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Thursday, April 7, 2011

It's over...




Many thanks to all followers and readers
Tomorrow, at 08.04., we'll be out of astronomical darkness.


Due a very northern location, 65N, we have a mandatory pause in astronomical imaging up here.
Next time we'll have real astronomical darkness, about an hour, at 06.09.
As always, I feel kind of sad, since I'm forced to give up my beloved hobby (read addiction)...


Even though I can't do any astronomical imaging up here, I'll keep publishing my experiments here in my blog!
The mandatory Summer brake gives me an opportunity to further develop my methods and fine tune my imaging hardware for the next season.

This imaging season, 2010/2011, I managed to use every single clear night,
the total number of images is not very high though, due the cloudy Winter season.

There are 19 individual images imaged from Oulu, Finland and 18 images imaged with an  Australian remote telescope (Northern Galactic Group). Remote images are imaged mainly during Summer and Spring 2010.
I hope, that I will have a possibility to use some remote instrument at this Summer season too, nothing is sure yet though.

Here is a slideshow from a collection of all my astronomical images from the season Autumn 2010/Spring 2011.
As usually, there are two versions of narrowband images, one in HST-palette and an other in "natural colors"



Direct link to the images above, with technical details: http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p198557669

Generally I'm happy with results from this season. I managed to get some very rare objects imaged, like some extremely dim Planetary Nebulae and Sharpless catalog objects. Beside that, I have further developed my processing techniques. (A new version of "Tone mapping", TM v2.0, will be soon ready to publish.)


One APOD from this season too!

[nasa-large.jpg]
 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110218.html


3D-experiments

I have done my 3D-studies from all of my images. They can be found from my portfolio in different formats. Parallel and Cross Vision stereo pairs and an Anaglyph  versions. (Required a pair of Red/Cyan eyeglasses to be seen as 3D.)

Direct links to a 3D-material:
Parallel vision stereo pairs: http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p272573124
Cross vision stereo pairs: http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p26802586
Anaglyph Red/Cyan 3D-images: http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/p532254131
Animated 3D from some of my images: http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/search/label/animations

Even though I can't do any astronomical imaging up here, I'll keep publishing my experiments here in my blog!
The mandatory Summer brake gives me an opportunity to further develop my methods and fine tune my imaging hardware for the next season.


MOVIE

I made a video collection to show only the material shot from my rooftop observatory in Oulu, Finland.
To see this video at YouTube in HD, please, select 720p from lower Right edge, then double click the movie window to see it in full screen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO3D-ALy4Sk&feature=player_embedded



www.tips-fb.com Posted by J-P Metsavainio at 8:35 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

CEDIC '11 (Central European Deepsky Imaging Conference 2011)







I was invited as one of the speakers at CEDIC conference in the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria.
A wonderful experience!
It was great to meet many familiar names from different astronomical discussion groups at live.
Now those famous names will have faces too, thanks to CEDIC.

Many thanks to CEDIC "Spotlight Team" and Christopher Kaltseis for a very hard work!


I had one Workshop and one lecture about an astronomical image processing, specially my "Tone Mapping" technique. 
At the end, I had an extra lecture about my 3D-experiments. I had a set of Red/Cyan anaglyph eyeglasses with me and 3D-images, of different astronomical objects, get projected to a big screen.
I got a feel, that viewers really liked what they saw.

Here are some links to my 3D-experiments, please, have a look:
http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/f359296072 anaglyph, parallel & cross vision stereo 3D


TONE MAPPING v2.0

The name of the workshop was "Tone Mapping Workflow in Practice"
I have further developed this powerful processing technique and now I can call it a Tone Mapping v2.0 .

I have split this technique to a three different groups.
At the moment I have just images about the workflow, without much technical details. I will publish a step by step tutorial, as a PDF, in a very near future,  in this Blog.


I  Tone Mapping for a Narrowband colors




II  Tone Mapping for an extreme luminance stretching




III  Tone Mapping for Narrowband star colors



What's new?

