On the advice of the kind folks over at Astrobin, I have been learning about the fantastic tool BlurXterminator (BXT). It is an amazing AI tool that can sharpen up the stars and bring out details in nebulas and galaxies.
I used BXT on my M8 and M20 image (in the slideshow above), and I think the new version is stunning and really brings out the nebulae. It is my first published Astrobin image!
Now I want to go back and reprocess all my prior images …
This is M16 the Eagle Nebula from the constellation Serpens. It’s the home of the famous “Pillars of Creation” picture from the Hubble Space Telescope. If you zoom in … you can see the Pillars of Creation in this image. Pretty cool I could capture it with my small telescope with a little over 5 hours of data. Pretty amazing to think that these star forming regions are all around us … our galaxy is still under construction! And so, so beautiful.
M16 is an emission nebula of ionized hydrogen gas where star formation is taking place. It is 5700 light years away from us, has apparent dimensions of 70 x 50 arcmin, and has an apparent magnitude of 6.4. It’s a great target for a small telescope!
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Red and blue in the sky seems right for the 4th of July!
This is another image from the fabulous dark skies of Dell City, Texas. This is two nebulae – M8 Lagoon and M20 Trifid – from the constellation Sagittarius. M8 is an emission nebula of ionized hydrogen gas where star formation is taking place. It is 5200 light years away from us, has apparent dimensions of 90 x 40 arcmin, and has an apparent magnitude of 4.6. M20 is a combination of three types of nebulas: the red side is an emission nebula of ionized hydrogen gas where star formation is taking place, the blue side is a reflection nebula of a cloud of dust reflecting light from a nearby star, and the black lines are a dark nebula of an interstellar cloud dense enough to block the light from behind it. It is 4100 light years away from us, has an apparent dimension of 28 arcmin, and an apparent magnitude of 6.3.
Although they’re in the same direction from us, imagine living at the midpoint between them! They’d be much larger and brighter since they’d only be 550 light years away, but they’d be in opposite directions in the sky.
Given their size, brightness, and proximity to one another, this pair is a great target for a small telescope.
This image was generated from about 3.8 hours of data.
On my first round of processing, I messed up the color processing and switched colors, making everything look purple instead of red and blue. An interesting effect, even if “wrong”. Isn’t the universe beautiful?
Happy 4th of July!
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We recently went out to visit our favorite dark skies spot, Dell City, Texas, and we enjoyed 5.5 cloud-free nights and I collected over 30 hours of data. I spent most of that time on M101 and the supernova (arrow points to the supernova).
One of the things I’ve taken to doing is taking flats and dark flats before doing a meridian flip so each run is processed with its own calibration frames. That way if I bump the camera or reorient it, the flats will match the lights.
Now that I’m home, I’m processing the data. I didn’t use StarXterminator to separate the stars from the galaxy because I wanted the galaxy and the supernova to be processed the same way.
A couple of the light frames were thrown out by PixInsight, so this image ended up using 306 2-minute lights for a total of 10.2 hours of data. Compared to what I could get from my driveway, I think it was worth it!
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I am working on figuring out how much exposure time I need for astrophotography. The answer from my Bortle 7-8 driveway is generally: More.
Here I’ve got three example to show how adding time adds detail to the images. In one minute, with a lot of processing, I can get the flame nebula to be barely visible, but the horsehead nebula … might be there, maybe, if you squint and know where to look. With 155 minutes … like magic … you can see both, but they’re grainy. Going up to 334 minutes, and the image is getting less grainy. But more time is still needed to get a really nice picture.
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Cloudless skies last night.
Antha Ann Adkins
Supernova shining bright.
A delightful sight.
Thursday night we had clear skies (though a near-full Moon) and I was able to take another set of M101 and supernova images. Comparing to my previous images, you can see that more time from my driveway gave me more galaxy details, but that they don’t compare to what I can get from darker skies.
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One of these things is not like the others … I got an image of M101 the Pinwheel Galaxy in February from the lovely dark skies of Dell City, Texas. Since then, light from a supernova in one of its arms has reached us … from 20+ million light years away. And I was able to image that from my driveway! The driveway picture is noisier and dimmer due to light pollution, but you can tell there’s something new there! I’m looking forward to going back out to the dark skies and imaging it again.
Interestingly, the total imaging times of 66×3=198 minutes on 2/16 and 218 minutes on 5/25 are pretty similar, but due to the light pollution, the 5/25 image has less detail, is noisier, and is grainier. On the other hand, the tracking wasn’t as good on 2/16, emphasized by the longer image times, so the stars aren’t circles and the image isn’t as sharp as I would like.
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We haven’t had good telescope weather for a while, so I’ve been working on learning more processing techniques. This is my latest effort: M106, a spiral galaxy containing a supermassive black hole in the center. It’s got some nearby friends. How many galaxies can you find?
This is the image where I learned that it’s better to fix the physical alignment of the tracking mount rather than take shorter images to reduce the star trailing – the same amount of time in 30 second images vs 1 minute images takes, well, twice as long to process.
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I’m still working on learning the PixInsight processing software, and I have discovered through the Adam Block videos the Generalized Hyperbolic Stretch process, and now I want to go re-process all the galaxies I’ve been working on.
Imaging galaxies and nebulae from my Bortle 8 skies takes hours of data collection and then more hours of computer crunching. I have learned that it’s better to fix the physical alignment of the tracking mount rather than take shorter images to reduce the star trailing – the same amount of time in 30 second images vs 1 minutes takes, well, twice as long to process.
Globular clusters, though, don’t need as much data. So I don’t need to image as long and the processing is faster.
This is M4 and NGC6144, both globular clusters in our Milky Way. Globular clusters contain hundreds of thousands to millions of stars that are gravitationally bound together. What would it be like to live in one? What would the sky look like?
In M4 you can see a “bar” of stars across the middle. This is apparently a characteristic feature.
I have imaged M4 before, but with simpler equipment, and without using stacking and other image processing techniques. I think this version is a vast improvement.
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In our rare cloud-free skies this weekend, I also imaged M13, the Hercules Cluster.
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Do you have a favorite globular cluster?
NGC 2359, also called Thor’s Helmet, is an emission nebula that is 15,000 light years away. It is a bubble of ionized gas around a hot central star, Wolf-Rayet WR7. It is 16 x 8 arc min in size, and I was pleasantly surprised that I could capture it with my small telescope. These pictures were made by stacking 64 3 minute images (and cropping).
I’ve been learning PixInsight, and I had some fun with playing with CurvesTransformation on this one. So, in addition to a standard view of the nebula, I created one I call “Thor in a Snowstorm”.
Which do you like better?
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Space&Aliens 