More Moon!

I spent some time tweaking the collimation on my F/4 Mallincam Newt. Before collimation, I thought it gave some wonderfully sharp images. After collimation, they looked even better.

This image was taken with the newt and the DS 2.3+ imager, proving that together, they are a formidable combination!

The Moon 4.13.16

Imaging DSOs becomes problematic when the moon approaches first quarter. I decided to take the time to fully collimate the VRC 6, which was a little out of alignment. I decided to test it on the moon. The image below was taken with the VRC 6, 0.5x focal reducer, and DS 2.3+. It is a stack of 250 frames from an avi, stacked in Registax with final processing (unsharp mask) in Photoshop. The collimation really sharpened up the image!

This image was taken with the same setup, but using a 2x barlow:

M82--The Cigar Galaxy

Saturday evening (4/9) was as good a night for imaging as we've had here in a while, despite the cold (33 degrees F). With not even a slight breeze to disturb it, the ZEQ 25 tracked almost flawlessly. I took this image with the VRC-6 (plus .5x focal reducer and skyglow filter) scope and the DS 2.3+, which gives a very decent wide field view with an F/ratio of 4.5.

This full-frame image is a stack of 30 images, stacked and tweaked in Nebulosity, with final finishing in Photoshop. The focus was a little off on the scope, but the image is reasonably good--I need to buy a Bahtinov Mask for this scope (the mask I have for the 8 inch Newt is too big).

M82 is a bright, starburst galaxy, with the starburst being triggered by the nearby M81 (Bode's Galaxy). The core of M82 is around 100 times brighter than that of our own Milky Way and this image brings out striking color in the galaxy's core.

The Sun on April 3, 2016

Last Sunday was a great day for solar observation! The sky was clear all day and the sun had a couple of large prominences on display.

The images posted here were taken with the PST-DS and the Mallincam DS 2.3+. The colors are as captured by the camera. Each image was captured as a 500 frame avi. The avi was loaded into Registax 6 for alignment and stacking. The best 200 frames from each avi were stacked and wavelet processing was also performed in Registax.  The result shows some nice detail on both prominences, including complex loops and other structures caused by the sun's magnetic field:

M81--The Power of Stacking!

M81 is a faint galaxy and rather a challenge to image in light-polluted skies. A single image is disappointing--showing a bright center and a fuzzy halo. Increasing integration time and histogram stretching is one way to bring out more detail, but if the data is not there in the first place, these techniques yield little, and increased sky glow is more likely to degrade the image. Stacking is the best way to capture this missing data and to pull detail out of a relatively featureless image.

The first image shows a stack of seven, 30-second integrations with some aggressive histogram stretching. The spiral structure of the galaxy is just visible above the sky greenish glow.

The single, "raw" image below shows what one frame looks like. The benefits of stacking (even such a small number of frames) are pretty clear.

Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse!

Betelgeuse is one of the brightest and largest stars that can be seen with the naked eye. It is a red supergiant--so large that it would probably extend to the orbit of Jupiter if it replaced our sun! In stars, bigger is not always better and, despite the fact that it is less than 10 million years old, it close to the end of its life (by contrast, our sun is 4.6 billion years old and is only about halfway through its life).  Within the next million years, Betelgeuse is likely to explode in a Type II Supernova explosion. The supernova would be visible from earth for several weeks before fading, outshining the full moon as a magnitude -12 star. Current best estimates is that a supernova is most likely in the next 100,000 years.

This image was taken with the F/4 Newt and the DS 2.3+.

M1--Again

Last night presented some imaging opportunities through somewhat hazy skies, I set up the F/4 newt and the DS 2.3+ (with UHC filter) and set to work. I decided to capture my darks with a 30-second integration at gain 30. This combination offered a general dark set that could be used for most of the imaging session, offering also good control of amp glow that can appear in stacked images with histogram stretches.

Here is a full-frame image of M1. The integration time was 30 seconds, and this is a stack of 12 exposures (the best of the 20 or so I captured). Detail on the image is quite good and the skyglow and amp glow are well controlled. All in all, I'm pretty happy with this pic, which gives a good idea of the capabilities of the Newt/DS 2.3+ combination.