A couple of new pix -- M42 and Eta Carina

[davenn]

had a good nite under the stars on Friday nite ( 16th Jan)

did more comet pictures to stack, also imaged M42, Eta Carina and the Small Magellanic Cloud
That last one I haven't worked on yet - will add to this thread when done

M42 - The Orion Nebula
15 x 30 sec images stacked, 2500 ISO, f5.6 @ 400mm Camera and telephoto lens were piggybacked on the telescope and its mount so I could do tracking ... avoid star trails

This is the Eta Carina nebula
5 x 30 sec images stacked, 400mm@ f5.6, 2500 ISO

cheers
Dave

 

[jim mcnamara]

That is a lot of time and attention in getting those two images. Thanks for posting them. PS: check Russ W's site for a bunch of photos - you can see a progression toward a really good quality image. Like these.

 

[davenn]

Thanks Jim ... Yes, Russ does some really nice work

Its a lot of fun with several disciplines involved ... Astronomy, photography and my weakest one ... post processing ;)
and that bit is almost the hardest part, trying to produce an image that is as true to reality as possible

Dave

 

[Drakkith]

Its a lot of fun with several disciplines involved ... Astronomy, photography and my weakest one ... post processing ;)
and that bit is almost the hardest part, trying to produce an image that is as true to reality as possible

Meh, screw reality. Make those pictures look as good as you can get them! After all, you can't see these objects like they appear in the pictures anyways, so there's really no 'reality' to go by. Well, that's my opinion at least.

 

[davenn]

Meh, screw reality. Make those pictures look as good as you can get them! After all, you can't see these objects like they appear in the pictures anyways, so there's really no 'reality' to go by. Well, that's my opinion at least.

LOL, Ohh I do my best to do that :) its just in various forums, I have seen images of some deep sky objects where the poster has seriously overcooked the image
pushed the saturation etc to the extreme and it ( in my opinion) has been ruined

OK here's the last of the 3 deep sky images from Friday night
This is the SMC ( Small Magellanic Cloud) This is one of the 2 satellite galaxies to our Milky Way Galaxy

6 x 30 sec images stacked, 400mm@ f5.6, 2500 ISO
There wasn't much colour in this pic anyway, primarily just star fields so didn't try and push any colour into it ... .The bright globular cluster, lower centre, is 47 Tuc ( 47 Tucana)
its only about 1/2 the size of M13 in the nthrn hemisphere and Omega Centauri in the southern hemisphere which are both really large globulars

Cheers
Dave

 

[Drakkith]

Nice!

 

[Drakkith]

I hope to take more pictures soon, as I've been a long hiatus. My SBIG ST-2000XMcamera was just serviced by SBIG and I'm waiting on an e-mail from their service department so I can pay for it and get it shipped back to me.

 

[davenn]

Will look forward to seeing some new pictures from you too :)
I don't know how many other astrophotographers there are on PF, really only know of you and Russ

Dave

 

[Drakkith]

By the way, I'm hugely jealous of your southern hemisphere location. There are so many awesome targets in the southern sky that I can't see.

 

[davenn]

By the way, I'm hugely jealous of your southern hemisphere location. There are so many awesome targets in the southern sky that I can't see.

come on "down under" for a holiday :)
we can head into the outback where there isn't a streetlight for at least 500km in any direction :)

this Aussie song isn't the Aussie anthem but it almost should be ...

Land down under
by Men At Work



Traveling in a fried-out combie
On a hippie trail, head full of zombie
I met a strange lady, she made me nervous
She took me in and gave me breakfast
And she said,

"Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover. "

Buying bread from a man in Brussels
He was six-foot-four and full of muscles
I said, "Do you speak-a my language?"
He just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich
And he said,

"I come from a land down under
Where beer does flow and men chunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover. "

Lyin' in a den in Bombay
With a slack jaw, and not much to say
I said to the man, "Are you trying to tempt me
Because I come from the land of plenty? "
And he said,

"Do you come from a land down under?
Where women glow and men plunder?
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover. "
Yeah!

Living in a land down under
Where women glow and men plunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover!

Living in a land down under
Where women glow and men plunder
Can't you hear, can't you hear the thunder?
You better run, you better take cover!

 

[Andy Resnick]

had a good nite under the stars on Friday nite ( 16th Jan)
<snip>
cheers
Dave

Jealous = me. Here, it's both cloudy and frigid. All the time. Until, like, April.

