Curtain of Fire

First off, for those that don't know, I'll give a brief explanation of what the aurora borealis is in layman's terms. The sun will occasionally discharge large clouds of plasma in the form of a solar flare. Occasionally, the Earth intersects the path of these flares and collides. When this occurs, the plasma is swept up by our planet's magnetosphere. The charged particles of plasma get directed to the north and south poles. When they collide with the atmosphere, they glow and can be seen as aurora. Intensity of auroras can vary on many factors, but the main contributor is the size of the flare that hits us.

On September 10, 2014, the sun unleashed an X1.6 solar flare in our direction. The chance of a massive geomagnetic storm got aurora watchers in a frenzy. It was all over the news, and the event got very high coverage. It promised to be an impressive show for millions of people in North America, even stretching down to parts of the United States where the auroras are rarely seen. Unfortunately for me, according to the maps released, I was in a "poor" zone where the aurora would be minimal. But I was still intent on seeing it and more importantly, getting my first ever images of it.

I originally grew up in a small mining town on the sub-arctic tunrda of northern Quebec. I was born there and lived there until I was in my mid teens. The aurora was a pretty regular event. On many clear nights through the year, you could look up and see at least a light display. Even in partial cloud cover, we could still see the bands of green dancing across the sky. Occasionally, there would be intense displays where we could see all forms of colour waving over the northern sky. So seeing an aurora is nothing new for me. Well, sort of...

At the time, this was normal for me. Growing up, my interest in the sky was minimal. I took the aurora for granted. I had no way of knowing that the opportunity to see such dazzling light shows was NOT the norm everywhere. It was the status quo for me, because it was all I knew. And having dark skies was also the norm. The town I lived in was quite small and isolated. Other than ambient lighting, there was very little in terms of light pollution. If only I could have regular access to skies like that now!

In my teens, my family moved to a small country town in eastern Quebec where light pollution was also very minimal. Being much farther south, the aurora was far less frequent. This is where I came to the realization that regular auroral shows were not the norm everywhere. I was still under dark skies all the time though. But wasn't into astronomy or photography at the time, so didn't appreciate the "gift" I had.

Fast forward 30 years and I now live in a medium size city in eastern Ontario. I have to contend with light pollution. Although I'm luckier than most urban amateur astronomers. Our light pollution here isn't terrible compared to most cities. I also live in a suburb on the northern perimeter, so I only have bad sky glow due south. And I have a couple of spots just out of the city that I can quickly get to within a 10 minute drive that will give me reasonable darkness. But if I want a truly dark sky, I need to drive about 45 minutes north to the Lennox & Addington Dark Sky Viewing Area.

And this is where I was on Friday, Sept 12, waiting for the aurora and my first chance to capture images of it. Usually, this site is quiet. I've been there several times over the course of the summer. At most, I think I've see perhaps a dozen people there at one time, and maybe 30-ish people would show up and leave over the course of the evening. My rough estimate for Friday was well over 100 people showed up, with my rough head count estimate of perhaps 40 people there at any given time.

Many people came from the Toronto area (a 2+ hour drive) to see the aurora. Some people came from as far as Hamilton (a 3 hour drive). However, most left disappointed. Turns out the Toronto-area news told everyone the aurora would be visible between midnight and 3 AM. So many people showed up between 11 and midnight. Unfortunately for the them, the aurora made its appearance at about 9 PM and was visible for all of 10 minutes or so. And clouds rolled in shortly thereafter and then the moon rose. Of everyone that showed up, I think only 2 people managed to get any images of it at all. And I was one of those! I knew better, so I was there before sunset. I had my camera set up on a tripod and had my scope set up hoping to do some deep sky imaging if the aurora didn't make a show. I was prepared.

