Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

A Seestar S50 was used to capture 25 minutes worth of 10s exposures of the Bubble nebula and the M52 star cluster. It was also used to capture 30 minutes worth of 10s exposures of Caroline's Rose cluster.

In each case the RAW FITS files were debayered, stacked and part processed in PixInsight, and further processed in Gimp 2.10, Starnet++ and GraXpert.

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The Bubble nebula and M52

Caroline's Rose cluster

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 9:22 PM 0 Comments

 Click on a sketch to get a closer view

Jim Startup

posted by astroimager  # 5:34 PM 0 Comments

Two hours worth of 5 minute RAW FITS exposures of the Propeller nebula, DWB111, were captured with AstroDMx Capture with William Optics 81 mm ED APO refractor with a 0.8 flattener/reducer and an Altair magnetic 2" filter holder with an Altair Quadband filter. 

The RAW images were debayered, calibrated and stacked in PixInsight with further processing being done in GraXpert, Starnet++, the Gimp 2.10 and ACDSee.

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AstroDMx Capture capturing RAW data on the Propeller nebula

The Propeller nebula RGB

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 4:51 PM 0 Comments

Thirty four images were captured in rapid succession in burst mode of the partially eclipsed Moon with a Bridge camera. The images were precisely cropped in AstroCrop, stacked in Autostackkert!4, wavelet processed in waveSharp and further processed in the Gimp 2.10.

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Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 4:39 PM 0 Comments

I collected another 100 subs last night, this time using the Sii/Oiii Altair filter. I've now reprocessed the Crescent to produce a SHO image. Processing largely as before but I used the Setiastro script to produce RGB stars from the two narrowband masters. I've now collected 6 hours 40 minutes just with the two filters.

I'm still on 2 minute exposure as a mount update has changed the guiding settings and I haven't yet found the new ones for Phd2! I'm hoping to sort that out this evening and also capture some actual RGB stars which will replace the synthetic ones.

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The Crescent nebula SHO

Anne Startup

posted by astroimager  # 4:29 PM 0 Comments

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The Full Moon: Taken shortly after the partial lunar eclipse; a stack of 49 x ARW's taken with a Sony ZV-E10 Vlogging camera fitted with a 350mm zoom lens. Pre-processed in PIPP to make an SER file from the images, then Stacked in Autostakkert!4 wavelet processed in Registax and finished off in Adobe Photoshop 2024. The widefield image was a single shot with the zoom lens backed off to 70mm.

NGC6604: Just 85mins of 5 minute unguided SHO data of this combined open cluster and nebulae in Serpens that contains one of our galaxies' most luminous stars. Imaged with an ASI 533MM pro camera and mono filter wheel fitted to field flattener attached to a William Optics Zenithstar 71 doubler refractor. Data acquired with NINA and integrated/processed in Pixinsight with further adjustments done in Adobe Photoshop 2024.

Propeller Nebula: A further 5 hours SHO data was added to the previous night's 6 hour acquisition to produce an updated image comprising around 11.25 hrs total integration. As before the data was acquired with NINA using an ASI 533MM pro camera and mono filter wheel fitted to field flattener attached to a William Optics Zenithstar 71 doubler refractor with integration/processing done in Pixinsight with further adjustments done in Adobe Photoshop 2024.  

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 4:24 PM 0 Comments

 A late afternoon solar observing session turned to an early evening imaging session with white light and hydrogen alpha data taken using a Altair 60EDF with a Herschel Wedge and a PST; both imaged with a Player One Apollo-M Mini camera using a x2 Barlow lens. The scopes were mounted on an AstroTrac running in solar tracking mode with data captured using AstroDMx Capture. 15% of frames were stacked using AutoStakkert!4 with wavelet processing done in Registax and post processing completed in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2024. The Ha image comprised an 8,000 frame SER, the mono white light image 5,000 frames and the colour white light SER 10,000 frames.

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Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 11:30 PM 0 Comments

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The Sun in white light

The Sun in Ca K-line light

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 3:54 PM 0 Comments

The Propeller (Cygnus X) : 6.42 hrs of SHO data were taken with an ASI 533MM Pro camera using a William Optics ZS71 doublet refractor fitted with a field flattener. Data were captured in NINA and integrated and processed in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2024. 

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The Propeller (Cygnus X) SHO

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 2:17 PM 0 Comments

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The Iris nebula is with LRGB with ZWO filters. Taken with my StellaLyra 8" F4 newtonian and Player one Ares M Pro camera. Total integration time is only 4 hours. It also needs far more data.

The Pelican nebula, taken with about 5 hours integration time with 3nm Ha, Sii and Oiii filters and processed in the Hubble palette in Pixinsight.

John Beer

posted by astroimager  # 10:39 AM 0 Comments

Imaging the Sun in white light

A Seestar S50 was fitted with an OD 5.0 Baader solar filter.

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A 3 minute RAW AVI was captured with the brightness control turned down so that there was no saturation in the blue channel. This was a photo captured to show the appearance of the Sun.

The RGB image was decomposed into the 3 colour channels. The blue channel was the brightest and contained most of the information. The image was wavelet processed in waveSharp and further processed in the Gimp 2.10.

The Sun in white light

Imaging the Sun with a SeestarS50 and a combination of an OD 5.0 Baader solar filter and a Baader stacked Ca K-line filter.

The equipment comprised a holder for the OD 5.0 Solar film kindly 3D printed for me by SAS member John Beer.

The dark blue preview

posted by astroimager  # 10:06 PM 0 Comments

In this imaging session we were testing a new autostretch display function in conjunction with our non-destructive DMx white balance in Nicola's AstroDMx Capture.

RAW, 5 minute FITs files were captured with AstroDMx Capture. 60 minutes worth of data were captured on the Pelican nebula. The scope was a WO 81mm APO refractor with an Altair Quadband filter and an Altair Hypercam 533C 14 bit OSC CMOS camera. The data were debayered, calibrated, stacked and part processed in PixInsight and further processed in the Gimp 2.10, GraXpert and ACDSee. The Final image was rendered as RGB and HOO-RGB blend.

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Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture showing autostretch with no white balance applied to the preview giving the expected green hue to the image from an OSC camera

Pelican nebula RGB

RAW, 5 minute FITs files were captured with AstroDMx Capture. 65 minutes worth of data were captured on the Eagle nebula, M16. The scope was a WO 81mm APO refractor with an Altair Quadband filter and an Altair Hypercam 533C 14 bit OSC CMOS camera. The data were debayered, calibrated, stacked and part processed in PixInsight and further processed in the Gimp 2.10, GraXpert and ACDSee. The Final image was rendered as RGB, HOO or a blende of the two. 

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture showing autostretch with DMx non-destructive white balance white balance applied to the preview

posted by astroimager  # 6:50 PM 0 Comments