Details:

Mars featuring Solis Lacus, a dust storm coming off the Mare Erythraeum, and the shrunken ice cap. Taken with a Celestron U2K and a Logitech Quickcam PRO 3000. Shot from my driveway in Rolesville NC on 10/20/2005 at 12:00 midnight.


Processing:

Describe computer image processing (if any) applied to each image and name of program used. If final image is a composite of several images, provide details on each image used.

All processing done in Registax. This image was the best 1000 frames out of 3200.

The Mars opposition of 2003 is what sparked my interest in astronomy and it amazes me that a short 2 years later with meager equipment I could produce this image. I can't wait for 2007.

Details:

Subject: Solar active region 10898 - a nice big one during the current activity minimum - and some granulation Telescope: Intes MN61 6" Maksutov Newton Filters: Baader Astrosolar n=3.8 filter film, Baader Solar Continuum green bandpass & UV/IR cutfilter Amplification: TeleVue 5x Powermate (f-effective=4500mm) Camera: Foculus FO124B IEEE1394/firewire b/w cam @15fps, 8.4ms integration time Capture time: 2006.07.02, 08:08UTC Sky conditions: Seeing: 5-7/10, Transparency: 8/10 Capture location: milky way, solar system, earth, 51:53:13n, 08:45:23e


Processing:

Manual multipoint alignment in Registax3/Photoshop with 5 alignment regions, 50 frames from 2500 stacked per alignment point, wavelet sharpening, histogram/curves adjustment, slight unsharp mask

Details:

Telescope used for all images: Meade 8" LX200 Classic alt-azimuth mode.

• Jupiter: SAC IVc webcam with Astronomik IR filter at prime focus; camera settings were 10 fps for 60 seconds. Gain-10%; Brightness- 40%; Saturation-35%; Gamma-40%. Location: Cuyahoga Astronomical Association Letha House Observatory, Spencer, Ohio. June 24, 2006 10:41 - 11:01 PM EDT.
  
  
• Saturn: SAC IVc webcam with Astronomik IR filter and Televue 2.5X Powermate; camera settings were 15 fps for 50 secs. Gain- 15%; Brightness-30%; Saturation-30%; Gamma-30%. Location: Cuyahoga Astronomical Association Letha House Observatory, Spencer, Ohio. June 24, 2006 10:15 - 10:30 PM EDT.
  
  
• Uranus: SAC IVc webcam with Astronomik IR filter and Televue 2.5X Powermate; camera settings were 15 fps for 50 secs. Gain-5%; Brightness-25%; Saturation 35%; Gamma-45%. Location: My backyard, Strongsville, Ohio. July 20, 2005 2:30 - 3:40 AM EDT.
  
  
• Neptune: Meade DSI with Astronomik IR filter at prime focus. Exposure: 70 individual frames @ 0.067s each. Location: Cuyahoga Astronomical Association Letha House Observatory, Spencer, Ohio. August 2, 2005 12:16 - 1:00 AM EDT.

Processing:

Collage Creator used to create the mosaic. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus: Images acquired and captured with K3CCD Tools v. 2.4.9.895 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune: Converted from TIFF or BMP to JPEG with Images Plus. Jupiter: Processed with K3CCD Tools v. 2.4.9.895 as 5 TIFF frames from five 60 sec AVI's. Images Plus v 2.50 was used to align and combine 5 Tiff frames. Levels, curves, unsharp mask and high pass filter was done with PhotoShop CS. Saturn: Processed with K3CCD Tools v. 2.4.9.895 as 9 TIFF frames from nine 50 sec AVI's. Images Plus v 2.50 was used to align and combine the 9 TIFF frames. Levels, curves, and unsharp mask was done with PhotoShop CS. Uranus: Best 571 frames from 750 frames selected and processed from one 50 sec AVI with K3CCD Tools v. 2.4.9.895. Levels, curves and unsharp mask was applied in Paint Shop Pro 5.  Neptune: Images acquired and captured with Meade Envisage. Images Plus v. 1.70 was used to align and combine 70 bitmap frames. Levels, curves, and unsharp mask was applied in Paint Shop Pro 5. 

Additional Thoughts: I still remember seeing webcam images of Mars in 2003!  At that time I had a Meade AR-5 LXD55, and got myself a ToUCam Pro. Boy was it hard to get that planet on the chip! By 2004, I had gone through 3 telescope/mount/webcam configurations, finally settling on my current set-up for planetary imaging (minus the DSI). I sure have learned a great deal since then! I mostly image the remote planets, since it is so hard to capture the delicate colors and nuances of (essentially) featureless disks! 

Details:

10" LX200 Classic at f/20 and f/30 with Philips ToUcam Pro at 10 fps, 1/25 sec.
November 24, 2005. 23h 00m. Diameter: 17.85" ;True distance: 0.5242193 AU Light time.

