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.

Reprocessed B33

I started again from scratch and had a complete reprocess of the Horsehead nebula. Combined now will calibration frames it is certainly a good deal cleaner. Plus I believe practice makes perfect and I am getting more adept at being more subtle with the techniques of Photoshop, less each time is certainly more!. I have also discovered it is to be turned into A3 size and printed very soon, cant wait to see it.

As mentioned previously there was a bright moon not far away at the time of capture.

I am happy with the dusty stuff captured. One thing I have noticed Blogspot appears to brighten the images a fraction from my original.

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.

 

 

Supernova 2014J

Sometimes the luck just holds. Well this time anyway. If you wander back through my blog or find my post on M95 april 2012. The avid nova watchers will remember the eruption in M95 sn2012aw. This happened just as I started at work a set of nights. We only do 2 sets a year and could not believe my misfortune in having to work when the skies were clear. Now go back a little futher to sept 2011 and sn 2011fe in M101. We were about to move and I had dismantled the observatory in preparation.

But not this time fellow bloggers. I had imaged m82 back in Oct testing out my new kit (left pic) and the wow amazing sn 2014J captured just last night 1 day after it's discovery. I am sure at this moment they are searching through Hubble archives to find the progenitor. We know already it is a type 1a and a few theories exist as to the fate of this white dwarf star.

Anyway here is my pic.

I am trying to do a blink comparison aswell. I will post it if I manage it. Any advice would be appreciated.

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.

Imaging the Califoria Nebula @f7

Whilst waiting for the Rosette to be clear of a tree the other night I had a play and took 3x 20 minute exposures of the California nebula. I have imaged this object before with the old set up imaging at @4.96 focal length of 446mm I was achieving a lovely wide field image encompassing the whole of the nebula. The new system is not as fast with the FLT110. Even with the dedicated TMB field flattener there is no reduction in the focal lenth so I now image at f7 at 770mm. So I just wanted to post 2 pics from the old system to the new. I had initial concerns over exposure length with the increase in focal ratio but my concerns were soon dissipated with the sensitivity of the new camera. I will of course need to mosaic a few of the larger targets. I cant wait to post some results.

 

Addendum

I have been learning a few new processing techniques Below is an update to the above to include a selective unsharp mask anda high pass filter. An amazing difference for 1 hours worth of exposure.

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.

A work in progress

As per my previous post I had a second night of beautiful clear skies. I had a few issues with plate solving though. Loaded a previous nights frame and solved it. asked the scope to goto and it was out by over a degree???? Some manual moves to frame it gave me an opportunity to gather another 3 hours of data. I have had several processing attempts. Some of which are posted here. Before christmas I spent some time with Mark Casto http://astrocasto.blogspot.co.uk/ where I learned and brushed up on a few Photoshop processes.

 From these images you can see I have enjoyed having a play. First image was a 2 hour process with flats removed and processed to highlight the dark dust lanes. Very pleased with the focus and flat image that the new spacers provide. I especially like the subtle wispy tendrils. 10 minute subs were used. Sometimes underprocessing brings out more details.

The second Image is a more in depth

process concentrating on keeping the colours as natural as possible without clipping the bottom end. 5 hours of data provide a smoother image.  A little more to do with the background colour. A big learning curve here as this is the first time I have used photoshop to process an image. I am very happy with the progress made so far.

The final image here is a combination of the 2 leaving the dark dust more prominent. I like the way the outer edges are a striking red from the internal pink, colour correction to maintain star colour. Finally I used a what appears to be an aggressive kernel filter to remove some intensity from the stars. It has clipped the bottom end but I like the way it has removed some stars thus focus the eye on the nebulosity. Beauty is of cousre in the eye of the beholder And the point of this post was to show differences in processing on different areas of the image.  As per usual the weather has closed in again and I see in the forecast a week of rain. I would like a few more hours in here before it is complete, but I do think I am on the way to a very pleasing image. Tell me what you think fellow bloggers.

Winter Project. Rosette Nebula.

This is a processd image from last night. 2 Hours worth of data in 10 minute subs. I would like to collect at least 6-8 hours plus calibration frames. No calibration frames taken as yet.
                 I see the way I would like this post to pan out showing a 2, 4, 6 hour image then a fianl calibrated processed pic to complete. But as we all know weather here is a shocker and this is the first real attempt in approx 6 weeks. We will see how this progresses and I will of course keep you all posted.
                 I now have my own set of T2 spacers and completed the set up last night, with CCD inspector showing a very flat field with even focus throughout. The biggest defect I can see here is the need for a flat field.
                 Even though the wind was swirly outside the dome the guiding graph showed no errors in the 2 hours taken. Although expected I am very impressed with the Ha sensitivity of the camera a huge difference between the un modded Canon 40D. It will be fun to go through targets imaged over the last couple of years and see the differences.

Comet Ison Animation

Before Comet Ison drove himself headlong to a fiery destruction. I captured these images on the morning of the 28th Oct. travveling at 115 thousand mph. 30x 2 minute exposures .