VdB 152 - Reflection Nebula in Cepheus [OC]
lefty7283 @ lefty7283 @lemmy.world Posts 41Comments 110Joined 2 yr. ago
lefty7283 @ lefty7283 @lemmy.world
Posts
41
Comments
110
Joined
2 yr. ago
Went out to a darksite and tried snapping some milky way pics with my DSLR while the main telescope was doing its thing. The three brightest stars in the image (Vega, Altair, and Deneb) make up the 3 points of the Summer Triangle. There's also a ton of deep sky objects in this part of the sky, including all of these that I've photographed before. Captured on July 18th, 2023 from the Deerlick Astronomy Village (bortle 3 zone)
Places where I host my other images:
Equipment:
- Canon T3i (astro-modded)
- Tamron 17-50mm lens
- Joby 3K tripod planted firmly on top of a RAV4
Acquisition: 3.5 minutes (17mm f/2.8 ISO 800)
- 14x15"
- Darks- 10
Capture Software:
- Captured using my finger on the shutter button
PixInsight Processing
- BatchPreProcessing
- StarAlignment
- Blink
- ImageIntegration
- DrizzleIntegration (2x, var β=1.5)
- DynamicCrop to remove blurred trees at the bottom
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
- SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
- SCNR green
- NoiseXTerminator
- ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear
- Slight SCNR green
- Shitloads of curves to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast etc with varying luminance/star masks
- MLT chrominance noise reduction
- NoiseXTerminator
- LocalHistogramEqualization
- DarkStructureEnhance
- more curves
- Resample to 60%
- Annotation
Clearly OP thinks newtonians are the superior telescope design to refractors
Went out to a darksite and tried snapping some milky way pics with my DSLR while the main telescope rig was doing its thing. Pretty pleased with how this turned out since I don't really do widefield imaging, and it's only 5 minutes of total exposure time (yes I know the stars are trailed 15" exposures were too long in hindsight). The milky way core is home to many different deep sky objects, including all of these that I've shot before, and a bunch more that I haven't photographed yet. Captured on July 18th, 2023 from the Deerlick Astronomy Village (bortle 3 zone)
Places where I host my other images:
Equipment:
- Canon T3i (astro-modded)
- Tamron 17-50mm lens
- Joby 3K tripod planted firmly on top of a RAV4
Acquisition: 5 minutes (17mm f/2.8 ISO 800)
- 20x15"
- Darks- 10
Capture Software:
- Captured using my finger on the shutter button
PixInsight Processing
- BatchPreProcessing
- StarAlignment
- Blink
- ImageIntegration
- DrizzleIntegration (2x, var β=1.5)
- DynamicCrop to remove blurred trees at the bottom
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
- SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
- SCNR green
- ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear
- Shitloads of curves to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast etc with varying luminance/star masks
- MMT for large scale chrominance noise reduction
- NoiseXTerminator
- Invert > SCNR >invert > SCNR to remove excess green and magentas
- more curves
- DarkStructureEnhance
- LocalHistogramEqualization
- EZ Star reduction
- NoiseGenerator to add noise back into star reduced areas
- DynamicCrop again
- Resample to 60%
- Annotation
I shot this mostly just to have a true color photo of M52, since my last go at it in 2019 was done in narrowband, with typical ugly narrowband stars. Captured on July 18th, 2023 from the Deerlick Astronomy Village (bortle 3 zone)
Places where I host my other images:
- TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
- Orion Sirius EQ-G
- ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
- Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
- ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
- Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
- Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
- Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
- ZWO ASI-290mc for guiding
- Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 2 hours 2 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)
- L- 30x120"
- R - 11x120"
- G - 10x120"
- B - 10x120"
- Darks- 30
- Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
- Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
PixInsight Processing
- BatchPreProcessing
- StarAlignment
- Blink
- ImageIntegration
- DrizzleIntegration (2x, var β=1.5)
Luminance Linear:
- DynamicCrop
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
- BlurXTerminator
- NoiseXterminator
- ArcsinhStretch+HistogramTransformation to bring nonlinear
RGB Linear:
- DynamicCrop
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
- ChannelCombination
- SpectrophotometricColorCalibration
- HSV Repair
- Slight SCNR green
- DeepSNR
- AcrsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
Nonlinear:
- added stretched luminance to stretched RGB via LRGBCombination
- shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust hue, lightness, saturation, etc. (some with lum masks)
- DeepSNR
- MLT Chrominance noise reduction
- LocalHistogramTransformation
- more curves
- SCNR
- BlurX for star reduction
- even more curves
- Resample to 60%
- annotation
Although the Orion Nebula is a popular beginner astrophotography target, it can be difficult to shoot because of the bright core. Combining images with different exposure lengths into an HDR image is necessary in order to properly expose for the faint dust surrounding M42 and the bright nebulosity near the trapezium cluster in the core. I opted to go for a more subtle HDR look with this one, which I think is more visually pleasing than some other overcooked HDR images (aka my previous attempt at it). Also for those interested I made a short time lapse of my telescope in action photographing this. Captured on January 22, 23, and February 7th, 2021 from a Bortle 6 zone (Probably higher local bortle level due to streetlamp at the south end of my driveway)
