# Another Deep Space Object



## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

Once again its Orion. But this time there are over 40 exposures of different lengths that go into making it. Over 2 hours of open shutter time. I shot a lot of different exposures trying to get a handle on the MkII and decided to throw them all together and see what came out. The gas clouds came out nicely on this one and I used a process in PixInsight to get the blown out inner area tamed somewhat. Still a lot to learn on that software I'm about half way through Harry's tutorials. But I'm satisfied its a good set-up just need to keep working at it to polish my processing skills and I'll make some excellent images with it.










The MkII is an excellent camera for AP. Rated above their astro only camera. Very low noise about half the time Pi will reject the dark frames saying there would be no benefit to applying them. I thought it was something I'd messed up but its not. Other people are seeing the same thing with it. DCRAW doesn't fully support the MkII yet so the colors are all off. Once you get the green out the rest are kinda washed out. I suspect that will be taken care of now that we are past the holidays.

Griz


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## Bird (May 10, 2005)

Cool shot Griz


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

Its getting a lot better as I learn PixInsight. That software is pretty awesome. Its a steep learning curve. Like having photoshop with no manual basically. Its a new program not all of the documentation is finished yet. Not a lot of external resources but the few that are out there are excellent. It gets better weekly though. A lot of people are switching over to it. Excellent value its about half the price of the other competitors and you can install it on as many computers of yours as you want. Mac Pc and Unix. You can even alter the code and do scripting. With the improvement in equipment its so much easier now to get good results. Doing it with a mono ccd and filter wheel is a lot more complicated than using a DSLR. If you buy a tracker that is capable of carrying your camera and lens the rest is processing. Since its all long exposure noise is the thing you really have to get under control. Lots of ways to do that though. I'm getting the additional equipment to set up an autoguider. Two reasons then I can drizzle the exposures and extend the time I can get nice round stars. Some narrow band filters need extremely long exposure times over an hour. Not possible even on the most expensive mounts with out autoguiding. Drizzle is a method of isolating the noise so the processes can see and remove it more easily. Say you have a hot pixel. If you move the camera say 10 pixels in a random direction each shot then that hot pixel will move and won't build up enough signal to fool the processes into thinking its a valid star. Does that to all the noise making it much easier for the software to do its thing. An autoguider is just a small mono camera that has a guider port on it. The guider port connects up to the motor controller box and issues pulses to the motors to correct any drift. Most motor control boxes also have PEC. Periodic Error Correction. You line up on a star and record the movements to keep it on position. Those corrections then play back as the worm gear turns to counteract any irregularities in the worm and gear. If you don't do these things your stars will bloom up and look terrible on an hour long exposure. All your detail will soften and the picture won't be acceptable. A lot of people don't like the complexity but I love machinery and tweaking machinery to perfection. Once you get it all lined out you don't have to mess with it much. An occasional adjustment to take out any slack that has developed by wear and tear is about it. If you can put it somewhere and leave the mount then you don't even have to polar align. So all this about it being the hardest kind of photography to master is a little over the top I think. Yea its all different and a lot of what you know about shooting good photos doesn't come into play right off the bat but really its just another photography solution you need to come up with. For someone like me that is mobility limited and pretty much assured of less and less mobility its the perfect solution to continuing to practice my hobby when the legs do finally give out all together.

Griz


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## dpeterson (May 3, 2007)

*I think I see It*

Can you find comet "lovejoy" in your pic? Wonderful picture by the way.


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

*Didn't know it was in the area*

I can plate solve the image and see if anything unusual shows up. When was the comet supposed to be in Orion? I used to hunt comets. You set up the scope to do patterns in the most likely areas to find new ones. Then go back several hours later and look for moovers. Here is a redone image that shows the proper colors. I converted the raw files to tiff. Can't use the calibration files with tiff files its a bug or something to do with the 7D2. Anyways I wanted to see what it looked like so I processed it without the darks flats and bias frames. Turned out nice anyway. The 7D2 has very low noise even with these long exposures at ISO 1600.










