Posted February 4th, 2012 by Dan
Image Location and Date: OCA dark sky site in Anza, CA on January 28th, 2012
Object: Cone Nebula Region
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Tair-3c
Imaging FL: 300mm
Imaging focal ratio: RGB-f8 Ha-f4.5
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 7 x 1200sec, 13 x 600sec
Calibration: Darks + Flats
Guide scope: Vixen 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight + Photoshop for final color adjustment.
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Posted January 10th, 2012 by Dan
Still working hard on this. Getting there…
This is the first large mosaic I’ve ever worked on and it is quite a tough one. Still working on getting all the background gradients in each frame squared away, you can still see the seam areas. I need to get more data for some of the frames, nearly every session was plagued by high winds. Some frames have 100 minutes of integration time, others have 20.
I’ve learned a few lessons throughout this process.
- Framing. I went for 15% overlap, looks like 20% would have been a better choice. Each session you should plate solve with the center image to make sure positioning and camera rotation are dead on.
- Flats. Take them after every session. Just do it.
- Throw away any subs with gradients that differ from the rest of the subframes in the particular frame.
- Do not take any photos near the horizon. Frames taken below 45 degrees altitude have very difficult gradients to get under control. Seems like I should just give myself a four hour window when the object is nearest the meridian to capture the frames.
- Pixinsight’s DBE tool is your second best friend. GradientMergeMosaic is your 1st.
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Posted January 2nd, 2012 by Dan
RGB:
H-Alpha:
Image Location and Date: SDAA dark sky site at Tierra Del Sol on December 31st, 2011
Object: Caldwell 49: The Rosette Nebula.
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Tair-3C
Imaging FL: 300mm
Imaging focal ratio: f4.5
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 17 x 600sec @ ISO 800 in Hydrogen-Alpha, 13 x 600sec RGB
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: 9×50 Finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, processed in PixInsight.
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Posted December 18th, 2011 by Dan
I used some data I have for an ongoing mosaic project to throw this together in Pixinsight. One thing I’m missing is reflectivity of the Orion Nebula against the galactic dust background, not sure what happened there.
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Posted December 10th, 2011 by Dan
Posted December 10th, 2011 by Dan
Went down to the Oceanside Pier this morning around 5:30, quite a few photographers down there!
Got this with my Canon 350Da + Tokina 70mm @f8. 4 second exposure @ ISO100
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Posted December 6th, 2011 by Dan
Ever since I did a mosaic of M31 I want to do more more more. The high resolutions, vast swaths of sky and interstellar dust dancing around is very hard to resist once you get a taste. It’s also a lot more work but I figure if I’m going to get any better at this I need to push myself to do more and more difficult projects.
So here is a little test area I did. It’s a 2×2 of downtown Orion. I only went for an hour for each frame since it was near freezing with 20 mph winds and I wanted to go to bed. The top left frame only got about ten minutes of exposure since I screwed something up but that’s okay, this is only a test to see if it’s worth going after a much larger area of sky.
I used my trusty Tair-3 300mm Russian lens at f5.6. I’m not confident I hit focus spot on since I haven’t made a bahtinov mask for this guy, just set it at infinity and cross my fingers. Not a bad lens at all for $150 on ebay. Hooked up to my modded 350D and it can ride my Atlas all night long through +30mph wind gusts without a care in the world.
EQMOD and Cartes du Ciel are absolutely fantastic for mosaic work. EQMosaic is my new favorite tool. Only problem I had is that gotos were not quite perfect, especially after I did a meridian flip and had to go back to the same area to grab the last frame. Now that I think about it, I think the GPS coords in Cartes du Ciel and EQMod were set differently. Going to play with that tomorrow night to see if I can get it spot on.
Darks and flats are absolutely critical for this stuff. The 350D has a fair amount of amp glow on the edges so that has to be taken care of.
I did a minimal amount of work blending the frames together in Photoshop so some stitching is evident but certainly not impossible to overcome if I sink my teeth into it.
Image Location and Date: SDAA dark sky site at Tierra Del Sol on November 28th, 2011
Object: Downtown Orion
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Tair-3 300mm Lens
Imaging FL: 300mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5.6
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 6 x 600sec @ ISO 800 (1 hours) PER FRAME
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: 50mm Finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, merged in Photoshop, processed in PixInsight and back to Photoshop for final color adjustment.
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Posted November 29th, 2011 by Dan
Image Location and Date: SDAA dark sky site at Tierra Del Sol on November 28th, 2011
Object: M33 Galaxy
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150mm Newtonian
Imaging FL: 750mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 15 x 600sec @ ISO 800 (2.5 hours)
Calibration: Darks, Flats
Guide scope: Tair-3 300mm f4.5 camera lens with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, processed in PixInsight. DBE>BN>ColorCal>HT>HDRWavelets>DSE>SCNR>MT>Saturation>Curve stretch.
