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Hi everyone. My name is Houston, I am a new member to SDAA and just signed up today to AISIG. Great group here, and there are some excellent images from what I have seen so far. I am particualry interested in heliophysics, and have been observing and imaging the Sun in HA for just over 2 years now.
I am originaly from Virginia, but have lived in San Diego for the past 10 years. I was in the Navy here in San Diego, got out and stayed in the area for school. I recently graduated from UCSD, where I found my passion for astronomy and cosmology. Although my imaging experience is mostly with solar, I am beginning to convert to the 'dark side' and am looking forward to trips out to TDS for some star gazing.
I can't wait to meet everyone and learn from what seems to be an endless body of knowledge and experience. The challenge that imaging presents, and the ablility to share with those who don't have telescopes of any sort, is what really turns me on to imaging. Cheers! And hope to see you out at TDS soon,
Houston |
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For those that have caught the dreaded bug called Astro Imaging and stepped into the swamp full of alligators, I have found there is no short cut for time. If you go the One Shot Color route as I have, be it a OCS CCD imager or a DSLR, you'll find that the time invested in getting good quality data is no less than that of someone doing LRGB imaging. Sometimes more. While you may not want the headaches of imaging everything 4 times, be prepared to spend the same amount of time under the stars getting enough data to slay the beast called "noise". I'm finding out that imaging at 2000mm and above I need no less that five hours of data for any DSO I may want to collect photons of. And be prepared to spend more time in post processing just to work on getting the fine details to display in the image. Take the time and you find that the quality of you images will go way up.
D. |
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Latest Build:
Homemade 16” F4.5 Newtonian OTA on a Homemade German equatorial mount with a Homemade drive |
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Nothing excites me more than the night skies of spring. The messier marathon is just around the corner and every worthwhile object in the sky will be visible in a single night of viewing. The desert heat yet to come, the clear dark nights of the coming summer months are preceded by last chills of winter.
High up in the mountains east of San Diego, those of us lucky enough to know it, and with time to exploit it will be shooting the night skies of the spring into summer equinox. This is a time of life renewed, and of Saturn high in the midnight sky. Mars sets, Jupiter long gone, and the archer chased over the horizon as the tail of scorpion rises in the morning sky to the east.
Comes the morning in high southern desert, the spring of life renewed.
Ad Astra,
jerry
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Okay, I am still the professional astronomer who doesn't own a telescope. But I now own my first DSLR camera! I have been a member of AISIG for awhile now but have never taken any images - none worth posting at least. I have a "borrowed" LX200 GPS 8" from school and I have purchased the necessary equipment to do some astrophotography with my Canon Rebel XSi. I chose not to get it modified since my primary use for the camera is everyday photography. I am perfecting polar aligning the scope since it is on a field tripod lugged out to my alley each night. I am learning about image processing by scouring the internet for those folks who are willing to explain what they did. I have posted a few of my successes but more will come. Each night is a new adventure... this is fun!
More can be found at: http://daphne.palomar.edu/mlane/ABOUTME/ASTROPIX.htm |
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Have you noticed the Logo in the description of my images lately? I struggled with trying to come up with a name for my observatory at TDS for a long time, as many of you have great names that identify yours as part of you or where you image at. Jeff's "Doghouse Observatoy" is my favorite observatory name and was the inspiration for me to finally come up with a name for my place for imaging the night sky.
"Observatory "D' was what I called mine for over three years and I was not happy with such a droll name. There was no flavor, nothing to identify me in the name. After acquiring the whole library of music from one of my teen years' music idols ( I know, that was a long time ago), I was inspirired and it will now be known as the Barking Pumpkin Observatory.
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This was a morning 10 second tripod snapshot of the conjunction. My wife and I spent a good amount of time driving around looking for a good place to get a reasonably well composed shot. I am still not sure if this is the best crop, but I have been dithering about posting, so I decided to go with this.
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I now have a personal website for my astro images. Please visit http://astro.ihermans.com. Enjoy! |
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Please visit my website at: http://www.rattlesnakeobservatory.com/astro/ |
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I am retired and travel about 1/2 the time in 5th wheel to parks all over the United States. I usually carry my telescope and camera with me. |
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Hello and Welcome to my Homepage on the AstroImaging website. Though I spend the majority of my time doing visual observation, every now and then I do come up with a photo or two, and so I will be sharing those with you here on my page. I have been a member of the club since 1996 and have many good friends in this club. These days your likely to find me at public star party events as I tend to make it to a lot of the local school star parties. I also make it out to TDS from time to time and if you see me out and about be sure to introduce yourself and say hello. I look forward to seeing you out under the stars.
