John
Tony, would the Dob fit inside one of those boxes you mentioned? If so, maybe we could pursuade Jeff Wright to let us keep two boxes down there?
John,
It's great knowing that if some poor beginner :( of 5-6 years in astronomy happens to mention the wrong moon on an image, that there is someone (liken to a puma and a deer) :evil: waiting to pounce, and correct the lonely and sad astronomer, but saying that, you are correct it is Io and not Europa :oops:
Well Spotted
Tony G
PS Mike, I'll Check about those boxes.
Tony - Lots of laughs... :lol: The only reason I looked/ checked was because I was trying to see if I could help identify the marking you are talking about - I wouldn't have noticed otherwise...
I don't mind being likened to a Puma but not a 'dear.....' pls.... :lol:
John
John, do you mean a deer? a lean horned animal or a dear, like Miss Marple!
Hey guys, does anyone fancy doing something in the autumn, there's a place called sixpenny handley just outside of salisbury, my nan and grandad used to live there and it's actually even darker than tuesnoad, there's a camp site there which is frequented by a few astronomers who know about it, and it's only fiver a night to stay there, plus showers, toilets etc.
I've been looking into heading up there myself sometime soon, so will be able to report on what it's like.
It's a bit further away than tuesnoad, but the sight should be breathtaking, just wish i'd had the sense to look up when i was visitiing as a kid.
can you post the details of the place up here?
here's the website for the campsite, I just checked though, it's actually £5.50 a night
http://www.churchfarmcandcpark.co.uk/ (http://www.churchfarmcandcpark.co.uk/)
Looks quite nice. What about lighting though? Are there lights after dark?
It's 120 miles from Orpington so about 2.5 hour drive. Not too bad.
Tony/John - sorry I wouldn't mix you up in real life, honest !
Fay, you do seem to have a thing about Miss Marple !
Daniel, that might be a possibility dependent on dates so let me know what you're thinking ...
God this is an active thread !
Cheers
Robert
John,
As promised here is the central part of M16 at full scale.
Modified EOS 350D on C11 at F5.6 10 x 5min at ISO 800. No filter, therefore image includes infra-red.
Darks and flats were applied during processing.
This is raw stack - I have not applied noise reduction or sharpening.
Mark
(http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10046/eaglecentre.jpg)
Thks Mark for posting - level of detail is exceptional - shame about star bloat though - have you got any techniques for reducing star size?
Cheers, John
Hi Daniel
Quotethere's a place called sixpenny handley just outside of salisbury, my nan and grandad used to live there and it's actually even darker than tuesnoad,
That was one of the areas I was looking into for an extra camp for next year, I hear it's very dark down there. Would certainly be interested at some point, especially if others are going down there.
Mark your central bit of M16 at full scale is awesome.
Carole
I've noticed that about M16, those stars are so close together you cant help getting quite a bit of bloating on them, I guess underprocessing the starry area's then masking them in may help, that's how I got around the center of M42 burning out
Handley Is lovely, I used to visit there a lot, and as far as I could remember pitch black around the church (which is where the campsite is) that i used to go to at night to creep myself out
Gorgeous M16 though, loving all that extra colour depth you got
John,
I can't immediately see how to reduce star bloat without resorting to nasty hacks in Photoshop. For instance in the nebula areas, if the star size is reduced then the area "left behind" needs to be filled with nebulosity. How can this be done without tampering?
Mark
It might be possible to do it with another set of lower exposures, I've seen that done on M31 before to stop the middle buring out everything whilst still allowing a smooth transition from the center to the outside. but matching the nebulosity on the 2 resulting stacks would be tough.
Mark - I think you are right. I took the image & ran it through one iteration of 'Astronomy Tools' reduce star bloat & it struggles (especially with full size crop) because some of the larger stars are actually joined - it doesn't do a good job of filling in the space when it reduces them. It worked a bit better on the larger image. I have emailed you a copy of the results so you can compare.
Cheers, John
Has anyone tried to do a HDR merge using Photoshop? You take several exposures of different length to allow for the darka nd light areas then merge it into a High Dynamic Range image in photoshop to produce the desired result? I've been reading up on this for traditional photography using DSLR's, but just thought it should also apply to astro images.
This is with a minimum filter applied to reduce the star size, you also need to deconvolute for the star shape and align the blue then it will be ok, can you e-mail me a BMP of the big picture and i'll post process it.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3124/2737555695_f1c3f22bf6_o.jpg)
Mike, I was interested in trying that HDR Merge, but it is not in my version of Photoshop CS. It is on the next one up.
The stars have gone rectangular in that image Chris.
OK - well here is my rework of the wider FOV image... I think stars are a little smaller... I also removed blue halo's...
Mark - Hope you don't me me posting....
(http://homepage.ntlworld.com/john.punnett/graphics/oas/markeagle.jpg)
John.
John, Chris,
You're producing some interesting results - reducing the star bloat
No, of course I don't mind you posting those experiments.
Chris - I'll send you a BMP (or TIF) tonight.
Mark
John,
that is so much better!
Hope you don't mind Mark, but it tempted me to have a go as well, as I have none of my own!!!!!
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3207/2737769955_e70a220b01_o.jpg)
I've posted a 1024x1024 of the raw M16 stack here for anyone who wants to deconvolve etc:
http://gallery.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/albums/userpics/10046/eagle1024.tif
It's approx 5Mbyte
Note, it's a TIF created by IRIS so the pixel range is 0-32767, that's just the way IRIS works ...
Hi,
Ok would be nice to have the original files, but I had a go based on the stacked one, which is not aligned fully.
I split the RGB in AIP, re-aligned them, Deconvoluted them separately, Sigmoid scaled seperately. Saved as fits, then recombined them in photoshop as file, LRGB (L being the ADV of the RGB) did no processing on the noise or the balance (except gussian blur and saturated the RGB by 15%) :-) then put it here.
The blue is fatter than the rest, oddly? And the Red was really fuzzy, anyway if an alignment was done on the full raws again it might have been better.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3145/2740274247_7dccb91a43.jpg)
original
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3003/2740289449_834abee4e1_o.jpg)
Much better Chris.
Nicely processed Chris! You've improved the colour and contrast and certainly brought out some extra detail.
It's true - I didn't align the RGB. I think the cause is atmospheric refraction because M16 is always low in the sky.
Blue fatter then the rest? I don't know why - could it be UV?
The fuzzy red is almost certainly due to IR - the focal reducer probably doesn't focus it in the same plane as the visible spectrum.
What do you use for the deconvolution? AIP?
Thanks,
Mark
Hi,
I always process in AIP unless I need sigma combine then I use maxim. I think you actually have a very nice image there, it was very easy to get the detail out of it.
Chris