Astronomy
After endless rain and clouds for weeks, we have finally gotten some nice evenings. I was able to get to a semi-dark spot but still within a reasonable driving distance this past weekend and did a little imaging while socializing with the other astronomers there. Its not super dark, but better than my back yard. I am still waiting on my new ccd so I just hooked up my Nikon D40 to my CPC 800 and had a go at NGC 2403.
For 30 sec subs I was pretty happy with it. I still get alot of color blotching from the chip in my D40, but once I can get over the frustration of that I got to processing my stack of 249 subs. a heavy hand on the saturation allowed me to pull out some decent color from the arms, but nothing like I would get if I were on an equatorial mount. Same with the detail in the galaxy's arms, but all in all, not a bad result.
- Bringing Out The Dust
I finally got a chance to shoot the Orion Nebula for the first time since I started imaging. After months and months of clouds and full moons during the only clear evenings I got a perfect evening. By far the best skies I have had here at the house since...
- 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...
- First Bicolor Narrowband Image
I have imaged various objects in just Ha before, but just got to use my OIII filter for the first time and am attempting my first bi-color processing. I am hoping to get more hours of both Ha and OIII in the coming days or weeks (whatever the weather...
- Small Objects Are Quite Difficult (at Least For Me!)
So I have quickly learned that for some reason I have alot more difficulties shooting small objects (relatively speaking in the sky), such as galaxies and small planetary nebulas, than objects like nebulas. I had always heard nebula photography was incredibly...
- Astrophotography On An Alt-az Mount With A Stock Camera
We bought our Celestron CPC800 XLT in late August, mainly intending visual use but I did have the hopes of taking a few astrophotos with it as well else we would have opted for a much lower end scope. If you are familiar with the CPC range they are dual-forked...
Astronomy
Finally the clouds clear
After endless rain and clouds for weeks, we have finally gotten some nice evenings. I was able to get to a semi-dark spot but still within a reasonable driving distance this past weekend and did a little imaging while socializing with the other astronomers there. Its not super dark, but better than my back yard. I am still waiting on my new ccd so I just hooked up my Nikon D40 to my CPC 800 and had a go at NGC 2403.
For 30 sec subs I was pretty happy with it. I still get alot of color blotching from the chip in my D40, but once I can get over the frustration of that I got to processing my stack of 249 subs. a heavy hand on the saturation allowed me to pull out some decent color from the arms, but nothing like I would get if I were on an equatorial mount. Same with the detail in the galaxy's arms, but all in all, not a bad result.
I am looking forward to my new camera getting in and getting back out to some more serious imaging. I have plenty of time to learn the new camera before our trip to Big Bend where I will finally get some seriously dark skies for the first time since our Yosemite trip.
- Bringing Out The Dust
I finally got a chance to shoot the Orion Nebula for the first time since I started imaging. After months and months of clouds and full moons during the only clear evenings I got a perfect evening. By far the best skies I have had here at the house since...
- 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...
- First Bicolor Narrowband Image
I have imaged various objects in just Ha before, but just got to use my OIII filter for the first time and am attempting my first bi-color processing. I am hoping to get more hours of both Ha and OIII in the coming days or weeks (whatever the weather...
- Small Objects Are Quite Difficult (at Least For Me!)
So I have quickly learned that for some reason I have alot more difficulties shooting small objects (relatively speaking in the sky), such as galaxies and small planetary nebulas, than objects like nebulas. I had always heard nebula photography was incredibly...
- Astrophotography On An Alt-az Mount With A Stock Camera
We bought our Celestron CPC800 XLT in late August, mainly intending visual use but I did have the hopes of taking a few astrophotos with it as well else we would have opted for a much lower end scope. If you are familiar with the CPC range they are dual-forked...