Dean.... |
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 of Picture 166.jpg) |
I took this at TDS Saturday the 31st of March with my Celestron C6-N and Meade LPI |
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Every new image is a learning experience, not only with the mechanics of the activities and equipment, but also in seeing more of the night sky's objects than ever before. Of course it is exciting to see many different objects in the heavens through your telescope or binocular, but with patience and growing experience imaging these objects, you are able to observe so much more. As an example, my 8" SCT telescope allows me to "see" about Mag 12 to Mag 13.5 stars on good nights; I can routinely image to Mag 17.5 to Mag 18.5 stars in those same conditions. That's about 100 times fainter than I can "see" through the eyepiece.
Check out my website at www.jthommes.com/Astro
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Just checking in |
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I’ve used my stock Canon Digital Rebel for a while now and love it. However all my buddies are upgrading to the new 20Da and I just don’t feel ready to retire this camera yet. One of the drawbacks of the stock Rebel is that its sensitivity to H-alpha is poor due to the internal IR blocking filter. It can be removed, but the camera must be completely disassembled and is a bit tricky. That’s why it costs several hundred dollars to have Hutech do it for you. However, Gary Honis and others have posted detailed descriptions of how to modify the Rebel:
http://ghonis2.ho8.com/rebelmod.html, and a few weeks ago I did just that on my kitchen table. I found that it certainly was not your typical “take the radio apart” job, and involves several very tricky steps that could easily ruin the camera. However all seemed to go well, and I now have a “new camera” with improved H-alpha sensitivity, for a cost of about $20. I replaced the internal IR filter with a clear glass plate from Edmond Scientific and installed appropriate spacers to maintain autofocus, all as described above. For daylight photography, I now have to use a color-correcting filter (CC1 I think from Xnite) in front of the lens. For astro work I use a Baader UV/IR cut filter that cuts off at 700 nm and thus transmits H-alpha.
On the weekend of 9/2/05 I did my first real astro tests of the modified rebel. I did a couple of repeat shots of objects I had done with the stock Rebel for comparison, using the same optics and similar exposures. The modified Rebel is definitely giving exposures with a very red cast to them. It looks like that color correcting images with the modified camera is going to be the next big hurdle. I spent a lot of time learning new histogram matching skills in Photoshop, as I just couldn’t get ImagesPlus to do a very good job here. Perhaps I just haven’t learned enough yet.
The first test was M16, shown here:
http://aisig.sdaa.org/astroblog/astroblogDetail.asp?imgID=715 which I had also shot last month with the stock Rebel:
http://aisig.sdaa.org/astroblog/astroblogDetail.asp?imgID=649 .
Comparing the two images shows that they are more similar than I was expecting. That is there is a noticeable but not dramatic difference in the nebulosity in the weak fringes.
The next test was M1, and the new image is here:
http://aisig.sdaa.org/astroblog/astroblogDetail.asp?imgID=713 and the old pre-mod image is here:
http://aisig.sdaa.org/astroblog/astroblogDetail.asp?imgID=341 . There is a much bigger difference here where the detail in the tendrils is better defined. Also the region around the central pulsar is better resolved although some of this could be due to a years experience and not just the improved camera response.
Finally, here is a shot of NGC7635, The Bubble:
http://aisig.sdaa.org/astroblog/astroblogDetail.asp?imgID=717
I took this one because Jeff Herman was shooting the same object that night with a C9.25 and his new Canon 20Da and we wanted to compare. Overall they are similar, mine perhaps goes a little deeper but this may be due to slightly larger aperature. Our real test will come soon when Jeff and I will image objects with our separate setups, then swap cameras and do it again. It would be really nice to directly compare the results of a stock 20Da and a modified Rebel.
I know I’m probably correcting too much of the red away in some of these images. Most nebulas would look pretty red if our eyes were sensitive to all wavelengths. Perhaps I just haven’t gotten used to the shock of seeing so much H-alpha emission in my pictures. However for now aesthetics makes me want to see objects with a fairly neutral color balance, the way my eye would see them. This will create an ongoing struggle to get the overall image rebalanced without affecting the balance of the saturated stars much. For now, I’ll continue to let my aesthetics have some input as that’s what I do this for anyway.
My conclusion: The increased H-alpha sensitivity of the modified Rebel makes a significant but not dramatic difference in overall luminance, and adds a much more dramatic “red nebula look” to uncorrected photos (which I tend to want to remove). For nebula it will be a plus, but for galaxies it is not clear how much improvement this will be. The increased work to rebalance color will make these images a lot more difficult to process. Bottom line, I’m glad I did it, but it’s going to be more work. What I really want is an STL-11000. |
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Tonight I made my first attempt to set up the scopes with the camera. Almost everything was assembled, except for the software to run the autoguider, which I left at another location. I learned a lot, had fun visual observing, and am ready for more! I need a checklist. I observed the Lagoon Nebula for a while. |
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This is an attempt at M15 from my backyard in Lakeside. The sky there is reasonably dark, but there is a fair amount of light pollution, which is what I am attributing to the (lack of) quality of this image. The image itself was formed from 585 frames and was processed using Registax. You can barely make out M15, but it is there! |
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http://hubblesite.org/ |
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In addition to taking new astro images which I will post some of here, I am in the process of scanning and digitally preserving some older film data. This is a big job and it will take me the better part of a year or so. As I do this I will also post some of these older images I think would be of interest as with the comet and eclipse images |
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I began using telescopes as a hobby when I was only 9 or 10. School and work distracted me away for a long time. In 2000 my wife bought me a small reflector and re-ignited my old passion. In 2001 I joined SDAA and after my first experience at TDS decided I had to get back into astrophotography. I started with film but quickly migrated to webcams and then to SBIG cameras, recently returning to film to capture wide field images. Most recently I have been doing hydrogen alpha imaging using camera lenses. I just posted a few images to the site. |
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I started astronomy in the 3rd grade and have enjoyed the night sky ever since. My high school science fair was a 'Photograhic Survey of the Lunar Surface" using a homemade 8", a popular project in 1965. I've made 5 'scopes, and now enjoy a Meade 16" LX200 with SBIG ST9E and eye candy with my 18" Dob Obsession. Yes, I still have my favorite homemade 8". I do a bit of imaging and photometry, but consider myself a visual observer. Whatever your interest in astronomy, ENJOY!
Clear, dark skies
Dennis
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Welcome to my AISIG Home page! Stay tuned for more shots coming soon! |
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Welcome to my web page. I have been taking astrophotos since 1968 and it has been a source of pure pleasure for me. I have been teaching Astronomy since 1981 at Mesa college and more recently at Southwestern college. My students have been using the 25 inch R/C and the 10 inch refractor for their lab work for quite a few years. They really enjoy the observatory at the SDAA site and I will post some of their photos on this site as well as my own photos. (with their permission) The upper right photo is a digital RGB photo taken with the Site 1024X1024 back thinned CCD chip through a home made 8 inch F2.8 Baker Schmidt telescope on Aug 2000. (Home made filter adapter and Kodak gelatin filters) Please enjoy the site and come back again for new pictures.
Best Wishes and Clear Skies to All.
Sina |
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Welcome to my AISIG Home page! Stay tuned for more shots coming soon! |
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Welcome to my AISIG Home page! Stay tuned for more shots coming soon! |
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Welcome to my SDAA AISIG home page. More pictures are coming soon. |
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Camera: Nikon 4300 point and shoot digital camera
Telescope: 8" Newtonian Celestron
I don't remember the exposure times; image taken at TDS |
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Hi! My astro adventure began to take hold in 1981 with a 3" Tasco scope. I took a cross country trip in summer 1982 from NC to WA and wound up at Montana and Glacier-Waterton National Park and a bi-centennial celebration, being hosted by the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers and a group from British Columbia. I became hooked on the dobsonian style scope, and my 13.1" arrived in NC that fall/winter.
Kathy & I married in 1993 and spent our honeymoon at the TSP that May. The honeymoon continues. The astro images I have to share are afocal and hand-held as the image drifts across the eyefield. Call them candid. Hope you enjoy.
Clear skies!
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