When the aurora finally did show, most of the people there didn't even realize it. It started as a green glow on the northern horizon. I pointed it out to people, and heard some saying that it wasn't the aurora, but light pollution. Being mostly city dwellers, they didn't realize that the northern horizon at this site is pristine dark sky. North of this site is nothing but wilderness and a few scattered small towns for hundreds of kilometers. This was most definitely the aurora. It's only when hints of purple and blue started showing up higher above the horizon that people really clued in and realized what they were seeing. It's too bad that it only lasted 10 minutes, because it really was a beautiful show, even though it wasn't very intense. I was grateful to finally see an aurora after so many years of not seeing one.

The evening was not without its problems though. I missed the peak of the display due to camera focusing issues. I had the camera trained on Arcturus trying to get my focus, and for some reason, I couldn't. I had clicked the lens to manual mode before attaching it to my camera, but it appears that when I put it on, I hit the switch knocking it back to auto mode. So I was fighting the auto focus without realizing it. While I was doing this, the aurora was at its peak. When I finally realized what happened, fixed, got trained on the aurora and started shooting, it was already receeding. I managed to get 5 pictures before it faded away completely. Of those 5, only 1 had decent detail. And I share that image with you now.

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/15234648331/in/photostream/

Once the aurora display died down, I tried to get some deep sky imaging. I wanted to get a good shot of the Ring Nebula with my now working 8" SCT instead of the 120mm refractor I've been using all summer. I wanted to finally put my little light bucket to work. After finding my target and taking some time to frame it properly with test shots, the clouds decided to make an appearance, and I wasn't able to take any images at all. However, I did manage to take 1 nice test shot of my subject. I'm quite pleased with the results considering it's a single 30 second sub without any calibration frames. It just goes to show how good imaging can be from a dark site!

M57 - The Ring Nebula. Single 30 second exposure, no calibration frames.

So with too many clouds and a bright moon in the sky, I decided that I would try something I hadn't attempted before - time lapse photography. I had a bit of an idea how it worked, but had never attempted it. So I figured it would be fun to try out. I popped on my 35mm f/1.8 prime lens and targeted the moon. I figured it would be a nice backdrop for time lapse. While testing out settings, I snapped this pic I entitled "Daylight at Midnight". It was shot as 12:03, but with my aperture fully open, the resulting image was so bright it looked like it could have been taken mid-day instead! It even came complete with a lens flare. It wasn't my intention, but I thought the image looked rather cool nonetheless, so I kept it.


Daylight at Midnight: https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/15040298640/in/photostream/

So after finding some good settings, I set the intervalometer and let the camera do its thing over the next couple of hours and pointing at different areas. The resulting time lapse isn't fantastic by any means, but considering this was my first attempt, I'm pretty pleased with the result. It was fun to try out, and I'll definitely be trying this more in the future. The video can be seen here on YouTube.

So until next time, clear skies to all.

The Report Card

When I started this blog last year, it was intended to document my progress in astrophotography from starting out as a total newbie with no clue about anything. I've only been doing astrophotography for a little over year now, and when I started, I knew nothing about photography or Photoshop. I learned everything I know on the subject today through watching video tutorials (YouTube is an amazing resource), trial and error, and comments and advice given by others. It's been quite an amazing journey of learning, and I doubt it will end any time soon.

 

So far, my blog entries have been about anecdotal chronicle of some of my photo sessions mixed with random informative posts and reviews. My progress as an astrophotographer can be seen though the work I've posted here since I started this blog, but by no means is it really the main focus of the blog as a whole. Today I change that with this post. It was time to analyze my skills and gauge my progress over the past year. But before I get to that, an explanation of how it happened is required.

This past weekend, I spent a lot of time on watching a bunch of processing tutorials learning new tools and techniques to add the the basic set I already had been using. I applied them to some ongoing projects I had (M31 and M51), and my results seemed to be a drastic improvement over previous attempts at this difficult data, as well as my previous images of those same objects. While processing these images, I developed a new workflow using these new tools and techniques I'd learned, documented the process (finally - I can't stress enough how this part was helpful), and followed this guide to the letter. And the end result was very impressive. 





https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14914674560/in/photostream/


https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/15078823916/

Given that, I thought I would go back and revisit some old data to see what I could do with it. To date, my favourite image has been my pic of the Orion and Running Man nebulae I shot last November. So I figured I'd go dig up that data set to see what I could do with it now that I had a better understanding of Photoshop and had new skills under by belt. 

