Oh no! Where will I go to see OF spam bots now???
Bye, Bob :-(
I love procrastinating on processing my images! I got set up early at a dark site last month and decided to shoot the sun while it was still up. There were a shitload of sunspots, including AR3697 in the bottom right. This sunspot group was the one that gave us the wonderful aurora back in May (back when it was known as AR3664)
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
Moonlite Autofocuser
Astrozap BAADER AstroSolar Density 5 filter
Acquisition:
Capture Software:
Processing:
Stacked the best 25% of frames in Autostakkert, 2X resample and autosharpened
Colorized using curves in Photoshop
More lightness/Hue Adjustments
Astrosurface wavelets to remove some grid artifacts from stacking
STF applied in pixinsight
Annotatation
I’m guessing it’s called that because it’s kinda headphone shaped. It was discovered in the 30’s so I’m assuming only the brightest parts of the nebula were visible to the astronomers.
This image is a combination of false color narrowband images for the nebula itself, plus true color RGB stars (the nebula is mostly red and a little blue in true color). If you zoom in to the center you can see the very blue white dwarf that caused the planetary nebula to form. Also for those curious this is what a single 10 minute long Ha exposure looks like (image total is 83.5 hours exposure). Captured over 33 nights from Jan-May 2024 from a bortle 9 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: 83 hours 30 minutes (Camera at -15°C), NB exposures at unity gain and BB at half unity
Ha - 238x600"
Oiii - 247x600"
R - 54x60"
G - 53x60"
B - 54x60"
Darks- 30
Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
PixInsight Preprocessing:
BatchPreProcessing
StarAlignment
Blink
ImageIntegration per channel
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Dynamic Crop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction 3x
duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)
$T * med(model) / model
Narrowband Linear:
Blur and NoiseXTerminator
StarXterminator to completely remove stars (to be later replaced by the RGB ones)
ArcsinhStretch to slightly stretch nonlinear
iHDR 2.0 script (low preset) to stretch each channel the rest of the way.
here’s the link to the repo if you want to add it to your own PI install.
RGB Linear:
ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R G and B frame into color image
SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
BlurXTerminator for star sharpening (correct only)
HSV Repair
StarXterminator to generate a stars-only image
ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear (to be combined with starless narrowband image later)
Invert > SCNR > invert to remove magentas
Curves to saturate the stars a bit more
Nonlinear:
R = iif(Ha > .15, Ha, (Ha*.8)+(Oiii*.2))
G = iif(Ha > 0.5, 1-(1-Oiii)*(1-(Ha-0.5)), Oiii *(Ha+0.5))
B = iif(Oiii > .1, Oiii, (Ha*.3)+(Oiii*.2))
NoiseX again
Background Neutralization
Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc
even more curves
Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier
This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before. More info on it here)
mtf(.005,
mtf(.995,Stars)+
mtf(.995,Starless))
Couple final curves
Resample to 65%
DynamicCrop
Annotation
Sh2-64 is the red nebula to the right of the image. It frames up pretty well with the more golden stars seen in the milky way core. I probably should’ve gotten more exposure time to help bring out some of the dark nebula details, but it was only clear for one night at the dark site (at least the night went perfectly, which is rare for trips out to the middle of nowhere). Captured on June 7th, 2024 from a Bortle 3 zone (Deerlick Astronomy Village)
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: 5 hours 44 minutes (Camera at half unity gain -15°C)
L - 76x120"
R - 32x120"
G - 32x120"
B - 32x120"
Darks- 30
Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
PixInsight Preprocessing:
BatchPreProcessing
StarAlignment
ImageIntegration per channel per panel
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Dynamic Crop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
Luminance Linear:
BlurXterminator (Correct only)
NoiseXterminator
HistogramTransformation + sketchpad’s iHDR script (low preset) to stretch to nonlinear
RGB Linear:
ChannelCombination to combine monochrom R G and B stacks into color image
SpectrophotometricColorCalibration
BlurXterminator (correct only)
HSV repair
ArcsinhStretch + iHDR script (low preset) to stretch to nonlinear
Nonlinear Processing:
LRGBCombination using stretched L as luminance
DeepSNR
Various curve adjustments for lightness, contrast, hue, saturation, etc (with varying lum/star masks)
Slight SCNR green
ColorSaturation to boost the saturation of the Ha region
More curves
NoiseXterminator
invert > SCNR > invert to remove some magentas
LocalHistogramEqualization
two rounds at scale 16 and 132 to target different sized structures
LOTS more curve adjustments
MultiscaleLinearTransform for chrominance noise reduction
Even more curves
Resample to 60%
Annotation
They’re still going to launch the 6 operational starliner flights on Atlas V’s, and Amazon has bought several of them for their Kuiper satellite constellation.
