Another Quick Entry

Interesting past several weeks. Astronomy computer died, but was mostly backed up. All the images saved, but it's been a real pain not having a dedicated astronomy computer. I bought a HP multi-core replacement, but, to my amazement, it wouldn't run the astronomy programs that ran the cameras, especially the ASI120MC planetary camera. Fortunately, I could return it, which I did. Now, the wife's older HP, which easily runs all the programs the new HP wouldn't, is doing double duty. Unfortunately, that also leaves less time, and more complications, for astronomy. Oh, well. That's life.
However, I was able to get some images of Jupiter and Saturn a few nights ago. Seeing wasn't all that good, but the planets are at least recognizable.

Jupiter, with 2 moons and moon shadow on surface.

Saturn, of course.

Quick Entry

It took a couple of days to process and stitch the image together, but I found a series of images taken along the terminator of the moon back in January. I guess you might say I'm a little late working on it. (Duh) Better late than never, hopefully. Hope you enjoy.

A Few More Entries Through Cloudy Skies

Clouds, rain, and summer haziness have all been factors in my ability to image this summer. They have left few opportunities. But, I have had some success. Since the last entry to this blog in which I presented current images, I've imaged about 45 Herschel targets, the moon, the sun, and Jupiter. I'll present examples of each this entry.

Clavius with craterlets "D" and "C" inside

Above is the crater Clavius with the smaller craterlets Clavius D to the left and C to the right situated in the middle of the main Clavius crater. To me, the craterlets D and C look somewhat like a pair of glasses, perhaps a pair of pince nez. Clavius is located near the southern pole of the moon and is about 136 miles in diameter. “D” is about 16 miles in diameter, while “C” is about 12 miles in diameter. The interesting point here is how well the craterlets are lit. Although the sun angle is very low, the tops of the craterlets appear to be as high as the rim on Clavius itself, or close to it. The low sun angle gives the image a somewhat 3D effect to me, which is one reason I like trying to image interesting things in this manner.

The sun, but I bet you already knew that.

This image of the sun was taken on June 29, 2019 and is a composite of two images. The first image is a much overexposed image to get the faint prominence seen on the left limb on the sun. The second is a much “better” exposed image that shows the sunspot (which I think is a left over sunspot from the just past solar cycle #24... I'm not 100% sure of that.). The color difference between the “rims” is because of my haste is trying to align a circular mask on the prominence image that I could use to allow the surface to show through. I didn't get the mask exactly aligned. I've used this technique before, but was having trouble seeing exactly where the circle of the mask was to get things aligned. At any rate, at least I am able to show generally that both the sunspot and prominence were both on the sun and in what relationship. This is a false colored H-alpha image.

Jupiter and moons (circled)

Next up is Jupiter plus 3 moons, which I have conveniently circled so you can find them. If you were actually looking through an eyepiece at this, the moons would be quite obvious. However, when imaging and trying to not overexpose Jupiter, the moons are much dimmer. Jupiter is low on the horizon (and will be this season), so imaging will be extremely difficult. Maybe that should be GOOD imaging will be extremely difficult. This image isn't great, but is certainly one of the better ones so far. The moons are, by the way, Ganymede “over” Io, with Europa to the far right.

NGC 4527, 4536, and just barely visible, NGC 4533.

Last is an image taken back on June 1, 2019 that shows the targets of NGC 4527 (galaxy near the bottom edge of image) and NGC 4536 (near the top edge of the image). Sharp eyed readers will notice a smudge just above the 2 stars in the middle of the image that's and extra; it's NGC 4533. At least one source on the internet says NGC 4533 is about 103 million light years distant; NGC 4527 about 46 million light years away, and NGC 4536 about 50 million light years from us.

For our LD friends

Here is a single image of the constellations of Orion and Canis Major, referenced in a reply on the LD forum. This is one of the many in the video below. However, I have found that the compression needed to get the video into the blog has darkened it enough for make it essentially un-viewable. I'll leave it up for now, but it may not stay.

Orion and Canis Major

Smoky Skies

On the evening of June 2, 2019 I imaged another 12 objects; galaxies actually. There was a complicating factor in this observing run; smoke. According to the local weather caster, this is smoke carried by the jet stream from Canada to Georgia. This references the fire . Haze, smoke, water vapor, and high cloudiness all contribute to making observing of fuzzy objects … well, challenging to say the least. You loose contrast, which means it is more difficult than it would normally be to separate the faint, cloud-like objects from the cloud-like atmosphere. I decided to let the images I took “count” as part of my images in the Herschel 400 list (which, as of last night, is at 325) for several reasons: 1) sometimes you just have to play the card you are dealt; you can't change the weather. 2) with my eyes, what I imaged is FAR better than anything I could have seen. 3) with the past year health wise, I may not be around or have the ability to image for much longer and I have to image this part of the sky when I it's available.

Many of the galaxies on the list are just so so; they look a lot like a fuzzy star that's elongated. Others show more structure; knots of stars, the arms of the galaxy, etc. Thus they are more interesting, visually. The first image I took last night was that kind. The image contains lots of galaxies, behind the smoke. But, two are visible; NGC4526 (towards the top) and NGC4535. This is a pair I would like to come back to and image in color, minus the smoke.

NGC4526 and NGC4535

This May Be a Record

As I know, I've been working on imaging the Herschel 400 list. I'm now up to 313 of the 400. On the night of May 28,2019, I imaged three galaxies, all on the list, in one image. Cheating, maybe, but they all fit, so there you have it.

The primary target was NGC 4261, but 4273 and 4281 came along for the ride. After processing the image, I counted 15 galaxies in this one image. That is what may be the record. Especially considering that the skies have been, and still are, quite hazy.

NGC 4261, et. al. Posted original size so you can try to find all 15. Vertical line on left is a satellite.

M33 Redo

It would appear that image processing is pretty much everything, second only to everything else. In other words, the data (original image) has to be good to start with, especially in terms of focus, tracking, etc.

As an experiment, or just to try something else to see if I could do better, I took the original data from 2015 on the galaxy M33 and processed using a different method.

The original method was to calibrate the image (flats, darks) for each color channel (L, R, G, B); combine the 4 channels, and then stretch the resulting LRGB image to arrive at the final image, which is shown below.

M33 Original image posted in 2015

All in all, not too bad.

However, doing some reading this weekend, I found a different method of processing the same data. This time, I basically processed only the L channel just as I would have the image above; ie, stretching it, sharpening it, etc. This new L channel was then combined with the RGB channels as before. Only a small amount of stretching and sharpening was done on this image. Indeed, I had to add a little blur to make it look a little better, ie, not so stark. Results below.

M33 Redo sharper and better color saturation, I think

Exactly the same starting images, just processed a little differently. Personally, I like the 2^nd one better.

As as aside, the "count" that blogger supplies for each entry, meaning the number of times someone has seen that page, has officially dropped to 0. Normally, it's 4 or 5. Probably bots looking around. I think I'll look at it after I post this just to get the count up to 1.