M31 Galaxy (Sleepless in Vancouver)

Jet lag-I hate it. Since I arrived here last Sunday, I never had a good night's rest. So instead of lying in bed and forcing myself to sleep, I kept myself awake by processing my M31 image. I was not optimistic that there would be improvement as the raw subs were not good. I shot these last year at home using very short subs fearing that light pollution would overwhelm the signal. IRIS somehow extracted the galaxy from the uneven gradient of light pollution and I was a bit satisfied with the new results! Now, when will be the next new moon?

Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443 & SH2-249)

I though that this rainy season would not end. Yet, last Wednesday night at home was a surprise in many ways. Firstly, it was unusually clear-no big thick clouds. Secondly, Polaris was clearly visible above my northern horizon where its perennially smoggy and lastly, we have a new dog which was not taken into consideration in my imaging set-up. As I gazed the sky, the temptation to bring out my gears from long storage was simply overpowering. Heck, why the wait? At least I will know if I can still tighten my mount's altitude bolt properly! As expected, it took me more than an hour in setting up after a long time of no imaging practice. Much of the delays were due to our beloved dog who obviously enjoyed pulling off the dangling wires from the mount.

I had to overlook the beautiful Orion beaming that time. Deciding on what H-alpha target was difficult as there were plenty of worthy choices. I settled on a relatively obscure IC443 and nearby SH2-249 nebulae. Framing both of them in my 3 degree field necessitated orienting the camera to north-is-up direction which was new to me. Clouds briefly interrupted a few shots but I was able to gather a 2-hour total exposure which was enough to quench my astro-imaging thirst.

I immediately processed the subs and in my eagerness, I was not careful in controlling some highlights and noise. Well, re-processing it sometime together with color data will be my project soon. But, it was definitely a good fun under the stars after long while.

Horse Head Nebula

It's weekend again! After a tiring work week it's time to unwind and relax. And what a better way to amuse myself than to do image processing. I have a set of color subs of the Horse head / Flame Nebula taken way back January 2009 in Caliraya, Laguna. It's 14 subs at 3 minutes each taken during one of our sessions there. That time I used my stock Canon 400D. Then, after a year I got hold of a H-alpha filter and made first light with it capturing the same object from our home. I accumulated 15 H-alpha subs of 4 minutes each using a modified Canon 350d. After getting some experience from doing composites of the Rosette and Crescent Nebula, I tried again combining the color and H-alpha subs. I was not expecting a stunner due to meager number of subs but still hoped for an improvement over my previous Horse head image. I first combined the red channel of the full color shot with the H-alpha then re-combined it again with the color image. I guessed that was called an HaR-RGB composite image. The H-alpha regions stood out while the natural star colors were maintained although some color noise were evident. Not bad, I supposed. Looking at the previous color image, the composite HaRGB image now seemed a lot better. What a really perfect way to spend the weekend!

50mm Finderscope to a Guidescope

I have always been wondering if I could lower the weight of my set-up since the GPD2 mount is already in its maximum load capacity. It has been carrying the Megrez 90, the Zenithstar 80ED, guidecam and the DSLR plus the mounting plate and rings. A friend even commented that the Zenithstar 80ED is an overkill for a guidescope as it could be a respectable imaging scope. So, with all these overcast skies and rains, my hands were itching to do something that can relieve the heavy guidescope. After a quick inventory of my astro toys, I noticed that I have a William Optics 7X50 finderscope that was seldom used. My challenge was to adapt the QHY5 guider to the tube. Dismantling the finder, I found out that it had an M42T thread so all I need to look for is a M42T to 1.25 inch adapter. Fortunately, I had a Vixen flip mirror which have two M42T to 1.25 inch adapters. I quickly set up the finder with the QHY5 camera, focused a distant building and measured the required distance of the adapter. Without any hesitation, I got a hacksaw blade, wore my gloves and goggles and started cutting the adapter tube to the desired length. I used a fine file to grind the rough edges and finished it with a sandpaper. The finished adapter mated smoothly with the finderscope half. I inserted the QHY5, and tested the whole assembly. To my pleasant surprise, the finderscope focused perfectly to the distant building. Now, I will just have to wait for a clear night to test it on a star and see if it is worthy to be renamed "guidescope"!

Astro-imaging Off-Season

Its too late for galaxy season and August is not the time for DSO imaging. But who says its not time for image-processing? I guess there's no better time to re-process a few old images than now when rain and overcast skies abound. Using newly learned techniques in processing I tried improving my images of the Leo triplet and my favorite Rosette Nebula. Subtle improvements nonetheless, I was happy how it turned out.

Bode's & Cigar Galactic Pair

I suddenly found myself with too much time on my hands while on an outside assignment. So. instead of watching TV, I started looking at my past images and played around with Photoshop and wondered if I can still improve it. I was not really happy with my M81 & M82 image so I opened it and experimented processing it again in Photoshop. This time, I applied some of new processing techniques I gathered since. The resulting new image somehow made me smile.

