Quick Moon Shot

Spent a nice 30 minute period in my front garden shooting the moon tonight. This was taken with my Nikon D7000 and 66mm William Optics Petzval.

M45 - Pleiades

Okay, so I have never really shot this cluster before. I'm quite happy with the result! The reflection nebula is clearly evident, and the stars within it are nicely focused. I could have done with a flat frame but will get one next time. As I said in my earlier post, the D7000 lets me focus very tightly now, and I think I can see the difference in the way that the detailed nebulosity has come out here.

Image Details:

• Imaging Scope: Astrotelescopes 80mm ED Refractor
• Imaging Camera: Nikon D7000
• Guiding Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor
• Guiding Camera: Meade DSI-C
• Mount: Celestron CGEM
• Exposures: 12 * 3 minute lights, 5 * 3 minute darks
  
• ISO 800
• Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Post-Processing in GIMP (contrast, saturation and unsharp mask)

Ahh, Gear!

Wonderful evening, tonight! Clear skies, cold temperatures, scope gear, a good mate and a bottle of Guinness! It doesn't get too much better than that. I took my astrophotography rig out tonight to test out the new D7000 body. I met my friend, Scott, out at an alternative dark sky site we'd found on the outskirts of Austin. I spent several hours out there, messing with the D7000 and taking some test shots. I'll post them on the blog here if they come out decently. For now, here's a shot of my new "office"! The D7000 on my 80mm ED refractor, with my Meade DSI guide camera on my William Optics 66mm refractor - all atop my Celestron CGEM which, as usual, behaved admirably tonight through PHD Guiding. Ahh, bliss!

The nifty thing about the D7000 for astro use is the live view with zoom. When I GOTO an object that I want to image, I can turn on "live view" mode, and then zoom into a star that exists in the field of view. Then, I can achieve very sharp, tight focus in preparation for light frame collection. It's wonderful, much better than trial and error!

While I am still processing the images, I can already see some nice, sharp images coming through...

The Moon with the Nikon D7000

Clear skies tonight, and the full moon hung in the low East sky. I thought I'd try out the new D7000 on it and shot it through my William Optics 66mm Petzval. The result is lovely. Near-full moons are hard to achieve focus on all around. I love the live view option on the D7000. I can turn it on, focus on the telescope until I get what appears to be the sharpest image possible, and shoot. This will be excellent for my DSO photography!

(Otherwise, for regular photos, the D7000 is stunning. I'll post some images on my Photo blog soon.)

Image Details:

• Imaging Camera: Nikon D7000
• Imaging Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor
• ISO: 160
• Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds

M20 Triffid Nebula

Again, sticking around Sagittarius, I aimed for M20. It's an object that has eluded me based on both the lack of ability to get out and shoot it and the rubbish results that have occurred when I have been able to shoot it! I may be pushing it when shooting smaller objects with an 80mm scope, but this is my best M20 yet.

Image Details

• Imaging Scope: Astrotelescopes 80mm ED Refractor
• Imaging Camera: Nikon D40
• Guiding Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor
• Guiding Camera: Meade DSI-C
• Mount: Celestron CGEM
• Exposures: 8 * 3 minute lights, 4 * 3 minute darks, 20 bias frames
  
• ISO 800
• Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Post-Processing in GIMP (contrast, saturation and unsharp mask)
• Noise reduction in Neat Image

Wide Field View:

M31 Andromeda

Here is my M31 "best of" image. I went through several iterations of processing on the set of images I acquired this past Friday night. While these were long~ish exposures (five minutes), I still really had to bend the curves and settings to get the image to look like this, and it really brought out some noise. I now think I need to take 10-minute exposures to get decent RAW images to stack and work from without inducing the noise and graininess seen in the resulting image. It IS better than my last attempt, for sure.

Image Details

• Imaging Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor

• Imaging Camera: Nikon D40
• Guiding Scope: Astrotelescopes 80mm ED Refractor
• Guiding Camera: Meade DSI-C
• Exposures: 19 * 5 minute lights, 4 * 5 minute darks
• ISO 800
• Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Post-Processing in GIMP (contrast, saturation and unsharp mask)
• Noise Removal in Neat Image

I am going to try this again in a few days' time. My M51 shot from a few months ago came out nicely at ISO400 with 10 minute exposures. That may be the ticket for this...