Can't wait till dcraw is fixed to support the 7D2. You always loose in a conversion and having calibration files cleans up the image quite a bit.

Griz


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

*Here is another one*

Redid the orion nebula converting to tiff and not using calibration files. The best photo I've seen so far of the comet is at this url. http://www.astrobin.com/146612/C/










Gonna be good once they get the 7D2 supported. This converts to 8 bit so I know I'm loosing lots of detail.

Griz


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## stargazer (May 24, 2004)

Man I am so envious, these are soooo cool.


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

Thanks its a bunch of fun for sure. Didn't think I'd get results like these for many more months. Its just so much easier to get them now. The MkII is unreal for this kind of thing. I was looking at an Orion earlier today that was 90 hours of integration. More detail and deeper color but not much more nebula really. Amazing as this is about an hour and a half of exposure. I'm not getting the HDRMulti Transform right yet its killing the color too much. But it sure does deal with blowouts effectively. I'm finding out about many new ways to do these. Splitting them out into colors plus lum and working with those individually and several others. I just picked up a book called Lessons from the Masters that has a ton of new ideas in AP processing. Wish the weather would clear up for a few days. Wanted to get out for a little while last night but the wind was too high. Finally found some dew control strips for camera lenses so I have that covered now. I should have the autoguider and the narrow band filters all installed and ready to go by the spring. You pick up so much detail with the Ha band. Its basically mono so its great for a lum layer for detail layered over the rgb data. And some pretty nice colors as a byproduct. A really pretty gold color will show up as well as enhanced reds OIII gets the deep blue. 7D2 has much better red response over the 7D. And the noise is practically non existent. I love it every time Pi kicks out a dark frame saying it won't do any good to subtract it. I remade them and had someone check them they are correct just not enough noise to matter. Of course the camera is staying nice and cool this time of year around 70-80 deg which is best for low noise but with the little that is there at those temps I don't expect a huge increase when we get to the warmer months and camera temps inch up towards 100 and over. Its going to be a very fun year for me. Season pass to Cota and the astro rig to play with and the MkII. My toy box is overflowing 

Griz


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

*Finally the gas clouds*

Worked through a few more tutorials and now I'm able to tease the gas and dust clouds out so you can see them. A little more detail in the star nursery area as well.










Sure wish it would clear up so I could get some more shots.

Griz


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## DA REEL DADDY (Jun 7, 2005)

Just beautiful. Thanks for your post. I really enjoy them.


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## griz (Jan 9, 2006)

*They are beautiful*

There is an object list called the Messier list. Its 100 objects and they are all stunning. That is the first ones most people work through. I have a couple of stunners lined up for my next few images. One will have to be a mosaic as it covers two huge nebulas the Heart and Soul. Several nights. All the upgrading is so I can take much longer exposures through specific filters that greatly enhance the image detail and also add some colors the standard rgb doesn't pick up. But they are so narrow let so little light through they require an hour or more sometimes to get the signal right to match the color shot. Unless you want to get into 10K and up mounts you need to correct the periodic error and any other drift in the system. The telescope computer mount modeling takes care of this for pointing but can't do it while imaging because it has no way to know and doesn't drive the motors. So you use a small telescope mine is a 50mm and a tiny camera 1.25 inches across the same size as a standard eyepiece and a few inches long. That scope and camera is mounted parallel to your camera so they see the same part of the sky. You find a bright star in the guide scope and the guider camera will lock into that and send any corrections to the motors. You also profile the worm gear by letting it guide through a couple of complete revolutions and note any errors. That gets saved in the motor controller and plays back as the worm turns smoothing it out even more. The better you control all this stuff the more detail and sharpness in the images. My setup does great up to about 10 minutes which is excellent but over that length of time it needs a guider. The guider makes it all better though. Even if the mount will do 10min with a guider the stars will be smaller and tighter and you will have more detail. Its like a camera shake blur you can try and get rid of it but its better not to have it in the first place. Everything you do to reduce it will also reduce the detail in the other parts of the image. So I should be set up now to do some really detailed and colorful images.

Griz


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