This is a luminance view of the Sculptor galaxy, obtained on a 27" Planewave CDK from Australia (15 minutes total). Postprocessed in PixInsight. The galaxy frames nicely with this scope and camera, so my next project will be to obtain RBG images to add to this data.
NGC 6888
This is a narrowband image of the emission nebula NGC6888 (Crescent nebula) in the constellation Cygnus, about 5000 light-years away. This is thought to be formed by the fast stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star (HD 192163) colliding with the slower moving wind ejected when it became a red giant.
Crescent Nebula narrowband image (Ha, OIII, SII).
M51 redo in Pixinsight
New attempt at this data after taking a 2 day workshop on the Pixinsight software. Probably went from understanding 3% of all this software can do, to maybe 10%....but still well worth the time and expense. This color seems much closer to what the real experts in the field are achieving.
IC2948
Redo of my data of the "running chicken nebula", which I think is improved with greater color saturation and brightness. If you are wondering, various explanations and schematics are given for the nebula name, but is seems no two of them are the same. 45 minutes of imaging time with Ha, OIII, SII filters on a Takahashi FSQ ED with SBIG STL-11000M camera from Australia.
The dark blobs in the central aspect of the image are Thackeray's globules (Bok globules). These are opaque clouds of interstellar dust and gas thought to be involved in star formation. Astronomer A.D. Thackeray first spied the globules in IC 2944 in 1950. Globules have been known since Dutch-American astronomer Bart Bok first drew attention to them in 1947.
Note also the little green blob at the top right of the image, which is a planetary nebula (expanding glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from a red giant star late in their lives). Best as I can figure out that thing is called either He2-72, or PK294-00 1.
Click on the image to expand it.
Ha component in the Whirlpool Galaxy
Interesting to compare modern CCD technology to what was obtained from the Hubble telescope a decade or so ago. Top image is my shot, and bottom is the Hubble composite.
M51: Stack of 4 - 5 minute acquisitions from New Mexico.
This Hubble image is inverted from the original to compare with my New Mexico shot above. (Reference: H II Region Luminosity Function of the Interacting Galaxy M51. Astrophysics Journal, 2011. DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/735/2/75)
M64: Celestron 11" Phoenix backyard vs. 20" New Mexico
This should be self explanatory why I now spend my time and money renting scope time.
Celestron CPC 11
Planewave 20" 15 minutes Lum exposure
NGC 6188 Narrowband
NGC 6188 is an emission nebula located 4,000 light-years distant in the southern constellation of Ara. This image is a stack of 15 minutes each of Ha, OIII, SII colorized respectively to RGB with 20 minutes of Luminance imaging overlayed. Processed with Pixinsight (registration, integration, wavelet transform) and colorized in Photoshop with additional gradient filtering, and noise reduction.
M16 deep field
This is a cropped image of the "Pillars of Creation", obtained with 15 minutes of exposure through Ha filter, on a Planewave 20" CDK from Australia. Camera was a FLI-PL6303E.
M16
M16, also known as the Eagle Nebula, is a star forming region in the Serpens constellation. It is probably best known from the "Pillars of Creation" image made famous by the Hubble telescope image from 1995. It is about 7000 light-years distant. This cropped image is from a 20 minute total exposure with Ha filter on a Takahashi FSQ ED from Australia.
Lagoon annotation
The nomenclature of this region is confusing. The easy part is the Lagoon nebula, or Messier 8. The emission region to the image left has a wide variety of names, but probably best known for the emission/refection region NGC6559. Barnard 303 is the dark nebula "V" shaped region - Barnard's Catalogue of 349 Dark Objects in the Sky (Barnard, 1927).
Residual bulk image
For a short time period (about a day), I thought I was famous. Then reality set in. I was taking images of the Owl nebula (M97) in narrowband, on the new 24" Planewave telescope located in California. Below is a 15 minute stack with hydrogen alpha filter. The dot which is marked is not present on any images on the web showing the nebula. A new supernova?! No. After emailing the imaging specialist for iTelescope (very helpful btw), it turns out this is "residual bulk image". Essentially a ghost of the star used to focus the scope just before this image was taken. A CCD imaging artifact. Ouch.
M104 - The Sombrero Galaxy
Shot from Australia with a 20" Planewave CDK. This is 1 hour of total image time, 15 minutes each of luminance, red, green and blue. I have switched to Pixinsight for image registration and integration (away from DSS), since I am forcing myself to learn that software.
IC3355
Well, here is a deep field shot of that interesting looking galaxy from the Markarian's Chain region. This is a cropped image of 20 minutes of L exposure on a 20" Planewave CDK. Deepskystacker for integration, then Pixinsight for stretching, and wavelet transformation. On to Photoshop for gradientXterminator, and Topaz noise reduction. Still interesting, and very asymmetrical.
M86 mosaic - small irregular galaxy
This is a close up of the Markarian's Chain mosaic. I am fascinated by IC3355. This little galaxy requires a more thorough evaluation.
Annotated Markarian's Chain
I know you really wanted to know all the details in this shot...
Little steps
This is a mosaic of Markarian's Chain, a galaxy group in Leo that I obtained using a Takahashi 150 on iTelescope from Spain. My first attempt set the center of the field on "The Eyes" (I'll let you figure out which galaxy pair this refers to in the image). The resultant image cut off M84 (fuzzy blob at center top). I then took a series of images centered on M86 (bigger blob towards center) which nicely included M84, but did not include all the other parts of the Chain at the bottom of the image. Two techniques used in making this mosaic that I have found useful: 1) Pixinsight mosaic mode (Process>ImageRegistration>StarAlignment) where working mode is Register/Union-Mosaic. Takes some fiddling to figure out the correct reference and target mode, but the end result is very worthwhile. Why? While Photoshop has powerful mosaic tools, it is most useful for rectilinear type of alignments, and for me becomes very painful trying to figure out rotational misalignment.... which is very common. So... Pixinsight takes care of the rotational alignment as if by magic. 2) Prodigital software "Astronomy Tools" plug-in for Photoshop. In this case, I used the "vertical banding noise reduction" feature to remove annoying slight vertical banding from the CCD.
So there you have it, the full Markarian's Chain!
Workflow
I have much to learn, but has become obvious that obtaining the images is the easy part. More of my time has been devoted to figuring out how to make the images semi-presentable through the post processing software than actually defining and acquiring the targets.
My current flow is something like this:
Obtain narrowband or RGB series (FITS format).
Register and stack the various series in DeepSkyStacker (DSS), or Pixinsight (Pix).
Stretch the images in Pixinsight (histogram transformation). I have also tried FITS Liberator (freeware) for stretching.
HDR multiscale transform the separate stacks in Pixinsight.
Export as both FITS and TIFF (16 and 32 bit)…..just in case.
Import into Photoshop (PS) and set up layers for levels/curves, and color mapping.
May use Gradient Xterminator, and Topaz labs Denoise 5.
StarSpikes Pro for that artistic touch.