I got my first ever images of IC434, the Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion. The Horse Head is the faintest object that I’ve ever attempted to image at  mag 10 or so. I’d taken about 20 images or so that on Monday night (12/3/07). Unfortunately, due to a number of mishaps, only about 12 were actually usable.

These 12 images were stacked using RegiStax to give me a good starting point. FYI, each original/raw image barely showed the horsehead. You could kind of see where the nebula was. This was brought out quite a bit after the stacking. However, it wasn’t until I brought the image into The GIMP that things really came into view. Its amazing how much data was ‘hidden’ originally. Almost like pealing the layers off an onion, the nebula slowly revealed itself with each processing option.

I’m happy with the results of this first attempt to capture the illusive Horse Head Nebula. This is a very tough object. I’ve only seen this on a small handful of occasions. This is a faint object. Its also just large enough that the minimal light arriving in the telescope is spread out enough to make this a highly difficult target. Only seriously dark skies and a fairly substantial aperture will allow you to see this in the eyepiece.

As far as the image goes, it seem that 12 minutes was not quite long enough Additionally, as the constellation Orion is still fairly low in the southeast early on, I was fighting a bit of local light pollution. Had there been a bit less moisture in the sky and had this been a bit higher in the sky, I’d have taken longer exposures. These, were all 60 seconds a piece. Longer exposures had the background sky looking all washed out due to light pollution from a neighboring shopping center. Perhaps, towards the end of the month, I’ll have another shot at the Horsehead before the moon rises. This, plus another round of telescope alignments, should hopefully allow me to hit this pretty hard. My goal is to get perhaps 50-100 minutes of exposures (5 minutes at a time). With the nebula sitting a bit higher in the sky and more and longer exposures, my signal to noise ratio should be dramatically improved. If this works out as planned, I should have quite a bit more data to start with as well as a much darker background. Anyway… I’m happy with this, my first image of IC434, The Horsehead Nebula.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: IC434 / The Horsehead Nebula
* Constellation: Orion
* Magnitude: ?
* Size: 6′ x 4′

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor
* 12 x 60s exposure at ISO1600 (comet)
* RegiStax
* Gimp Curves & Levels
* Neat Image

Comet 17P/Holmes continues to put on a show for skywatchers willing to brave the cold weather. After an incredible run of clear skies through much of the fall, skies turned snowy here in Park City. Storms have been passing over or very near the area for much of the last week or so. This wasn’t too bad as it coincided with the large phases of the moon. Now that the moon has vacated the scene, its nice that skies have taken a break. I was wondering what Comet Holmes would look like after this extended absence. I was also wondering where it’d moved to. Well, first of all, its still very near Mirfak (alpha Perseus). Now, a couple of degrees to the southwest of the bright star. Quite easy to find once my eyes were dark adapted. The comet isn’t quite as bright as it was a couple of weeks ago but it continues to grow. It’s almost filling the eyepiece, perhaps 3/4* in diameter?

The accompanying image represents (3) 60 second exposures and (1) 100 second exposures at ISO1600 using the Canon Digital Rebel XTi at prime focus through my Astro Physics Starfire 160 Refractor. I stacked the raw images using RegiStax 4 and then ran it through the Curves function in GIMP. Finally, I reduced the noise using Neat Image.

This image has a bit of a reddish color to it. This comes mostly from the 100 second exposure. I think there was a bit of moisture in the atmosphere that got picked up at ISO1600. It was a sharp, detail filled image, so I left it in. I’m now too sleepy to reprocess it… so this is how its going out the door

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: Comet 17P/Holmes
* Constellation: Perseus
* Magnitude: 3?
* Size: 45′ (roughly 50% larger than the diameter of the full moon!)

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor
* 4 x 60s exposure at ISO1600 (comet)
* Gimp Levels
* Neat Image

I caught a sweet shot of The Moon and the red planet, Mars last night just before the clouds rolled in. The pair were separated by around 1* or so. This pairing is often referred to as a conjunction or alignment.