This is the result of processing my old data with my new and improved workflow. I was able to have a much nicer, neutral brackground vs the pitch black (although it could be a touch darker), and was able to pull much better detail and contrast out of the nebulae. I'm sure I could have even have pulled out more faint detail, but decided I was happy with what I had for the time being. I'll likely be adding more data to this one M42 is visible in the coming months anyway, so I'll hold off till then. But for the time being, I'm very pleased with what I've accomplished with this new image. 

Click to see full size version

That said, I see some processing errors that need to be corrected in the next version. I'm still learning to use some of the new tools I've added to my skillset. I've just started using manual noise reduction (using Noise Ninja) and using sharpening (never used it before). It's going to take some practice to be able to come to grips with those processes as well as others I've added.In the coming days, I intend to revisit some data I took of M31 last year using only my camera (as with this last image) to see what I can do with this old data and how I can improve it with my new workflow. It should be interesting to see what I can do with it.

So overall, I think it's fair to say that I've made great strides in the last year. And I honestly have to thank my friends over at the Amateur Astrophotography Magazine, Astronomy for Fun, and Astrophotography/ Amateur Astronomy Enthusiasts Facebook groups (all linked below). These groups are full of really informative people. I've learned a lot from people there directly and indirectly through their informative posts, one on one help, or just seeing other peoples' work to give me a goal to aspire to. If you're not a member, you should check them out. 

• Amateur Astrophotography Magazine - https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmateurAstrophotography/
• Astronomy for Fun - https://www.facebook.com/groups/astroforfun/
• Amateur Astronomy Enthusiasts Facebook groups - https://www.facebook.com/groups/astrophotographers/

And of course, the various YouTube videos, blogs and other posts I've read and watched have been invaluable to get me where I am. It's just mind blowing how much good information there is out there for those willing to seek them it out. 

In the next while, I'll try to make another blog post including links to some of the blogs, sites and videos that I found useful, as well as some of the tools I've been using.

 

So until next time, friends, clear skies.

(Lack of) Quality, Meade to Order

This is the tale of my wonderful paperweight 8" Meade LX90 ACF. It isn't my usual astrophotography-related blog, but I think that it's really something that should be put out there nonetheless as it applies to equipment that some reader may consider purchasing in the future. But keep in mind, this is merely MY personal experience. Yours may vary. But quick Google searches on this issue will return a myriad of similar experiences people have had with Meade Instruments over the years.

It all started about 3 years ago. I decided I wanted a nice 8" go-to scope, as my 6" reflector and rickety EQ mount just weren't cutting it. I had decided on an Schmidt-Cassegraine of some flavour. So after a lot of looking around, I settled on the LX90 ACF that was in my price range. It seemed like the optics were awesome even though reviews on the mount were mixed. People seemed to love it for visual, but hated it for photography. And it seemed some of the heavy users were encountering some problems with motors and electronics and having issues with Meade tech support and getting their mounts repaired. I spoke to a few people and they recommended going Celestron instead, but for a comparable Celestron at the time, I was looking at several hundred dollars more than I was willing to spend. I figured I was going to use this for visual observing only (hadn't gotten into photography yet), and figured I'd get a wedge if I ever wanted to take pics. So I placed my order.

In the first 2 years I owned it, life happened. I didn't manage to get out with it more than a dozen times or so at most. And for what I did, it seemed great. I was having occasional tracking problems on the azimuth axis, but it was minor and not really much of an issue for visual observation. It wasn't until last summer that I started encountering more serious problems. Note that despite being over 2 years old, it had seen little use and great care, had always been stored in its shipping box, etc. So for all intents and purposes, this was mint condition scope with hardly any use, despite being out of warranty.

