Madratter's AstroImaging
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    • PixInsight Tutorial #2 >
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Voyager It Is

3/14/2020

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The stars are with the voyager
Wherever he may sail;
The moon is constant to her time;
The sun will never fail;
But follow, follow round the world,
The green earth and the sea;
So love is with the lover's heart,
Wherever he may be.

The Stars Are With The Voyager by Thomas Hood

I have done a lot of imaging since the last post and in particular, I have been giving Voyager a real workout. On that front, I decided that it was well worth the money to purchase it and that is now my main image acquisition software. I use it in tandem with TheSkyX Pro and PHD2.

Recently I have switched over to using my AT8RC at the native f/8 for Galaxy season. I get a little resolution by doing so.
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Messier 98 (NGC 4192) with NGC 4186 at f/8 with AT8RC, 20200307
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The Horsehead Nebula (B33) with NGC 2023 at f/8 with AT8RC, 20200307
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NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, The Eyes, at f/8 with AT8RC, 20200227
Before that I was using the AT8RC at around f/5.9. Here are some of the images I took.
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Messier 61, 20200222
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NGC 2170, 20200222
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Messier 99, 20200219
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SH 2-280, 20200217
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SH 2-261, 20200208
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Fox and Helm

1/29/2020

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Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night

Amos 5:8
I was fortunate to get quite a bit of good weather recently. That has allowed giving Voyager a really good workout, imaging as many as three targets in a night, switching automatically between them.

Certainly one of the show case constellations is Orion. It has been a favorite of mine since I could identify it when I was still in single digits. Almost all the time spent in Orion by Astrophotographers is spent on a few showcase objects, the Great Orion Nebula, The Horsehead and the Flame, Messier 78, and sometimes Barnard's loop. However, there is far more available to shoot than just these few objects, and some of them are quite spectacular in their own right.

Recently, I have been shooting one of those objects, NGC 1788, the Fox Face Nebula. This is an interesting region with beautiful contrasts between bright Blue and Golden stars, a reflection nebula (NGC 1788 proper), dust, and even a Ha region (the right side of the fox - left from our perspective). This is a wonder LRGB target.
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NGC 1788, The Fox Face Nebula located in Orion, 20200122
I have also been shooting NGC 2359, so called Thor's Helmet, named because of the resemblance to a Viking Helmet. Personally, I think it looks a lot like a spider, but no one asked my opinion when they named it, and there was already a spider nebula anyway. This is located nearby to Orion in Canis Major, one of Orion's Hunting dogs. This is a good LRGB or narrowband target. I did it in SHO (the Hubble palette). This object is unusual in that the OIII is as strong or stronger than the Ha. A very hot star is essentially blowing a bubble in the gas of the area.
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NGC 2359, located in Canis Major, one of Orion's Hunting Dogs, 20200126
Now that I have much more time under my belt with Voyager, I am still very pleased with it. I'm almost certainly going to switch my imaging over to using it. I'm very impressed with how reliable it is, and how well it recovers from problems.

To illustrate this, there was a night recently where they were calling for some clear skies but there were lots and lots of clouds. As it turned out it stayed mostly cloudy throughout the night. But Voyager dutifully ran and tried to collect some data. In the morning, it had found just four 5 minute periods when it could take an image. 3 of those were spoiled by clouds during parts of the exposure. But I did have one 5 minute exposure to show for what was by all counts a hopeless night. The point is, it kept recovering and kept trying. This will be a great help on nights that are partly cloudy from time to time.
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My Journey to the Stars

1/20/2020

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I Immaterialize
And Slowly Drift
Into the Unknown

With the Cold Winds with Soul
The Wintery Plains Lie Untouched
I Ride on My Elements
Towards the Stars Unseen

(My Journey to the Stars - Burzum)


I continue to work with Voyager instead of SGP. Last night I finished up getting the data I needed for NGC 896, the Lantern Fish. What made it notable was this was the first time I have used Drag Script in Voyager to collect data from multiple objects over the course of a night. There were some early errors that forced me to stop the script, edit, and restart a few times. But data from the last two objects + sky flats of OIII and SII were gathered without intervention.

