The first two images that I was happy with are shown here at the left (click for larger image). Messier 31 on the left, Messier 33 on the right. They were both taken using my Orion Short Tube 80 refractor. A 400mm achromat that I bought as part of an autoguider package. It provided a nice wide field for these larger targets, with a Canon XSi for the image acquisition mounted on a Celestron CG-5 ASGT mount. I'm still very bad about recording image information, but I believe these were done by stacking ten 2-minute exposures in Deep Sky Stacker. These images were taken before I knew anything about focusing masks, so the focus on M-33 is a little soft. Plus, the chromatic aberration of the achromatic lens can also be seen as casting a slightly purplish color to the stars. I guess they're not bad for first attempts.

Now, almost exactly a year later, I've upgraded some equipment and learned even more from trial and error. Below are the same two targets taken the night of 9/3/2010:

Although these were taken with the exact same size telescope, there a a few key differences. The telescope is an apochromatic triplet, a TMB80SS. Triplets have better color correction so they don't show the purple fringe that an achromat does.

Instead of my XSi, these images were captured with an SBIG ST8300M CCD camera. This is a purpose-built cooled monochrome camera. For color, images have to be shot thorough red, blue and green filters then combined with software. This tri-color technique has been around since before color film existed and was used to produce the very first color photographs. However, instead of stacking three film negatives by hand, the three mono images are stacked and processed using software. In addition to the RGB images, a Luminence layer is added to provide more depth and detail to the image. In actuality, the luminance layer accounts for the majority of the data used to make up the final image.

This is where the biggest difference between the two sets of images comes into play: integration time. Both of the 2010 images have 60 minutes of luminance (20 X 3 min), and 60 minutes combined RGB (10 X 2 min per channel). Although, I had a focuser mishap on the M-33 sequence, so the blue channel only has four 2-minute images. All images were taken at a temperature of -5C and calibrated with 150 dark frames.

I still have a ways to go, but I think there have been some definite improvements over the intervening year. I would like to be able to bring out more color in these two galaxies. And that's where I'm still a bit on the weak side: post processing. I've seen many fine images of these and due to their close proximity to us they show more color than most galaxies, especially in the red where many star-forming hydrogen alpha regions are prevalent.

Indeed, the image seen at left shows some of those hydrogen alpha regions. The biggest difference with this image is that I actually took an image using an h-Alpha filter and substituted that image for the red channel. But, it was taken through a different telescope, so the image scale is different, so combining it with the image above would take more image processing skills than I currently have. If I get another clear night before it gets too cold for me, I'll get some h-Alpha data that I can mix in with the TMB80 data.

At this point, I think I'm happy with the equipment choices that I've made. Now, it's just a matter of getting out under the stars, gathering data and gaining more knowledge and experience with image processing techniques.

Easy.

Right?

Fiscal responsibility at the time forced me to sell my equipment and drop out of being "active" in the hobby. I never lost the interest, just the means to seriously pursue astronomy. I never got out of the habit of looking up every time I walked outside at night, or spending some time in the wee hours of a balmy August morning looking for Perseid meteors, or jumping into the car and speeding to a nearby dark site with the report of an auroral display.

Fifteen or so years later, and I found myself in the position to be able to once again become active in amateur astronomy and took advantage of the opportunity.

Photography has always been an interest of mine and photographing astronomical objects and other sky-based phenomena was a natural extension of that interest, considering my involvement in astronomy. My first serious attempt at astrophotography, that is, outside of simple star trails was the North American/Pelican Nebula complex in Cygnus.

The image at left is the results of this attempt. Keep in mind that this image was taken at a time before digital cameras and cooled CCDs were widely available at the amateur level. Those that were affordable, anyway. This image, then was taken using conventional film. Specialized, scientific film that had been hypersensitized by baking it in an hydrogen atmosphere for about 24 hours. This made the film, which was originally 25 ASA, about 400 ASA and almost impervious to reciprocity failure. The film, Kodak Technical Pan 2415, was one of the most popular black & white film emulsions available to amateur astronomers due to this and it's incredibly small grain. The image reproduction shown here suffers from .jpg compression and the fact that I can't find the original scan. I will have to have the negative scanned again in the near future before it degrades too much.

The instrument used for this versionw as a Celestron 5.5" Schmidt Camera which worked at f/1.5 or about 200mm focal length. This camera was piggybacked on my fork-mounted Meade 8" LX200, and the mount was hand-guided by me using an illuminated reticle eyepice. The image consists of a single 30 minute exposure taken through a Kodak Wratten #93 filter gel filter (to isolate the hydrogen alpha wavelengths) and developed by myself in Kodak Dektol.

Jump forward 15 or so years to last night, August 28, 2010.

Astrophotograhy equipment has made leaps and bounds in the intervening years. Last night's efforts are show here to the right. This one was taken using a Canon 300mm f/4 EF-L lens attached to an SBIG ST8300M CCD camera through a Baader 12nm h-Alpha filter. It is the result of twenty 5-minute exposures which were guided with a TMB80SS refractor and an Orion Starshoot Autoguider. I literally set everything up, framed the image and found a guide star, then pressed a button and watched a movie while the camera an computer did all the work.

Things have certainly changed in the intervening years.

The images were stacked and combined in Deep Sky Stacker and post-processed using Photoshop CS4. Minimal changes were made using Levels and Curves. No other processing was done at this time.

I'm not saying that either method is better than the other. Back then, amateurs certainly achieved some very fine results with the equipment available. Indeed, there are still some purists who prefer to work with film, saying that continuous tone images are superior to digital. In some respects, they're right. Digital images can only be enlarged so much before the size of the pixels becomes ungainly and makes the image look blocky. Although film images may be able to be enlarged more, they are still limited to the grain size of the emulsion. Tech Pan is gone ... discontinued by Kodak a few years ago, and even other films are starting to get hard to find. Most film developing has be either be done by the photographer or taken to a lab that sends it to a larger lab.

I think digital has come to a point where pixel size is small enough and the sensors large enough to allow amateurs to create images that rival professional images that were being made back when I took that first photo of NGC7000. The process may not be nearly as hands on as it used to be, but, is that necessarily a bad thing?

You would think that it being such a bright object, it would be easy to get a photograph of M-31, and you would be right. Getting a good photograph of it is another story. First off, it's huge compared to other astronomical objects. The photo below was taken at a relatively short focal length of 685mm, and it still fills the frame. Not only is it huge, it's got a very large dynamic range. Which means if you get the fine details of the spiral arms, you tend to completely overexpose the core. Expose for the core and details are hard to bring out. Getting a good photograph of M-31 is all about balancing the exposures between the core and outer arms.

I hadn't tried to photography M-31 with the CCD camera, so I just took a stab at the proper exposures. Still without a luminance filter, I had to substitute Hydrogen Alpha. This is a composite of twenty 2-minute exposures for each channel, hAlpha, red, blue and green. I blended the hAlpha and red images to bring out the red, star forming regions that can be seen in the outer arms. Also, the Ha and red were blended for the luminosity channel.

Date: August 7, 2010
Location: Sugar Grove Nature Center, Funk's Grove, Illinois
Telescope: AT106LE, AT2FF
Camera: SBIG ST8300M, FW5-8300
Filter: Baader hAlpha, RGB
Mount: Celestron CGE
Guider: Orion ST80, SSAG
20 X 120 seconds, each channel Ha,R,G,B
Individual channels stacked in Deeps Sky Stacker
Red channel blended with hAlpha for red and luminosity using Photoshop CS4

Anyway...

Object: Messier 8
Date: August 6, 2010
Location: Funks Grove, Illinois (40.5N, 89.0W)
Instrument: AT106 LE (106mm f/6, triplet)
Camera: SBIG ST8300M w/ FW-5 filter wheel
Filters: Baader Ha(7nm), R,G,B
Astro-Tech Field Flattener
Guider: Orion ST80 w/SSAG
Mount: Celestron CGE
Ha - 10 X 180 seconds
RGB - 4 X 180 seconds each channel
Channels stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
HaRRGB Combine done with Photoshop CS4 using Starizona Method 2

Click the thumbnail for a larger image:

[Update: I wanted to compare the two different HaRGB Methods that Starizona has. First thing I notice is that there are many more stars in the picture below compared to the first one. I also see now that I've got some egg-shaped stars on the right side of the image. Probably due to something in the imaging train not being square]

Continuing from my previous post, I now had two Black Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio Polyxenes) chrysalises. I thought it might be neat to have a time-lapse of the butterflies emerging.