Personally I doubt starliner is going to keep flying once the 6 ISS missions are over, regardless of launch vehicle.
This is already the highest res (at least in terms of being zoomed in), but here’s the entire uncropped photo
thanks!
Finally done with classes and I got some time to at least star processing my pics. Gonna be a while before I figure out all the HDR stuff, so here’s a pic of the prominences about 10 seconds before C3. It was absolutely nutty seeing them naked eye during the eclipse, and visually through my other telescope. Captured on April 8th, 2024 from Sikeston, MO.
Places where I host my other images:
TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
Orion Sirius EQ-G
Canon T3i (Ha modded)
Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition:
Capture Software:
Eclipse Orchestrator Free for automating the capture sequence
NINA for controlling the mount and autofocuser
The saturation is increased, but looking at the moon through a telescope you can barely see some faint blue/tan colorations that line up with this pic. The blue areas have more titanium minerals and the tan/orange areas have more iron
Thanks to my north facing balcony, I can only photograph the moon when it’s at high declinations. Fortunately it was at +27 dec the other day, and it was early enough for me to be awake to shoot it! Captured at 10pm on April 12th, 2024.
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: (Camera at Unity Gain, -15°C)
R - 20000 x 5.4ms
G - 2000 x 4.3ms
B - 2000 x 6.0ms
Capture Software:
Stacking:
PixInsight Processing:
DynamicCrop
ChannelCombination to combine monochrome images into RGB image
ChannelMatch to align G and B color channels to red
ColorCalibration
HistogramTransformation (slight stretch)
SCNR > invert > SCNR to remove green and magenta color fringing
CurvesTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc.
LocalHistogramTransformation
dynamic crop
Annotation
So it turns out camera sensors are perfectly fine being exposed to the last ~20 seconds of sunlight before an eclipse. I’ve decided that if I still have this cam in 2045 I’m going to sacrifice it to the sun by not putting the filter back on after totality, and letting it document its own demise.
Holy shit this was the most awesome thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ve been prepping for this eclipse ever since I got clouded out at the last minute for the 2017 eclipse, and almost everything went perfectly! (I didn’t even hit eclipse traffic on the way home!) With the camera automated I got 163 HDR pics during totality, plus more from the partial phases, so expect to see some more pics in the coming weeks!
I really like how the diffraction spikes turned out from the Bailey’s Beads, and how the blue turned out in my totality pics. I tried to keep the editing minimal on this, and just did some minor contrast and saturation adjustments (see below for more details). The corona in the image is definitely bluer than how it looked irl (which was mostly just white), but the prominence color is pretty close to what I saw through my other scope. I suspect it’s because of the custom white balance I’ve had to use for my astro modded cam. For those curious here are my other C2 pics, unedited other than cropping
Captured on April 8th, 2024 from Sikeston, MO.
Places where I host my other images:
TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
Orion Sirius EQ-G
Canon T3i (Ha modded)
Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
Moonlite Autofocuser
Acquisition:
Capture Software:
Eclipse Orchestrator Free for automating the capture sequence
NINA for controlling the mount and autofocuser
The Little Dumbbell Nebula gets its name because it kinda looks like a tinier version of the Dumbbell Nebla M27 (yes, a different palette was used for this pic). It’s really tiny compared to the uncropped FOV. I’m a lot happier with this attempt at it, compared to my 2019 pic of M76 with the same equipment. I know It’s a bit out of season rn but I needed something to shoot at the start of the night. The nebulosity itself is false color, but the stars are true color RGB. Captured over 10 nights in Feb/Mar 2024 from a bortle 9 zone (I could only get a couple hours max per night on it.
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: 21 hours 6 minutes (Camera at -15°C), NB exposures at unity gain and BB at half unity
Ha - 99x360"
Oiii - 83x360"
R - 101x60"
G - 100x60"
B - 99x60"
Darks- 30
Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
PixInsight Preprocessing:
BatchPreProcessing
StarAlignment
Blink
ImageIntegration per channel
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Dynamic Crop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)
$T * med(model) / model
Narrowband Linear:
Blur and NoiseXTerminator
StarXterminator to completely remove stars (to be later replaced by the RGB ones)
ArcsinhStretch to slightly stretch nonlinear
iHDR 2.0 script to stretch each channel the rest of the way.
This is a great new pixinsight script from Sketch on the discord. here’s the link to the repo if you want to add it to your own PI install.