Places where I host my other images:
- TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
- Orion Sirius EQ-G
- ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
- Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
- ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
- Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
- Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
- Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
- ZWO ASI-120MC for guiding
- Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 5 hours 54 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)
- L- 109x120" + 50x15" + 50x5"
- R- 23x120" + 25x15"
- G- 23x120" + 25x15"
- B- 22x120" + 25x15"
- Darks- 30
- Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
- Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
- BatchPreProcessing
- StarAlignment
- Blink
- ImageIntegration
- DrizzleIntegration per stack per channel (2x, Var β=1.5)
- HDRComposition per filter to make 64-bit HDR images
- DynamicCrop
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
Luminance:
- EZ Deconvolution
- EZ Denoise
- STF applied via HistogramTransformation to make nonlinear
RGB:
- ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R, G, and B HDR stacks into color image
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
- PhotometricColorCalibration
- SCNR to partially remove greens
- HSV repair to saturate clipped star cores
- Linked STF applied via HistogramTransformation to make nonlinear
Nonlinear:
- EZ HDR applied to reveal detail in blown out core per Luminance and RGB images
I opted to only mix 10% of the HDR image back in the original luminance. Wanted to go with a more subtle HDR look that didn't feel too 'overcooked' while keeping some of the nebulosity near the trapezium visible in the final image.
- LRGBCombination to add lum image as a luminance layer to the RGB image
- CurveTransformation to adjust lightness, contrast, and saturation
- ACDNR
- LocalHistogramTransformation
- HistogramTransformation to slightly stretch image
- Another Curve for saturation boost
- EZ Star Reduction
- Resample to 78%
- Annotation
But if a plug but !astrophotography@lemmy.world if you like space pics taken by amateurs
This is one of my longer projects, with 84 hours of long exposure time over 2 seasons going into this photo. Sh2-224 is an extremely faint nebula, and this is what a single 10 minute long exposure (through a Ha narrowband filter) of it looks like. I ended up getting ~83 hours of narrowband exposures like this, plus about an hour of RGB images for the stars. Because it's so faint, if the moon was up at all I did not shoot it, which cut the number of clear nights I could reasonably image it in half. The nebula itself is false color (although the HOO palette I used is fairly close to natural color), the stars were taken with RGB filters and are true color. With this project I finally managed to learn how to do some starless processing techniques for combining the stars+nebula
Captured over 27 nights between February 2021 and April 2022, from my Bortle 6 driveway
Places where I host my other images:
- TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
- Orion Sirius EQ-G
- ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
- Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
- ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
- Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
- Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
- Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
- ZWO ASI-120mc for guiding
- Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 83 hours 52 minutes (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)
- Ha - 266x600"
- Oiii - 231x600"
- Red- 14x90"
- Green- 14x90"
- Blue- 14x90"
- Darks- 30
- Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
- Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
- BatchPreProcessing
- SubframeSelector
- StarAlignment
- Blink
- ImageIntegration
- DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Narrowband processing:
- DynamicCrop
- DynamicBackgroundExtractions
- NoiseXTerminator
- StarXterminator to completely remove stars for starless processing
to be later replaced by RGB stars. doing this allows the nebula to be stretched without worrying about blowing out stars
- HistogramTransformations to stretch nonlinear
RGB Linear Processing:
- DynamicCrop
- DynamicBackgroundExtractions
- ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R, G, and B frames into color image
- PhotometricColorCalibration
- Slight SCNR Green
- HSV Repair
super useful for putting color back into blown out star cores
- StarXterminator to generate stars only image
basically just getting rid of the background
- ArcsinhStretch + Histogram transformation to stretch nonlinear
Combining Channels:
- ChannelCombination to combine stretched Ha and Oiii images into color image
Ha mapped to red channel, Oiii to Green and Blue
- HistogramTransformation to re-linearize HOO and RGB stars images
- PixelMath to add RGB stars only image to starless HOO image
HOO + Stars the math was simple
- HistogramTransformation to bring HOO+Stars pic back to nonlinear state
Nonlinear:
- Shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, saturation, contrast, hues, etc. with various masks
- ColorSaturation to selective saturate/desaturate specific hues
- More curves
- Slight SCNR Green
- NoiseXterminator
- LRGBCombination with extracted L as luminance, used for chrominance noise reduction
- even more curves
- color saturation again
- SCNR to remove some green star color
- EZ star reduction
- NoiseGenerator to add noise into reduced star areas
- LocalHistogramEqualization
- guess what baby more curves!
