Moon 12th March 2022

Not my most favourite object in the night sky, Captured on Saturday night approx 21.03.

AVI capture at just 4 frames per second, hardy a high frame rate but best 90% of 300 frames for each

 

California Nebula

 A rework of a previous capture. Using the new to me Arcsinh Photoshop curves processing. A piece of software designed for PIXinsight. Can be found here. Photoshop Colour Preserving Stretch (markshelley.co.uk) Along with a fantastic explanation and several You tube videos showing it's use. A great one from Astro Ed (1) Astrophotography: The ABSOLUTE BEST way to STRETCH your Astro Image data in Photoshop [PS]! - YouTube demonstrates some new techniques for the teasing of data from images, especially keeping those stars small too. I used two itterations and combined it with a Starnet++ frame. Not the cleanest of data but great fun to play with. 

M42 The Orion Nebula

A last look at the Great Orion Nebula for a few months. Unfortunately for me it disappears behind the front of the house about an hour past the meridian so a very limited window of capture now in March.

Anyway a short capture of 20 x 180 and 20 x 30 seconds images taken with the ASI294mc pro on the ED100 via the ASI AIR Pro.  Calibrated and stacked in Deep sky stacker and processed in Photoshop. I am always amazed how smooth the result is and even with a huge crop on the Trapezium the resulting image is incredibly clean. One confession to make though for the pixel peepers, the 4 stars of the Trapezium have been made round removing slight halos from processing.

Jupiter

Some recent captures under less than average seeing. Using my ZWO ASI120MC camera and the clubs Celestron C9.25 with a 2x Barlow lens. Captured at 11 frames per second approx 90 seconds of recoding to avoid image rotation. The best 50% of frames captured was the result. My best capture of the Great red spot I like the small white disturbance into the south equatorial belt, that defines the red spot nicely. I can also see  some lovely striation detail to the North Belt. I am pleased with it despite the seeing, but not as happy as I would like when seeing some of the other jupiter images posted on Facebook groups. I will of course endeavour to get a little more each capture and produce an image worthy of publicaion.

I am very happy with this image capture of Jupiter and Ganymede. A steadier atmosphere gave a small improvement to the overall image quality. Captured to the right is Ganymede. It looked like a horrible blur at first. An RGB realign later has given a pleasing result to it's disk. I also gave a small increase in colour vibrance and some contrast adjustment. Some distinct patterns in the north & south temperate belts can also be seen. I have a few more Avi's to process and I will add to this post if anything new comes from them..

 

More from our nearest neighbour.

Sunday was a day of work for me. Finished early enough to roll back the roof for what was about an hours break before the clouds rolled across at around hrs. This is the first time I have used my William Optics GT 81 triplet refractor for lunar imaging. The focusser on the scope is wonderfully smooth and allowed a quick set up. Imaging at f11.8 I am pleased with detail. Registax calibrated using 70% of the best of 1500 frames. Processed in Photoshop with a layers mask overlay to increase contrast. A high pass filter also used to selectively sharpen. Width across the image approx 1000 km. Centred is my favourite crater on the surface "Plato" Age is anything from 3.2 to 3.8 billion years old. A perfct circular shape has obliterated what was a mountainous area. Appearance in the centre is of a smooth surface formed by lava. There are craters in the central area, not visible at this focal lenth. High walls and steep slopes of 2000 metres are almost perfect aprt fromon the left edge is a partial collapse. I have also neglected to change the image to B & W I like the contrast from the imbrium basin.

My second image is again the same focal lenth as before. The 93x93 Km crater "Copernicus" is the showcase of this lunar vista splashed just south of  the tail of the Appennine mountain range. It's central peaks rise approx 1200 metres high about the same as the Caign Gorm mountains.  Everywhere you look is something different and interesting to look at.


















Using the live view record feature I can record using the 5 x magnification feature. Therefore not just a crop of the above image.
I am forever amazed that just an 81mm refractor is capable of this.
On the right edge lies  Eratosthenes. Very high slopes and walls require a more oblique angle from the sun to illuminate the walls slightly smaller than copernicus at 60 km's wide. A high pass filter and unsharp masking has teased a little more detail out.






Finally a mosaic of 2 of the images. My intention was not to create a mosaic this time. I was just imaging random objects. 2 line up so here they are.

Lunar landscape

I have revisited an image / mosaic of the Appennine mountain region after having it professionally printed. What appears on the the screen is not always the same as the printed result. I will have to have this one reprinted soon and look foward to seeing the difference.
Several layer masks and soft light blend modes have increased contrast. Layered sharpening has also allowed the mountains to become sharper whilst leaving the lava plains alone.

Without doubt my favourite area on the lunar surface. The more lunar savvy will spot the landing location of Apollo 15 at Hadley Rille. A previous post does mark the landing site.
If you have never tried this have a go. I recently hooked up the laptop to our big tv. I was stunned at seeing the image so large and lifelike.

Rosette Again

The weather has been awful for most of the UK this last few weeks and I feel for those in my county of birth in Somerset. It has given me the chance to reprocess my 8 hour image of the Rosette nebula. Stacked with calibration frames using Maxim DL. As mentioned before I am using my new learnt skills using Photoshopto process. The use of levels & curves tease out the detail hidden in a master frame. A DDP algorythym in Imagesplus was the software of choice to do this previously. Various blending modes and layer masks allow me more control over the final result. I have mentioned a few times before that I prefere to under process rather than over do it. Each of us has our own way of doing things and it is always fantastic to see others interpretations of these enigmatic targets we choose to image. I am trying to put together a tutorial for my workflow, I will of course share when I have completed it. For now please enjoy my image. I have certainly enjoyed putting it together.

M82 Nova Wide field.

For 2 nights in a row we have been treated to clear skies. I have treated my camera again to the amazing supernova in the nearby galaxy of M82. I wanted a wide field shot of the area. Here is the result of 2 hours of exposure in 10 minute sub frames.

 

I am very happy with the dust lanes in M81. Dark dust visible circling the galaxy core.

 

Unfortunatly astronomy for the next week will take a back seat. I am working a set of nights from Monday bad timing with the moon out of the way.

 

 

The Horsehead Nebula.

With a magnitude -11.8 moon causing a little concern. I thought I would have a play. I have imaged the Horsehead a few times before so I was not banking on a perfect image. I must admit though I am again impressed with the sensitivity of the camera and scope. I captured 3 hours in 20 minute sub frames.

 Processed in photoshop only using levels & curves. An unsharp mask & high pass filter has done wonders on the dusty stuff & blended using layer masks. A subtle saturationboost and noise filter applied to complete.

Rosette 8 Hours

Rosette Nebula

 

The skies were surprisingly clear last night allowing me to take another 3 hours of 20 minute sub exposures. Totalling now 8 hours, Work is still progressing. I still want to play with some layer masking to highlight those dust lanes and outer edges of the nebula. There is no way my DSLR would have ever been capable of this level of detail.