Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

A Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom bridge camera fitted with a Baader solar filter and mounted on a static tripod was used to capture 135 images of the Sun. The images were precisely cropped in Nicola's AstroCrop, registered, stacked and wavelet processed in Siril and post-processed in the Gimp 2.10.

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Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager  # 8:09 PM 0 Comments

M57 the Ring nebula in Lyra. Settings were 50s 1600ISO and a 4000D DSLR Canon camera attached to a 102mm Skywatcher refractor telescope on an eq5 Skywatcher tracking mount. 

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Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 8:06 PM 0 Comments

Testing a function in AstroDMx capture where one can arrange the objects of interest on the screen, Capture an image of the arrangement and then use AstroDMx Capture to send the mount (scope) precisely back to the same arrangement of objects and position it exactly as before.

The function worked perfectly so despite the fact that there was a 69.7% Moon nearby and low in the sky, it was decided to capture data on the Lagoon and Trifid nebula that were in the same field of view of an SV405CC OSC camera on a Skywatcher Esprit 80 ED Super APO Triplet refractor fitted with a field flattener and mounted on a Celestron AVX mount.

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AstroDMx Capture for Linux was used to capture 40 x 30s FITS exposures plus matching dark-frames.

The data were stacked and part processed in Deep Sky Stacker and post-processed in the Gimp 2.10.

The Lagoon nebula, M8 and the Trifid nebula, M20

The new functionality in AstroDMx Capture is coming along satisfactorily, and we look forward to imaging these objects in a dark sky.

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 2:58 PM 0 Comments

Another automated run last night using NINA to capture some 50 x 2 minute subs of the North American nebula using an Atik 320e OSC camera fitted with an Optolong L-eNhance narrowband filter. The camera was attached to an Altair 60 EDF doublet refractor, fitted with a 0.8 x focal reducer. The scope was driven with an iOptron CEM26 mount, guided with PHD2 using an SVBony SV165 guide scope and QHY5-L-II-M camera. Images were stacked in DSS and processed in Adobe CS2.

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The North American Nebula

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 11:45 AM 0 Comments

Waxing gibbous moon, taken with my Panasonic z82 Lumix Bridge camera. Settings were 1/80s, ISO100, at f/6.3 with a Skywatcher Star Adventurer 2i tracking mount.

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Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 11:42 AM 0 Comments

M13 globular cluster in Hercules. Settings were 30s and 800ISO and a 4000D DSLR Canon camera attached to a 102mm Skywatcher refractor telescope and an eq5 Skywatcher tracking mount.

M13

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 6:51 PM 0 Comments

A Skymax 127 Maksutov was used with a Player-One Mars-C II (IMX662) OSC fitted with an IR/UV cut filter. The imaging was done during twilight with a bright sky. AstroDMx Capture for Windows was used to capture 20 overlapping, 1500-frame SER files of the Moon. The best 80% of frames in each SER file were stacked in Autostakkert!. The resulting 20 images were stitched into a mosaic using Microsoft ICE. The resulting image was wavelet processed in Iris, post-processed and resized in the Gimp 2.10.

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Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture capturing a lunar SER file

58.6% waxing, gibbous Moon

Click on the image and click again to see a very close view

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 5:59 PM 0 Comments

Using a Skywatcher Esprit 80 ED Super APO Triplet refractor mounted on a Celestron AVX mount. A Player-One Mars-C II (IMX662) OSC uncooled camera was placed at the focus. AstroDMx Capture for Windows was used to capture the image data on M8, the Lagoon nebula. The mount was given a simple two-star alignment before it was sent to M8. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask and a bright star. AstroDMx Capture for Linux was used to find and position M8.

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Focusing an alignment star with AstroDMx Capture, using a Bahtinov mask

The focusing star enlarged, showing the perfect positioning of the diffraction spikes, indicating perfect focus.

It can be seen that because only a simple two star alignment, using alignment stars west of the meridian, that when the mount was sent to M8, which was east of the meridian, it found M8, but it is mainly off the sensor at the top left of the image.

posted by astroimager  # 12:41 PM 0 Comments

With conditions set fair all night I set up as early as I could to maximise the amount of semi darkness in which to image and used NINA to target and image M16 and M17. I programmed two automatic 92 minute sequences for each target which allowed time for meridian flip and auto focus routines to complete within the period of semi night time. Some 46 x 2 minute subs were taken of each target using an Atik 320e fitted with an Optolong L-eNhance narrowband filter attached to an Altair 60 EDF Triplet refractor fitted with a 0.8 x focal reducer. The scope was driven with an iOptron CEM26 mount guided with PHD2 using an SVBony SV165 guide scope and QHY5-L-11M camera. Images were stacked in DSS and processed in Adobe CS2 with de-noising done in Affinity Photo.

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M16

M17

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 12:04 PM 0 Comments

Waxing gibbous Moon, taken with my Panasonic z82 Lumix Bridge camera, settings were 1/10s and 100iso at f/6.3 on a Skywatcher Star Adventurer 2i tracking mount.

