Sunday, February 21, 2010
IC 443, project continues
H-alpha channel
This winter has been very cloudy, up here 65N. Those few clear nights has been very cold, temperatur has dopped to -30 celsius at many nights. I have used every oportunity to shoot various target, even though extereme low temperature does no good to my equipment nor me.
Now I have collected as much H-a light to this Supernova remnant as I could. I have had, ones again, many problems with my scope and other eguipments doe the weather and other various reasons.
In previous post, there is this target with less than two hours of exposure time, now I have shot much more exposures to have higher S/N. This will need even more time, but this season is not long enough for that and I'll like to shoot O-III and S-II channels too to make a narrowband color composition out of them.
Here is a wider field IC 443, from February 2009, imaged with a Tokina AT-X 300mm camera optics:
Here is a wider field IC 443, from February 2009, imaged with a Tokina AT-X 300mm camera optics:
Technical details;
Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9 Guiding, SXV-AO @ 7Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
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Exposures:
H-alpha 18x1200s, binned 1x1 + 14 x 1200s, binned 2x2, Flats. Bias and Darks
Total exposuretime for H-alpha is about eleven hours.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Starting a new project, IC 443
Last night I started a new imaging project with the IC 443, supernova remnant in Gemini.
Not a very promicing start though, I got less than two hours of usable data after spending whole night shooting it. There was lots of thin upper clouds and they ruined majority of my frames. I'll shoot more H-a, maybe 6-7 hours, Sulfur and Oxygen as well.
I will test a new imaging system with this objet, I call it "VARE" Variable Resolution imaging. The idea is shoot part of the data binned 1x1, like an example here, and rest of it binned down to 2x2 - 4x4.
By that way, I can use high S/N details from a 1x1 binned image and low S/N areas from other bin modes.
Using binning is basicly same as use of the faster optical configuration, I have much greater sensitivity at cost of resolution. For example if I bin camera down 3x3, I have allmoust nine times more sensitivity!
I will write a tutorial about VARE-method, after I have tested it.
Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO @ 7Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
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Exposures:
H-alpha 5x1200s, binned 1x1, Flats. Bias and Darks
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Planetary Nebula in Constellation Lynx
Red=S-II, Green=H-alpha and Blue=O-III
Finally, after a long period of bad weather, I was able to shoot more H-a, O-III and S-II channels.
Seeing was not too bad but the transparency was very poor. This is an object with a very low surface brightness and bad transparency eated out some signal.
Due the low brightness this objet is not commonly imaged, even though it has a largish angular diameter to a planetary nebula. (6'.67" x 6'.67")
Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack.
Deconvolution with a CCDSharp, 30 iterations.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.
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Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guiding, SXV-AO @ 9Hz
Image Scale, 1,5 arcseconds/pixel
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Exposures:
H-alpha 14x1200s, binned 2x2 and 7x1200s, binned 3x3
O-III 2x600s, binned 4x4 and 1x1200s, binned 4x4
S-II 3x600s, binned 4x4 and 1x1200s, binned 4x4
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
An Universe Today article, Stereo "Soul"
An Article by Tammy Plotner.
At this time Universe today published an article based on my volumized closeup visualization of a "Soul nebula".
Klick HERE, to see an articel in Universe Today.
The original image with details:
http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p1072219942/h12739e52#h12739e52
A 3D-animation for those, who has difficulties to see Stereo image pairs:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-3d-animations-from-deep-space.html
The original image with details:
http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p1072219942/h12739e52#h12739e52
A 3D-animation for those, who has difficulties to see Stereo image pairs:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-3d-animations-from-deep-space.html
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