Flat frames really help (IC 4592 re-processed)

I was inspired by Vincent re-processing his images during stormy night and coming up with beautiful Jupiter photos. When electricity was restored, I reviewed my images taken before and found out that the flat frames taken for the
Blue Horsehead image exhibit severe vignetting and uneven illumination. No wonder I had difficulty processing this nebula. I took another set of flat frames but this time I used the computer screen as "light box". My regular light
box was designed for my scope and not for the zoom lens which somehow resulted in faulty flat frames. I soon discovered that the heavy sky glow gradient was reduced which made processing a lot easier. Color balancing was also not too
difficult as before. Good flat frames do really help.

Here again is a re-processed image of IC 4592, a large faint reflection nebula
in Scorpious taken with a 70-300mm zoom lens:

Partial Lunar Eclipse 26 June 2010

I was waiting for this night since March but I cannot hide my skepticism if the weather would cooperate by mid-June. Sure enough, the whole day of June 26, 2010 was cloudy, overcast even. Rain started falling at around 6:00 pm so I had to abandon all my plans for imaging the eclipse. While I was sitting by my computer feeling sorry about the weather, my wife shouted that the eclipsed Moon was penetrating the clouds. I hurriedly took my camera and began shooting the Moon. I chose one shot taken at 8:42 pm when the clouds uncovered the beautiful eclipsed Moon.

Crescent Nebula (NGC6888)

This 3-day weekend off gave me enough time to re-process a few of my images captured previously. The H-alpha subs were taken at home while the color subs at Buso-buso. It also gave me opportunity to practice and experiment combining H-alpha with color images. But I have to learn more. This image did not turn out what I had expected but a good exercise nonetheless. I didn't crop the image to capture more of the red nebulosity of the background albeit the elongated stars at the corners.

Helix Nebula

Tonight is New Moon. I'm supposed to be under the beautiful night sky. Why is that rainy season starts early in June? Somehow, I felt that this astro season ended so soon. I could have imaged more wondrous objects in Scorpius, Cygnus and Sagittarius. But here I am tonight, listening to the rain as it makes its unwelcome noise on our tin roof. So instead of feeling sorry, I started to look at my old images and tried to re-process them. This time, I was able to try a few tricks in processing astro images. First on the list was the Helix Nebula I took in November 2009 in Buso-buso, Antipolo. I started to re-stack the images and adjust it in Photoshop CS. I made some color balancing and gradient control. These brought out more pleasant colors of the nebula. Comparing the new image with the old really made my night. (day?)

The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus

This the second object I planned to capture last Saturday. The H-alpha subs were taken at home and waiting for the color exposures. Finally, I was able to take a total of 2-hour color exposures from Buso. I did not use my focal reducer/field flattener as I thought that the resulting image would be small. However, I had to crop half of the image size to remove the elongated stars. I still want to gain experience in combining H-alpha with color and this was a good exercise for me.

Blue Horsehead in Scorpious

I was not able to process the shots from last Saturday in Buso-buso as we went on a family vacation in Hong Kong. As soon as we arrived, I started to process the first object which was a very faint reflection nebula in Scorpious. I have been waiting for a trip to a dark site for this as the Scorpion was not visible from our house. The sky at Buso was remarkable last Saturday. The Summer Milky Way was beaming and I could feel the perspective of being in its outer spiral arms. The temptation of shooting many objects that night was simply overpowering. But I had to stick to my two planned objects. I did not use my telescope for this object as it was large. The 70-300mm lens was used on the 350D for capturing IC4592, the so-called Blue Horsehead. There's not much images of it on the web and most if not all were taken using very high end equipments. I was wondering how it would look like using just a camera zoom lens and DSLR. At first I felt I was just wasting my time as the subs did not register even the slightest hint of nebulosity. I merely used the guidepost stars to approximate the nebula's location for framing. Worse, I made a mistake in getting the flat-light frames. Just what I had expected the stacked image didn't turn out well. The image was very faint, the background gradient was uneven, and noise was unbearable. Initially, I wanted to give up on it but I tried to convince myself that I could learn more by challenging my skills on Photoshop. I made aggressive stretching to bring out the colors in addition to heavy background gradient control. This is a 3-hour long total exposure at F6.3, ISO 800. I planned to re-visit this object using my Megrez 90 and do some mosaic.

