Category Archives: Nebulae

Nebulae

First Light – RisingTech Sony IMX224 Camera

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M57, The Ring Nebula. Mix of 30 sec and 60 sec exposures taken with RisingTech Sony IMX224 Eyepiece Cam and a TV-85 at F/7.

I did it.  I bought a RisingTech (ToupTek) Sony IMX224-based eyepiece camera.  Its a nice little low-noise cam that beats the pants off of the Aptina AR0130 color CMOS chip in my other ToupTek camera, as far as noise is concerned.   I got it mainly to do Electronically Assisted Astronomy (EAA) which is sometimes all that is possible in a very light polluted environment.

I love the immediate display of a color image that it gives you.   It lets you hop around the sky and see objects like dim galaxies and nebula without having to wait until you process the images to see what you’ve captured.   There are various software packages that let you stack images on the fly and you don’t have to save any of the sub-images if you don’t want to.   It creates the stack and you save one file in the end, if you like it enough.

I did a little of both keeping images for later and just looking at stuff and not saving the stack when moving on to other objects.   It was fun and I actually stayed up all night doing it.

I plan on doing lots more of this EAA form of amateur astronomy in the future and I think the new camera was a good investment ($168.00 shipped from China, total!)   It is inexpensive enough that almost any amateur astronomer can now afford one.

Nebulae

The Ongoing M42 Project

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The M42 Project. Best data since 2011 to 2017. Mostly taken with a TV-85 at F/5.6, core is mostly a C-8 at F/6.3.

Here’s one of those images I’ve been playing with over the last few weeks.   It combines a number of shots into one image and I try really hard to minimize the blending errors.   Doh!    🙂

I have two versions of it.   The 2nd version below has better resolution, but is cropped tighter and is not quite the field of view I was hoping to encompass like in the 1st one above.

The M42 Project. Best data since 2011 to 2017. Mostly taken with a TV-85 at F/5.6, core is mostly a C-8 at F/6.3. The tighter cropped version.

 

Nebulae, Star Clusters

The Pleiades – Combined Data, 2011-2017

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The Pleiades – Combined data from 2011 to 2017. TV-85 at F/5.6.

I took the very good Feb 2017 version of M45 and combined it with 3 other good images taken with the same scope as far back as 2011.   I still have more that I can add to it, but for now this will do.

Not satisfied with the first version above, I worked up a darker version with more contrast and noise reduction.

The Pleiades – Combined data from 2011 to 2017. TV-85 at F/5.6. Darker version.
Galaxies, Nebulae, Star Clusters

Orion Nebula Up Close with a Toupcam

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The Orion Nebula. 226 x 8 sec, Gain 350, Toupcam Aptina AR0130 Color Cam, Televue TV-85 at F/7.

It was Friday, March 3, 2017 and the weather was iffy for imaging at my dark sky location.  So, I decided to stay in town and try some short-exposure imaging with the Toupcam color planetary/guider cam I have.

I also wanted to try out an adapter I purchased for the Orion Star Shoot so that it can work with the Orion Ultra-Mini, 130mm, F/4.3 guider scope I’ve been using.   This worked better with PHD2 than I thought it would.  It seemed more accurate than the Toupcam with less dropped frames.   In fact, I’ll probably leave this as the permanent guider setup.

For the Toupcam, I used a two inch extension on the TV-85 at F/7, but I still had to let the cam and extension hang halfway out the focuser to even reach focus.   But, it was stable enough to try some simple targets like the Orion Nebula.

I used a software program called SharpCap for acquisition, dark subtraction and  stacking.   It worked well enough for M42,  but it had trouble with stacking dimmer objects like M46, an open cluster with plenty of stars in it.   I used IRIS to stack the individual frames manually for that one.

M46 Open Cluster, 60 x 8 sec, 350 gain, Toupcam AR0130 Color, TV-85 at F/7.

The last two images were tests of a relatively dim galaxies, like NGC 4565 and M64.  I only got 16 frames for NGC 4565, so it is not too special.   But, it shows the galaxy well enough to recognize what it is.   Like the previous image, it was also stacked manually in IRIS.

NGC 4565, 16 x 8 sec, 350 gain, Toupcam AR0130 Color Cam, TV-85 at F/7.

For my M64 dim galaxy test, I accumulated 38 frames @ 8 sec each.  It was also a test of using a video file format called .SER that was designed for astronomical imaging.   It is like a video file.  After I downloaded a SER viewer/player, which also let me export the frames out as TIF format, I was able to bring the data into IRIS and stack.

M64 Black Eyed galaxy. 38×8 sec, 350 gain, AR0130 Color Cam, TV-85 at F/7.
Nebulae, Star Clusters

The Pleiades, Feb 25, 2017

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The Pleiades, Feb 25, 2017. 31×300 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.

It was a beautiful evening and I just had to shoot the Pleiades (M45) from my new dark sky site.  They just looked too good from there.

I wanted see how much I could pick up with the unmodified Canon T3.  It is definitely a camera that is sensitive to blues and cyan.  It does comets and galaxies well enough.  It is not as good as a modified camera on nebulae, unless its a reflection nebula like M45.

