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Post by Dragon Man on Nov 27, 2017 13:05:00 GMT
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Post by davy on Nov 27, 2017 13:35:59 GMT
Just to show the horse head nebula,, taken from UK by my friend Steve Richards posted on Facebook yesterday,, who needs Hubble lol From Steve The Horsehead Nebula (B33) The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) is one of the best known nebulae in the night sky but few astronomers have actually observed it through a telescope. The reason for this strange state of affairs is that the nebula is very dim as it is, in essence, just a pillar of dark dust and gas – in fact we can only see it because of the curtain of relatively bright Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) emissions (IC 434) behind it. This weekend several observers have seen it for the first time through a combination of excellent conditions - especially last night (25th/26th November) - and pure dogged determination to observe it. My hat is off to these intrepid observers who have persevered to achieve that goal. I on the other hand turned to the ‘Dark Side’ to achieve the same goal capturing my data over 2 nights, the first killed part way through by mist and cloud and the second (last night) working very well until a miscalculation in my image scheduling meant that the observatory closed down when it failed to maintain its guide star while imaging through a tree – Doh! Barnard 33 is a dark nebula situated in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex in the constellation of Orion. Situated underneath the mag +1.74 ‘Belt Star’, Alnitak, this nebula is very well named as in images, its shape representing a horse’s head is clearly identifiable. For me it actually looks closer to a sea horse in appearance but the shape of a horse it most certainly is! Image Stats Mount: Mesu 200 Telescope: Sky-Watcher Esprit 150 Flattener: Sky-Watcher Esprit specific Camera: QSI 683 WSG-8 Filter: Astrodon 3nm Ha Subframes: 15 x 1800 sec Ha Integration: 7.5 hours Control: CCD Commander Capture: MaxIM DL Calibration and Stacking: PixInsight Post-Processing: PhotoShop PS3 I have deliberately taken a 'high key' approach to processing this data to release some of the additional detail often lost in the foreground region below the Horsehead Nebula itself.
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Post by davy on Nov 27, 2017 13:41:36 GMT
Would be nice to see how video astronomy camera's and our techniques could compare on this subject,, maybe a challenge of a month option for the future.
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Post by howie1 on Nov 27, 2017 19:25:19 GMT
Would love to ... but prob not for while ... LOL.
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Post by howie1 on Nov 27, 2017 19:39:57 GMT
Thanks for posting Ken. Every time I see a Hubble shot lately I have been thinking of the James Webb and what that might bring?! We were blown away by the images and scientific discoveries made by Hubble, so what's James Webb hold for us! It's also truly amazing that in just 5 years I've been into EAA, I've seen blocky, blurry Mallincam images turn into the latest camera and software combo's images which get pretty darn close to Hubble on some targets. Davy's mate's Horsie is right up there in this regard! The idea of a challenge on the Horsie is a neat idea ... the Mallins 5 years ago were "live" near-real-time 120 sec of integration unfolding in front of your eyes on a tv monitor, while the latest NSN broadcasts are 30 minutes worth of stacking. But the end result is still spectacularly good for a bunch of amateurs using just a few grand's worth of gear. I've only ever done the Horse with hyperstar and never tried it with my 30 sec single shots techniques. I can't wait to give it a crack ... but as per my post on the weather here .... haven't done DSO's since June! I think you've been pretty much the same Ken down South? Very poor Winter/Spring for astronomy views. cheers H
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Post by Dragon Man on Nov 28, 2017 9:42:32 GMT
Yes Howie, the weather is still disastrous here. Thunderstorms and rain still on a daily basis. The only thing that has changed here is the temperature. No longer is it cold and raining, it is now stinking hot and raining!