Cygnus Dreamin' Part 2

Hey, its been clear night skies since the start of the week and I just felt guilty of wasting three nights in a row doing nothing for the advancement of amateur astronomy in the Philippines-meaning, I was too lazy to set-up my gears. Scorpious was awesome at midnight and the Summer Milky Way was simply fantastic! So, to redeem myself of my inactivity, I set up my astro gears last night, tested the alignment and covered everything with a big plastic sheet for an astrophotography session the following dawn. I intended to shoot some nebulosity in Cygnus as this was visible from our roofdeck. Actually, I have always wanted to shoot objects in Scorpious but the Great Wall of our house blocks the beautiful southern skies. Anyway, I went to sleep and set my mobile phone to alarm at 2 am - just in time for Cygnus to be well placed in the northeastern sky. I had difficulty rising up when my phone sounded its wake-up alarm. I just had a couple of hours sleep and the warm bed beckoned me to sleep a little more. Heroic minute-for the love of astronomy immediately flashed in my head and I found myself booting-up my laptop for imaging session. The sky was relatively clear and I had no trouble finding the guidepost stars in Cygnus. I looked up the position of the Crescent Nebula from The Sky software and manually star-hopped until I found it. I thought that it would be better if I removed the Focal Reducer to gain some better image scale but that proved to be costly mistake. I had to focus again and it took me almost an hour to nail the focus and re-acquire the image. Time flew fast and it was already 3:15 am when the first sub was taken. I set 30 subs at 3 minutes each on the GuideMaster software and let it do the acquisition and guiding. I went down and took a catnap until my wife woke me up to tell that its already bright outside. I hurriedly went outside and was amazed that the sky was really bright even it was still 5 am. I had to thrash several subs due to skyglow and left me with only 20 useable subs. I dismantled my gears and started to do the processing while having breakfast. Here is the result of the beautiful Crescent Nebula in the star-filled region of the Milky Way. This is a work in progress and I hope I can add some color data later on when we go to Buso, Antipolo this weekend.

Cygnus Dreamin'

The inavailability of the SLA Camp in Buso for the month of April got me stucked at home during weekends. This meant that I had to contend myself in doing H-alpha narrowband imaging. The galaxy season was coming to close and the rising Scorpious, Sagittarious and Cygnus were prime targets for H-alpha. I wanted to shoot some good targets in Scorpious but these were inaccessible from my place. So, I had no other choice but to look for worthy targets in the northern part of the sky. Looking at The Sky planetarium program, I chose the Witch's Broom or NGC6960. I reckoned that it was best to image it at around 3 am when it was considerably high in sky from my place. So i set-up my gears the night before, went to sleep then woke up to the alarm of my clock at 2 in the morning. Here I made 27 frames of 4 minutes each. I have yet to add some color data to this monochrome image when we are able to get back to a dark sky.

Bode's galaxy & Cigar galaxy

There was I waiting for Scorpious to rise from the eastern horizon of Boso-boso, Antipolo. I had planned to image the Blue Horsehead nebula in the horns of the Scorpion and I was expecting it to rise by around 1 a.m. So to keep myself busy and also to test my newly made camera power supply adapter, I started shooting the famous M81/M82 galaxy pair in Ursa Major. I let GuideMaster took the shots and made 32 subs at 3 minutes each. Not satisfied with the result as I was expecting to capture the reddish starburst filaments of M82. Anyway, there's still another time to capture it.

M95, M96, M105, NGC3384 Galaxies in Leo

These were my first targets last Saturday. However, these were unplanned targets as the sky was not cooperative to reveal the Monoceros region for me to capture the Seagull nebula-my primary target for the night. Leo was partly clear early that night so I took advantage to image some of the galaxy cluster there. The Leo triplet was beaming however I already took image of it in Tagaytay. Maybe it was better to try another cluster so I positioned my scope to the M95 group. Here I made 20 frames of 3 minutes each exposures. Framing was a bit off, I think.

M101 Galaxy in Ursa Major

While I was waiting for Scorpious to rise in the pre-dawn sky, I was scanning "The Sky" planetarium software for suitable targets. I found mostly galaxies which were too small for my scope. And since the clouds and perennial haze ruled that night, I had to watch which part of the sky was clear for longer time. Ursa Major was for a time clear so I slewed my scope towards M101 not because its relatively bigger but because I was curious to find the difference between my previous M101 image when I used a non-modified cam and now with a modded cam and with field flattener/focal reducer. I took 18 frames of 3 minutes each exposures for this. I think it still need some more exposures to lessen the noise and smoothen out the details.

Scorpious Rising / Rho Opiuchi Region

I have been waiting for Scorpious to rise in the pre-dawn sky last Sunday. I went to Buso together with a small group of avid amateur astronomers hoping for a clear sky. We were treated to a rather cloudy sky as the night fell but slowly clearing up as night progressed. Too late for the Seagull Nebula which I desired to shoot that night, as I watched the eastern side of Orion being eaten by thick clouds and as it slowly descended to the clutches of western skyglow. I looked up and Leo was the only part of the sky that was a clear. So as I wait for my primary target to rise, I used the intervening time to shoot some galaxies there. But I was not satisfied. My goal was to capture that colorful region of the sky called the Rho Opiuchi Nebula. And as I glimpsed the rising Scorpious, my eyes were transfixed at the supergiant Antares, hoping my gaze will somehow clear the haze and clouds. My gears were all set-I mounted the camera lens which I would like to test and oriented the mount towards that star. Then, by stroke of luck, the region cleared up. I promptly shot some frames until dawn. I was able to get 35 subs of 3 minutes each.