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Posted November 3rd, 2011 by Dan
This one was very very tough. I had some very bad gradients from light pollution, upper atmosphere clouds and a red LED that somehow leaked light into the scope causing some nasty images in the core frame. I’m not sure if I’m happy with the colors or not so I may come back to this one shortly.
Image Location and Date: SDAA dark sky site at Tierra Del Sol on October 22nd and 29th, 2011
Object: M31 Great Andromeda Galaxy in Andromeda
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150mm Newtonian
Imaging FL: 750mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 14 x 600sec @ ISO 800 per frame (7 hours total)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, merged in Photoshop, processed in PixInsight and back to Photoshop for final color adjustment.
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Posted November 1st, 2011 by Dan
Image Location and Date: SDAA dark sky site at Tierra Del Sol on October 29th, 2011
Object: IC405 Flaming Star Nebula in Auriga
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150mm Newtonian
Imaging FL: 750mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 30 x 600sec @ ISO 800 (5 Hours)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight + Photoshop for final color adjustment.
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Posted October 4th, 2011 by Dan
Image Location and Date: Palomar Mountain Observatory Campground on October 1st, 2011
Object: NGC7000 North America Nebula + IC5070 Pelican Nebula in Cygnus
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: 300mm Tair-3c lens
Imaging FL: 300mm
Imaging focal ratio: f6
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 9 x 600sec @ ISO 800 (1 Hour 30 Minutes)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight + Photoshop for final color adjustment.
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Posted September 27th, 2011 by Dan
Image Location and Date: SDAA site @ Tierra Del Sol on September 23rd and 24th, 2011
Object: NGC7293 Helix Nebula
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150 Newtonian
Imaging FL: 750mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 9 x 600sec @ ISO 800 (1 Hour 30 Minutes)
Calibration: None!
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guided with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop.
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Posted September 27th, 2011 by Dan
Image Location and Date: SDAA site @ Tierra Del Sol on September 23rd and 24th, 2011
Object: M45, The Pleiades
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150 Newtonian
Imaging FL: 750mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 23 x 600sec @ ISO 800 (3 Hour 50 Minutes)
Calibration: None!
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guided with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop.
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Posted September 26th, 2011 by Dan
Check it out! It’s REALLY bright, I could easily see it in my 8″ scope. It’s near the horizon right now so I couldn’t get a great picture of the galaxy, sorry.
Image Location and Date: SDAA site @ Tierra Del Sol on September 24th, 2011
Object: M101, SN2011fe
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150 Newtonian
Imaging FL: 750mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 13 x 180sec @ ISO 800 (39 Minutes)
Calibration: None!
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guided with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop.
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Posted September 20th, 2011 by Dan
For some reason I have never taken a picture of the moon with my 6″ scope before. Well I was doing some testing with the new mount during the full moon and decided what the heck, I’ll spend 1/60th of a second on it.
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Posted August 31st, 2011 by Dan
Posted August 31st, 2011 by Dan
Image Location and Date: Julian Starfest on August 27th, 2011
Object: Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd + M71 in Sagitta
Mount: CG5GT
Imaging scope: 300mm Tair-3c lens
Imaging FL: 300mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5.6
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 7 x 300sec @ ISO 800 (35 Minutes)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Fits Liberator + Photoshop.
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Posted August 31st, 2011 by Dan
Image Location and Date: Julian Starfest on August 27th, 2011
Object: Double Cluster NGC884 + NGC869
Mount: CG5GT
Imaging scope: 300mm Tair-3c lens
Imaging FL: 300mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5.6
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 27 x 300sec @ ISO 800 (2 Hours 15 Minutes)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Fits Liberator + Photoshop.
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Posted August 31st, 2011 by Dan
Image Location and Date: Julian Starfest on August 28th, 2011
Object: NGC7000 North America Nebula
Mount: CG5GT
Imaging scope: 300mm Tair-3c lens
Imaging FL: 300mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5.6
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 7 x 300sec @ ISO 800 (35 Minutes)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Fits Liberator + Photoshop.
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Posted August 31st, 2011 by Dan
I recently rented an 8mm fisheye lens from Borrowlenses.com for a week to mess around. It’s pretty neat but you can only do so much with them. I think when I’m finally going to buy a nice wide lens it will be in the 21mm prime range.
Image Location and Date: Tierra Del Sol (SDAA Dark Site) on August 30th, 2011
Object: Milky Way
Mount: CG5GT
Imaging scope: Peleng 8mm Fisheye
Imaging FL: 8mm
Imaging focal ratio: f8
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 3 x 300sec @ ISO 800 (15 Minutes)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Fits Liberator + Photoshop.
Image Location and Date: Julian Starfest on August 27th, 2011
Object: Milky Way
Mount: CG5GT
Imaging scope: Peleng 8mm Fisheye
Imaging FL: 8mm
Imaging focal ratio: f8
Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D
Lights: 4 x 300sec @ ISO 800 (20 Minutes)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Antares 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Fits Liberator + Photoshop.
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