Last summer, I started with photography. For the most part, the scope worked fine. I was taking short, 30 second exposures only, so field rotation wasn't an issue. Most of the time, it tracked perfectly, but occasionally it would drift on the azimuth axis. But minor issues overall. Then it got worse. Occasionally, the azimuth motor would stop altogether. It would be in mid-slew, and just stop. The altitude axis always worked fine, but azimuth would die. I would have to kill the power, re-align, and it would be good for a while. I called Meade about this, and they had no answers for me, claiming they'd never seen this problem before. They suggested I send it to them to look at it, but since the scope was out of warranty, I was looking at a hefty bill just to get it looked at, not to mention shipping costs.

Then it happened... One day, I powered it up, and got a "Motor Fault" error. I called Meade. Again, since it was out of warranty, they seemed very disinterested in helping me over the phone. The best they could do was tell me to ship it to them. I found that switching it on and off a few times would eventually correct the error and it would continue working "normally" (I use that term loosely) for a while before the motor would give out again.

In June of this year, I once again got the "Motor Fault" error, and it was permanent this time. Over several days, I messed with it, tried different power supplies, batteries, etc, but to no avail. The motor wasn't working any more. So I called Meade again, knowing I'd have to bite the bullet and send it in. After a brief conversation with a disinterested employee who barely spoke English, he told me I would be charged $300 + shipping costs both ways for repair. Left without any options, I sent it off to them.

That's when the fun started. The shipping cost was $140 to get it to them. About a week later, I received a call from Purolator. US Customs tacked on a $220 customs fee on the scope, despite it being declared as a warranty return and having an RMA number from Meade listed on the box. Of course, Meade wouldn't accept deliver of the scope with customs owed. Purolator informed me of my options; I had to either pay the customs fees, pay return shipping (plus customs for re-entry into Canada) or forfeit the package. So naturally, I had to pay it.

About two weeks ago, I was thrilled to come home from work to find a UPS slip in my mail box. Not so thrilled to see $120 customs fees owing on it, but happy to have my "working" scope back. Unpacking it, I saw that they charged my credit card $375 for repair and return shipping. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and rainy for a week straight after, so I couldn't actually test it. But finally the following weekend, I had a nice clear night!

I got all set up in my yard. I powered up the scope, and "Motor Fault". You gotta be kidding me! After turning it on and off a few times, finally it kicked in. But the GPS receiver was no longer working. I went into the menu to enable it, but it was already turned on. So basically, they broke my GPS while "fixing" the scope. It would hang while attempting to access the GPS. I did have my local coordinates saved previously, so I was able to call that up and get the alignment done. I was able to start using it. I slewed to a few objects. Tracking seemed as hit or miss as before. But it was working more or less.

Then in mid-slew, the azimuth motor stopped working. I had to reset it again several times to get it working due to the motor fault error. Finally, I gave up, determined to call Meade again the next day. Needless to say, I was furious. I'd just paid well over $700 to get the scope fixed, and it still didn't work. I could have just gotten a new 8" LX80 ACF tube on a dovetail (same OTA as the LX90) to mount on my EQ mount for the price I had paid to fix this thing, and it was actually in worse condition now than when I'd sent it to them.

Over the next few days, I called Meade twice. Each time, a guy took my info and told me a tech would call me right back. No one called me back. When I called the second time, I made it quite clear to the guy on the phone I was furious at the amount of money I had paid only to have the scope shipped back in worse condition than I sent it. His best advice was to ship it back to them (again at my own expense) so they could look at it again, and that someone would call me back shortly. I waited another 2 days, and got no call. So I proceeded to go to the Meade Facebook page and made an angry post detailing my experience.