 

[davenn]

Until, like, April.

yikes :(
dunno when I will get the next chance ... been cloudy and sometimes raining since then
It definitely was may last chance for the Comet Lovejoy pix

Do you also do astronomy and maybe astrophotography, Andy ?
Would be interesting to know how many of us there are :)Dave

 

[russ_watters]

How did I not see this thread and you guys talking about me? Thanks guys!

davenn, I have a picture somewhat similar to that first one on my site...except nowhere near as good. And that's an unbelievable number of (very sharp!) stars in the second one. Great stuff!

I haven't done any atrophotography in like a year...I'm starting to itch again though...

 

[russ_watters]

Meh, screw reality. Make those pictures look as good as you can get them! After all, you can't see these objects like they appear in the pictures anyways, so there's really no 'reality' to go by. Well, that's my opinion at least.

Agreed. As long as you aren't literally painting it, pretty much anything is fair game to me.

 

[russ_watters]

come on "down under" for a holiday :)
we can head into the outback where there isn't a streetlight for at least 500km in any direction :)

this Aussie song isn't the Aussie anthem but it almost should be ...

Land down under
by Men At Work

I bought a Colin Hay solo album after he did a bit on "Scrubs" playing "Overkill" while following a doctor around all day (in a halucination). And the best I can do for dark skies is driving 100km from Philadelphia to some 600m "mountains" and freezing (because it is only clear in winter) in a random parking lot somewhere (with no beer, so I can drive home at dawn). Your way is better.

 

[davenn]

How did I not see this thread and you guys talking about me? Thanks guys!

davenn, I have a picture somewhat similar to that first one on my site...except nowhere near as good. And that's an unbelievable number of (very sharp!) stars in the second one. Great stuff!

I haven't done any atrophotography in like a year...I'm starting to itch again though...

Hey Russ

that's because we were talking about you not to you hahahaha joking :)

seriously, please get back into some astrophotography, as I am encouraging Drakkith to also do so. It would be great to get
regular content put up in a thread showing images, and seeing the improvement in them with our collective growing experience etc
I know I would enjoy discussions on imaging and post processing etc

cheers
Dave

 

[davenn]

And the best I can do for dark skies is driving 100km from Philadelphia to some 600m "mountains..."

Where I went for these pix is an hour's drive out of the city its good for looking west, but still a lot of sky glow to the east from the lights of Sydney
For really dark skies, I need to travel some hours to the other side of the mountains and stay in motel overnight.
Now knowing what the camera and lens is capable of, I may make that effort periodically as we head towards winter

Dunno about you, But I find with older age, I just cannot handle the cold nights like I used to haha
It takes a special astro event and some effort to drag the scope outside in recent years ;)Dave

 

[Andy Resnick]

<snip>Do you also do astronomy and maybe astrophotography, Andy ?
Would be interesting to know how many of us there are :)

Yes- when the weather turns nicer, I try to get outside and enjoy the night sky. Hopefully I'll be able to post some good ones this spring- I missed my chance to image the Virgo galaxy cluster last year.

 

[davenn]

awesome Andy !

please join in the image posting fun, I don't want to feel all alone ;)

Dave

 

[Andy Resnick]

Fair enough- here's some from last summer/fall: One with my telephoto lens (400mm) of Andromeda, 1 hour and 40 minutes of integration time:

But I also discovered some real benefits to wider fields of view: here's 2 using my 85mm, one is a full frame photo of the Milky Way and the other a 1:1 crop of a region in Cygnus:

And finally 2 with my wide angle lens (15mm): a 5 hour 'star trails' photo and a stitched-together Milky Way image

 

[davenn]

very nice, Andy ! :)

Andromeda @ 400mm, I had been wondering what to expect at that focal length :)
100 minutes total time, can you remember the sub exposure times and what did you process them in ?

cheers
Dave

 

[Andy Resnick]

Each exposure was 10s (that's the best I can reliably do, meaning >80% acceptable), ISO 2000, IIRC. Processed in Deep Sky Stacker.

 

[davenn]

Greetings Andy

I did mean to reply earlier, been a bit busy

I'm doing my image stacking in DSS, but I don't do any processing in there
I will usually use either Lightroom or Photoshop. They both have better Levels and Curves control than DSS

So I do the stack, along with any darks and flats I want to use. I then save the file as a 16bit TIFF and use the option save processing as embedded only
I am finding that particularly when using Lightroom for PP that I usually don't worry about adding flats to the stack in DSS, as LR has good lens/field
correction adjustment features

I'm far from being anywhere near an expert on the post-processing. Most of my deep space astrophotography goes back to the film days
and deep space object digital imaging and stacking etc is very new to me. There are some VERY talented guys on the Cloudy Nights astronomy forums
who have been a great help with guidance for me :)

Dave