Automation is a marvelous thing, at least when it works right.
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NGC 896, The Lantern Fish in SHO (Hubble Palette), 20200119
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New Kid On The Block

1/17/2020

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We're gone at the music and our bodies collide,
Get ready to blast off, 'cause we're gonna crash
To the moon and the stars in the sky
We're gonna crash into it tonight
Into the music and outta of your mind,

(Crash - New Kids on The Block)

I've been a long time user of Sequence Generator Pro. It and I go back to 2013. But recently I've gotten the feeling that there just might be something better out there at this point. SGPro still works for me, but is it best? Maybe I just have the 7 year itch.

I've been hearing about a program called Voyager by StarKeeper. However, I was under the impression that it required a ASCOM camera driver. And my camera, a SBIG STF-8300m does not have one. But recently I heard that Voyager could control my camera through TheSkyX with the Camera add-on. I have that because I got it with my Paramount MyT. Hmm, maybe this was worth a try. Sunday, the 12th I downloaded it, and I was able to take it for a brief spin before the clouds rolled in. Still, that brief spin looked very promising.

Last night, I got to take it on a more extended outing. I'm very impressed. Among other things I really like the tight integration with TheSkyX. It can use it to control the camera, my mount, focusing, guiding, platesolving, and finding objects with the planetarium. You don't have to use it for all that (and I don't), but you can.

Among the things I really like about Voyager are its focusing routines which are top notch. It also figures out your focuser without you entering a ton of parameters like step sizes. It also has a really nice web interface called the Web Dashboard.
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One small part of Voyagers Web Dashboard.
The image above shows just one small part of the Web Dashboard.

Another thing I like is Roboclip, which is an observing list, integrated with nice capabilities for doing framing. It is very well done. I have a Roboclip data base for my target list elsewhere on this site.

I highly recommend checking Voyager out. It is quite likely I'll be purchasing it. This is one of the objects I was shooting last night.


Picture
NGC 896, the Lantern Fish in Ha, 20200116
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The Stars Look Down

1/10/2020

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Seems like a lifetime ago
You could look with pride
On your world of dreams
What is the meaning of this?
And the stars look down
What are you trying to do?
And the stars look down

Neil Peart (Rush)

I'm sorry to say that Neil Peart, the drummer and lyricist for Rush has passed on. Sometimes the world can seem brutal and uncaring. Probably most of us who have been affected by cancer have felt that way at some point. But then I lift my eyes to the stars and I am reminded of the great beauty that I have been privileged to enjoy.

On Wednesday, January 8th I had clear skies. I started the night by redoing the periodic error correction for my MyT. Then I took some OIII data of the Rosette Nebula, and finished the night with more data on NGC 2841.

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The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2244, 4 hours of OIII data, 20200108
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The Rosette Nebula, NGC 2244, HOO version using the OIII data from 20200108, and some old Ha data from October of 2013.
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January 08th, 2020

1/8/2020

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Monday, January 6th didn't look very promising, but I got enough clear weather to take an image of Messier 38 and to take test shots of a number of other objects.

This was my first go at using my AT8RC after collimating it again. It was also a chance to try the flats I took after collimating and see if they were working properly.

The resultant image came out reasonably well, and I can check another Messier object off the list.
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Messier 38, 20200106
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O Little Town Of Bethlehem

12/26/2019

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O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light

(Lyrics to O Little Town of Bethlehem by Phillips Brooks.)


Another Christmas has come and now gone. But the Savior, the everlasting light, is still with us. Even the stars will someday die, but He will be with us forever.

I have been fortunate to have clear skies for a number of Christmas nights. I was again blessed in that way this year. I used the opportunity to take NB data for the Jellyfish Nebula. I also got luminosity data for NGC 2841, one of the targets in my list that I haven't imaged yet.

In the meantime, I have processed some data I took on 18th and 19th of December. Subs were 5 minutes in length binned 1x1. I ended up with:

Red: 19 subs
Green: 15 subs
Blue: 15 subs

Total integration time was 245 minutes (4 hours 5 minutes). This was a pretty tough target for me. NGC 1333 is located in Perseus.