I had read it could be as soon as five days, but it ended up taking nine. The first chrysalis formed on 7/21, and when I woke up on 7/29 and noticed that it had turned more transparent, I knew there would soon be a new butterfly. It happened a lot quicker than I expected as I'd also read that it could be 24 hours after the chrysalis turned clear before the butterfly emerged. It was actually more like five hours or so.

The video is below. Not much happens for a while except the chrysalises moving a bit, but soon you can start to see some changes taking place in the lower one that indicates the butterfly is ready to emerge. Around the 8:08 time index, the butterfly actually emerges.

Don't blink!

Even though I was taking an exposure every 5 seconds, the butterfly pops out very quickly. If I had a clue how, I would make that portion of the video slo-mo, but alas, my video editing skills are non-existent.

I'm currently also raising a Monarch caterpillar, so hopefully I'll be able to get a video of that transformation, too.

Until then, click the link below for the video:

Recently, I was tending to my garden and came across some caterpillars partaking of the tops of my carrots. They are Papilio Polyxenes, the Black or American Swallowtail Butterfly.

Here's one:

Just for kicks, I grabbed a couple and fed them for a few days and now they're starting to pupate. I watched this afternoon as the first one shed its skin and sealed itself up inside the shell. The second one has been hanging by that silk string for quite some time now. Assuming that it's still alive, it should be pupating within the next 24 hours or so.

On a lark, I decided to set up a cam to capture the metamorphosis in process. I've got YawCam running my Logitech QuickCam 9000, capturing an image every 60 seconds that I can then turn into a time lapse of the event. I've also got YawCam's HTTP function running so anyone can access an updating webcam. Take this linkto check out the cam. It will update every 10 seconds.

Enjoy!

This one is of Messier 16, the Eagle Nebula. It is one of the most well known of the summer Milky Way nebulae, mostly because of Hubble's famed Pillars of Creation image. To me, it looks more like a dog sitting up and begging, but hey, to each their own.

M-16 is an emission nebula in the constellation of Serpens, the snake, and is an active star forming region about 6500 light years from Earth.

Messier 16, The Eagle Nebula

Date: 2010-07-04/05
Lens: AT106LE, 106mm f/6.85 Triplet Refractor, w/ ATFF Field Flattener
Camera: SBIG ST8300M
Filter: Baader 7nm hAlpha
Mount: Celestron CGE
Guider: Orion ST80 w/Starshoot Autoguider & PHD
20 X 180 seconds, 150 darks, no flats, no bias
Image Acquisition: CCD Soft
Stacked with Deep Sky Stacker, Processed with FITS Liberator and Photoshop CS4

I've also included below a tighter crop of the Pillars of Creation portion of M-16. It's not quite as good as Hubble's, but I think it's decent. I'll hopefully return to this one later in the year to get some color data to add to it.

I also had the opportunity to install a dew heaters strip into my ST8300M to hopefully fix the dewing problem that people in more humid climes have been having, me included. I had received the heater strip from SBIG on Friday, but didn't have a chance to install it. So, on Friday night with 75% humidity, I wasn't even able to get 10 exposures before a big dew splotch covered most of the window covering the CCD chip.

I made it a point to install the heater Saturday before going out to image again. It seemed like it had done the trick as I was able to get 105 minutes of h-Alpha of M-27, but when I started the color exposures, the dew once again reared its ugly head. However, it seems that one of my solder joints wasn't quite up to snuff and had worked its way loose, so I'm guessing that happened about the time I started the color sequences. I'll hopefully have a chance to get the color data next weekend.

So, here's the result of the 105 minutes of h-Alpha. I really like the look of this image. It shows the nebula as the big ball of gas that it is, and just starts to show the fainter outer halo that's evident in very deep images.

As always, click on the thumbnail to see a much larger image:

Messier 27 - The "Bow Tie" Nebula
Imaging Instrument - Astro-Tech AT8RC, 8" f/8 Ritchey-Chrétien, ATFF field flattener
Camera - SBIG ST8300M w/ FW5-8300 Filter Wheel
Filter - Baader 7nm Hydrogen Alpha
Mount - Celestron CGE
Guide Scope - Orion ST80 w/ Starshoot Autoguider
Exposure - 35 X 180 seconds, Binned 2X2
50 Darks, No Flats, No Bias
Stacked with Deep-Sky Stacker
Processed with FITS Liberator and Photoshop CS4