A beautiful clear evening (but with a bright Moon overhead) so that meant star imaging only. There, low on the southern horizon was beautiful Sirius blazing away – so that was the target! Managed to get 22 x 2-minute subs using the Canon 200mm prime lenses and the ASI 2600MC Pro OSC CMOS cameras. EXTREMELY pleased with the result.
Category Archives: Deep-Sky Imaging
Sirius – The Brightest Star in the Sky
Out of all my bright, single star images, I think this one is my favourite. Sirius – the brightest star in the sky. Two-frame (vertical) mosaic with camera in landscape mode. 3 x Sky90 refractors and 3 x M26C (non-Trius) OSC CCD cameras. Each frame is 90-minutes of 2-minute subs (so that’s actually 270-minutes of actual exposure time per frame).
Star Reduced Pleiades
The Full Extent of the California Nebula
There is a LOT more to the California nebula than you usually see in the posted images. This is 24 x 20-minute subs taken with the Canon 200mm prime lenses, ASI 2600MC Pro OSC CMOS cameras, and the Optolong L-Enhance filters. Notice the long “nose” which is usually absent on images of this one. I wonder how much more I can get out of this one by getting more subs?
Star reduced Horsehead nebula and Belt Stars of Orion
The Horsehead nebula and the Belt Stars of Orion region. This is a 2-frame mosaic using a single Sky90 and a single M25C OSC CCD. H-alpha and OIII data was also included. Imaging time around 4-hours (or more) per frame. This version is with the star reduction app that works with Russ Croman’s StarXTerminator.
Russ Croman’s StarXTerminator Program and the JWST Images
I recently downloaded the free evaluation copy of Russ Croman’s StarXTerminator program – which basically does what it says on the tin. I also saw a recent James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on APOD and was once again flabbergasted at the absolutely dreadful EIGHT diffraction spikes around bright stars. So I thought I would try an experiment and see what StarXTerminator would do on a JWST image. I was expecting StarXTerminator to do a good job on removing stars but I was expecting it to leave a lot of the diffraction spikes behind. In the images above you can actually see what happened. StarXTerminator did an absolutely superb job on removing both stars AND diffraction spikes. A quick run of “Despeckle” in Photoshop really cleaned up the background and the “Spot Healing Brush” tool cleared up a couple of stragglers. I really think Russ should be in serious discussion with NASA on how to clean up their JWST images.
The Stars Like Dust
Alshain, Altair, Tarazed & Barnard’s “E”
Noel Carboni’s AstroFlat plug-in has just been released!
I have been recently beta-testing Noel Carboni’s new flattening tool for deep-sky images.
This plug-in makes flattening even the most difficult image data a doddle (even I can get good results).
If you carry out deep-sky image processing, then you must have this tool in your digital darkroom toolbox – it’s sharp!
Today’s Earth Science Picture of the Day (EPOD)
Is a stereo view of asteroid JO25 2014.
Thank you Jim at EPOD for continuing to publish my work and Dr. Brian May for creating the stereograph.