I was really displeased with how I processed the Western Veil the other day. This field is especially difficult because of all the stars in it obscuring the target. PixInsight’s StarAlignment reported over 50,000 stars, though I imagine the real count is at least double that. I became very overwhelmed… Continue Reading... "Retouching the Veil"
With the moon approaching full, I don’t want to start another full imaging project. I’ve learned my lesson with trying that. Instead, I took a nice clear night and did a little Electronically Assisted Astronomy. From the comfort of my desk, I was able to look at over 10 objects… Continue Reading... "A little moonlit EAA"
I had a little window of clear sky last night, and I decided to do some EAA. First things first, I wanted to take a little data of the Moon. It became a whole thing when I must have had a setting incorrect in Sharpcap, and I could not get… Continue Reading... "An obscured Moon"
The next project for my little 72mm rig was the Veil Nebula. I have not managed to fix my field curvature issues, I need to get some shims or something and play around with the backfocus one night. Also, I’m not super great at processing “bi-color” images. Although the Baader… Continue Reading... "Western Veil"
The Bubble nebula is a real favorite of mine, and I was really unhappy with the way I did it last year. With more patience, as well as a steadier hand in PixInsight, I am very pleased with the results this year. I decided to frame it to include its… Continue Reading... "The Bubble, with a little Salt and Pepper"
I’ve put together correctly-scaled images of solar system objects so that you can see just how small the planets appear compared to the moon and each other. The moon was imaged at 0.612 arcseconds per pixel, while the planets were 0.098 arcseconds per pixel, save Mars, which was 0.328 arcseconds… Continue Reading... "Apparent size of solar system objects"
Are you getting tired of the planets yet? I’m on a mission to fine tune my planetary imaging. It’s very finicky. I tried a few different tweaks with exposures, and I found out that the new verison of Sharpcap uses a ZWO library that has a bug in it that… Continue Reading... "More Jupiter!"
As with Jupiter, I think my Saturn turned out a bit better this time. There was kind of a weird glow coming off of the top of it, not sure what that was, but I do like the detail much more with unsharp mask over wavelet sharpening. This is a… Continue Reading... "Improved Saturn"
I’m enjoying the gas giants as much as I can while they are still close for the year. Learning to do planetary is like learning deep sky, but the techniques and skills don’t overlap very much, and I feel like I am starting all over again learning planetary imaging. It’s… Continue Reading... "Improving my planetary with Jupiter"
In anticipation of SharpCap 4.0‘s new features, I wanted a little practice today before I attempt to image the Moon and the gas giants again. The seeing was absolutely horrendous, but the new feature tracking and ADC assistant tool in SharpCap were welcome additions. Continue Reading... "Daytime Venus"
