Astronomy
As those of you who know me probably know, I prefer nebulas to galaxies. No real reason, I just do. Not that I dislike galaxies but I enjoy imaging nebulae a lot more. So as galaxy season goes into full swing what do I pick for an object to image: the Elephant Trunk Nebula!! Being at a nice northern latitude I am day by day getting less "dark" to work with not to mention the infamous cloudy skies of England so when I saw on the forecast that I was supposed to get not one, but two perfect nights in a row I set up my scope and accepted the fact that I wouldn't sleep from Friday morning until Sunday night.
I have been looking forward to doing Elephant Trunk in narrowband since I started imaging, I just had to wait until I was good enough and I finally got SII and OIII filters. Of course, the Elephant Trunk doesn't rise high enough for me to begin imaging it until about 1257am so I had to come up with something to image as a warm-up. I was randomly slewing about while trying to decide and landed on the "Whale Galaxy" and figured, why not? Off I went on my imaging marathon.
Night 1 I imaged for 5 hrs on the Whale, mostly on luminance but a little red and blue binned as well and then switched to narrowband filters and moved on over to the Elephant Trunk and continued on until sunrise.
Night 2, same except I shot more luminance and a little red, blue, and evened out the green on the Whale followed by Hydrogen-Alpha only on Elephant Trunk.
It is now 55 hrs, give or take, since I last slept (although I did take a couple of quick naps when my daughter did during the day) but my marathon weekend is complete! I spent around 4 hrs processing today and have my final results.
First, the Whale Galaxy (and his companion), total LRGB integration time: 7 hrs (4:1:1:1)
and finally my Elephant Trunk in HST-mapped narrowband (SII, Ha, OIII). Total integration time: 10hrs (2:6:2), (I had a couple of hours of Ha from a week or two ago that I added in to this weekends data):
- Blogging Fell By The Wayside
I have been incredibly busy since Christmas and unfortunately forgot to make any posts as a result. I have done some astrophotography and enjoyed the few clear nights England provided. Here are a few of the objects I imaged over the last few months: ...
- North America & A Pelican
I have been continuing work on my narrowband mosaic project. I first started imaging on this project on May 21, 2011. In the early morning hours of August 7 I finally got 1/3 of the way through by finishing the Ha portion of the mosaic. I still have a...
- Eastern Veil And Building An Image
My latest image project has been the Eastern Veil Nebula in narrowband. I shot the SII and OIII first, both binned 2x2 and with 20 min subexposures, followed by two nights of Ha, binned 1x1 also with 20 min subs. I used a custom variant of JPM's tonemapping...
- Iris Nebula
I have been wanting to do some dark nebula imaging for a while, but had read about how difficult processing would be for such images so I held off for a while until I had the means to do longer subs. Now that I have an autoguider my sub length is sufficient...
- Finally Back Into The Night
Its been a few months of clouds and rain and so I havent gotten to get out to observe or image in quite some time. My local astronomy group (San Antonio Astronomical Association) had an outreach outing at Garner State Park this past weekend and the forecast...
Astronomy
A Whale of a time getting to the Elephant Trunk
As those of you who know me probably know, I prefer nebulas to galaxies. No real reason, I just do. Not that I dislike galaxies but I enjoy imaging nebulae a lot more. So as galaxy season goes into full swing what do I pick for an object to image: the Elephant Trunk Nebula!! Being at a nice northern latitude I am day by day getting less "dark" to work with not to mention the infamous cloudy skies of England so when I saw on the forecast that I was supposed to get not one, but two perfect nights in a row I set up my scope and accepted the fact that I wouldn't sleep from Friday morning until Sunday night.
I have been looking forward to doing Elephant Trunk in narrowband since I started imaging, I just had to wait until I was good enough and I finally got SII and OIII filters. Of course, the Elephant Trunk doesn't rise high enough for me to begin imaging it until about 1257am so I had to come up with something to image as a warm-up. I was randomly slewing about while trying to decide and landed on the "Whale Galaxy" and figured, why not? Off I went on my imaging marathon.
Night 1 I imaged for 5 hrs on the Whale, mostly on luminance but a little red and blue binned as well and then switched to narrowband filters and moved on over to the Elephant Trunk and continued on until sunrise.
Night 2, same except I shot more luminance and a little red, blue, and evened out the green on the Whale followed by Hydrogen-Alpha only on Elephant Trunk.
It is now 55 hrs, give or take, since I last slept (although I did take a couple of quick naps when my daughter did during the day) but my marathon weekend is complete! I spent around 4 hrs processing today and have my final results.
First, the Whale Galaxy (and his companion), total LRGB integration time: 7 hrs (4:1:1:1)
and finally my Elephant Trunk in HST-mapped narrowband (SII, Ha, OIII). Total integration time: 10hrs (2:6:2), (I had a couple of hours of Ha from a week or two ago that I added in to this weekends data):
- Blogging Fell By The Wayside
I have been incredibly busy since Christmas and unfortunately forgot to make any posts as a result. I have done some astrophotography and enjoyed the few clear nights England provided. Here are a few of the objects I imaged over the last few months: ...
- North America & A Pelican
I have been continuing work on my narrowband mosaic project. I first started imaging on this project on May 21, 2011. In the early morning hours of August 7 I finally got 1/3 of the way through by finishing the Ha portion of the mosaic. I still have a...
- Eastern Veil And Building An Image
My latest image project has been the Eastern Veil Nebula in narrowband. I shot the SII and OIII first, both binned 2x2 and with 20 min subexposures, followed by two nights of Ha, binned 1x1 also with 20 min subs. I used a custom variant of JPM's tonemapping...
- Iris Nebula
I have been wanting to do some dark nebula imaging for a while, but had read about how difficult processing would be for such images so I held off for a while until I had the means to do longer subs. Now that I have an autoguider my sub length is sufficient...
- Finally Back Into The Night
Its been a few months of clouds and rain and so I havent gotten to get out to observe or image in quite some time. My local astronomy group (San Antonio Astronomical Association) had an outreach outing at Garner State Park this past weekend and the forecast...