M81 & M82

Okay, so this is my first attempt at M81 and M82 using long exposures and guiding. The post-processing is rough, and I tweaked with it for HOURS. Still not happy with the result. I think the problems with this photo are:

1. Not in focus. I should have slowed down on Friday night and "focused" on "focusing"! ;-) As a result, it's not as sharp as it could be by a long shot.
2. Stars are too bright and "burned out" in my opinion. But I couldn't decrease star brightness without decreasing the nebulosity of the galaxies. Very annoying.
3. There is still a digital feel to this image. I'm trying to get a nice, glossy image and seem to be far from that. Not sure how to do that.

Having said that, it's a vast improvement on my attempt from last year and definitely a step in the right direction. You can clearly see the spiral arms of the main galaxy and there's some nice color there too.

Image Details:

• Imaging Scope: AstroTelescopes 80mm ED Refractor
• Imaging Camera: Nikon D40
• Guiding Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor
• Guiding Camera: Meade DSI-C
• Mount: Celestron CGEM
• Exposure Time: 1 hr 20 mins (8 * 10-minute exposures)
• ISO400
• Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Post-processing in GIMP
• Noise reduction in NeatImage

M31 Andromeda Galaxy

This image is much better than my last attempt at this beautiful galaxy. I have a long way to go yet, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. As stated in a prior post, I didn't set up my guider due to pure laziness and lack of concentration. So, this image was made of two-minute exposures. With guiding, I could at least double the exposure length and get a much better image, which I will for try next time out. I definitely have my drift alignment down now as the stars look pretty good, and you can see more detail in the galaxy itself.

Image Details:

• William Optics 66MM Refractor
• Mounted on a Meade 8" LX200 Classic with Milburn Wedge
• Nikon D40 DSLR
• ISO800
• 37 *120 second light frames
• 8 *120 second dark frames
• 8 * flat frames
  
• Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Level and curve adjustment in GIMP
• Noise reduction in Neat Image
  

Lagoon (M8) and Triffid (M20) Nebulas

I am on the fence on this once. This is my first wide-field attempt at anything in this rich region of the sky, near Sagittarius and, thus the center of the Milky Way. There are a LOT of stars and patchy regions in this part of the sky, and it was a real test as far as capturing the images and processing them was concerned. I fiddled around with different processing techniques and settled on the result below. I want to go back and try some different things later. I was able to bring out a bit of color in both nebulas, and captured the denseness of the star fields nearby. As with my Pleiades shot in my previous post, I think a much longer exposure would have been better, and with guiding too. Happy with it for my first attempt, though.

Image Details:

• William Optics 66MM Refractor
• Mounted on a Meade 8" LX200 Classic with Milburn Wedge
• Nikon D40 DSLR
• ISO800
• 20 *120 second light frames
• 6*120 second dark frames
• 8* flat frames
  
• Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Level and curve adjustment in GIMP
• Noise reduction in Neat Image
  

Pleiades (M45) Test Shot

Below is a test shot (actually my first ever attempt) of the Pleiades cluster. I only took around seven two-minute frames for this shot. Longer exposures would have revealed much better nebulosity around Merope (brighter star at bottom of the cluster) and Maia (star at the near top of the cluster). 4 minute exposures would have been grand. To be honest I had my guiding gear with me but was too busy chatting and mucking around to set it all up. Next time...

Image Details:

• William Optics 66MM Refractor
• Mounted on a Meade 8" LX200 Classic with Milburn Wedge
• Nikon D40 DSLR
• ISO800
  
• 7 *120 second light frames
• 4*120 second dark frames
• 8* flat frames
  
• Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Level and curve adjustment in GIMP
  

Double Cluster (NGC869 & NGC884)

Here's one of my images from last weekend. I love the Double Cluster. It's a great pair of objects, visually, especially when using a wide-field eyepiece. So, I decided to try and capture it and the result is below.

Image Details:

• William Optics 66MM Refractor
• Mounted on a Meade 8" LX200 Classic with Milburn Wedge
• Nikon D40 DSLR
• ISO800
  
• 21*30 second light frames
• 4*30 second dark frames
• Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Level adjustment in GIMP