Thursday, February 9, 2017
This video visualizes the real effects of light pollution:
This article and video show us that there is absolutely no substitute for dark skies. Notice how you can barely make out the basic shape of Orion in the city light pollution, however at the darkest location you can see clearly the Rosette nebula and Barnard's Loop
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Recently Judson Graham set out to image M81 & M82.
Not an easy thing to do for many people but with a teenager's persistence he showed everyone that came to the Research & Astroimaging meeting Friday night, that good things happen when they listen to sage advice from experienced members.
The image he first displayed looked nice but he insisted it wasn't good enough and wanted to know how to better use his processing software.
This image is the result of his makeover. An outstanding job by any account.... but he wants to keep learning how to squeeze the best out of each shot.
DSS did not want to stack this, I was getting all sorts of weird halos. so I resorted to my backup program "Sequator" which does a great job with stacking but left both sets of diffraction spikes!
His new camera and 8" telescope seems up to the challenge:
Here's the technical off his AstroBin page:
Not an easy thing to do for many people but with a teenager's persistence he showed everyone that came to the Research & Astroimaging meeting Friday night, that good things happen when they listen to sage advice from experienced members.
The image he first displayed looked nice but he insisted it wasn't good enough and wanted to know how to better use his processing software.
This image is the result of his makeover. An outstanding job by any account.... but he wants to keep learning how to squeeze the best out of each shot.
DSS did not want to stack this, I was getting all sorts of weird halos. so I resorted to my backup program "Sequator" which does a great job with stacking but left both sets of diffraction spikes!
His new camera and 8" telescope seems up to the challenge:
Here's the technical off his AstroBin page:
Imaging telescope or lens: Orion 8" f/3.9 Newtonian Astrograph
Imaging camera: Canon 700D Canon T5i
Mount: Celestron CGEM
Guiding telescope or lens: Orion Mini 50mm Guide Scope
Guiding camera: Orion Starshoot Autoguider
Focal reducer: No Name Field Flattener
Software: O'Telescope BackyardEOS 3.1 Premium Edition, PHD Guiding 2, Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Photoshop CC
Accessory: Celestron SkySync GPS
Resolution: 4522x2869
Dates: Feb. 3, 2017
Frames:
47x120" ISO1600
14x300" ISO1600
47x120" ISO1600
14x300" ISO1600
Integration: 2.7 hours
Avg. Moon age: 6.13 days
Avg. Moon phase: 36.86%
Astrometry.net job: 1435394
RA center: 148.956 degrees
DEC center: 69.339 degrees
Pixel scale: 0.970 arcsec/pixel
Orientation: -83.729 degrees
Field radius: 0.721 degrees