Our Deep Space

Milky Way Core Region, nebulosity edit

This is a little bit different of an edit than I normally do, one done to emphasize the nebulosity around the Milky Way (at the sacrifice of sharpness and increase in noise). Shot with my NIkon D600 and Rokinon 85mm f1.4 lens on an iOptron Skytracker, 6 panels stitched together, each panel is a stack of 8 shots, ISO 400, f2.5, and 2 of each exposure at 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute. Each panel was stacked with Deep Sky Stacker, initial edits done with PixInsight, then all the panels were stitched with PTGui and final edits were done with Photoshop and Lightroom. Shot from a Bortle 4/5 zone at Rockport Reservoir, Utah. I think overall it'll look cleaner once I can collect more shots to reduce the noise, not bad though given that each frame is 20 minutes total integration from a fairly light polluted area.

Orion Nebula and Running Man Nebula

Last day of August, can't help but feel the change of seasons in the air as we transition from summer to fall. With the change in seasons we also shift from prime Milky Way season with the core visible to winter season where we can no longer see the core of our galaxy. Here in the northern hemisphere it also means longer and colder nights and I have to think about other things to image and work on. This time of year we also start seeing the Orion constellation rise earlier and earlier, my main goal this fall and winter will be putting together a series of images of the constellation at various focal lengths. Here's a shot of the Orion and Running Man Nebula from last year, this will be my benchmark to improve on.

Orion - D600 + Samyang 135mm Mosaic

Quick and dirty edit of my imaging from over the weekend, two panels mosaiced, each panel shot with a Nikon D600 and Samyang 135mm f2 lens on a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer mount guided with an Orion 50mm mini guide scope and a Toupcam guidecam. The left half of the image was 60 exposures, 2 minutes each at f2 and ISO 800, the right half was 40 exposures with the same settings, had to toss out 20 exposures from the right panel because of a focus problem. With the lousy weather I probably won't be able to get the upper 2 panels complete until the next new moon phase in a couple weeks.

Pleiades Dust

Decided to do a bit better edit of this, added some flats into the calibration and did my normal PixInsight workflow with a stronger star size reduction in Photoshop afterwards.

Horsehead and Flame Nebula

Finally got some clear skies to do some shooting, drove an hour to a reservoir outside Salt Lake City to get out of the horrible air pollution and fog that's been developing at night. It was COLD, when I finally threw in the towel it was -9 degrees Fahrenheit and pretty much everything was frozen solid, definitely the coldest I've ever shot in. I wanted to test out my Tamron 150-600mm lens with my now full-spectrum modified Nikon D7000 with some guiding on my Star Adventurer tracking mount. I was going to do a mosaic of the Flame and Horsehead Nebula over to the Running Man and Orion Nebula, did 2 hours of the Flame and Horsehead and then moved the lens fov over to the Orion/Running Man and started having tons of problems with the guiding. By that time Orion was up near the meridian and that was causing havoc with the large lens on the modest Star Adventurer. I ended up flipping over to Andromeda and getting some shots of that, I'll try to post that later. Acquisition Details: Nikon D7000 (full spectrum with a UV/IR Cut filter added) + Tamron 150-600mm lens at 300mm Sky Watcher Star Adventurer tracking mount guided by Orion 50mm mini guide scope and ToupTek Guidecam via PHD2 30 x 4 minute exposures at f6.3 and ISO 1600 120 Bias frames and 40 Flat frames applied Calibrated, Debayered, Registered and Stacked in PixInsight Geometry crop followed by LinearFit to red channel, Dynamic Background Extraction, SCNR on green channel, screen transfer function to take out of linear state, and contrast/saturation curves. Exported as 16-bit Tiff to Photoshop. In Photoshop I did a bit more curves enhancement and a minor star size reduction and sharpening. Kind of disappointed in this lens, the flair on the brighter stars with the coma at f6.3 has me shaking my head, I hadn't noticed that problem before and it's a bit...ugly. Considering selling this lens and just picking up a high quality 80mm refractor with better optics.

Witchhead Nebula

Tonight's image is the Witchhead Nebula. Details: Astrotech AT65EDQ Nikon D7000 Sirius EQ-G guided with Orion 50mm mini guide scope and ToupTek Guide Cam 6 x 10 minute exposures at ISO 400 80 x bias frames 30 x flat frames Calibrated, corrected, debayered, stacked in PixInsight. Edits in PI are Dynamic Background Extraction, SCNR to remove green, masked stretch, curves adjustment to boost shadows. Exported to Photoshop, edits in Photoshop were Dust and Scatches with screen layer to increase brightness, followed by overlay layer with high pass filter to increase contrast, then some curves modification for slight contrast adjustments. Followed that with color blotch reduction, smart sharpen, and slight star size reduction. Final edits done in Lightroom (mostly noise reduction and some saturation). I need to restack this with different stacking perameters, my pixel rejection wasn't strong enough I guess and there are some geosynch satellite trails passing right through the top of the nebula. Only had 2 hours to shoot and ended up tossing away half my frames for one reason or another, forgot to take the bahtinov mask off, forgot to set the NikonHacker black point hack for 3 of the exposures, battery ran out half way through one exposure, focus was off for one exposure. More learning experiences with this scope and mount, I guess. Oh and it was even colder tonight at Rockport, around 5 degrees when I left, I'm really getting tired of shooting in such cold temps, looking forward to spring.

Andromeda at 300mm

Here's the second image I put together from last night, this one of Andromeda, same setup as before with my Nikon D7000 and Tamron 150-600mm lens at 300mm. This time I did 17 exposures at 4 minutes, ISO 1600, and f6.3. Pretty much the same stacking and editing process as the Horsehead and Flame Nebula shot with calibration and stacking in PixInsight, Dynamic Background Extraction (x2 for this shot since I was shooting into the light pollution of the SLC metro area and had some tough gradients), color calibration, masked stretch, then export to Photoshop for curves and saturation plus star size reduction. I missed the focus by just a little bit so the image is soft, plus there are the same stupid flares around the bright stars because of this lens.

M42 reworked

Tried to correct some artifacts around the brighter stars and pull back the core a little so it's not quite as blown out.

Heart Nebula H-alpha

Be still my beating heart.... Just moved into a new home and with even more snow/rain/clouds over the last 2-3 weeks I haven't had time to image since I did the Horsehead and Rosette shots. Snowed all day today and when I got home it miraculously cleared up. I hurried and setup all my equipment, ending up having the best guiding I've ever had (sub 1" RMS) and about the only thing I could image from my back patio was the Heart Nebula. Did 16 x 10 minute exposures at ISO 1600 with my Baader 7nm H-alpha filter on my Nikon D7000 (full spectrum mod), shot with my Astrotech AT65EDQ on a Sirius EQ-G mount from a bortle 8/9 zone.

Horsehead and Flame H-alpha

A very noisy beginning to my h-alpha imaging of the horsehead and flame nebula, this is such a tough target to shoot even in normal RGB with my DSLR, doing it in H-alpha from the city with a near full moon is a tough task with my modest equipment. I'll hopefully be able to add to this a bit more tomorrow if the weather stays clear. 17 x 10 minute exposures at ISO 1600 with my Nikon D7000 (full spectrum modified) and Astrotech AT65EDQ and Baader 7nm H-alpha filter, Orion Sirius EQ-G mount (Rowan Belt Modded).

Rosette final edit

Final edit of my H-alpha Rosette, 32 x 10 minute exposures at ISO 800 with my Nikon D7000 (full spectrum modded) and Astrotech AT65EDQ with a Baader 7nm H-alpha filter on an Orion Sirius EQ-G Mount (Rowan Belt Modded).

The Core of Our Galaxy

This was supposed to be the start of my Ridiculously Huge and Way Too Much Work(TM) summer Milky Way project. Instead I get to start all over thanks to some stupid lens/camera artifact that showed up in all the images I took this last weekend. When finished the picture will be roughly 8 times bigger than this and will require around 10-12.5 hours of exposures. This is about the best I could edit out of the 2.5 hours of exposures I took Saturday night. This is 3 of the 5 panels for the mosaic I shot that night, each panel is a stack of 15 exposures taken with my Nikon D800E and Samyang 135mm lens on a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer tracking mount. Each exposure is 2 minutes at ISO 800 and f2. Also did 38 flat frames and 15 dark frames for calibration, done in PixInsight before exporting and stitching with PTGui followed by more editing in Photoshop.

Andromeda Final Edit

Decided to give this data another go-through, wasn't entirely happy with the original edit I did, think this one turned out much better.

Rho Ophiuchi Complex

A very up and down start to this crazy huge Milky Way core region project, decided to put together 4 panels this last weekend while up in the Uinta Mountains. I also tried using the NikonHacker black point firmware for my D800E for the first time, I had previously used it for my D600 and D7000, but it's always tricky to get it to load right (and stay loaded throughout the entire imaging session). Focus also drifted a bit as it cooled down into the low 40's which caused the left 2 panels to not stitch/mosaic perfectly, plus I fudged the alignment on the upper left panel, but that will be no problem once I get the rest of the panels done. Lastly, I had to take 3 different sets of flat frames because of issues with the master flat calibration of the lights, frustrating stuff. So 4 panels down, around 20-22 panels to go, this is going to be a tough project. Each panel is a stack of 7 to 10 exposures taken with my Nikon D800E and Samyang 135mm f2 lens on a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer tracking mount. Each exposure was 3 minutes at ISO 800 and f2.8.