September 2005 Images
Page 2
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Ok, here is Mars again. As it gets closer and closer to Earth and to October 30th of this year, Mars gets bigger and bigger. I will try and follow it closely and document this favorable apparition here on this website. |
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Mars on 9/11/05, 10:09 UT (5:09 am CDT.) C-8 2000mm, Celestron 2X Barlow, Toucam Pro webcam. About 480 frames out of 1200 total were stacked in Registax 3.0.1 and wavelet processed. Unsharp mask and crop in Photoshop. |
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I woke up early on the morning of Wednesday, September 14, 2005 to image Mars again. The seeing was better than the previous session on 9/11/05. Hardly any of the stars in the sky were twinkling. I would rate it as a 6/10 or 7/10 seeing. I boosted the blue color in the Toucam Pro camera control software before capturing the AVI. This helped quite a bit with color balance after stacking. I hardly had any blue to work with in the image taken on 9/11/05. |
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Mars on 9/14/05, 11:05 UT (6:05 am CDT.) C-8 2000mm, Celestron 2X Barlow, Toucam Pro webcam. K3CCDTools was used for image acquisition. This is 300 frames out of 1200 total stacked in IRIS 5.0 with unsharp mask and wavelet processing. De-interlace filter and a tad more unsharp masking in my image editor. |
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An item I just had to try out as soon as possible is my new Lumicon Deep Sky Filter. Even with a bright moon rising in the east, I was able to image the Lagoon Nebula with this new filter. It seems to work very well. I let Guidedog and my computer guide the telescope with a separate 500mm guide scope, 2x Barlow and a Toucam Pro webcam. I had configured my C-8, 2000mm F/10 with a Lumicon Easy Guider with it's F/5.8 focal reducer. I removed the pick-off prism and the off-axis reticle holder and covered the hole with black tape. I put the filter right on the T-adapter for the camera and slide it into the back of the Easy Guider. Here is the result: |
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The Lagoon Nebula, M8 on 9/19/05. C-8 2000mm F/10, Lumicon Easy Guider with F/5.8 focal reducer, Lumicon Deep Sky Filter and a Canon Digital Rebel at 800 ISO. Image was generated with 4x125 second sub-images stacked in IRIS. Flat, bias and dark frame removal, Gaussian, DDP. Photoshop for levels and color balance and noise reduction, crop and JPEG conversion. Neat Image for final noise reduction. |
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Here is another try at the Eagle Nebula. It was not exactly what I was hoping for in terms of total exposure time, but I'll take what I can get since I might not get another chance for a while. Hurricane Rita threatens to cloud me over, among other things. |
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The Eagle Nebula, M16 on 9/21/05. C-8 2000mm F/10, Lumicon Easy Guider with F/5.8 focal reducer, Lumicon Deep Sky Filter and a Canon Digital Rebel at 800 ISO. I used 15x60 second sub-images and stacked in IRIS. Flat, bias and dark frame removal, Gaussian, DDP. Photoshop for levels and color balance and noise reduction, crop and JPEG conversion. Neat Image for final noise reduction. |
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Mars is getting bigger and is one month away from closest approach to Earth. On this day I imaged it during poor seeing conditions - about a 3 or 4/10 rating. Oh, well... you take the what you can get sometimes. |
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Mars on 9/29/05, 10:23 UT (5:23 am CDT.) C-8 2000mm, Celestron Ultima 2X Barlow, Toucam Pro webcam. K3CCDTools was used for image acquisition. This image was generated with 500 frames out of 1800 total and stacked in IRIS 5.1 with unsharp mask and wavelet processing. I did some more unsharp masking and color balance adjustments in Photoshop. |
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New Telescope -
Celestron 102mm F/5 Refractor
First Light on 9/29/05
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My latest addition to my growing arsenal of imaging equipment is a Celestron 102mm F/5 refractor telescope. It replaces my mirror lens for high power piggyback astrophotography. In addition to the scope, I purchased a 2 inch Baader Fringe-Killer filter. This will help with the chromatic aberrations that most cheap, fast focal ratio refractors have. Coupled with my new Lumicon Deep Sky filter, this setup should be all I need to get decent images of the night sky. Below are three pictures that I took with this new telescope and filter to test it. I think it works fairly well. My only problem is that this new rig is not quite as stable as the mirror lens arrangement was. The refractor is twice as heavy. Finding a balance in right ascension was tricky. I could not balance it well in declination. It seems wind will be a problem, too. I guess I need to build an observatory! :-) |
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M22 on 9/29/05. Canon Digital Rebel w/Lumicon Deep Sky filter, Baader Fringe-Killer filter, Celestron 102mm F/5 refractor piggybacked on a C-8. Guided with a Toucam Pro and Guidedog. Exposure was 3x120 second sub-images at 800 ISO stacked in IRIS with bias, flat & dark processing. Richardson-Lucy deconvolution, 10 iterations. Notice that the smaller globular cluster to the upper right is somewhat resolved. This image is a 70% crop of the full frame, which you can see if you click here. |
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M27, The Dumbbell Nebula on 9/29/05. Canon Digital Rebel w/Lumicon Deep Sky filter, Baader Fringe-Killer filter, Celestron 102mm, F/5 refractor piggybacked on a C-8. Guided with a Toucam Pro and Guidedog. Exposure was 9x120 second sub-images at 800 ISO stacked in IRIS with flat, bias and dark processing. Richardson-Lucy deconvolution on RGB layers, 3, 6, and 12 iterations, respectively. This image is a 35% crop of the central area of the frame. |
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The Helix Nebula on 9/29/05. Canon Digital Rebel w/Lumicon Deep Sky filter, Baader Fringe-Killer filter, Celestron 102mm, F/5 refractor piggybacked on my C-8. Guided with a Toucam Pro and Guidedog. Exposure was 11x180 second sub-images at 800 ISO stacked in IRIS with bias, flat, and dark processing. Richardson-Lucy deconvolution on RGB layers, 2, 5, and 7 iterations, respectively. This picture is at the same scale as the above image. |
All Images Copyright © 2005 Mike Broussard.
All rights reserved.
To send comments or for more information, please email me at
mike@synergyitg.com.
Visitors since September 20, 2005