Finally I got their attention! The following day, I got a call from the head of Meade's customer service department about the Facebook post. He was very apologetic and told me they'd immediately be crediting the repair costs back to my credit card, but I was out of luck when it came to shipping and customs expenses (which were double the repair bill). He offered to take the scope back completely at Meade's expense, this time - including shipping and customs expenses - and look at it again. He wanted to "make it right". He even offered to take the scope home and personally test it outdoors in actual practical use instead of on the bench in the shop to try to get to the root of the problem

As much as he wanted to "make it right", at this point, nothing short of refunding me in full for the scope is going to make this anywhere near right. The frustration, headaches, and incredible expense required to get what's supposed to be a "premium quality" instrument to function had taken its toll on me. Even if they had offered a full refund, I'd still be out a lot of money from the shipping and customs fees. And at this point, I had made a decision. I had already removed the OTA from the fork mount and ordered some tube rings and a dovetail to mount it on my Celestron Advanced VX EQ mount so I could actually use my OTA problem-free. I can vouch for top quality optics in that scope and I love it, but I have zero confidence in the quality of the mount or the service and support from Meade.

It's unfortunate it took me publicly posting a scathing review of what went down on Facebook before they'd get back to me. Had they gotten back to me before that, I may have been inclined to accept their offer to take it back at their expense. To me, charging me a bunch of money and not having repaired it in the first place and their subsequent inaction in calling me back showed disrespect for me as a customer. And if I'm dropping thousands of dollars for a premium instrument, I expect it to work right and to actually be treated like a valued customer, not just another source of cash flow.

So I can officially say that I'm done with Meade. I'll continue enjoying my OTA on my Celestron mount. But as far as I'm concerned, the LX90 mount itself is rubbish and has been demoted to paper weight status. The next time I have a few thousand dollars to spend on a scope, I most certainly will NOT be looking in Meade's direction.

I should be receiving my rings and dovetail plate in the next week or so, and I'll post a followup (and hopefully some images) once I can get out to test the new setup.

Until then, clear skies!

The Super Moon Explained

Ok, it's over. The super moon everyone's been talking about for the last month has come and gone. However, I still hear questions about what exactly made this super moon special.  So I figured it would be a good idea to write this blog entry explaining it.  This will be old news to those in the know, but I'll start with a very simple explanation of the celestial mechanics at work here for those that don't understand.

The moon revolves around the Earth once every 27.3 days.  But it's orbit isn't perfectly circular. Because of the gravitational tug of the sun, it travels in a slightly elliptical orbit at an average distance of approximately 381 000 km. At its closest point (perigee), that distance is reduced to a 'mere' 357 000 km. At its farthest point (apogee), the moon is at 406 000 km. At it's closest point, it's about 50 000 km closer to the Earth than at apogee. So technically, there's a "super moon" every month when the moon is at perigee, but it's only considered to be a true super moon when perigee coincides with the full moon, resulting in a larger apparent size and significant increase in brightness. And that's what just happened this month.

Most people I've spoken to about this didn't really notice a difference in size. To someone who doesn't look at the moon a whole lot, this is quite understandable. The angular size of the moon only appeared 14% larger than normal, which isn't really a noticeable difference. However, there was a 30% increase in brightness, and I think most people could easily notice that. I know I certainly did! I was out with my scope on the night before the full moon (97% full) and sky was very bright. And the shadows cast by the moon were far more pronounced than usual. There was no mistaking the added brightness!

In the days leading up to the full moon, I was out a few times taking some images. The full moon is the worst time of month to take images of the moon. The lack of any shadows makes the surface look very bland and 2 dimensional, not to mention the high brightness wreaks havoc on cameras CCDs. But nonetheless, I was determined to get some images.

The first project I attempted was a mosaic of the moon on August 7. The moon was at 90% full and quite close to perigee. Using my Skywatcher 120ED refractor and my Celestron NexImage 5, I started systematically taking shots of the entire surface. 16 frames later, I had the entire surface covered. I later processed the images and stitched them together using Auto Pano Giga to produce this full mosaic of our celestial neighbor. For a full resolution view, I would strongly advise checking the link below the image so you can see the full size image on my Flickr page.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14862673035/in/set-72157637130862065



 

And of course, I couldn't let the supermoon get by without getting a single, full frame shot as well on the day of the full moon. This one was done using my Skywatcher 120ED and my Nikon D7000 DSLR. It's not a big image since my little f/5 refractor is really intended for wide angle photography, but the results were still quite pleasing overall.




https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14869662316/

So now that the pesky moon is starting to leave our evening sky once again, I'll be following up with some more deep sky imaging in the coming weeks. My 8" Meade LX90 has been out for repair all summer due to a motor failure. It's been shipped back to me and I should be receiving it in the next couple of days. Happy times will be here again!