RGB Linear:
ChannelCombination to combine monochrome R G and B frame into color image
SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
BlurXTerminator for star sharpening
HSV Repair
StarXterminator to generate a stars-only image
ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear (to be combined with starless narrowband image later)
Nonlinear:
R = iif(Ha > .15, Ha, (Ha*.8)+(Oiii*.2))
G = iif(Ha > 0.5, 1-(1-Oiii)*(1-(Ha-0.5)), Oiii *(Ha+0.5))
B = iif(Oiii > .1, Oiii, (Ha*.3)+(Oiii*.2))
NoiseX again
Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc
LocalHistogramEqualization
UnsharpMask
More curves
ColorSaturation to slightly desaturate the purples
even more curves
Pixelmath to add in the stretched RGB stars only image from earlier
This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before
(again, credit to Jimmy independent starless processing stuff)
mtf(.005,
mtf(.995,Stars)+
mtf(.995,Starless))
Couple final curves
DynamicCrop waaaay in on the nebula
Annotation
Kinda as a joke I designed a house for astrophotography in sweethome 3D. You can also export the whole 3D house model into unity and upload it to VRChat to actually walk around inside it
So I shot the Bubble Nebula in true-color last year, but I decided to shoot it again this past month in false color. It really helps to show the extended nebulosity, and gives me and excuse to compare my image to Hubble’s. This false color image uses the SHO palette, where the sulfur-ii wavelength is mapped to red, hydrogen-alpha to green, and oxygen-iii is blue. I’m really happy with how the colors turned out on this one. There’s also a number of other nebulae and a star cluster in frame. Captured over 14 nights in Jan/Feb 2024 from a bortle 9 zone (I could only get a couple hours max per night on it.
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: 37 hours 36 minutes (Camera at -15°C), Camera at unity gain.
Ha - 95x360"
Oiii - 140x360"
Sii - 141x360"
Darks- 30
Flats- 30 per filter
Capture Software:
PixInsight Preprocessing:
BatchPreProcessing
StarAlignment
ImageIntegration per channel
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
Dynamic Crop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
duplicated each image and removed stars via StarXterminator. Ran DBE with a shitload of points to generate background model. model subtracted from original pic using the following PixelMath (math courtesy of /u/jimmythechicken1)
$T * med(model) / model
Narrowband Linear:
Blur and NoiseXTerminator
Duplicated the images before stretching to be used for separate stars-only processing
Slight stretch using HistogramTransformation
iHDR 2.0 script to stretch each channel the rest of the way.
Stars Only Processing:
PixelMath to combine star images (SHO palette)
SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration (narrowband working mode)
StarXTerminator to make stars only image form each channel
SCNR > invert > SCNR > invert to remove greens and magentas
ArcsinhStretch + HT to stretch nonlinear - to be combined later with starless pic
Nonlinear:
PixelMath to combine stretched Ha, Oiii, and Sii images into color image (SHO palette)
StarXterminator to remove stars
HistogramTransformations to tone back the greens and apply a more aggressive stretch to red and blue channels
Shitloads of Curve Transformations to adjust lightness, hues, contrast, saturation, etc
LRGBCombination with stretched Ha as luminance
DeepSNR
more curves
ColorSaturation to bring up the blues in the bubble
LocalHistogramEqualization
even more curves
MLT for chrominance noise reduction
Pixelmath to add in the stretched stars only image from earlier
This basically re-linearizes the two images, adds them together, and then stretches them back to before
mtf(.005,
mtf(.995,Stars)+
mtf(.995,Starless))
A round of NoiseXterminator for good measure
Resample to 60%
Annotation
They shut it down last September. It’s nsfw spinoff redgifs is still up.
It may not be as big or well known as the other well known cluster in Hercules (M13), but it sure looks nice. Captured over 4 nights in July/August 2024 from a Bortle 9 zone
Places where I host my other images:
Instagram | Flickr
Equipment:
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: 6 hours 55 minutes (Camera at half Unity Gain, -15°C)
Lum - 209x60"
Red - 78x60"
Green - 62x60"
Blue - 66x60"
Flats- 30 per filter
24 JimmyFlats per filter
Capture Software:
PixInsight Processing:
BatchPreProcessing (with premade JimmyFlats)
StarAlignment
Blink
ImageIntegration
DrizzleIntegration (2x, Var β=1.5)
DynamicCrop
DynamicBackgroundExtraction
Luminance:
BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)
ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear
RGB:
ChannelCombinaiton to combine monochrome R, G, B stacks into color image
BlurXTerminator (correct only mode)
SpectroPhotometricColorCalibration
HSV Repair
ArcsinhStretch + histogramtransformation to bring nonlinear
Curves to saturate it a little
MLT for large scale chrominance noise reduction
Nonlinear:
LRGBCombination with stretched L as luminance
DeepSNR Noise reduction
Several CurveTransformations to adjust lightness, contrast, colors, saturation, etc.
Invert > SCNR > invert > SCNR to remove some greens and magentas
More curves
A little bit of noiseXterminator
DynamicCrop in on the clustert
Resample to 75%
Annotation