  • Usage of the "Difference Map" A starless image is subtracted from an original image to form a difference map. This map will contain all the removed data by byte by byte.
  • Usage of the "Linear Dodge (Add)" mode, under a Photo Shop, when removed data is placed back guarantee a Zero data lost and an artifact free stars.
  • Usage of the Tone Map for controlling a local sharpening  and contrast
  • Tone map based noise reduction
  • A powerful star selection routine (100% accuracy)  with a "Difference Map"
  • Star colors from a Narrowband data
  • Small tweaks in overall work flow








www.tips-fb.com Posted by J-P Metsavainio at 2:24 PM 0 comments
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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

PuWe1, a Planetary Nebula, project finalized





PuWe1, a Planetary Nebula in Lynx 
Ra 06h 19m 34s Dec +55° 36′ 42"



Note. The size of the full Moon is marked as a gray circle, at the lower Left corner, for a scale.
A bicolor composition from emission of ionized elements. H-alpha = Red, O-III = Green and 85%O-III+15%H-a = Blue. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum. Star colors are mixed with a same method.

PuWe1, (Purgathofer-Weinberger 1, PNG 158.9 + 17.8, PK 158+17.1) is a large circular Planetary Nebula in the constellation of Lynx. It has an apparent diameter of 20', without an outer halo seen in the image.

AN OUTER HALO!

After new sets of exposures, it really starts to look, that there is an outer halo in this Planetary Nebula!
I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere nor imaged before. 
PuWe1 seems to have a same kind of structure, than much brighter M27: http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2011/02/m27-dumbbell-nebula-reprocessed.html

This is an extreme dim nebula but after processing the data carefully, the emission of ionized Oxygen, O-III, seems to have much large diameter, than a circular H-a area at center. There is an extended area of H-a outside of the main structure, it seems to be stronger at Right side of the Nebula. 

M27 and PuWe at the same scale.


Processing work flow:

Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.

Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack. 
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Equipments:
Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 @ f2.8
Platform and guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guider, Lodestar
Image Scale, 3,79 arc seconds/pixel

Exposures:
Baader H-alpha 7nm 12x1200s, binned 1x1
and 16x900s, binned 2x2
Baader O-III 8,5nm 14x600s, binned 3x3

www.tips-fb.com Posted by J-P Metsavainio at 7:52 PM 0 comments
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Barnard 30, B30, project finalized





Barnard 30, a dark nebula in Sh2-264, in Orion
Ra 05h 31m 42s Dec +12° 12′ 39"



Image is in HST-palette, (HST=Hubble Space Telescope) from the emission of ionized elements, R=Sulfur, G=Hydrogen and B=Oxygen. Star colors are mixed from the NB channels, Red=H-a, G=O-III and B= 85%O-III + 15%H-a.


Last night I shot data for S-II & O-III channels (Ionized Sulfur and Oxygen). Very dim but enough for narrowband color composition. Total exposure time is relatively short due the low elevation.
I haven't seen this one in narrowband palette before, please, let me know, if you have seen an emission line image of Barnad 30 somewhere. I'll like to see one for a reference.

Barnard 30 is a dark nebula at Orion's head, due the proximity of eye catchers of Orion Nebula and low surface brightness, this target is rarely imaged.
B30 is part of the very large Sharpless object in Orion's head, Sh2-264. This large nebula spans 8 degrees of sky, that's 16 full Moons side by side, whole upper part of this image is covered with Sh2-264. Above image is about three degrees wide.
B30 lies about 1300 light years from Earth, above the triangular group of stars marking the head of constellation Orion.
Latest data from a Spitzer Space Telescope indicates, that this area is a star-birth region with many low mass stars and brown dwarfs.


Note. The size of the full Moon is marked as a gray circle for a scale. (Moon has an angular size of the 30', that's a 0,5 degrees)
Natural color composition from the emission of ionized elements, R=80%Hydrogen+20%Sulfur, G=100%Oxygen and B=85%Oxygen+15%Hydrogen to compensate otherwise missing H-beta emission. This composition is very close to a visual spectrum. 


Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack. 
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.

Equipments:
Tokina AT-X 300mm f2.8 @ f2.8
Platform and guiding, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9
Guider, Lodestar
Image Scale, 3,79 arc seconds/pixel

Exposures:
Baader H-alpha 7nm 9x1200s, binned 1x1
and 12x900s, binned 2x2
Baader O-III 8,5nm 3x900s, binned 2x2
Baader S-II 8nm 3x600s, binned 3x3


www.tips-fb.com Posted by J-P Metsavainio at 2:29 PM 1 comments
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