Leo Triplet from Tagaytay

We went to Tagaytay to check out my colleague's farm for any astro potential. Together with Irving, I set-up my gears as night fell. Well, I realized instantly that there's no way I can use the polar scope so I practiced drift alignment. Haze ruled the night as clouds threatened my desire to do imaging. Anyway, I shot some frames of he Leo Triplet between the clouds. I was able to get a total of 50-minute exposure before the DSLR battery went dead. Somehow, the thought of acquiring a long focal length RC scope for small objects entered my mind when I saw how small these galaxies were.

Rosette Nebula for Valentine's Day

I'm not sure if I will be able to add color to my Rosette. I previously imaged this flower in H-alpha and been wanting to blend it with RGB data. But since it already middle of February, Monoceros is already transiting the meridian which means my camera might hit the tripod legs. So, when the group arrived in Buso last Saturday, my yearning to image it was overpowering in spite of the erratic weather. Here I made 21 frames of 3 minutes each and combine it with previous H-alpha image.

Markarian's Chain of Galaxies

I was thinking of a good target when we went to Buso-boso last Saturday night. It is supposed to be a season for galaxy hunting but my gears are not appropriate for capturing small objects. The field of view of my scope is around two and a half degrees which is relatively large so a galaxy will appear puny if I shoot it. But I really wanted to capture galaxies so I chose to shoot a few of them in just one field. This a 22 - frame shot of 180 seconds each duration.

Cone Nebula - Widefield

Somehow, I feel I'm running out of targets for my H-alpha filter. The galaxy season is starting and a clear and moonless sky is what I need for these small and faint objects. At 8pm, Monoceros is almost overhead and I guess its not yet too late for the Cone nebula. Last Friday, I set up my gears at home and started targeting the Cone area. It took me almost an hour to find the cluster area by comparing the eyepiece view with the The Sky planetarium display. I made series of focusing shots then finally at around 8:30 pm I was ready to shoot. I made 30 frames of 4 minutes each until my scope was about to hit the tripod legs. I sleepily dismantled my gears and hurriedly went to sleep. It was not until Sunday afternoon that I started processing the images. I was happy and disappointed at same time. Happy in a way that I captured the Hubble's Variable Nebula in the same field but disappointed that the stars are irregularly shaped. Hmm, need some time for troubleshooting.

California Nebula

I have always wanted to image the California Nebula but was not able to do so mainly due to weather conditions and partly due to my equipment. Just by looking at its stats, I know that it is huge - more than 120'. Definitely not going to fit in the FOV of my scope. So, when my most awaited focal reducer came together with the H-alpha filter, its the first object that entered into my priority list to image. However, when we went out last night, doubts were in my mind if it was not yet too late to image it. The waxing quarter moon was also in close proximity. Another test of the H-alpha filter, I said to myself. It took more than a couple of tries to frame it. In this resulting image, I made 25 frames of 4 minutes each.

Second Light of H-alpha filter

After arriving from a tiring trip abroad, I managed to test again the H-alpha filter on the Rosette Nebula. This time I tried to increase the exposure duration to 120 minutes, my longest so far. It's amazing how much more details can be realized by increasing total exposure time.

First Light - Astronomik Ha filter

I was able to acquire a H-alpha filter with the help of Mr. Brian Davis who hand carried it from the U.S. I was thinking that somehow I can take advantage of the few clear nights at home to do a bit of astrophotography. The sky at my place has been affected by ever increasing light pollution from nearby Pasig and Makati cities. Last night, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a break in the clouds. I hurriedly finished my dinner and began setting up my gears. I inserted my new Televue field flattener and pop in the H-alpha filter inside the Canon 350d. What better way to test my new toys than use it on the Flame & Horsehead nebulas, I said to myself. Also, I would like to test a new guiding software, GuideMaster. And so I snapped 15 frames of 240 seconds each. However, my luck ran out when the camera battery got discharged when I was about to shoot the dark frames. Anyway, the objective of this exercise was just to test the equipment and not image processing so I stacked the 15 images and here's what I got. Hmm. .. makes me want to set-up again. . .

New Year's Day Lunar Eclipse

After fighting drowsiness, I managed to shoot some images of the partial Lunar eclipse from our home in Taguig City. I started the first shot at 2:53 a.m. and every 10 minutes hence until around 4 am. I stacked the seven images in sequence to show the outline of the Earth's shadow on the lunar disk.