A planet, a cluster, a nebula and me

pursuer · Jan 10, 2006

My first try at Saturn, this was only processed quickly, I will spend more time on it tomorrow whem Im not so tired. I was very surprised to see how many moons the ToUcam picked up.
Edit: the one without a title is actually a star, not a moon.

The beehive cluster

Im not sure why I bothered with this with the moon as bright as it was tonight but I decided to take a single exposure anyway. The Orion nebula.

Finally here is a little look at the setup I use. Thanks for looking.

PlasticSpanner · Jan 10, 2006

Awsome!

:thumbup:

I'm amazed at how many moons you got too! How many frames was that? You even got a reasonable shadow on the rings behind Saturn!:thumbup:

M42 looks good even with the moon out!

The Beehive shot needs a longer exposure/more frames to resolve more stars though. Last time I looked there were practicaly hundreds! :lol:

Maybe a lower mag too?

I love the last shot of your setup! What is the screen you've setup?

Great nights work!:hail:

clarinetJWD · Jan 10, 2006

Pursuer! I had no idea you could get a shot of Saturn like that. Unbelievable! Wow...

pursuer · Jan 10, 2006

Thanks, Saturn is the result of the 150 best frames out of 900 or so. To get the moons I took a seperate clip with the gain and exposure cranked up and then combined them in PS. Tommorow I will hand pick frames and do some wavelet processing with PixInsight, that should give a much better result.

Both the Beehive and M42 are very short exposures, 15 seconds if memory serves. I was mainly after Saturn so I only did a rough polar alignment, so that was as long as I could go tonight. You are also right about the magnification but that is at prime focus so it is as wide as I can get without piggybacking.

I live next door to a college and and apartment building so glare was always a problem. I used to hide behind my baby barn but from that location I could only see a small part of the sky and I couldn't polar align. I sank some posts before the ground froze in a much better location. I just used some filter fabric I had laying around for the screen. As you can see from the pic some light gets through but even so it makes a huge difference and I am going to double up the fabric tomorow so that should do the trick. I can see almost the entire sky from this spot including Polaris so I think it is going to work out well. I discovered the screen does a decent job of blocking the wind as well.

Ok, im off to bed now. Glad you liked the shots

PlasticSpanner · Jan 11, 2006

That screen is a great idea! I will do the same to block out the two streetlights that shine into my garden!:thumbup:

Looks like we may be getting clear skies tonight too! :boogie:

I'll have to compile a list of "targets" later!

hobbes28 · Jan 11, 2006

Those are awesome!

pursuer · Jan 11, 2006

Thanks Clarinet, hobbes.

Here is the reprocessed Image if anyone is interested

PlasticSpanner · Jan 11, 2006

Saturn is much sharper in that one but appears a little more grainy.:thumbup: This is what I hope to avoid with a very slow film & several long exposures!

Got a clear night tonight and I've been out now for 3 hours! It's -4 deg C & I'm bloody freezing! Moon it just too bright to get much!

Even more determined to get my motor drive and eyepeice projection adapter now! :mrgreen:

pursuer · Jan 11, 2006

Awsome, glad you finally got a clear night. It is raining where I am

ya, I think I sqeezed everything possible out of that image. I realised that I forgot to use my 2X barlow which would have really improved the image scale and detail :irked:

but I installed a firmware mod on my ToUcam today that will allow me to bypass the webcams canned sharpening and compression and capture raw image data. The combination of that and my barlow should make for a better result next time.

be sure to post your shots from tonight when you get them, clear skys

JTHphoto · Jan 11, 2006

I really have no idea what you guys are talking about in most of this thread, but i love your images, keep it up! I use to go into the big telescopes when i was at UA, they have at least two on campus and a huge lens manufacturing plant under the football stadium, they were making a huge lens for an observatory in Hawaii i think. i didn't get to see saturn much bigger than this, and the rings where perpindicular to us at that time so it just looked like a line through a disk... i remember we could see the striations on jupiter though... that was a lot of fun, i can't wait to see more of your images!!! :thumbup: :thumbup: