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Ok...who's guilty?
I looked at my hit counter today and just about crapped my pants.
Who the heck submitted me to reddit?
Not that I mind the hits.
It's amazing what webcams can do
I'm amazed at what can be accomplished with a 5 year old $50 webcam and a few modifications. I took a Quickcam 4000, removed the lens and added a nosepiece made of a 1.25" PVC drain pipe.
Both of these were taken using my Celestron C6-R, 6" f/8 achromatic refractor, stopped down to 4" to alleviate chromatic aberration, for an effective focal ratio of f/12. The camera was set to 640 X 480 which yielded 15 fps.
First image is my entry attempt for the Cloudy Nights September Beginner Bright Object Astrophotography Challenge, Rupes Recta, or Straight Wall. I captured 3 minutes of video with the camera set to 640 X 480 under very marginal seeing conditions. Processed with Registax 5, I was only able to get 93 good frames. I wasn't able to get the 3rd quarter moon in the scope until after 1am, so I was already too tired to wait till it got any higher. Watching the video was like looking at something underwater. I think it's a little overprocessed, so I still want to do some fiddling with the Registax settings.
This image of Jupiter, I took earlier the same night. The seeing was marginally better since the planet was a bit higher than the moon. I just had to hurry and get the video before Jupiter got into the trees. Observing from my house just plain sucks.
Anway, this is a stack of about 900 frames. It's amazing the amount of detail that Registax can pull out of a video that at times only looks like an out of focus blob. It really makes me wonder how true to life the images are, with the amount of processing that gets done on them. Not only mine, but all of the webcam images that are all over the web.
My god, it's full of (purple) stars...
Color me (ugh) a little disappointed. I knew that an achromatic telescope would display some chromatic aberration on brighter subjects, but I really had no idea it would be this bad.
The two images here were taken with my new C6-R (6" f/8 achromat refractor), Rebel XSi at ISO 800. Guiding was done with an Orion ST 80 with a Starshoot Autoguider.
I don't know if my focus was slightly off, or if the chromatic aberration really is this bad on this scope, but these are unacceptable with those purple-ringed stars.
Research needed...
Spirally Goodness
I love optical illusions. The Bad Astronomer has a posting about one I hadn't seen. Take a look here.
Prime Time
I worked Friday night on getting some experimental prime focus shots using my Rebel XSi and Orion Short Tube 80. I bought this scope to use with the autoguider, but I have a funny feeling that I might end up using it for some of the larger targets. At f/5, it's got a nice wide field of view.
This first image is Messier 31, The Andromeda Galaxy, with it's two companions Messier's 32 & 110. M-31 is, I believe, the farthest object that is observable with the unaided eye, at 2.2 million light years distance. It is seen to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch in the constellation of, well, Andromeda. This image is a composite of 10 three minute images, unguided, through the aforementioned 80mm f/5 refractor, using a Canon Rebel XSi dSLR, at 400 ISO. Ten light frames and three darks were stacked using Deep Sky Stacker. The only image manipulation that I bothered with was auto leveling with GiMP.
The second image I worked hardest on that night was the one to the left of Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula. This one was a two-fer, as the wide field of the scope allowed me to catch Messier 20, the Trifid Nebula. Both of these wonderful emission (and reflection) nebulae are in the southern Milky Way constellation of Sagittarius. This area is lousy with deep-sky objects, it being the view towards the center of our galaxy. M8 is visible just above the spout of the teapot of Sagittarius. M20, is easily visible with a pair of small binoculars.
This image shows mostly the red emission nebulosity of these two objects, but you can just start to see the blue reflection nebulosity in the upper part of M20. I think either longer exposures, or more careful image adjustment would bring out the blue parts of both a little more.
Once again, this was taken using the 80mm, f/5 refractor, Canon Rebel XSi at 400 ISO. Nine, three minute exposures were stacked with three dark frames using Deep Sky Stacker. Minimal image adjustments (levels) done using GiMP.
I toyed around with a couple other targets, namely Messier 13, the Hercules globular cluster, and the Double Cluster in Perseus. I haven't had the time to pull them off of the camera yet. They'll probably show up as part two of this posting later on.
Enjoy.