Until next time, clear skies.

Stars of the Show Deserve a Cigar

Friday, the night was humid and hazy and the seeing was terrible. But with beers in hand, Kevin braved the mosquitoes and set up our scopes in his back yard to make an evening of astrophotography. Thin clouds were blowing through and the atmosphere was very turbulent. I didn't really expect a great result, but Kevin wanted to test his new scope and I was determined to get some pics after failing to get anything useful our previous time out.

Everywhere I look, I see stunning photos of galaxies, clusters, and nebulae. Occasionally, you get a constellation image and stunning widefield images of the Milky Way. Most of the time, it's pictures of the ethereal beauty of deep space objects. Honestly, I can see the appeal. I mean, what photographer wouldn't want to capture such exquisite beauty, right? And I'm as guilty as the next person for doing so.

This time, I thought I would do something a bit different and try photographing a star instead. Under the sky conditions at the time, it seemed like it would be the only thing I could get a decent image of anyway. And when you can photograph 1, why not get 2 in the form of a double star? So I chose the Mizar / Alcor pair, since it's just too obvious and a usually overlooked target.

According to the Wikipedia article: "Mizar (Zeta Ursae Majoris, Zeta UMa, ζ Ursae Majoris, ζ UMa) in Arabic known as "سها" is a quadruple system of two binary stars in the constellation Ursa Major and is the second star from the end of the Big Dipper's handle. Its apparent magnitude is 2.23 and its spectral class is A1V. Mizar's name comes from the Arabic مئزر mīzar, meaning a waistband or girdle."

This is a beautiful pair that can be seen with the naked eye by people with average eyesight. Most never notice that it's a multiple star until it's pointed out to them, but once they know, they can easily see it. Through binoculars or a telescope, the separation of the 2 is very apparent. And it's a nice sight to see.
 

Mizar and Alcor - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14505980869/in/photostream/

 

And suddenly, the sky cleared up of clouds. It was still terribly humid and the seeing was poor, but I figured I'd try a shot at some deep space goodness. Since I was into shooting doubles, I thought I would swing the scope southeast 20º or so and try to catch the deep space pair of Bode's Galaxy (M81) and the Cigar Galaxy (M82). In an 8" SCT, I can only get a single of the objects in frame, but with my trusty 120mm Skywatcher wide angle refractor, I was able to frame them both very nicely with my Nikon D7000 attached.

 

M81 and M82 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14695785512/in/photostream/

 

I honestly didn't expect much with deep sky shots. But I still managed to get a great shot of this pair. Deep sky imaging from city suburbs is an iffy practice at best. Luckily, I like right at the northern edge of the city, so light pollution in the northern sky isn't quite as bad as when I aim south. So I'm hoping to get more of these under better conditions. This will be top of my list next time I go out to the Dark Sky Viewing Area.

 

Till next time, clear skies to all.



Where Eagles Dare

'Tis a both joyous and woeful time. I now have access to a beautiful dark sky site - the Dark Sky Viewing Area located just north of Tamworth, Ontario. It's a purpose-built astronomical observing area and the southern most site in Ontario devoid of light pollution. Or nearly. Long exposure photography of the southern horizon will show some glow from cities, but in all other directions, the sky is as pristine as can be. Other than the infestation of mosquitoes, this is about as ideal a location as anyone could expect to view or image the night sky.

For anyone in Eastern Ontario interested in checking out this site, you can view their web site here: http://www.lennox-addington.on.ca/must-see/dark-sky-viewing-area.html or check out their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DarkSkyViewing. Trust me, if you're serious about observing or imaging and live within a couple of hours drive from here, it's totally worth it. Weather permitting, you won't be disappointed. Just bring the strongest mosquito repellent you can find if coming in the summer months!

The woeful part is that the azimuth motor on my 8" Meade LX90 died and the scope is off for repair. So that means I'm left with only a short tube, 120mm refractor for imaging for the next couple of months. Definitely not ideal for deep sky imaging. But I'm not deterred! I'll use it till I get my main scope back! It's the equivalent of a 510mm f/5 lens, so it provides me with pretty decent magnification. Other for some chromatic abberation on bright stars (particularly blue stars), images are pretty sharp with decent resolution. 

On Sat, June 28, I headed out with my friend Kevin - my regular partner in crime when it comes to astronomy - to see what we could image. As Kevin didn't have a good scope, we'd normally just work together. He seems to have a better hand and eye when it comes to focusing shots than I do, so I generally line up and find the object, he does the focusing, then I get my intervalometer and we stand around chatting while the camera does its work. 

This time around, we decided to coordinate our efforts on different objects to maximize our time out there. With the scope, I focused on deep sky objects (DSO), and he focused on shots of the Milky Way using his Nikon D60 with both his 50mm and my 35mm prime lens mounted on my iOptron SkyTracker. We came up with a plan to create a mosaic of the Milky Way while I started searching (visually) for some DSOs to shoot.

The first object that I locked onto was M13 - The Hercules Cluster. I had seen this object a couple of times in the past. I had even tried to image it once last fall as it was setting. I managed to get 1 poorly focused 30 second exposure of it before it set behind some trees. So it was high time to try to get some good shots of it. So I locked on, got focus, and snapped off a series of 3 minute exposures at ISO 1000. The results were truly astounding. The number of stars visible, even in my small refractor, were astounding. The final image looks a bit flat compared to the resolution I get from my LX90, but I'm still quite pleased with the result.

Note the images in this blog have been shrunk down significantly to fit in this limited space. I would strongly recommend you click on the links below the images to see the full-sized version on my Flickr page.

M13 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14556088593/in/set-72157637130862065/

The second target I locked onto was M16 - The Eagle Nebula. I'd tried to see this object before, but had limited success. I had tried years back using my 6" reflector from my back yard. Finding it manually was quite a challenge, but the view from a light-polluted suburb was disappointing. It was just barely visible due to light pollution. When I finally got my 8" LX90, I found it easily, but it was still barely visible. The visual appearance through my 120mm refractor was faint, but pleasing compared to past experiences. But imagine it brought out a lot of detail I hadn't seen before. Even with fairly short amount of time spent on it (21 mins of exposures in the final image), the details that came out was beautiful, not to mention the rich star field that it sits in. This is a target I'll most definitely be focusing on again in the future to add data to this image!

M16 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14536109244/in/set-72157637130862065/

The final deep sky target of the evening was one of my favourites - M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. I had some mixed results with it through last summer. I finally managed to get 1 really good shot of it with just my camera, 300mm lens and SkyTracker. This time around, I managed to get some good data, although limited in time. As it turns out, I have just the right magnification with my refractor and camera to get M31 perfectly in frame! It was still fairly low on the horizon, so many of the shots I took were blurred by the atmosphere, but out of the 1+ hour of data I collected, 39 minutes of it were usable to produce this final image. It still lacks some colour and detail compared to what I COULD get, but overall, I'm very pleased with how this image turned out. 

M31 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14535700005/in/set-72157637130862065/

And last, but not least, we have to get to some of Kevin's images of the Milky Way. First, we have this 3 frame panorama of the the core of the Milky Way. This provided a rich view of the core.

Milky Way Core - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14515696226/in/set-72157637130862065/

Next is this behemoth of an image. This is a 13 frame mosaic of the full band of the Milky Way stitched together with Autopano Giga and some post processing in Photoshop for histogram stretching and colour correction. It's a huge image. I would strongly recommend that people view the original on my Flickr page, download the full-size image, and zoom in on it. You won't be disappointed! The original was over 150MB in side and 17k pixels wide. I've reduced it to 40% of its original size to make it more manageable.

