Our Beautiful Universe - Photos and Videos

[DennisN]

A remastered blast from the past, with some marvellous photos:

‘Look closely and there’s a tear in Armstrong’s eye’: the Apollo space missions as you’ve never seen them before" (The Guardian)

"Nasa’s original moon mission photographs, kept locked in a freezer in Houston, are some of the most vital artefacts of human endeavour. Now, they have been remastered for a new century. Introduction by Tim Peake. Photographs restored by Andy Saunders"

Article: https://www.theguardian.com/science...issions-photographs-remastered-neil-armstrong

Example:

 

[Andy Resnick]

Think I'm ready to send this to a printer- The Veil Nebula, 18 hours (10s subs) @ 400/4, Nikon D810, Losmandy GM-8 mount:

It's a little easier to see with the stars suppressed:

Some 1:1 crops:

 

[Devin-M]

I came across this very impressive walkthrough of a remote observatory…

 

[ondrejbruha]

Cygnus region

This photo was taken in Czechia near to Prague (Bortle 4/5).
Gear: Sony A7 + Samyang 135/2 + STC Multispectra filter + SW Star Adventurer
Postproces: Stacked 250 photos in APP, adjust in PixInsight and Photoshop.

 

[Andy Resnick]

A couple of years ago, I was inspired by this photo. Since it was taken with a 300mm lens, the field of view of my 400mm is too small, so I have been working on a mosaic (400/4, Nikon D810, 10s subs, Losmandy GM-8 mount):

Here's a few details/zooms:

I think I need another year to really tighten it up, but so far, so good!

 

[Andy Resnick]

Since it's been cloudy lately, I've had a chance to catch up on the mosaics (like above) and one I'm putting together of the Milky Way using my 105mm lens. Here's a single field-of-view (FOV):

This is after stacking but before background subtraction; Nikon 105 @ f/2 on a D810, 1 s subs (no tracking mount!), total of about 30min integration. A few 1:1 crops-

I have 50 different FOVs that are getting assembled into a mosaic that spans the Milky Way from NGC 6271 to M11, a process that is slower, trickier, and more painful than I expected. Slow, steady progress...

 

[collinsmark]

The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543, Caldwell 6), captured from my back patio from late June to early August, 2022. It's a planetary nebula in the constellation Draco. It's the remains of a dying star that ejected squirts of matter at periodic intervals, and has been expanding ever since.

Here's a crop.

To be sure, there's more detail in the outer shell that I was unable to capture. I tried, but failed. I encountered a lot of problems when imaging The Cat's Eye Nebula. First and foremost was the weather. Just about every night from late June to early August was either completely overcast or very hazy. The nights I actually imaged were the nights where it was just hazy. And I was set up imaging for about 15 or 16 nights. Several nights it clouded over just after I got started and I came away with no data at all. Of the remaining 13 nights where I did acquire data, some nights it was just 10 minutes of good data, other nights no more than an hour or two before the overcast came in. And then there was my telescope's encoder failure that I talked about in another post.

It reminded me of the poem, Fog, by Carl Sandburg:

​

Fog​

​

The fog comes​

on little cat feet.​

​

It sits looking​

over harbor and city​

on silent haunches​

and then moves on.​

Except in my case, it stuck around every night.

It's not a complete failure though, the central region came out better than expected. And the neighborhood cat came by several times to hang out.

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF fork-mounted on an equatorial wedge.
Baader 3.5-4 nm Ultra-narrowband filters.
Off-axis guider and guide camera.
ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro main camera.

Software:
Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PixInsight
Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) (for mask generation)
Topaz Labs Denoise AI
Topaz Labs Sharpen AI

Integration:
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8) skies
All subframes binned 3×3
SII: 73×10 min = 12.17 hrs
Hα: 62×10 min = 10.33 hrs
Oiii: 82×10 min = 13.67 hrs
Total integration time: 36.17 hours.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Finished putting together the Milky Way mosaic (for now). Here's the whole thing (2% scale):

This fuses images I took in 2018, 2020, and 2022 (coincidentally equal time intervals) at the beach (very little light pollution). I believe the bright object near Sagittarius is Jupiter (in 2018). I am only able to acquire images for this under unusual circumstances (moonless, clear, little haze), so I'm not sure when I'll be able to get more data, so to speak. Even now, though, the center is imaged quite well- here's a crop at about 20%:

Color is good, contrast is excellent. Woot!

 

[Andy Resnick]

M27 @ 800mm f/8, DX format, 8s subs, 1.3h exposure (so far):

100% crop: it's still very noisy...

 

[Andy Resnick]

M27 @ 800mm f/8, DX format, 8s subs, 1.3h exposure (so far):

View attachment 314296

100% crop: it's still very noisy...
View attachment 314297

 

[DennisN]

Fascinating:

New Webb Image Captures Clearest View of Neptune’s Rings in Decades (NASA)
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddar...s-clearest-view-of-neptune-s-rings-in-decades

Example:

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

 

[collinsmark]

The Bat Nebula (NGC 6995, IC 1340), captured from my back patio in late August and early September, 2022. The very savory Bat Nebula is a small part of the Eastern Veil Nebula, which, together with Western Veil Nebula, and everything in between, form the Cygnus Loop, in the constellation Cygnus.

The Cygnus Loop is a supernova remnant that formed from a massive star exploding some 7000-8000 years ago (another source says 20,000 years ago). It lies about 1500 light-years away from Planet Earth (estimates vary; older estimates were around 2400 light-years, while a newer estimate is ~1470 light-years). That makes the bat around 12 light-years across, roughly. That's one sumptuous bat.

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF fork-mounted on an equatorial wedge
Starlight Instruments FeatherTouch Crayford focuser modified for electronic focusing.
Baader 3.5-4 nm Ultra-Narrowband filter set.
Off-axis guider (OAG) with ZWO ASI174MM guide camera
ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro main camera.

When viewed visually (with a really, really fast telescope, allowing you to see colors) or when photographed with standard RGB colors, the Bat Nebula would have shades of both red and blue-green (cyan). Most of the red would come from both hydrogen and sulfur emissions, and the blue-green from oxygen emissions. Even when imagined in narrowband, it not uncommon to reproduce these color variations by mapping hydrogen (Hα) to the red channel, and mapping oxygen (Oiii) to both the blue and green channels, ignoring sulfur altogether. I took a different approach.

Software:
Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PixInsight.
Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) (for minor touch-ups)

Instead, I gathered narrowband data in all three Sulfur (SII), Hydrogen (Hα), and Oxygen (Oiii) spectral bands, and mapped the data to RGB using the standard Hubble palette, where SII maps to red, Hα to green, and Oiii to blue, making a false color, SHO image. Using data from all three color wavelengths provides a whole gamut of new RGB colors and succulent flavors.

Integration:
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8) skies.
All subframes binned 3×3.
SII: 58×10 min = 9.67 hrs
Hα: 78×10 min = 13.00 hrs
Oiii: 77×10 min = 12.83 hrs
Total integration time: 35.5 hours

And just remember, like I always say, no matter how adorable, scrumptious, and cuddly the bat may look, please do not eat the bat.

 

[Devin-M]

Andromeda Galaxy, 300mm focal length f/4.5, 2 min * 60 exposures (2hrs):

 

[Devin-M]

Stars removed:

 

[bruha]

Hi, its beautiful ... can I ask what is this two small bright objects? (second image is left/righ turned isn it..)
Lot of succes :)

 

[Devin-M]

Hi, its beautiful ... can I ask what is this two small bright objects? (second image is left/righ turned isn it..)
Lot of succes :)

The 2nd image of Andromeda (with stars removed) is rotated 180 degrees compared to the 1st. The two bright objects are satellite galaxies orbiting Andromeda. The smaller one is Messier 32, the larger one is Messier 110, and Andromeda itself is Messier 31.

 

[Devin-M]

9 minutes to impact…

 

[bruha]

Thanks !

 

[collinsmark]

The Elephant Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A) captured from my back patio in Sept. 2022. The Elephant Trunk is a smaller part of a larger ionized gas region called IC 1396, in the constellation Cepheus. It's called the Elephant Trunk Nebula presumably because if you squint your eyes and tilt your head to the side, it kind of looks like an elephant with a big, bulbous trunk. Sort of.

The trunk itself is a dark cloud of gas illuminated and ionized by a bright, massive star, forming a bright rim at the boundary of the dense cloud. The star in question, HD 206267, is not shown in the image because it is outside the frame; it would be located about an additional 1/3 of the image height, above the upper edge of the image. (In the image, "up" is celestial East.)

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF fork mounted on an equatorial wedge.
Starlight Instruments FTF2008BCR focuser modified for electronic focusing.
Off-axis guider (OAG) with ZWO ASI174MM-mini guide camera.
Baader 3.5-4 nm Ultra-Narrowband filter set.
ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro main camera.

I was going to go off on a diatribe about pink elephants, but decided not to at the last minute.

Software:
Nighttime Imaging "N" Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PHD2 guiding (of course)
PixInsight
Topaz Labs Sharpen AI

It's time we discussed the big elephant in the room. It's the Elephant Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A). It's around 2,400 light-years away from Earth. And it's roughly 30 light-years long, depending on what you consider as part of the nebula.

Integration:
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8) skies
All subframes binned 3×3
SII: 60×10 min = 10 hrs
Hα: 69×10 min = 11.5 hrs
Oiii: 67×10 min = 11.67 hrs
Total integration time: 32.67 hours

 

[pinball1970]

The Elephant Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A) captured from my back patio in Sept. 2022. The Elephant Trunk is a smaller part of a larger ionized gas region called IC 1396, in the constellation Cepheus. It's called the Elephant Trunk Nebula presumably because if you squint your eyes and tilt your head to the side, it kind of looks like an elephant with a big, bulbous trunk. Sort of.

View attachment 314883

The trunk itself is a dark cloud of gas illuminated and ionized by a bright, massive star, forming a bright rim at the boundary of the dense cloud. The star in question, HD 206267, is not shown in the image because it is outside the frame; it would be located about an additional 1/3 of the image height, above the upper edge of the image. (In the image, "up" is celestial East.)

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF fork mounted on an equatorial wedge.
Starlight Instruments FTF2008BCR focuser modified for electronic focusing.
Off-axis guider (OAG) with ZWO ASI174MM-mini guide camera.
Baader 3.5-4 nm Ultra-Narrowband filter set.
ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro main camera.

I was going to go off on a diatribe about pink elephants, but decided not to at the last minute.

Software:
Nighttime Imaging "N" Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PHD2 guiding (of course)
PixInsight
Topaz Labs Sharpen AI

It's time we discussed the big elephant in the room. It's the Elephant Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A). It's around 2,400 light-years away from Earth. And it's roughly 30 light-years long, depending on what you consider as part of the nebula.

Integration:
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8) skies
All subframes binned 3×3
SII: 60×10 min = 10 hrs
Hα: 69×10 min = 11.5 hrs
Oiii: 67×10 min = 11.67 hrs
Total integration time: 32.67 hours

Blimey!
Reading your post after looking at your image I was expecting to see, "Hubble" where you listed "Equipment!"
Amazing colour and details.
It took me several squints to get the Elephant but I saw it eventually.

 

[DennisN]

It's time we discussed the big elephant in the room.

I thought you were thinking of your beast of a telescope.

 

[timmdeeg]

Recently and unexpectedly between rainy days we got clear sky at night and I succeeded to capture the eastern Veil nebula NGC 6992. Now the couple together with NGC 6960 is completed. I enjoy these bizarrely intertwined reflection- and emission nebulae very much.

Sony A7III - UNC 200 mm f/5 Newton with Reducer - Skywatcher HEQ5 - guiding with StarAid
DeepSkyStacker - Siril - LightZone

NGC 6960 - 28.08.2022 - 25x180s Optolong L-Enhance - ISO 3200

NGC 6992 - 30.09.2022 - 23x180s Optolong L-eNhance - 24x45s ISO 3200

 

[Devin-M]

I tried imaging this same target back on September 5 but I never posted it because mine came out so poorly... among other reasons I think I only got about 20 minutes of data so the image was extremely noisy. Also I was shooting without any narrowband filters and there was quite a bit of light pollution. We (girlfriend & I) had gone to our first "star party" at whiskeytown lake which turned out to be a park ranger with a laser pointing out different stars and planets and a couple people with visual telescopes set up. I was the only one with an imaging rig. Families with kids kept coming up and asking to see what my telescope was doing and I had to say "oh, the nebula is too dim to see in camera" so they would walk away disappointed. So after 20 minutes I pointed the telescope at saturn so they could see the rings and atmospheric distortion live on the back of the camera (because Saturn is bright enough to see without additional processing), but that meant my original target came out noisy...

2175mm f/14.5 Maksutov-Cassegrain OTA, 90 seconds exposures for 20 minutes, no filters on a Nikon D800, 6400iso:

Saturn (live view):

 

[collinsmark]

Jupiter, captured from my back patio on the morning of September 23rd, 2022.

Midpoint timestamp of acquisition: 2022-09-23 08:07.8 Universal Time (UT).

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX200-ACF fork mounted on an equatorial wedge.
Starlight Instruments FTF2008BCR focuser modified for electronic focusing.
Explore Scientific 1.25" 3X Focal Extender.
ZWO Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC).
ZWO ASI585MC camera.

Software:
FireCapture (for acquisition)
AutoStakkert! (for lucky imaging processing and stacking)
RegiStax (for wavelet sharpening)
PixInsight (for miscellaneous image processing)
WinJUPOS (for derotation and additional stacking of sharpened images)
Gnu Image Manipulation Program, GIMP (to remove some frame/boundary artifacts left over from RegiStax)
Topaz Labs Sharpen AI (for a final sharpening step)

Acquisition:
FireCapture was used for acquisition. This was first light for the new color ASI585MC camera. I ran into some problems with the frame rate, being only around 20 fps, when I was expecting around 90 fps. This is something I'll need to figure out before next time. (Early evidence suggests the USB connection was as if it was USB2.0 instead of the higher speed USB3.1. I need to debug this.)

Integration and processing:
Atmospheric seeing: Meh. Well, mostly meh. There was brief ~6 minute period of pretty good seeing out of several hours of capture, and those six minutes are what I used for the image shown here.
Six, 1-minute contiguous videos were chosen (stored in .SER file format) to be fully processed.
Each video was processed with AutoStakkert! keeping 70% of frames.
Each of these subsequent 6 images were separated into their Red, Green, and Blue components and sharpened separately using RegiStax wavelet sharpening, then recombined back into RGB images.
These 6 sharpened RGB images were then derotated and stacked in WinJUPOS creating a single, derotated RGB image.
That image was then brought into GIMP to fix a weird frame boundary artifact left over from RegiStax.
That image was imported into PixInsight and processed (CurvesTransformation and LocalHistogramEqualization).
Near the end of processing, Topaz Sharpen AI was used for a final sharpening step.

 

[russ_watters]

Awesome! I've been using mono/RGB for planetary forever, but I'm seeing it really isn't necessary and also it's a problem when capturing something that moves pretty fast in realtime like Jupiter and its moons.

 

[collinsmark]

The Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380, SH2-142), imaged from my back patio in mid-to-late September, 2022. The Wizard Nebula is in the constellation Cepheus.

It's called "The Wizard Nebula" presumably because it remarkably resembles a wizard, either magically levitating some bright orbs (stars) or maybe reaching out to give somebody a big hug.

Equipment:
Meade 10" LX20000-ACF fork mounted on an equatorial wedge.
Starlight Instruments FTF2008BCR focuser modified for electronic focusing.
Off-axis guider (OAG) with ZWO ASI174MM-mini guide camera.
Baader 3.5-4 nm Ultra-Narrowband filter set.
ZWO ASI6200MM-Pro main camera.

There's a chance this might be my last astrophoto posted before the big holiday (Halloween).

Software:
Nighttime Imaging "N" Astronomy (N.I.N.A.)
PHD2 guiding (of course)
PixInsight
GIMP (to fix a couple of saturated stars)
Topaz Labs Sharpen AI (as a small, final sharpening step)

If you wished for a scary photo, think of it as a big scary wizard reaching out for a big loving hug.

Integration:
Bortle class 7 (maybe 8) skies
All subframes binned 3×3
SII: 59×10 min = 9.83 hrs
Hα: 71×10 min = 11.83 hrs
Oiii: 67×10 min = 11.17 hrs
Total integration time: 32.83 hours

[Edit: Slightly reprocessed image.]

 

[Maarten Havinga]

I just took a new wallpaper ;) @collinsmark

 

[Andy Resnick]

Had a moon-free clear skies weekend- 3 consecutive (relatively) dark nights when I can stay up past midnight! Mostly I imaged M31 (Andromeda galaxy) and am still processing those. But each night when M31 moved behind a house, I was able to image Neptune and Triton for a few minutes- this was assembled from 3 different image stacks (8s subs), one from each night, 1:1 crop using a lens equivalent to a 100mm refractor:

You can see how Triton is orbiting Neptune and can estimate the orbital period, knowing that the images were taken almost exactly 24 hours apart. You can also probably tell that the image quality is lower than it should be, especially Friday night (top position). I'd like to ask the group some questions about this, I'm still trying to diagnose the problem.

It started when I switched from 400mm to 800mm, meaning I'm much more sensitive to 'user error'.

The main symptom presents as tracking error due to poor polar alignment, but I'm reasonably sure I am aligned within 2 arcmin. I have no real evidence for this, but I rough align using a reticle and then use the GoTo drive to fine align on 2 or 3 bright stars using the camera's live-view, zoomed all the way in and using the illuminated centerpoint as a fiducial. (I don't use an auto guider)

Even so, I am only able to keep < 10% of my subframes, and that metric has proven to be very stubborn: 6s exposures did not appreciably increase the acceptance rate, for example. Re-polar-aligning periodically (every 45 minutes or so) during the night also did not help.

It could be vibration- my 'telescope' oscillates like crazy when mounted, so if it's windy I expect low rates. But Sunday night was calm. I've also tried increasing the amount of time between exposures, to allow the structure time to fully dampen after the shutter moves, to no effect.

It's also not poor seeing conditions- that presents as uniform blurring, which is not what I see.

I don't have any of the bad images, sorry--- I get rid of those fairly early in the stacking process.

It's a little frustrating... any ideas?

 

[dlgoff]

... You can see how Triton is orbiting Neptune ...

That's incredible.

 

[collinsmark]

It could be vibration- my 'telescope' oscillates like crazy when mounted, so if it's windy I expect low rates. But Sunday night was calm. I've also tried increasing the amount of time between exposures, to allow the structure time to fully dampen after the shutter moves, to no effect.

It's also not poor seeing conditions- that presents as uniform blurring, which is not what I see.

I don't have any of the bad images, sorry--- I get rid of those fairly early in the stacking process.

It's a little frustrating... any ideas?

Great composite, btw.

I wouldn't underestimate seeing. Atmospheric seeing can vary quite a bit from night to night and even within that larger fluctuation, can vary quite a bit from minute to minute. [Edit: And technically, from millisecond to millisecond. Seeing is fractal-like in terms of time.]

If you can, try to concentrate/center your acquisition around the time that your target crosses the meridian. This doesn't guarantee good seeing, but since this is the time where the target is highest in the sky for that night, it means less atmosphere to shoot through, thus increases the probability of better seeing.

I can't say for sure that seeing is the only problem though. Astrophotography is like an onion of hurdles, obstacles, and challenges. Peel off one layer, and there's another layer still there, waiting.

 

[DennisN]

Astrophotography is like an onion of hurdles, obstacles, and challenges.

To me, astrophotography has felt like when I peel off one layer, I don't find another layer.
I find a couple of other onions.
(or to quote Churchill: "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma")

Maybe I shouldn't be so frank. I don't want to scare any potential newcomers to the hobby.

 

[pinball1970]

That's incredible.

Yeah!

 

[Andy Resnick]

Great composite, btw.

I wouldn't underestimate seeing. Atmospheric seeing can vary quite a bit from night to night and even within that larger fluctuation, can vary quite a bit from minute to minute. [Edit: And technically, from millisecond to millisecond. Seeing is fractal-like in terms of time.]

If you can, try to concentrate/center your acquisition around the time that your target crosses the meridian. This doesn't guarantee good seeing, but since this is the time where the target is highest in the sky for that night, it means less atmosphere to shoot through, thus increases the probability of better seeing.

I can't say for sure that seeing is the only problem though. Astrophotography is like an onion of hurdles, obstacles, and challenges. Peel off one layer, and there's another layer still there, waiting.

I'm fairly certain it's not seeing. Fortunately, I didn't wipe the SD card yet, so I was able to get some raw images to show (these have been converted to jpegs for obvious reasons).

This is a *typical* bad image- not the worst, but very average- scaled 200%. Right ascension is up-down, declination is left-right.

This is what expect to see if the rig is oscillating purely in right ascension- remember, this is an 8s shutter time. However, what can't be seen in a single image, is also a slow drift. This can be seen by 'stacking' successive images- I'm not aligning them, just creating an image stack and keeping the maximum values at each pixel- again, scaled to 200%:

What you see here is a single vertical sweep to the left and a longer back-and-forth sweep on the right; I stacked a series of 20 consecutive images and a series of 40 consecutive images, separated by about 1 hour. This image shows drift in both RA and declination. This is what I expect to see if my polar alignment is off.

The simple response is "do a better job polar aligning", but given my alignment procedure, I expect (assume!) polar alignment to be within a couple of arcmin.

Any ideas?

 

[Devin-M]

Are you aiming right at Polaris? If so that may be the issue. Polaris is actually offset by about 3/4 of a degree from the axis of rotation of the Earth.

This is what my polar alignment scope looks like when properly aligned, and the exact aim point varies by time of day/night. I use an app to figure out where the aim point should be exactly.

 

[Devin-M]

How are you triggering the camera? If you’re just pushing the button it might be inducing a shake that could take 30 secs to a minute to die down. Using an intervalometer with a delay on the shutter release could help. Or if you shoot a sequence the shaking is usually much less by the 2nd or 3rd image. There’s also an option on your Nikon to release the shutter up to 3 seconds after the mirror flips up to reduce the mirror flip induced vibration.