December 31, 2009
After reading about MartinB’s method for combining Ha into/onto RGB data for his Cone nebula image a while back, I was itching to have a play with some of my own data.
Erik Larsen has very nicely allowed me to use his RGB data in this combined image, and to post the results. His data was 11×300s, taken with a modded Canon 500D through an Orion ED80. Many thanks for allowing me to show this.
So, I took Erik’s RGB Horsehead and Flame RGB data
and the Ha data that I took on Christmas Day
Threw them both into Registar, aligned the Ha data to the RGB data, saved them out.
Now using MartinB’s method, I load the RGB data into a layer, then duplicated that RGB layer on top with “soft light” mode. This increases the contrast, but also drops the black point, so I used some levels/curves to bring that back up a little.
I then pasted the greyscale Ha data into a layer on top, set the green and blue channels to black (only the red was left), then set that layer method to “lighten” to it only affected the reds.
After some careful levels and curves on the duplicate RGB and the Ha layers, it got somewhere close to what I wanted. The stars have a slight red halo from the larger Ha stars, which should be easy to fix later, and maybe I over did it with the Ha lightening 
This is the result. Lots of lovely reds, but no loss of contrast like previous attempts of using just an additiona Ha layer, plus the other colours are not washed out. I am currently digging out all my previos Ha RGB images to see if I can improve on them with the same method.
(Click on image for larger version)
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December 27, 2009
95 days… ninety five long frustrating days… thats how long it was without an image. And then, on Christmas day, the skies cleared. It was glorious, and I have the imaging buzz again! Woohoo!
Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 77EDII @ f/4.3
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + Maxim
Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 8×900s, Astronomnik 13nm Ha (101 bias, 101 flats)
Orchestrated: CDD Commander
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2 + PixInsight
(Click on the image for a larger version)
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December 10, 2009
80+ days now without any imaging is making me a bit crazy, so I decided to dig out some old data and see what I could do with it.
I took my old Rosette RGB data from January 2008, and used Registar to align that with Ha data from MartinB. Used the Ha data to lighten only the red channel of the RGB, and then used a deconvolved copy of the Ha data as a Luminance channel on top of all of it. Lots of fiddling with levels, curves, selective sharpening, layer masks and NoiseNinja before it started to look anywhere near right
I had forgotten about all the strange things that the Hyperstar did to my images, includuding being flipped horitonally (caused Registar to fail!) and slightly bloaty stars. Looking at this RGB data again now (nearly 2 years later), I can see some real issues with it. Hopefully I`ll get a chance to shoot some RGB data of the Rosette this winter with my Borg 77…. actually, at the current rate of bad weather, I`ll be happy if I manage to image anything at all before summer comes around again!
I`d just like to say that I have looked at this image on several different monitors, and it varies wildly from rich reds to light salmon pinks, so I just worked on it with my calibrated monitors for what I see as my own personal choice. Your own opinion of the colour will vary depending on how your monitor shows it.
I`d also like to thank MartinB for allowing me to use his Ha data for this project, it really helped add some punch to this image.
RGB Data
OTA: NexStar 8 GPS + Hyperstar @ f/2
Guiding: WO66 + DSI-C + PHD
Imaging: QHY8 + MaximDL, 20×180s, Astronomik CLS
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
HA Data
OTA: FSQ 106
Imaging: QSI 532 + MaximDL, 14×600s, Astronomik 13nm Ha
Stacked: CCDStack
Aligned with Registar, post process with PixInsight and PSCS2.
(Click on Image for larger version)
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September 29, 2009
A while back, just after I received my Borg 77, I jokingly mentioned to a friend of mine who owned a Starlight Xpress H36 that it should illuminate his CCD reasonably well. We laughed, we joked… and a crazy idea kind of stuck in our heads.
I contacted Hutech and obtained the correct 72mm adapters and spacers to allow me to swap over from the SX M25C to the H36, and we chose a few targets. One that stuck out as an obvious choice was the Heart and Soul area, which is always done as a two pane mosaic. It would be in a good location in the sky as it got dark, and a great place to start.
So, when it started getting clear and dark on the Friday at the Kelling Heath Star Party, the plan sprung into action.
A few things to mention before we get to the image itself.
- Many thanks go to Paxo (Steve) for lending me the camera to attach to my Borg for this project.
- This was really a proof of concept to show whether it would actually work or not. I think it did 
- The H36 wasnt aligned squarely with the OTA, something we only noticed in the subs after they were stacked. We should have checked the collimation screws on the H36, but were too excited at the time! The stacked version had much larger stars at the bottom of the image than at the top, which meant I had to get creative with the star reduction routines. Its not ideal, but it certainly looks a lot better than the version I first saw on screen.
- We were unable to plate solve in Maxim using this configuration, nor was PoleAlignMax. As such, the polar alignment is fractionally out, and field rotation is just visible in the very corners of the uncropped version. Unsure if this was due to such a large area of sky to solve for, or the large number of catalog stars it tried to retrive from the catalogs before it tried solving. I doubt I will get another chance to try this specific combination out, but I know Paxo now has a Pentax 75, so there will be similar projects coming up soon which will require PAM to work.
Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 77EDII @ f/4.3
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + PHD
Imaging: Starlight Xpress H36 + MaximDL, 30×600s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (101 bias, 101 flats)
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2
(Click on image for larger version, or click >>HERE<< for the MAAASIVE version… 4445 × 2635!!)
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September 25, 2009
The Kelling Heath Autumn Equinox Star party has always been lucky for the weather, and this year was no different. Of the 4 nights I was there, it was clear on 2 of them. Thats more clear nights than I have seen in the previous month!
I do have at least one other image from Kelling that I need to do some extended work on before it sees the light of day, so I started on this one first.
Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 77EDII @ f/4.3
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + Maxim
Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 24×600s, Hutech IDAS (101 bias, 101 flats)
Orchestrated: CDD Commander
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2 + PixInsight
I know that the camera isnt quite square to the OTA (hence the crop and the slightly larger stars in lower right corner), but thats something to work on at some point in the future.
(Click on image for larger version)
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September 10, 2009
You know some nights when everything goes right, and all you really remember is the imaging? Yes? Then you also know the soul destroying, life sucking nights where a long list of things that worked just fine last time decide to conspire against you. Last night was the latter option. I wont bore you with details, but I nearly packed up at 11pm and went to bed.
Thankfully (almost) all the problems went away after I rebooted my laptop, so I managed to get everything working, left it running for ~6 hours, and still went to bed
Seeing wasnt great, a fair amount of vapour in the air, lit up by the moon, but it was quite still in the sky, breeze free on the ground… and bl__dy cold! Not “winter” cold, but autumn has definitely arrived with the fresh mornings leaving everything covered in dew.
Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 77EDII @ f/4.3
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + PHD
Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 24×900s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (101 bias, 101 flats)
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2
Note: the lower right corner in the mid sized image shows some odd curvature, which I pretty convinced is due to me overtightening the front tube ring on the Borg and pinching the objective. Next time out, I will have to keep an eye on that.
(Click on image for larger version)
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August 21, 2009
Well, although forecasted as a clear night on Wednesday, the clouds did roll in every now and then… but in between them, the seeing was great, very still indeed. A bit blustery, so I swapped my OTA and target from Iris Nebula with the MakNewt to using the Borg 77ED@f/4.3 and the North America nebula and Pelican Nebula. I knew the cloud would cause some issues, and transparency wasnt as good as I would have liked, so I decided to image in Hydrogen Alpha. Looks like it was the right choice
Highlight of the evening – sitting in my moon chair on the lawn, leaning back and looking south, a incredibly bright meteor lit of the sky, with the trail it left behind glowing for 5-6 seconds. Not often you get lucky enough to be looking in the right place at the right time:)
“Whoah!” moment of the evening – PHD deciding that the strobe light from a passing aircraft was a better star to be guiding on than the real guide star. Yes, it did pass RIGHT through the FoV for the guide scope.
Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 77EDII @ f/4.3
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + PHD
Imaging: M25C + MaximDL, 21×900s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (101 bias, 101 flats)
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: Registar+ ImagesPlus + PSCS2
(Click on image for the large version… its worth it for the finer detail!)
Posted by Steve under Astronomy | Comments Off
July 26, 2009
Usually it takes weeks and weeks to get a clear sky after new kit arrives, but it was threatening to clear last night so I set up.
The clouds didnt really want to play ball as they were supposed to, so I only really managed to get about an hour of really clear skies, but I was just glad to be outside. Nice to see the Milkyway stretching down to the southern horizon again, and the return of astrodark again.
As much as I would like to have had a full night imaging, I was happy wth getting the Borg out and imaging. Call this a dry run of things to come
Almost zero flex in the system (0.28 pixels per hour or thereabouts). I was also imaging with the WO66 but that was more to find the correct back focus distance for the reducer, so I wasnt expecting much out of that one.
Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 77EDII @ f/4.3
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + PHD
Imaging: M25C + MaximDL, 5×600s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (51 bias, 51 flats)
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: ImagesPlus + PSCS2
(Click on image for larger but slightly noisy version)
Posted by Steve under Astronomy | Comments Off
July 4, 2009
Gah, after the “Perfect night” on Wenesday, Yin and Yang have now swung back in the opposite direction by giving me one of those nights I wish I hadnt started. Random USB kit failures, Lodestar kept spitting out black frames, replaced with DSI which spat out white images (then died), GPS mouse failed occasionally, Logitech wingman controller for game pad was sporadically working… lost 90 minutes on that!
(Remember kiddies, just because your brain told you that you put the USB hub out on the table, and your brain also told you that you put the power supply out and plugged it into the 4-way, it does help if you actually connect the two items!).
Discovered some flex in the system, which got me pricing up a Borg 77 or 101, only to discover today that a lot of PHD users on the stark labs Yahoo group are stating that newer versions of PHD are giving some weird RA trailing effects. WIll watch that thread with great interest, and put the thoughts of Borg goodliness to one side for now.
Also, not sure if I have the correct 56mm back focus distance for the WO66 FLAT2 unit. WIll have to investigate that as well. The very edges/corners of this image have very bloaty stars.
I`ll be back for this one later in the year….
Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD, plus CCD Commander
OTA: William Optics ZS 66SD
Guiding: FLT98CF + SX Lodestar + PHD
Imaging: M25C + MaximDL, 9×600s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (100 bias, 100 flats)
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: ImagesPlus + PSCS2
(No larger image, its too noisey!)
Posted by Steve under Astronomy | Comments Off
July 2, 2009
I missed this one totally last year due to poor weather (either cloudy, or too windy to use the 190MN), so the chance to shoot it this year was too good to miss.
I have to say that shotting narrowband Hydrogen Alpha during what is effectivly twilight still gets fairly decent images. You have to be careful with the noise when post-processing, but its certainly not a waste of time to get out there and image.
The dew last night was getting a bit crazy… as soon as it started to cool, the amount of water that dropped out of the air (and onto all the electrics!) was terrifying.
So, anyway, here we go:
Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD, plus CCD Commander
OTA: Skywatcher 190 MakNewt
Guiding: ED80 + SX Lodestar + PHD
Imaging: M25C + MaximDL, 17×600s, Astronomik 13nm Ha (100 bias, 100 flats)
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: ImagesPlus + PSCS2
(Click on the image for a larger version)
Posted by Steve under Astronomy | Comments Off