This is about 2.58 hours of integration – about the minimum needed to bring out that faint background nebulousity I’ve always tried to get.  It is difficult to decern the true background if there are any gradients, unfortunately.  There were a some here and I tried my best to minimize them.   Towards the end of the set, M45 moved into the muck and a little LP from a small neighborhood to my northwest.  Plus, the zodiacal light was contributing a gradient, too.   It was interesting to see that, though.  🙂

Below is the normal orientation for M45 with some noise reduction thrown in.  I didn’t do any to the first image.  That was pretty much how it came out after stacking.

The Pleiades, Feb 25, 2017. 31×300 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD. Normal orientation.

 

And finally, the gaudy, maxed out version:

The Pleiades, Feb 25, 2017. 31×300 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD. Gaudy maxed out version.

🙂

Nebulae

The Orion Nebula with Just 6 Subs

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The Orion Nebula on Feb 22, 2017. 1×360 sec and 5×120 sec @ ISO 1600, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.

Man, dark skies are the best!   I have a better image here with just 6 subs than with my last attempt I did using 56 sub-images taken from the middle of a metro area.  You just can’t beat a good dark place when it comes to astrophotography.

Nebulae, Star Clusters

The Pleiades in 10 Minutes – In Lots of LP

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M45, the Pleiades. 10×120 sec @ ISO 100, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.

It is surprising that you could get the Merope nebulousity in the Pleiades to show up under severe light pollution (LP) with just 10 minutes of exposure.  It was definitely transparent this night, so that helped.  Processing was no fun, however.   Nasty red LP took its toll.

Update Feb 5, 2017:

I did a guiding test on  Feb 3rd and used M45 as my target.  I shot lots of sub-images with 15 and 30 second exposures.   I took the best 74 and combined those with the above data is this is what I got:

M45 – 74×15 sec @ ISO 1600 added to 5×120 sec @ ISO 100 or about 28 minutes of integration.

It certainly smoothed out that muddy-looking background LP remnant splotchy-ness appearance.  Not too bad for shooting from a location next to shopping center parking lots.  lol

Nebulae, Star Clusters

The Orion Nebula from a Bortle 7 Red Zone

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M42 on Jan 13, 2017. 11×60 sec @ ISO 200, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.

I was doing a shakedown of new equipment and decided to post the results of my test shot of the Orion Nebula.  The 11 sub-images were taken from a red zone on the LP map, probably a Bortle 7 to 8 sky with only the brightest stars visible.

I was trying out a freshly configured Windows 10 laptop, a new guiding camera and a new guide scope.   Yep, I broke down and bought the new Orion Ultra-Mini guide scope, since it matched with my relatively new Aptina AR0130 color planetary/guider cam.    I also used a new Shoestring Bluetooth wireless interface for the mount, which although it worked well enough towards the end, the first part of the session was not without issues.

M42 on Jan 13, 2017. 11×60 sec @ ISO 200, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD. Color added from previous image.

This session was also the first one where everything actually worked since I replaced the two stepper motors in my Atlas mount.  The last time I tried it I couldn’t get the little netbook I was using to stay connected  to the mount.  A different laptop with a more robust USB bus did the trick.

There are still kinks to work out with the new guiding camera arrangement and the newest version PHD2 Guiding.  The last time I used PHD Guiding, it was Craig Stark’s original version.  This is the first time I’ve used the new Open Source version.   It will take time, but I’m sure the setup is capable of getting the job done.   I got rid of the Meade SN-6 scope I was using as a guide scope and that reduced the weight and bulk of the imaging rig.   A lighter payload should let me get better tracking once I have all the settings tuned, hopefully.

I’ve gotten behind in the last couple of years and now I can finally catch back up to all the new technology and software that is now available.    Soon, I hope to transport my revamped imaging rig to a dark sky sight and churn out some new keeper comet and deep sky images before summer arrives.   Wish me luck.  🙂

Nebulae

M42 with a Dobsonian – No Tracking

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Orion Nebula Core Area. 32 frames, 350ms, Aptina AR0130 Color Imager/Guider, 6" F/8 Newtonian, Dobsonian mount.
Orion Nebula Core Area. 32 frames, 350ms each frame, taken with an Aptina AR0130 Color Imager/Guider camera and a 6″ F/8 Newtonian on a Dobsonian mount.

Here’s one for the personal record book – shooting the Orion Nebula with a scope that has no tracking whatsoever.  It was on a Dobsonian mount.

I used an eyepiece camera in video mode and just let M42 drift through the field while I tried to get the most video frames possible.   I think I got between 35 and 70 frames for each video.  Out of 8 or 9 videos taken, two of the AVI files were good enough to try stacking select frames for a better image.

I used 16 frames from one video and 16 from another video.  Each set was stacked in IRIS with the planetary work process for AVI videos, then the two images were combined in PS.

The results are poor compared to what is possible with a tracking mount.  But, I knew it could be done with the right technique and I just had to try.   🙂