Processing:

Stacked in Registax ver 2 and K3CCD. Saved as least-loss .JPG image and slight unsharp mask applied in Astroart 3.0.

Details:

Seeing 6/10 - Trans  8/10
Imaged through an OrangeTube C-8, using a Toucam 840 and 2x Barlow.
Shutter speed 1/25
10 frames per second
50% Brightness
50% Gain
0% Gamma
Imaged at home, Hendersonville, Tn

Processing:

90 second video capture.
Stacked and wavelets applied using Registax 3
Levels, Contrast, and Saturation applied using Photoshop 5

Details:

Telescope: Wedge mounted Celestron N11GPS with f/6.3 Reducer / Corrector.
Camera: Canon 20Da DLSR
Mode: Raw
ISO: 1600
EXP: 30 sec
Images: 13
Guiding: STV via piggy-backed FSQ-106
Location: Little Blair Valley, California

Processing:

ImagesPlus:
Convert raws, dark and flat calibrated.
Aligned 13 images on comet and median combined.
Aligned a subset of 10 images on stars and median combined.
Averaged the two results together.
Digital development.
Saved as 16-bit TIF.

Photoshop CS:
Levels, curves and masks.
Noise reduction via Noise Ninja.
Resized and converted to jpg.

Details:

Telescope: Celestron NexStar8GPS
Camera: Celestron NexImage, Jupiter & Saturn @ f/23 with 2x
barlow, Mars @ f/54 with 2x barlow & ScopeTronix MaxPower
Site location: Scaggsville, MD (76¡53'12.526" W 39¡08'59.228" N)

Mars: 11/03/2005 04:30 UT
520 frames @ 1/10 s (best of 606)
seeing 3/5, transparency 4/5
gain 40%, gamma 20%
saturation 100%, brightness 75%, contrast 50%

Jupiter: 07/01/2006 01:31 UT
554 frames @ 1/10 s (best of 606)
seeing 3/5, transparency 2/5
gain 40%, gamma 40%
saturation 50%, brightness 50%, contrast 50%

Saturn: 02/21/2006 03:19 UT
1671 frames @ 1/10 s (best of 2210)
seeing 3/5, transparency 2/5
gain 40%, gamma 40%
saturation 100%, brightness 50%, contrast 50%

Processing:

All software for Mac OS X
Images rotated to south up with "AstroYacker"; constant angle for
Mars & Jupiter, varied by 1 degree for Saturn; Saturn scaled by 200%
for alignment and stacking. Aligning, stacking, wavelet sharpening, color balance, best image selection with "Keith's Image Stacker". Final color saturation (Jupiter) and contrast (Mars) adjustments, and image composition with "Graphic Converter"; Mars scaled to 40% (f/54 -> f/23) to give same scale as Jupiter and Saturn; Saturn scaled back down to 100%.

Additional Thoughts:
The Jupiter image shows an Io shadow transit--I can't find Io . A
later image from the same evening easily showed Io itself as it
neared Jupiter's darker edge but the GRS was nearly gone by then. I
prefer this image which also (just barely) shows the smaller red spot
(Red Jr.) just above and right of the GRS.

Details:

A 34 frame mosaic of a 9 day old moon shot through a TeleVue 2X Barlow on a C8 with an SBIG ST-2000XCM CCD camera. Taken 2/7/2006 from my driveway in Gastonia, NC. Each frame in the mosaic was cherry picked from 5 exposures each at 100 ms.

Processing:

Darks and Flats in CCDSoft.
CCDSoft also used to set a consistent histogram for each frame. Mosaic
assembled in Photoshop. Mild unsharp mask applied.

Additional Thoughts:
Effective focal length is around 4000mm using the 2X Barlow. IMHO, this is the best way to capture full phase, high resolution images of the moon.

Details:

E160; camera StarlightXpress SXV-H9; exposure 26 x 45 seconds unguided; site Igloo Observatory, Hampshire, IL; time 4 March 06, 1102 UT at image mid-point; 45 seconds was the longest I could image without blurring the comet due to its fast relative motion. This night the tail was about at its longest.

Processing:

Images flat-compensated (no darks used), stacked and aligned on the comet head with ImagesPlus (IP). Log 0.5 power histogram stretch applied to accentuate tail details, at the expense of saturating the head.

Negative image formed in IP as some viewers prefer the negative to discern tail structure.

The coma in monochrome is a less-saturated view than the head-plus-tail.

The color-intensity map was formed in AstroArt 3.0. Colors are mapped into intensity (ADU levels) to allow better visualization of the coma’s structure.

The isophotes were formed in AstroArt 3.0. They are like contour lines on a topographical map and represent another way of visualizing the structure of the coma.