This was a more interesting image to process as the two are so far apart in brightness. The image I chose was a bright one (so that Mars would be visible). As such, the moon was a way washed out. To better deal with this, I created a duplicate layer in GIMP. This allowed me to process the two separately and then re-combine them later. For the moon, I used a number of Curves to dramatically reduce the overall brightness.  This revealed details on the lunar surface. For Mars, I used the Curves function to dramatically brighten the image. Not sure if this is cheating, but I took a copy of a black section and covered over the moon on this one. Otherwise, it was going to get brighter still. Finally, I selected just Mars and did an additional Curves and Levels function on just this object. This made Mars stand out significantly. Finally, I merged the two layers to create one nicely integrated image.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Moon
* Magnitude: roughly mag -12
* Size: roughly 1/2*

* Designation: Planet Mars
* Magnitude: mag -1.22
* Size: 15″

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* 1 x 1/2s exposure at ISO400
* Gimp Curves

I took this picture almost as an after thought. I’d gone out to image Comet Holmes as it cruised by Mirfak (α Per). While doing so, I decided to image the moon to see if the two really were the same size (the actually are). I pulled the Canon Rebel off of the scope and popped in the 31mm Nagler eyepiece with a variable polarizer to reduce the brightness somewhat. Skies were actually much steadier than I’d expected, revealing some amazing details. I decided to make use of the TeleVue 2x Barlow to capture some of the added details.

I chose this view centered on the Lunar Apennine Mountains because this is one of the most dramatic features on the lunar surface. There were also a couple of distinctive craters running right along the lunar terminator that were brought into stark contrast. The lunar terminator is the line where light meets dark on the lunar surface. It is along this line that many oft missed details are revealed to lunar observers..

This shot was the best of a number taken that night. I took a handful of quick but under exposed images thinking that I might stack them. Unfortunately, minor variations caused by seeing existed that made this seem problematic. I decided that the entire process would be much easier if I took the best single image and started working from there. The accompanying image was just what I was looking for. It was a 1/30 second exposure at ISO100. It was fairly well illuminated and required just a little boost at the low end of the spectrum using the Curves feature in GIMP. GIMP is a free image processing software package that runs on a number of operating systems. I’ve used it in the past when my laptop was running Windows. Unfortunately, the laptop came with Vista, the most horrible version of Windows ever released. I suffered for about 6 months before finally deciding to load Ubuntu Linux on the machine. Its been just a short while since doing so, but performance and stability are dramatically improved.. but I digress Anyway, GIMP also runs quite well on my Linux box, allowing me to do whatever processing I need on my images.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: The Moon
* Magnitude: roughly mag -8
* Size: roughly 1/2*

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor f/10
* 1 x 1/30s exposure at ISO100
* Gimp Curves

I got out an snagged some sweet views of Comet 17P/Holmes again this evening. I viewed through both the Astro Physics Starfire 160 (6.2″) and the ObDob, a 25″ Obsession Dobsonian Reflector. Views were sweet in both, but I have to say… at least as far as telescopes go… size does matter

The comet just about filled the 31mm Nagler eyepiece. This is my lowest power, widest field of view eyepiece. At 100x and roughly 0.8*, the comet seemed to be bigger than the estimates I’ve heard. The prominent core seems to have faded… or been hidden behind all the cometary debris encircling this comet.

This comet had already blown me away with the unexpectedly great show it’s put on. I’d not expected have a comet to look forward to for quite some time. Even when I first heard about it, I figured it’d not likely be all that great. Wrong! This comet has put on an amazing show… and it’s not not done yet. I has moved a few degrees though the constellation Perseus in less than 2 weeks.

Here’s an image I processed on Saturday night from images captured on Tuesday night (11/07). That particular night, I was hoping to image the recently detected tail of the comet. I saw that a few astrophotographers had taken much longer exposures than I had. While I was trying to portray the comet as it appeared in the eyepiece, these individuals were looking for details well beyond what could be seen visually. So, I opted for 30 minutes of exposure time via (18) x 75 second expousres. I went all the way to ISO 1600 to make sure I grabbed every possible photon. When I stacked the images, I was depressed to see that I had absolutely no tail to show for my efforts. Subsequents images seen online as well as comments seemed to indicate that the comet’s tail had disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared. Comet 17P/Holmes had once again proved to be no ordinary comet.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: Comet 17P/Holmes
* Constellation: Perseus
* Magnitude: 2.5
* Size: 15′ (roughly 1/2 the diameter of the full moon!)

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor
* 18 x 75s exposures at ISO1600
* Stacked using RegiStax 4
* Neat Image
* Photo Shop Levels
* Gimp Levels

I got a handful of images of M35 the other night. This is a beautiful open star cluster in the constellation Gemini (The Twins). This object is beautiful in even the most modest of telescopes. More aperture reveals a never ending number of fainter stars throughout the entire cluster. Smaller telescopes and binoculars however, may miss the nearby but much fainter NGC 2158 pictured to the left of the main cluster. At mag 8.6, the doesn’t just jump right out at you. My 6″ shows this in a subtle way, whereas my 25″ makes even this faint cluster look pretty impressive. If you find yourself under clear skies, be sure to look for the two bright stars of Castor and Pollux. The twin stars of gemini are at the head, whereas M35 is down near the leading foot. Checkout this star chart of Gemini for help in finding the cluster.

