Here’s another ISO 6400 test image and I think it came out pretty well. Temps were only in the mid to low 60’s, so noise was an issue. However, the test reveals that with enough sub-images, the noise can be smoothed out. I did notice that there was a remnant pattern noise that I see when guiding was off and tracking in a certain direction. Dithering during guiding would help for that, but I did not set that option during my imaging session. For sure I’ll try that next time.
Well, I finally managed to catch that small comet that is about to side-swipe Mars. It was a last minute effort and I caught the comet late and a little too close to the horizon. It was so low, that I had to throw out the last six sub-images because they were way too red. At that point, the comet was only 2 degrees above the horizon. That’s probably the lowest angle I ever tried to image something.
The actual close approach to Mars will occur on October 19th, 2014. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to shoot it again at that time. It’s a little runt comet, but at least it is newsworthy. lol 😀
For this image, I had to travel a few miles from home to find a western horizon free of obstructions, since from my backyard it is impossible to see. I ended up staying there most of the night since the sky was so nice.
A mosaic of the Crescent Nebula area. Exposures from 4 different years were used. The base image was acquired on Nov 2, 2013 and was 40x60sec ISO 6400. I imaged it again on October 17, 2014 with 77 images and added that into the mix. Two nights of imaging in Nov 2010 of 9×720″ ISO400, 11×480″ ISO800 sub-images were also added in (for a total of 5.21 hours integration time.) Finally, data from an image of just the Crescent Nebula itself, taken with my SN-8 telescope was used and it was made with 57×180″ ISO 1600 sub-images taken on Oct 1, 2007.
I used RegiStar to manipulate the data. The beauty of software like RegiStar is that it can combine data taken years apart. In this case, over 7 years. I was able to take the nebulosity caught with a high ISO stack of sub-images, but with a noisy background and combine it with stacks of subs taken at lower ISO values which had a much smoother background. The stacked mosaic-like result let me bring out more of the dim nebulosity that pervades the Crescent Nebula area and keep the noise at bay, somewhat. A little more detail in the Crescent itself was enhanced with data from my larger, 8″ scope.
I present a regular version and an enhanced, lighter version that was generated from the data in the first image with Starizona’s Levelizer plug-in for PS.
The eclipse of the Moon on October 8, 2014. This was shot with a JVC HD Video Recorder. I made stills of the moon from the movie clips I took. Some were used to make this composite image. I never tried a video camera before for an eclipse, so this was a learning experience.
Unfortunately, before the eclipse got going good, fog came in really heavy and the totality part of the eclipse was seen for just a minute or so. Before I knew it, the moon had sank too low into the fog and was swallowed by it. I barely got a shot off. Oh, well… at least I did not scratch. LoL 🙂
Recently, I purchased a new monitor (a Dell 22″ LCD) and needed a good background image for it. My M31 data from 2011 had some issues, so I re-worked it a little and rotated it to a landscape orientation instead of the portrait orientation that I had used before. Now, it makes a great background image for that new monitor! 🙂
This image of the Pleiades was a combination of data from October 2013 and October of 2011. I sized it to be used as a screen background for my current monitor.
December’s weather has been horrible. For the last 10 days it has been wet and cold and too cloudy to shoot any images of any comets. Finally, it cleared enough to get out. Unfortunately, while it was clear initially, clouds moved in before I could get a good amount of sub-images of Comet Lovejoy. I did get 21 of them, so at least I did not scratch.
Below is the star streaks version of the data, with a few clouds for good measure. LoL. 🙂
Continue reading Comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) on December 11, 2013
Comet Lovejoy composite image taken with a Canon 200mm telephoto lens. I shot 40×30 sec sub-images at ISO 3200 and stacked them. The first image of the set was used as the background base image. I then took the stack of subs and combined them with the base to show the tail better. To me, this shows how the comet sort of looked in binoculars as it was rising from behind the trees.
I also did a star-streaks stack that shows the extent of the tail better than the image above. I did very little post-processing on it, since that just took away from the raw feel of the image:
With all the hype about Comet ISON going on over the past 2 days, we still have a very nice comet to look at that is putting on just as good a show – Comet Lovejoy. Here’s how it looked the morning after Thanksgiving Day with a 200mm F/2.8 telephoto lens mounted on a simple equatorial tracking mount. I used 2 light pollution filters for this since I had to shoot towards a very bright LP dome from a metropolitan area to my northeast. It was a test and it seems to have worked beautifully. Next time, I’ll try this with the camera on my bigger mount and track the comet with much longer exposures.
Continue reading Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1) on November 29, 2013