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Post by howie1 on Nov 29, 2017 3:30:18 GMT
I knew I had a Horsie shot somewhere ... I have various online photo accounts ... Google Photos, Microsoft Drive, Photobucket, Flickr. So went a-hunting for my Horsehead shot. Photobucket sold early last year to some mob who wanted to charge and did not give any access to your photos until paying up!!! Scumbags! So I lost all of those photos on there. Then I checked my Flickr account which is where most of my astro shots are, but for whatever reason Flickr would not let me in to my account for several days! I suspected Yahoo had done some similar deal - as they keep selling off their businesses. I lost my Yahoo mail for about a month a while back, so figured I would either have lost all my Flickr shots for good ... or perhaps if I am lucky it would also come back to me in about a month's time. Anyway ... couldn't find Horsie on Google nor Microsoft Drive so in the end ... very lucky for me .... Flickr allowed me back in last night when I tried it ... Done about this time last year ... Canon 650D on 9.25 Edge with F/2 hyperstar - all of which is still in boxes for the day when I can sell up and move to the dark skies of Country Queensland and stick the heavy CGEM DX head on a pier. Man, I have way too many scopes n stuff! Two photos. The overly bright and overly colorful one is ISO3200 with 18 frames of 20 sec, and second more subdued shot is ISO3200 only 9 frames of 30 seconds. While that sounds short, it isn't on my old 2009 Macbook bootcamped. Stacking takes over 90 seconds per frame on that ol' girl ... it's why I gave away stacking and pushed more and more into single 30sec and perhaps the odd single 60 sec shots for all my "viewing". Anyway ... link to the album below ... Thank God my Flickr account is back up ... now I will have to download all my shots and save off elsewhere just in case it all "disappears" again! Still up for the Horsie challenge for this year ... will be very interesting to see what I can pull using my favoured single frame 30sec (maybe 60 sec) methods! Cheers Howie
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elpajare
Member
Posts: 438
home town/country: Girona-Spain
time zone gmt +/-: 1
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Post by elpajare on Nov 29, 2017 8:11:44 GMT
Thanks for the link Ken
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Post by Dragon Man on Nov 29, 2017 9:31:03 GMT
Wow Howie, that second horsie is a stunner mate
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Post by howie1 on Nov 29, 2017 21:05:41 GMT
Thanks Ken. IC434 and Orion area in general is such an interesting area. In a relatively short'ish shot-time, I was happy to "pull-out" so many interesting things - colours indicating the composition; sharp wave/pressure "fronts" from the ancient star forming/nebula forming nova's and/or the big stars stellar winds. Luckily it's low hanging fruit and pretty easy to get with the DSLR (especially at f/2 LOL). I recall Chris Appleton way back years ago getting the Horsie on a Mallincam Hyperplus with 20 sec frames stacked on the fly on the old NSN. I think that old cam only went to max 20 sec integrations? It only had two toggle switches on its side ... sort of low or high gain, and short or long exposure. Something like that. But it worked ... and fast! I still remember the awe of seeing it "evolve" in color right there on the screen. Who wouldn't want to get into EAA seeing that stuff happening in front of your eyes.
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Post by howie1 on Nov 30, 2017 1:12:57 GMT
Re the two images in my other post for the Horsehead Neb ...
I found the live HD desktop video capture from when I stacked and tweaked those IC434 Horsie images. The narration was garbage, so I just re-recorded narration.
It's a short 3 minute video in which you'll see the simple sliders movements of my workflow, and much more importantly - why I moved each slider in AstroToaster!
About 20 seconds before the video finishes, I click the logarithm stretch and you will see on the screen something very similar to what I posted earlier .... a more subdued color image of the Horsehead Neb (nicer than the more garish colored image). In the last few seconds of the video it shows me carrying on tweaking moving the sliders WAY too aggressively and that resulted in something more like the other Horsehead image - the much more overblown garish colors.
Hope you enjoy this short 3 min vid and get something out of how I figure out what sliders to tweak in Toaster, and why.
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Post by Dragon Man on Nov 30, 2017 5:21:53 GMT
Good simple tutorial Howie. Yeah, you killed the image at the end though
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 30, 2017 8:33:50 GMT
Would be nice to see how video astronomy camera's and our techniques could compare on this subject,, maybe a challenge of a month option for the future. Yes - I've often wondered about that. I have the coordinates of the Hubble Deep Field in my observing file but I've never been there.
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