Board Astronomy (contains big images)

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

The last one of the crab nebula is taken with a Canon Rebel T3 I borrowed from a friend. My own cam is an EOS60D. I plan to modify it eventually and remove the IR filter, so I get more broad wavelengths captured.
The telescope I use is a Skywatcher 200/1000N Newtonian.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Those are some great images. You've captured some great detail. I'm assuming you're taking multiple exposures and processing them into a single image. And yes, removing the IR filter is a good idea.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Yes, those pictures are between 30 to 70 single exposures stacked. Most of them about 30 seconds long. Except for the last one of the Crab Nebula (which I will have to reprocess because it‘s way to green), that one is 1m30s long exposures.
And the Moon is a single short snapshot.

i use DeepSkyStacker, which is free software.
I do the post processing in Photoshop CS.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

i reprocessed the Crab Nebula. My first attempt was way to green. These colors seem much more natural and in line with other pictures online.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Awesome stuff. These are the kind of astronomy pictures we need to see more of on here

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Working on it. Got a picture of the whirlpool galaxy in the pipeline which I didn’t do solo but with members of my Uni‘s Astro Club.

 

[publiusr]

Barnards's Star in action
https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showth...n-now-spanning-10-years&p=2363257#post2363257

Wolf 359 moving
https://forum.cosmoquest.org/showth...along-with-New-Horizons&p=2504569#post2504569

Nice graphic showing star emissions and radio
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-puzzling-link-star-formation-radio.html

Betelgeuse is at about 36% of its normal brightness
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2003/

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

M51a and M51b
Whirlpool Galaxy
Collaborated with my Uni Astronomy Club for this one.

You can find this objet(s) bear the handle of the Big Dipper.
It‘s visible through binoculars and small telescopes in dark nights.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Very nice! I can see you getting better and better with some of your earlier images. We just had someone speak at one of the astronomy clubs I belong to, and he didn't know a thing about astrophotography when he started, but along with advice from a pro who's been doing this for years, he slowly took to it and is now producting some amazing images. It's a long process, and I can see why it would be a good club activity as I'd find it a bit much for one person to do given all the steps required, ie flat frames, noise reduction, alignment and dittering. He uses PixInsight, but I imagine you can get similar results with similar programs.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

This is an interesting picture, which I still consider a work in progress.
it's the Christmas Tree cluster and Cone Nebula in the Monoceros region slightly east of Orion.
First of all, it was difficult to find and I am majorly proud to have been on target eventually.
Interesting about this is, that there is still a hidden hydrogen gas clouds, which my camera was not able to capture.
i really need that astro modification at some point.
you can still vaguely make out the xmas tree shape between the two brightest stars and the cone nebula next to the second brightest star at the lower left center region.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

This moonshot was taken on 02/02/2020 by myself and other members of the HSRW Astronomy Club. Finally got around to process it. Was stacked from 64 single images.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I reprocessed one of my first images again. The Orion Nebula. You can see my previous attempt on page 1 and judge for yourself what a difference just a little bit of practice makes.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Some really good definition and details in both pictures!

 

[{ Emilia }]

Love the images, keep them coming!

A friend of mine has two telescopes (one refractor and one reflector) and he's nice enough to invite us over once in a while for some sky watching. Actually seeing other planets with my own eyes and even making out Saturn's rings or Jupiter's moons was awe-inspiring to me for some reason. And some nebulas are so pretty.

The problem, really, is to get away from light pollution.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Actually seeing other planets with my own eyes and even making out Saturn's rings or Jupiter's moons was awe-inspiring to me for some reason. And some nebulas are so pretty.

Our club has outreach events, sometimes such as boy/girl scouts looking at us doing an event with them, and if the sky is clear we always bring the telescopes out and at the very least view the moon. Even at its very basic, it never gets old hearing the audible gasps as they see something through a telescope for the first time. And that feeling is amplified when you've built one yourself.

Last year, we had a fairly big event with lots of telescopes, including two big commercial telescopes belonging to the park, and over 300 people on the field. I brought out my homemade 8-Inch/F6 and one woman was particularly keen as I showed her Saturn. She was quite amazed at what she was seeing. She then went to look through the C16 the park had, which had a long lineup, then when she had a view through that, she came back to me and told me she had preferred the view through mine. And another person had exclaimed at the fact that what they were seeing was real. They couldn't believe it. Being told something looks the way it does, and seeing it with one's own eyes is quite different.

Yeah, light pollution is a problem, particularly when you're near big cities. Fortunately, there's more education and awareness than about 20 years ago. I'm fortunate enough to live in a region where I only have to drive about an hour before I get good skies. Living north of Lake Superior has its advantages.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

skies are quite middling here where I am.
Guess it could be worse

 

[Owain Taggart]

Taking that into account, it's fairly impressive what you've managed to get with those skies. Then again, many astrophotographers have used techniques to diminish the effect of light pollution, and they're getting better all the time, thanks to skill and better and better software. I know one guy personally who's been in a lot of magazines like Sky & Tel, Ron Brecher, who's gotten so good that he says light pollution doesn't really bother him all that much anymore, and that the mass satellites shouldn't prove to be a problem.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Not my own picture for a change.

ESO has released an unbelievable 9GB mosaic image of the Milky Way depicting 84 million individual stars.
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/zoomable/
zooming in and revealing more and more and more details is mesmerizing!

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

I took a new batch of images of the Orion Nebula at a relatively high ISO to get as much nebulosity as I can. Unfortunately I still got clouds eventually which ruined a lot of individual shots.
Still I think it came out ok, considering.
I believe I managed to bring out more natural colors this time and the framing is way better, including the Running Man at the top of the image.

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

My first decent Image of Planet Venus. Proud. Looking forward to do the same with Mars, Jupiter and Saturn soon.