Astro Anarchy

Monday, March 22, 2021

A temporary WEB SHOP OPENED

This is a very temporary Web Shop and I'll shut it down in near future!
You can now buy my photos as a photographic prints

Please, have a look, https://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/

The reason for the Temporary Web Shop is that my picture of the Great Mosaic of Milky Way, went viral. I can't reply personally to all, who wants to have a photo from my collection.

I'm a professional visual artist and my photos are always a very limited series. In this case, the limitation is done by limiting the sales time. I will inform a day or two ahead, when I'll close this Web Shop permanently.

Thank you,

Astronomical Nature photographer J-P Metsavainio, Finland

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Space between Cygnus and cepheus

I have published several large mosaic image panoramas in a past year. I have made several smaller sub-panoramas, they are working as an independent artworks.

This image shows an area between well known and much imaged objects, I always like to find a new viewpoints to the sky.

The space between Cygnus and Cepheus
Click for a large image, it's worth it

Image in mapped colors from the light emitted by an ionized elements, hydrogen = green, sulfur = red and oxygen = blue.

A closeup to show the resolution
Click for a large image,

A closeup from the main image shows the Sharpless 124 at up and the Cocoon nebula with a dark gas stream at bottom.

The mosaic, technical info

Panels used for the mosaic image are marked here, panels are shot between 2010 and 2021

I have used several optical configurations for this mosaic image during the years. Up to 2014 I was using an old Meade LX200 GPS 12" scope, QHY9 astrocam, Canon EF 200mm f1.8 camera optics and baader narrowband filter set. After 2014 I have had 10-micron 1000 equatorial mount, Apogee Alta U16 astro camera, Tokina AT-x 200mm f2.8 camera lens and the Astrodon 50mm square narrowband filter set. I have shot many details with a longer focal length, before 2014 by using Meade 12" scope with reducer and after 2014 Celestron EDGE 11" and reducer. Quider camera has been Lodestar and Lodestar II.

Thursday, March 4, 2021

Nebulae of Auriga and how my mosaic images are done.

I'll like to show the actual resolution of this and other of my large mosaic images by posting a close up from this panorama. Since there are data from so many years (2009 -2021) and it has been shot with various optical configurations, I had to develop a new method to combine frames for a mosaic image.

A closeup from the panorama
Click for a large image

This closeup is reduced about 80% from the original resolution

In my last blog post I published a panoramic mosaic image showing the sky between taurus and Perseus. https://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-new-mosaic-image-from-taurus-to.html

The Mosaic Work

Up to 2014 I was using an old Meade LX200 GPS 12" scope, QHY9 astrocam, Canon EF 200mm f1.8 camera optics and baader narrowband filter set. After 2014 I have had 10-micron 1000 equatorial mount, Apogee Alta U16 astro camera, Tokina AT-x 200mm f2.8 camera lens and the Astrodon 50mm square narrowband filter set. I have shot many details with a longer focal length, before 2014 by using Meade 12" scope with reducer and after 2014 Celestron EDGE 11" and reducer. Quider camera has been Lodestar and Lodestar II.

I took my current toolset as a base tool since it has a relatively high resolution combined to a very large field of view. Also it collects photons very quickly since it's undersampled and I can have very dim background nebulosity visible in very short time (many times 30 min frame is enough)

I do all my mosaic work under the PhotoShop, Matching the separate panels by using stars as an indicator is kind of straight forward work. My processing has become so constant, that very little tweaking is needed between separate frames, just some minor levels, curves and color balance.

I have used lots of longer focal length frames in my mosaic to boost details. To match them with shorter focal length shots I developed a new method.

Firstly I upscale the short focal length frames about 25% to have more room for high resolution images.Then I match the high res photo to a mosaic by using the stars as an indicator. After that I remove all the tiny stars from the high res image. Next I separate stars from low res photo and merge the starless high res data to a starless low res frame. And finally I place the removed low res stars back at top of everything with zero data lost. Usually there are some optical distortions and it's seen especially in a star field. Now all my stars are coming from a same optical setup and I don't have any problems with distortions. (I'm using the same star removal technique as in my Tone Mapping Work Flow)

Sunday, February 28, 2021

A new mosaic image from Taurus to Perseus 2009-2021

I have published several large mosaic images in past six months. This time my mosaic project took about 12 years to get finalized.

49 individual panels are covering 36 x 11 degrees of sky, total exposure time is around 250 hours. Native resolution for the mosaic is 31.000 x 8.800 pixels.

There are several rarely seen objects in my mosaic, they are very dim and majority of the 250 hours of exposures was used for them. There are three supernova remnants in the panorama, Simeis 147 at left, Sharpless 224 and Sharpless 221 are located at center of the image. They all are very dim but the Sharpless 221 is the most difficult one, it has an extremely low surface brightness and I think that my photo of Sh2-221 was the first three band color image out of it. Two large emission nebulae at right end of the mosaic must be the dimmest nebulae I have ever shot.

From Taurus to Perseus 2009-2021

Click for a large image, it's worth it!

Image in mapped colors from the light emitted by an ionized elements, hydrogen = green, sulfur = red and oxygen = blue. NOTE, the apparent size of the Moon in a lower left corner.

Frames used for the large mosaic

Click for a large image