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NGC 1333, December 18th and 19th, 2019
Well, my wife went off shopping so I got a chance to process IC 443, the Jellyfish. Subs were 10 minutes each binned 1 by 1. For Ha, and OIII I ended up with 12 subs each. I got 11 SII before switching targets. Total integration time was 5 hours 50 minutes. The Jellyfish is strong in Ha and SII. The SII is surprisingly strong. The OIII on the otherhand is pretty weak. Here are the results in the Hubble Palette, SHO.
Picture
IC 443, The Jellyfish Nebula in SHO, 20191225
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His Jewels Were the Stars

12/21/2019

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Tears are often jewel-like
My mother's went unnoticed by my father, for his jewels were the stars
And in my father's eyes I knew he had to find
In the sanctity of distance something brighter than a star
One day they told us the sun had flared and taken him inside

Rocket Man - Pearls Before Swine

I have been fortunate to have some reasonably good weather of late. I have spent parts of 4 nights gathering data on NGC 1491. While the common name for this is the Fossil Footprint Nebula, I like to call it the Burning Man. After culling, I ended up with 17 hours and 20 minutes of data in Ha, SII, and OIII. I spent the most time on the SII since that signal is quite faint. I totally overcooked my first try at processing this data. Hopefully, this version is a bit better.
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NGC 1491, The Burning Man or Fossil Footprint Nebula, December 19th, 2019
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Stardust

12/17/2019

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Beside a garden wall, when stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale
Tells his fairytale
Of paradise, where roses grew


(Stardust, Mitchell Parish)

Wednesday night, December 11th, the clouds made way for clear skies. The Moon was full but I was not about to let that stop me. Most of the night was spent imaging the Burning Man Nebula, NGC 1491. But it took a while for that target to clear the trees. In the meantime, I imaged the Double Cluster in Perseus, NGC 869 and 884. I reduced my exposures to 1 minute to help ensure that I minimized over saturating the sensor in order to preserve good star color. The result was 20 subs each of R, G, and B binned 1x1 for a total integration time of 1 hour. With bright clusters like the Double Cluster, that is plenty of time. The telescope used was my AT8RC with the CCDT67 focal reducer/flattener.

I used PCC in PixInsight to calibrate the color. Here is the result:
Picture
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Star Of Wonder

12/9/2019

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The bug has bitten me again. Recently I went out to the observatory, dusted things off, lubed the wheels to the roof, and generally made things ready for usage. I also updated the computer I use for image capture.

On the evening of November 1st I got a break in the weather and a chance to see if the system still worked. I decided to have a go at collecting some Ha data for NGC 6960, the Witches Broom, or the Western Veil. It isn't my best data ever but the system did work with the exception of a USB cable to my focuser that needed to be replaced.
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On November 22 and 24 I got more good weather. This time I collected Ha, SII, and OIII data on some of the detail in the Heart Nebula, IC 1805. In particular I got the area surrounding the open cluster, Melotte 15.
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After the Heart Nebula, I was feeling pretty good about the Hubble Palette so I decided to try NGC 1491 on the night of November 27th. I call this Nebula the Burning Man. While I collected Ha, SII, and OIII data, I have found SII signal too weak to do much with it. I need to decide what direction I want to take with this. Here is a quick pass at the Ha data.
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In the meantime, I got some good weather for at least part of the night again on December 5th and 7th. The Moon was a factor so I decided to go after one of the Messier objects that I still had not image, Messier 76, the Little Dumbbell. While visually dim, from an imaging point of view it is a bright object with good surface brightness.
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In the full-size uncropped version of M76 there are at least 6 galaxies captured going down to at least 18th magnitude. Not bad since the Moon was definitely a factor.
Throughout this, I have been upgrading the software that I use. I now have upgraded, PHD2, TheSkyX Pro, SGP, and PixInsight.

I also upgraded to Nebulosity 4 since it can be used as an ASCOM driver. I wanted to give N.I.N.A. a try and it has no native SBIG drivers. Unfortunately, that experiment failed for a number of reasons. I do really like the integrated object browser within N.I.N.A. It is a nice piece of software for free. It still lacks features found in the paid alternatives, that may be important to you, but the price is right if you don't need those features.
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    Madratter

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