Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

M45 (The Pleiades): Stack of 62 x ARW images taken with a Sony ZV-E10 Vlogging camera fitted with a 70-350 mm zoom lens set at 222 mm at F5.6 and ISO 800. The camera was mounted on an MSM tracker with polar alignment carried out using a polar scope. The camera was controlled remotely with a mobile phone using the app "Camrote" to use its bulb intervlometer to achieve the longer exposures required.  Associated darks were taken along with 20 flat field frames which together with the light frames were integrated and processed in Pixinsight.

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M45

Almost full moon: A Sony ZV-E10 Vlogging camera was fitted with a 70-350 mm zoom lens which was fully extended to 350 mm and some 65 x ARW images were taken of the moon in burst mode at F6.3 and ISO 100 using a remotely controlled  Bluetooth shutter release. The images were converted into an SER file using PIP which was used in Autostakkert! 4 to stack 50% of the frames. The output Tiff file was then processed in Pixinsight and finalised in Adobe CS2.

Moon

The Sun in white light:: Some 60 x ARW images were taken of the Sun using a Sony ZV-E10 Vlogging camera using a 70-350mm zoom lens fully extended at 350mm with the objective lens covered with Baader OD 5 solar film. The images were taken using burst mode using a Bluetooth  remote control and the images were then made into an SER file using PIPP. The resultant Tiff file was then sent to Autostakkert! 4 to stack 50% of the frames and then Registax was used to wavelet sharpen the image with final processing done in Adobe CS2.

Sun

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 6:52 PM 0 Comments

Stack of 150 Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom Bridge camera images of the 99.6% Moon. Images registered and precisely cropped in Nicola's AstroCrop, sum stacked in Siril, wavelet processed in waveSharp and post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

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99.6% Moon

A Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom bridge camera fitted with an ICE ND100000 solar filter and mounted on a static tripod was used to capture 69 images of the Sun at ISO 100 and 1/2000s. The images were precisely cropped/registered in Nicola's AstroCrop before being sum stacked in Siril, wavelet processed in waveSharp and post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

The Sun with the prominent active region AR3590 'naked eye' sunspot group (through a safe solar filter)

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager  # 3:45 PM 0 Comments

8 hours of 300s subs using the two Altairastro ultranarrowband Ha/O3 and S2/03 filters, the ASI533, Altairastro 70EDT refractor on the CEM40 mount. 48 subs for each filter.

All stacking and processing done in Pixinsight, as with my earlier images. I actually did an HSO version as well as this SHO one but the latter showed more of the gaseous emissions coming from the Medusa nebula area. I used narrowband normalisation to balance the 3 narrowband channels so that the S2, red section around the edge of the nebula showed well. Ha and O3 are in the same part of the nebula so tend to come out turquoise. I reduced the green slightly so as not to overwhelm the O3 signal. I also cropped the image once processed as the nebula is rather small for my field of view.

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The Medusa nebula SHO

Anne Startup

posted by astroimager  # 5:36 PM 0 Comments

Dr Simon Helan (Swansea Astronomical Society) gave a fascinating live and Zoom talk on the Constellation Cepheus. The talk was wide-ranging and well researched. The Constellation is rich with objects and is home to the prototype Cepheid variable star, a type of star used for measuring distances. The historical value of Cepheus was shown and that it contains stars that illustrate the evolution of our own Sun. It was most encouraging that Simon illustrated many of his slides with images captured by Swansea Astronomical Society astrophotographers. The talk concluded with an interesting question time. As always, we shall look forward to Dr Simon Helan's next lecture to the Society.

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posted by astroimager  # 11:00 PM 0 Comments

The Monkey Head Nebula imaged in Portugal. 84x300s subs using Ha/O3 and S2/O3 4nm ultranarrowband filters, ASI533MC with my Altairastro 70EDT refractor on the CEM40 mount. 7 hours split equally between the two filters.

Completely processed using Pixinsight. After running Graxpert on both images, I split the stacked RGB images and combined the G and B channels from each to create an Oiii master using weighting to ensure the stronger, green channel dominated. I then recombined the resulting Ha,Oii and Sii images to create a Hubble palette image.