Annotation was done in MaximDL 2.2.  The image should be viewed at full size for the text to appear correctly.

Additional Thoughts:

Imaging fast-moving comets is challenging because one can not expose arbitrarily long with normal sidereal tracking or the comet becomes blurred. This is especially challenging when one is trying to capture the faint filamentary detail in a long tail. I’ve not found autoguiding to work because the autoguider invariably grabs onto a star and loses track on the comet head.

Details:

Lunar Mosaic taken on July 13 2006 using a 10" LX200 SCT and a canon G3 4MP digital camera. A maxview 40mm plossal was used. Camera was set at ISO 50 and 1/25th second exposure and 4x zoom was used. The mosaic is composed of 9 pictures each of which is composed of 8-17 stacked images to reduce noise and increase sharpness. The photo was taken from Mississaauga Ontario Canada.

Processing:

Astrostack was first used to stack each of the 9 images. A deconvolve filter was also used in astrostack to bring out a bit more sharpness. After stacking, I used imageJ to reduce the size of each image to half the size and cropped each image to make it more suitable to construct a mosaic. The last program used was Autostich to produce a mosaic. After mosaic was produced, some light retouching to reduce stitch lines and increase brightness was done in imageJ.

Additional Thoughts:

Seeing was average-good.

Details:

Object: Comet 73P (Schwassmann-Wachmann) close encounter with
M57-The Ring Nebula
Taken: 22:45-23:45 EDT May 7, 2006
Telescope: Meade LX200GPS 12” SCT (@ f/6.3)
Guiding: Off-axis w/ Meade DSI II & Autostar Envisage
Camera: Canon 20Da DSLR @ ISO1600; 90 second exposure
Location: Caesar Creek State Park, (Warren County) Ohio (N39.513, W84.020)

Processing:

Single 90-second exposure, ISO1600; RAW file conversion, full calibration (bias, flat, dark),
and initial image processing using ImagesPlus 2.75; final image processing
(crop, Levels, Curves only) using Photoshop CS2

Details:

Moon, waxing gibbous July 14th, 2005
14" Celestron SCT with field flattener
SBIG 2000XM Camera
0.01 sec exposure
Santa Fe, NM
(best image picked from 10 successive exposures)

Processing:

Processed with MAXIM DL to improve contrast and with a kernel filter to
sharpen edges.

Details:

Moon_Crater Clavius
LXD-75 8” SC, DMK 21BF04, Alexandroupolis of Greece, 14 Aug. 2006, 00:28:09 UT, barlow 2.5X and UV/IR cut filter.

Processing:

Processing in Registax, I choice 551 best frames from 1179 and select 4 differents points for align and stack, final processing in Photoshop.

Details:

Meade 12” f/7 lx200gps
Canon digital rebel 
Exposure: 1.5 sec iso400
Site: Mcconnellsville, Ohio 
4/28/06 9:02 p.m.

Processing:

Photoshop 7,
Levels
Contrast adjust
Color adjust
Grain surgery plug-in

Additional Thoughts:

Details:

Saturn taken with a Meade 8" LX90 @ f/35Êfrom my backyard in Mansfield Ma on March 31, 2006 at 2:15 UT. Two cameras were used for this image, a DMK 21AF04 firewire camera for the luminance portion, capturing @ 30fpsÊfor 5 minutes(9000 frames)Êand a ToUcam 840 for the color, capturing @ 10fps forÊ7 minutes and 40 seconds(4600frames).

Processing:

2250 of the 9000 luminance frames were stacked in Registax 3 using MAP ( Multi Alignment Point) Processing. 900 of theÊ4600 color frames were stacked in Registax 3 using MAP also and wavelets were applied to all. The luminance and color images were cropped into 3 pieces showing only the sharpest areas that were aligned on in Registax and then they were stitched back together using Photoshop. The recombined luminance and color images were combined in Photoshop to make this LRGB image. Also used in Photoshop were color correction, levels and unsharp mask. NeatImage was used to reduce the noise in the final image.

Details:

The Lunar crater Theophilus in the lunar afternoon, taken when the moon was
waning.
Celestron 9.25 SCT @ f20
Philips ToUCam 840K with Baader IR/UV cut filter, 1/33 sec, 10 frames/sec
Taken at Bothell, WA on Aug 13 2006, 10:32UT
Seeing was excellent, estimated at 8/10 Pickering.

Processing:

Processed in Registax 3. Stack of 300 out of 900 frames. Slight application of wavelets.

Details:

Telescope: Celestron C 9.25 @ f/30
Mount: Losmandy GM-8
Camera: Phillips webcam Pro3D

Exposure: 1400 frames, 1/25s 
Site location: Donja Stubica, Croatia
Date: March 11. 2006.

Processing:

1400 frames combined in  Registax and final processed in Photoshop.