Milky Way Mosaic - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14357848558/in/set-72157637130862065/

And as a side note, on Sunday, Kevin finally bought himself a good telescope. He's now the proud owner of a previously enjoyed 8" Celestron NexStar SE complete with an equatorial wedge. So we're now going to be able to image DSOs once again while I wait for my scope to come back from service. Congratulations on your new window to the universe, Kevin. I was glad to be of assistance to you in getting this fine instrument. 

Until next time, clear skies to all.

Milking It For All It's Worth

It's been almost 6 months since my last post here. I realize it's a long time, but we've had a long, extremely cold winter that started off with a nasty ice storm just before Christmas, and another just after the new year, leaving a thick coat of slippery ice on everything much of the winter. As much as I love getting out to shoot the sky, I'm still recovering from a broken foot and ankle from last summer and wasn't steady enough to venture out onto the ice. The few times I did get my gear out, it frosted over on me before I managed to actually get anything worthwhile. So there's really been nothing worthwhile posting.

This spring, I started seriously looking at some wonderful images of rich star fields in the Milky Way. Some are so breathtaking with the sheer number of stars visible. I wanted to attempt taking such photos. Living in the city (albeit a small one), we never see the Milky Way without leaving the urban environment. 

Over the winter, I discovered we have the Lennox and Addington Dark Sky Viewing Area roughly 60 km away from my place. It's said to be the most southern point in Ontario that's free of light pollution. So this past weekend, I packed up my gear, grabbed a couple of friends, and headed out to try to get some good shots.

Most of the evening, the moon was out. We took a few shots of it, but mostly we were doing visual observing until the moon set. We got some good visuals on different deep sky objects like the Whirlpool Galaxy, various nebulae (the Ring Nebula was awesome. It was my first time seeing it), and a bunch of different clusters. It was quite a treat to finally get to use my 8" LX90 under a pristine sky and excellent seeing conditions. 

As the moon was setting, I tried my newest scope - an modestly priced Skywatcher 120mm f/5 refractor on a Celestron Advanced VX mount - to take some shots of the Whirlpool Galaxy. I attached my Nikon D7000 and went to work. I wasn't expecting much from a non-apochomatic refractor of this size, but still managed to get some pleasing images of M51. I took a a total of 20 90-second light frames along with some dark and bias frames. I didn't expect much, but the result turned out better than I expected. I'm really looking forward to imaging it with my LX90 on a future visit to the site on a moonless night.

M51 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14376910392/

Once the sun had set, it was time to have some fun with the camera and my friend's nice 50mm f/1.8 lens. We mounted it on my D7000 and put it on my iOptron SkyTracker. I found a nice random spot in the Milky way, and fired off a some test shots. Once I had settings that I was happy with, I tried a 15 second test exposure. The result was pretty pretty much perfect. I had found the sweet spot. It's only later when I was processing the image that I discovered that a meteor had streaked across the sky as I was taking the shot. And it was perfectly centered in my field of view, as can be seen in the photo below. There was no cropping here. This is as it came out of the camera, with only some stretching of the histogram, some star diffraction and framing applied. This was nothing but sheer luck, but it was absolutely perfect.

Meteor streaking across the Milky Way - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14376780582/in/photostream/

It was getting rather late at that point, but wanted to get a really rich image of the milky way. So I randomly chose a new spot that looked good, set my timer and grabbed 9 30-second exposures, 5 dark frames, and some bias frames for stacking. The light frames looked good, but it's not until I stacked and processed the image the next day that I truly saw how awesome the shot came out.The number of stars visible in this image is really quite mind-blowing, particularly when considering this is just a small patch of the sky.

The Milky Way - https://www.flickr.com/photos/crunchmeister/14191586308/in/photostream/

So all in all, it was a great test run at a new site with some new equipment. I now have a 35mm f/1.8 lens on the way and I really can't wait to take more deep sky images with it at this site. This summer is likely to be quite fruitful when it comes to imaging. And with that, I hope to be able to be able to update my blog more often with each subsequent imaging session. 

Until next time, clear skies!