BlurXterminator was run before stretching using EZstretch and removing the stars with StarXterminator. I then used narrowband normalization to increase the Oiii and Sii signal. HDR was run on the luminance channel to bring out detail. In the stars image, I removed the magenta cast by inverting, running SNCR then inverting again. I then increased the saturation of the stars before using Pixelmath to return them to the nebula image. A few iterations of curves to finish and then I used Astroflat Pro in Affinity Photo to remove some colour blotchiness in the background.

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Here's a slightly different rendering of the Monkey Head, this time using the Foraxx utility in Pixinsight, though I did use the original HSO stars as I felt the star colour was better in that version. I omitted the HDR process on the nebula as that sharpened it too much. The Foraxx script seems good at increasing detail as well as producing a rather nice colourway.

posted by astroimager  # 5:36 PM 0 Comments

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Tantalising views like this showing glimpses of the huge sunspot group AR3590 meant that it was worth waiting for a gap in the clouds.

A small gap appeared shortly before the Sun set behind the mountain and I was able to capture 68 virtually cloud-free images with Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom bridge camera fitted with an ICE ND100000 solar filter and mounted on a static tripod was used to capture 69 images of the Sun at ISO 100 and 1/1000s. The images were precisely cropped and registered in Nicola Mackin's AstroCrop using a search perimeter of 30 pixels from the crop box (which gives a very accurate registration). The 69 cropped/registered images were simply sum-stacked in Siril, wavelet processed in waveSharp and post processed in the Gimp 2.10. 

Setting the crop box in AstroCrop

posted by astroimager  # 5:30 PM 0 Comments

The Sun: Some 50 ARW images of the Sun were taken with a Sony E10 Vlogging camera fitted with a 350 mm lens, with the objective covered with ND5 Baader safety film. Raw data was acquired in quick succession at 1/1000 s exposure at F6.3 and ISO 125 using using burst mode and the resultant images were then converted into an SER file using PIPP. Some 50% of the images were stacked in Autostakkert! then wavelet processed in Registax with final processing applied in Adobe CS2.

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Chris Bowen

posted by astroimager  # 8:43 PM 0 Comments

M45 (the Pleiades): 10 min capture using a Sony E10 Vlogging camera fitted with a 70mm lens at F 5.6 and ISO 400. The camera was mounted on an MSM tracker operating at sidereal rate to counteract the movement of the Earth to allow un-trailed images to be taken. The bright moonlight restricted what could be achieved with the camera unfiltered, so exposures were kept short. Data was captured as RAW's in camera, with the camera being remotely operated by NINA. Some 21 images ranging from 1 second to 91 seconds were stacked and processed in Pixinsight using associated darks and bias files.

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M31/M33 region of sky: 30 min capture using a Sony E10 Vlogging camera fitted with a 23mm lens at F 5.6 and ISO 100. The camera was mounted on an MSM tracker operating at sidereal rate to counteract the movement of the Earth to allow un-trailed images to be taken. Data was captured as RAW's in camera, with the camera being remotely operated by NINA. Some 21 images were stacked and processed in Pixinsight ranging from 30 seconds to 4 minutes with associated darks, bias and flat field images. The wide field of view covering 34 x 21 degrees of sky captured many deep sky objects and a couple of minor planets in the frames. The image was annotated in Pixinsight to show the positions of Messier objects, bright stars and the minor planets.

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 8:39 PM 0 Comments

The Double star cluster: LRGB wide field (2 hrs 20 mins total exposure) and cropped RGB image (1 hr 50 mins) taken with a ZWO ASI 533MM Pro camera attached to an Altair 60 EDF doublet refractor fitted with a 0.8 x FR. Data acquired with NINA and integrated/processed with Pixinsight.

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The Double cluster: NGC 869 and NGC 884

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 5:40 PM 0 Comments

The Double star cluster in Perseus taken with my 80ED APO Skywatcher refractor telescope with a 1300D DSLR Canon camera and a field flattener. Settings were 45s and 800 ISO. I used an intervalometer to control the camera and a Bahtinov mask to focus on a bright star. The scope was mounted on an EQ5 GOTO Mount. The image is a stack of 50 images, 50 flat frames and 30 dark frames all stacked in Sequator and processed in Siril. 

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The Double star cluster in Perseus

posted by astroimager  # 4:13 PM 0 Comments