- Extract L --> LRGBCombination again with mask for larger scale background chrominance noise reduction
- Resample to 70%
- Annotation
It took one night to actually photograph it (drove about 2 hours to a dark site away from the city), and then a few hours back at home to process the pic
The Antennae Galaxies (NGC 4038/4039) are a pair of colliding galaxies about 65 million ly away. The collision over the last few hundred million years has resulted in streams of ejected stars, forming the 'antennae'. Despite having guide camera issues for the first hour of the night, and horrific seeing/guiding error/HFR values, this somehow turned out decent. I've also made an annotated version which highlights background galaxies in the uncropped FOV.
Captured on April 20th, 2023 from the Deerlick Astronomy Village (Bortle 3)
Places where I host my other images:
- TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
- Orion Sirius EQ-G
- ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
- Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
- ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
- Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
- Astrodon 31mm Ha 5nm, Oiii 3nm, Sii 5nm
- Agena 50mm Deluxe Straight-Through Guide Scope
- ZWO ASI-
120mc290mc for guiding - Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition: 3 hours 52 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)
- L- 55x120"
- R - 21x120"
- G - 21x120"
- B - 19x120"
- Darks- 30
- Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
- Captured using N.I.N.A. and PHD2 for guiding and dithering.
PixInsight Processing
- BatchPreProcessing
- SubframeSelector
- StarAlignment
- Blink
- ImageIntegration
- DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Luminance Linear:
- DynamicCrop
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
- BlurXTerminator (i caved)
- NoiseXterminator
- ArcsinhStretch+HistogramTransformation to bring nonlinear
RGB Linear:
- DynamicCrop
- DynamicBackgroundExtraction
- ChannelCombination
- SpectrophotometricColorCalibration
- HSV Repair
- AcrsinhStretch + HistogramTransformation to stretch nonlinear
Nonlinear:
- added stretched luminance to stretched RGB via LRGBCombination
- DeepSNR
- shitloads of CurveTransformations to adjust hue, lightness, saturation, etc. (some with star masks)
- more curves
- LocalHistogramTransformation
Two round of this: one at kernel radius 16 for the finer 'feathery' details and one at 200 something for larger structures
- SCNR green
- CloneStamp to remove one weirdly saturated Ha region (it looked bad)
- even more curves
- NoiseX
- UnsharpMask
- curves!
- BlurXTerminator (star reduction only)
- MLT for chrominance noise reduction
- guess what more curves
- final curves
- Resample to 70%
- DynamicCrop again
- annotation
VdB 152 is technically just one part at the end of the dark nebula, and there are a number of other cataloged structures in this image. Captured from August 16-25, 2023. Broadband data from a Bortle 3 zone (Deerlick astronomy village), Ha from Bortle 9.
Places where I host my other images:
Flickr | Instagram
Equipment:
Acquisition: 30 hours 15 minutes (Camera at -15°C)
Capture Software:
PixInsight Preprocessing:
Luminance Linear:
Ha Linear:
RGB Linear:
Nonlinear Processing: