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Share your Personal Photography Pictures. (NSFW images must be linked & labelled)
- Thread starter Jdizzy92
- Start date
- Joined
- May 2, 2008
- Location
- Stockton CA
- Moto(s)
- 2020 BMW S1000XR Lowride.
- Name
- Bill Harr
- BARF perks
- AMA #: 1097
Back road into Bodie, my camper home for the night.
dmaxAl
Active member
some astro pix
Decided to drop the hammer on an astro imaging rig I've been wanting for a while. Steep learning curve on this stuff too. Very frustrating sometimes, there's a lot to 'go right' in order to get an image, obviously multiple by my newbiness. But I'm starting to get somewhere I think.. But still having probs getting the color/white balance right between the laptop with the imaging software and everywhere else.. try try again.
Dumbell Nebula:
Following two are the Pelican Nebula, basically composed using the same sequence but using different filtration techniques.
and these two same thing but North American Nebula is the subject.
And the rig itself. Main imaging tube is a 132mm Williams Optics refractor coupled to an Atik 383L CCD. In this config the piggyback is the guide scope but I can move the camera onto the 71mm scope for wide f.o.v shots. Whats not in the pics is the epic amount of software and processing involved
Decided to drop the hammer on an astro imaging rig I've been wanting for a while. Steep learning curve on this stuff too. Very frustrating sometimes, there's a lot to 'go right' in order to get an image, obviously multiple by my newbiness. But I'm starting to get somewhere I think.. But still having probs getting the color/white balance right between the laptop with the imaging software and everywhere else.. try try again.
Dumbell Nebula:
Following two are the Pelican Nebula, basically composed using the same sequence but using different filtration techniques.
and these two same thing but North American Nebula is the subject.
And the rig itself. Main imaging tube is a 132mm Williams Optics refractor coupled to an Atik 383L CCD. In this config the piggyback is the guide scope but I can move the camera onto the 71mm scope for wide f.o.v shots. Whats not in the pics is the epic amount of software and processing involved
Last edited:
thrillseeker
New member
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2007
- Location
- San Jose
- Moto(s)
- 2007 R6, 2008 Monster S4RS Tricolore, 2012 1199S Tricolore
- Name
- David
WOW!!! that's once crazy setup.. very nice pictures dmaxAI
berth
Well-known member
Yea, 
for newb-ness. Those are great.
for newb-ness. Those are great.
SuperMike
just doesn't get it
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2006
- Location
- Old Marsh Creek Springs
- Moto(s)
- 1969 Honda CT90, 2008 KTM SuperDuke 990
- Name
- o_O
- BARF perks
- AMA #: 2815988
That's awesome. Can't wait to see more!
dmaxAl
Active member
Well thanks guys!
Those pics represent about 3-4months of hands on bring up
Wifey has been quite understanding all things considered..
Light pollution is the major challenge. And just getting worse and worse. Oobus, these were all taken from my back yard But I am pretty fortunate to live in one of the few remaining 'bay area' spots with a little dark sky left, on the Mt Diablo foothils facing east towards the peak. This allows me to keep the worst of the bad light at my back and plan the shot sequence facing east and up to the meridian. These are all composited images, where the same pic is repeatedly taken through different filter colors then they all get digitally integrated for the final pic. Some of the frames use narrowband filters, where they pass through a very precise wavelength slot to the ccd. They correspond to the emission spectrums of HA (hydrogen), OIII (oxygen) and SII (suplhur) which are associated with the different nebulae. They also happen to be away from the wavelengths that pollute the sky from street lighting, so by using them we can cut a lot of the pollution from the image. Of course this means about 98% of the photons are getting rejected so exposure times go up. Long exposure times (my current sequence time is 10 frames each of L, R, G, B at 1-2 minutes each plus 10 frames each, about 2-3 minutes of whichever narrowband is used for that target) means the scope has to very accurately track the rate which the heavens move around us. And the objects are like teeny weeny.. That dumbell nebula is only 8' in angle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbbell_Nebula
Each frame gets processed to remove the thermal and optical noise by applying math and special frames which account for these noise sources - basically even more pics that get generated to calibrate the image train). As I said, a lot to get right in the right order, but it is very rewarding to me. Showing my age, I started playing with images at 14 on an old Zenith slr, external exposure meter and everything. Film and processing cost money, so each shot count, and a 24exp film lasted a while. I did my own b&w processing, so when an image finally appeared in the developer tray, it was like 'effingA!' or not.. But there was no instant gratification. Then along comes digital. I took 890 pics in 1 day last weekend at a sports event.. nuff said.. anyway this astro stuff is like my old school stuff. Ya gotta work it, there's a process, theres no instant gratification and if the stars align and you get a decent image it's all the more satisfying. Which tickles me pink you guys liked em.. go google what some of the amatuers are doing for some truly spectacular images.
Plans for this winter hopefully include loading up the r and heading for some dark sky.
Those pics represent about 3-4months of hands on bring up
Wifey has been quite understanding all things considered.. Light pollution is the major challenge. And just getting worse and worse. Oobus, these were all taken from my back yard
But I am pretty fortunate to live in one of the few remaining 'bay area' spots with a little dark sky left, on the Mt Diablo foothils facing east towards the peak. This allows me to keep the worst of the bad light at my back and plan the shot sequence facing east and up to the meridian. These are all composited images, where the same pic is repeatedly taken through different filter colors then they all get digitally integrated for the final pic. Some of the frames use narrowband filters, where they pass through a very precise wavelength slot to the ccd. They correspond to the emission spectrums of HA (hydrogen), OIII (oxygen) and SII (suplhur) which are associated with the different nebulae. They also happen to be away from the wavelengths that pollute the sky from street lighting, so by using them we can cut a lot of the pollution from the image. Of course this means about 98% of the photons are getting rejected so exposure times go up. Long exposure times (my current sequence time is 10 frames each of L, R, G, B at 1-2 minutes each plus 10 frames each, about 2-3 minutes of whichever narrowband is used for that target) means the scope has to very accurately track the rate which the heavens move around us. And the objects are like teeny weeny.. That dumbell nebula is only 8' in angle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbbell_NebulaEach frame gets processed to remove the thermal and optical noise by applying math and special frames which account for these noise sources - basically even more pics that get generated to calibrate the image train). As I said, a lot to get right in the right order, but it is very rewarding to me. Showing my age, I started playing with images at 14 on an old Zenith slr, external exposure meter and everything. Film and processing cost money, so each shot count, and a 24exp film lasted a while. I did my own b&w processing, so when an image finally appeared in the developer tray, it was like 'effingA!' or not.. But there was no instant gratification. Then along comes digital. I took 890 pics in 1 day last weekend at a sports event.. nuff said.. anyway this astro stuff is like my old school stuff. Ya gotta work it, there's a process, theres no instant gratification and if the stars align and you get a decent image it's all the more satisfying. Which tickles me pink you guys liked em.. go google what some of the amatuers are doing for some truly spectacular images.
Plans for this winter hopefully include loading up the r and heading for some dark sky.
inthewoods
New member
dmaxAl
Active member
Veil Nebula.
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alien
^ somewhere out there is another motorcycle forum.
Too bad earth didn't patent the wheel
Too bad earth didn't patent the wheel
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2003
- Location
- West Sacramento, CA
- Moto(s)
- 2012 Street Triple r,
DRZ400SM, KTM 450SMR, YZ250F (still parting out),
- Name
- Steve
Spectacular.
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alien
I wouldn't have expected to look up and see green colors but Ive never looked up with more and a pair of binoculars
dmaxAl
Active member
humbled oobs, once I get around to printing out a few 8x10's ya got one.
ty.
ty! Solar system imaging is on my to do list. Fundamentals change though - strap a video camera to the telescope and then analyze each image in the video to select the clearest, sharpest images. THey then get stacked back together. phew.
I think I might have posted this one before, but here goes anyway:
Awesome moon shots really need very low atmospheric pollutants, or the haze blows the contrast at the edge, where moon pics are really at their best once we start seeing the mountain/valley profiles.
Lets call it artistic rendering.
Yeah, you look at the stars visually green doesn't factor much. Visually we really only can distinguish star color, and even then it's 'bluish side of white' or 'reddish side of white'. Nubulae are milky.The color pics here are 'false color', in the RGB space, with Red corresponding to Hydrogen-Alpha, green corresponding to O-III and blue the S-II emission spectrums (CFHT palette).. Because the narrowband filters pick out different parts of the nebula's surface, this is where color is used to bring out depth.
You never caught the northern lights in your time in Scotland?
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alien
I don't recall if it was Scotland or not but I've seen the northern lights over that way. Might have been northern Norway, spent months up there. I've also seen them in Canada. But its been almost decades, one of the most awesome things I've ever seen.
Too bad with so much light pollution around me I rarely ever see a starry night anymore.
With the spin of the earth are you able to somehow track the apparent movement of the stars or stuck with using a fast shutter speed?
dmaxAl
Active member
If you look at the pic of the telescope you see there are two different scopes? The main scope is the imaging scope - it has the camera (that red box) on it and the exposure's are in minutes. The little scope on the top is the guide scope, and it has it's own dedicated camera. During the photo sequence, a program takes control of the telescope mount and analyzes the image from the guide scope to correct for any drift.
The type of mount itself matters. This scope has whats called a german-equatorial mount, which aligns it's primary axis to the earth's N-S axis pointing at polaris. By rotating around this axis at rate of 15deg per hour, the scope tracks the stars as we move within them.