This image was constructed from (5) 60 second exposures at ISO400. As usual, I was shooing with the Canon Digital Rebel XTi at prime focus through my Astro Physics Starfire 160. For some reason, perhaps the location in the sky, tracking was much better than normal. I’ve not allocated the proper amount of time to make tracking a complete non-issue. I’m still limited to 60-120 seconds before star trailing becomes unacceptable. As the phase of the moon grows in the days ahead (and if/when clear skies return to Park City), I hope to finish this off once and for all.

These images were stacked using RegiStax 4 and were then manipulated inside PhotoShop. I used the levels function to set the black point appropriately and then used the Curves function to bring out some of the fainter details. I had to pull this into The Gimp, because on my Windows Vista machine, many of my software applications provide only limited and/or sporadic functionality. I’m currently in the process of upgrading to Ubuntu Linux. This should alleviate the multitude of pains I’ve been suffering through these last several Vista-Inflicted months. For those of you who are not familiar with it, The Gimp is a full featured, FREE, image processing software package. It is comparable to the pricey Adobe Photoshop in many ways. As I’m not familiar enough with either of these packages, I’m currently unable to give a good comparison. Anyway, its free and highly functional.

I mentioned previously that I’ve been reading through Ron Wodaski and Russ Croman’s Zone System for Astro Imaging book. This (still a read in progress) has given me a much better understanding of the principles needed to develop high caliber astro-images. It’s amazing to see details that I’d otherwise miss come into clear view by applying these principles. This book is a must read for the aspiring or experienced astro photographer.

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: M35
* Type: Open Star Cluster
* Constellation: Gemini
* Magnitude: 5.1
* Size: 30′
* Open Star Cluster NGC2158 appears to the upper left

Astro Photo Processing Details

* Canon Digital Rebel XTi
* Astro Physics Refractor
* 5 x 60s exposures at ISO400
* Stacked using RegiStax 4
* Neat Image
* Photo Shop Levels & Curves

Ok, I finally got my image cleaned up. I also had the opportunity to crack the binder on a new book focused on image processing… from an astrophotographer’s perspective. It’s called “The New Astro Zone System for Astro Imaging” by Ron Wodaski with Russ Croman. I’ve only gotten a chapter or two into the book and feel like I’m 100% better at image processing. I can’t even say that I’ve taken in all that I’ve read… only a small portion of it… and yet…. as the accompanying image shows, I’ve certainly picked up something If you’re at all serious about astrophotography, this book is a must read. You may already know a large chunk of what’s covered in the book, but if you pick up just a few nuggets, this book could push you to the next level.

Anyway, this image was created from (10) 60 second exposures at ISO400 with Canon Digital Rebel XTi through my Astro Physics Starfire 160 at prime focus f/7.5. The images were stacked using RegiStax (another program that I’ve only scratched the surface with).

Next, I brought this into PhotoShop where I applied some of Wodaski and Croman’s magic. I used Levels (which I’ve used extensively before), and Curves (which I’ve hardly ever used before because I didn’t know what in the world I was supposed to accomplish with it). I used each of these twice and then saved the image.

Finally, I pulled this image into Neat Image. This is a program that bills itself as the best noise reduction program on the market. Not knowing much about this… and being satisfied with the results… I’ll accept their claim at face value. Neat Image took off some of the rough edges in my image. It considerable reduced the noise (pixelation) in the image with a somewhat intuitive interface. I’ll need to go through the docs to see what can be accomplished with this tool, but its interface was not the slightest bit intimidating… and seemed to suggest that I tweak settings to see the effects.

All in all, I think I have already made a qualitative breakthrough in my astrophotography skills. I’ve printed a few of my favorites… and am looking forward to revisiting some of my earlier efforts as I upgrade my skills with the aforementioned tools.

Be sure to checkout my earlier effort on Irregular Galaxy M82. This was created before I began working “in the zone”

Astro Photo Details:

* Designation: M81
* Type: Spiral Galaxy
* Constellation: Ursa Major
* Magnitude: 6.9
* Size: 21′x 10′

* Designation: M82
* Type: Irregular Galaxy
* Constellation: Ursa Major
* Magnitude: 8.4
* Size: 8′x 3′

Astro Photo Processing Details

* 10 x 60s exposures at ISO400
* Stacked using RegiStax 4
* Photo Shop Levels & Curves
* Neat Image