Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

M64 The Black eye Galaxy. Settings were 1min and 3200ISO using a 1300D DLSR Canon camera. The camera was mounted on an 80ED APO Skywatcher Refractor telescope. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 GOTO Mount. I used a Bahtinov mask for focusing on a bright star and an intervalometer to control the camera. The image was a stack of 200 images and 25 flat frames all stacked in Sequator, processed in Gimp 2.10 and further processed in GraXpert. 

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M64

posted by astroimager  # 9:25 PM 0 Comments

I borrowed the society's 115mm triplet refractor to fit a Vixen dovetail to allow use with different types of mount and re-calibrated the auto focuser. I then hooked up my ASI 533 MM Pro mono camera and filter wheel which I attached to the 115mm triplet's field flattener and mounted the scope on my iOptron CEM26 mount for some short exposure tests. I did some short runs using all 7 filters to image the Leo Triplet of galaxies and M13. To complete testing I did a longer follow-up imaging run on M81 (2.6 hours worth) using Lum/HA/RGB channels. After some adjustments, I processed the data in DSS and CS2 and was satisfied with the results (montages of the tests are attached). I returned the triplet to Fairwood and did some further imaging with this arrangement at the last member's viewing and imaging night of the 19th April where I targeted the Sombrero galaxy (M104). Whilst at Fairwood I reprocessed the M81 image in colour using Pixinsight and this is also attached.

The wide field and cropped images of the Sombrero galaxy attached are a combination of 1.7 hours’ worth of 60s RGB subs and 28 mins of 2 min Ha subs taken with the 115mm triplet at Fairwood plus 38 mins of 60s luminance subs taken the following night from home using my 60mm doublet refractor. The different image data sets were star aligned in Pixinsight and integrated together as one image (total exposure time being 2.8 hrs). I did take luminance data at Fairwood, but the subs were 26 x 2 min exposures compared with the 38 x 60s ones taken with my smaller scope. I found that combining the longer exposure luminance frames wiped out all the colour data and completely dominated the composition; hence the hybrid version I settled for in the end. I had a big problem with strong wind gusts during the imaging at Fairwood and lost quite a lot of data through scope movement. The data I did manage to salvage still suffered from wind, but to a lesser extent. This resulted in egg shaped stars and chromatic aberration issues around the stars however, which I was unable to fix in post processing.

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The Sombrero galaxy

M81

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 9:19 PM 0 Comments

The Markarian chain. Settings were 1min and 1600ISO using a 1300D DLSR Canon camera. The camera was mounted on a Skywather 80ED APO Refractor telescope with a field flattener. The telescope was mounted on a EQ5 GOTO Mount. I used a Bahtinov mask for focusing on a bright star and an intervalometer to control the camera. The image was a stack of 170 images and 25 flat frames all stacked in Sequator and processed in Gimp 2.10 and further processed in GraXpert.

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The Markarian chain.

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 3:32 PM 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 130 images of the Sun. The images were precisely cropped in Nicola Mackin's AstroCrop before stacking in Autostakkert!, wavelet processing with waveSharp and post-processing in the Gimp 2.10.

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Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager  # 12:23 AM 0 Comments

The equipment used.

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Motor-focus modified Skymax127

Low cost refurbished 6th generation i5 Thinkpad running Linux and AstroDMx Capture as well as an INDI server.

63 minutes worth of 3 minute exposures of M51 stacked in Siril and post processed in GraXpert, Neat Image and the Gimp 2.10.

M51

2 hours worth of 5 minute exposures of the Hamburger galaxy NGC 3628 stacked in Siril and post processed in GraXpert, Neat Image and the Gimp 2.10.

Hamburger galaxy NGC 3628

posted by astroimager  # 5:00 PM 0 Comments

With two different scopes, we captured the Markarian Chain of galaxies and the globular cluster M3.

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The Markarian Chain

Click HERE for full details and other images.

M3 globular cluster

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 10:07 PM 0 Comments

 Nicola has released Version 2.1.0 of AstroDMx Capture for all operating systems.

Click HERE for full details of the feature release.

posted by astroimager  # 2:46 PM 0 Comments

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M45: 30 mins of luminance data (2 min subs) taken with an ASI 533MM Pro camera using an Altair 60 EDF doublet refractor fitted with a 0.8 x FR.

M101: 2.2 hrs of L/RGB/Ha data (2 min subs) taken with an ASI 533MM Pro camera using an Altair 60 EDF doublet refractor fitted with a 0.8 x FR.

M51: 54 mins of OSC data (2 min subs) taken with an Atik 320e camera using an Altair 115mm triplet refractor fitted with a FF.

Montage: A selection of images taken during the night, along with some of the processed images completed by members.

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 10:47 AM 0 Comments

Settings were 60s at 3200ISO using a 1300D DLSR Canon camera. The camera was mounted on a Skywatcher 80ED APO Refractor telescope with a field flattener. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 GOTO Mount. I used a Bahtinov Mask for focusing on a bright star and an intervalometer to control the camera. The image was a stack of 170 images and 25 flat frames all stacked in Sequator and processed in Gimp 2.10.

Click on the image to get a closer view

posted by astroimager  # 4:34 PM 0 Comments

This is M51, taken from the Fairwood Observatory on Friday the 14th April, with my William Optics Zenithstar 73 and ZWO 533MC Pro. Used a UV/IR cut filter and was nice to image a broadband target without the moon for once! 

5 hours of data and processed in Pixinsight.

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M51

John Beer

posted by astroimager  # 4:27 PM 0 Comments