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Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 11:59 AM 0 Comments

A Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom bridge camera fitted with a Baader solar filter and mounted on a static tripod was used to capture 121 images of the Sun. The images were precisely cropped in Nicola's AstroCrop, registered, the best 95% of the images stacked and wavelet processed in Siril and post-processed in the Gimp 2.10

Click on the image to get a closer view

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager  # 4:18 PM 0 Comments

Nicola has been working for some time on introducing new functionality into AstroDMx Capture. The various new functions will come online sequentially according to our project plan. All of this is in addition to the continuing native implementation of new cameras. As we stand, the forked project now comprises about 78 KLOCs (thousands of lines of code). Including internal documentation, the project now exceeds 90k lines.

Our internal build of AstroDMx Capture has control of the mount and can send the scope to particular objects. It then captures an image of the star-field, solves the star-field and then, on command, centres the object in the camera’s field of view. This will facilitate the rapid acquisition of objects, suitably placed for imaging. Tightly linked to auto-guiding, the positioning of dim objects requiring particularly long exposures plus auto-guiding, will now take less time to set up.

The experiment reported here used a Skywatcher Esprit 80 ED Super APO Triplet refractor mounted on a Celestron AVX mount. A Player-One Mars-C II (IMX662) OSC uncooled camera was placed at the focus. AstroDMx Capture for Linux was used to capture the image data. The mount was given a simple two-star alignment before it was sent to the first test object. The scope was focused using a Bahtinov mask and a bright star.

The following objects were the test subjects for the experiment:

Globular clusters

M13; M92; M3

Planetary nebulae

 M57; M27

Open cluster

IC 0665, the Summer beehive cluster

Although the AVX mount is reasonably well polar aligned, using a simple two-star alignment is likely to result in some slight error in the GOTO function; which is what was required for this experiment.

AstroDMx Capture was used to send the mount to an object and an image was captured. In most cases the object was somewhere in the field of view of the camera sensor, but not centred. The image was then used to solve the star field and AstroDMx Capture was then able to move the mount precisely, to centre the object on the camera sensor.

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                   Example screenshots before and after AstroDMx Capture has centred the test object on the camera sensor

M92 after AstroDMx Capture sent the scope to the object with a GOTO command

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M57 after AstroDMx Capture sent the scope to the object with a GOTO command

M57 after AstroDMx Capture issued a command to centre the object

In all six cases AstroDMx Capture was able to send the scope (mount) to the required object and then centre the object ready for imaging. Exposures just long enough to see the star field are all that are required. Also in these cases the objects were required to be just visible for the purposes of this experiment.

posted by astroimager  # 4:47 PM 0 Comments

A Skywatcher Esprit 80 ED APO Pro Triplet Refractor was mounted on a Celestron AVX GOTO mount. A Player One Mars-C II camera was fitted with a UV/IR cut filter.

AstroDMx Capture for Windows was used to capture a 5000-frame SER file of the 37.5% waxing, crescent Moon.

Click on an image to have a closer view

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture capturing a 5000-frame SER file of the Moon

Siril was used to register the images and stack the best 80% of the frames, and wavelet process them. The final image was post-processed in the Gimp 2.10.

37.5% waxing Moon

posted by astroimager  # 2:18 AM 0 Comments

28% waxing Moon. 150 Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom bridge camera images precisely cropped in AstroCrop, stacked in Siril, wavelet processed in Siril and post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Click on the image to get a closer view

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager  # 12:14 PM 0 Comments

Crescent Moon taken with my Panasonic z82 lumix Bridge camera. Settings were 1/10s, ISO 80, at f/6.3 with a Star Adventurer 2i tracking mount.

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Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 2:26 PM 0 Comments

This was an experiment using the continuous video technique of Sylvain Weiller to obtain an image of the Moon as an alternative to capturing several overlapping panes and stitching them into a mosaic.

A Player One Mars-C II camera was placed at the focus of a Skymax 127 Maksutov. A continuous SER movie was captured by panning over the entire Moon so that all parts of the Moon were captured in the movie. SER player was used to partly process the movie data and then to save out the movie as an AVI and also every 20th frame was used to construct an animated GIF of the movie so that the panning can be visualised.

Animation of the panning process

As the capture was done in twilight, the SER movie was processed suing SER player to reduce the gamma and increase the gain. Then SER player was used to save out the frames in an AVI container. The problem is that being an old technology, AVIs are limited in the number of frames they can contain. The SER file that was captured had too many frames to be able to capture the whole lunar surface in a single AVI file. So, every second frame of the SER file was saved in the AVI. This AVI now encompassed the whole panning process as can be seen in the animation above.

The AVI was then loaded into Microsoft ICE (Image Composite Editor) which is able to build panoramic images from AVI videos. ICE successfully produced a panorama of the 19.5% crescent Moon.

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Microsoft ICE producing the panorama mosaic of the Moon

posted by astroimager  # 12:42 PM 0 Comments

Stack of 130 solar-filtered Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom Bridge camera images precisely cropped in AstroCrop, stacked in Siril, post-processed in Siril and the Gimp 2.10.

Click on the image to get a closer view

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager  # 3:06 AM 0 Comments

Crescent Moon taken  with my Panasonic z82 Lumix bridge camera. Settings were 1/10s, ISO80 at f/6.3 with a Star Adventurer 2i tracking mount. 

Click on the image to get a closer view

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 1:05 PM 0 Comments

Stack of 48 Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom Bridge camera images of the 12.2% waxing, crescent Moon precisely cropped in Nicola's AstroCrop, stacked in Siril, post-processed in Siril and the Gimp 2.10.

posted by astroimager  # 12:09 AM 0 Comments