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.

So.... It's Been A While

About 3 months, more or less. Things have been busy around here. And the skies have been cloudy, mostly. However, I have managed a few nights imaging. Three, I think. But on those nights, I have managed about 25 target images, Jupiter and Saturn, the moon, and a “nightscape” sequence, which I'll put at the end. It's a movie (.avi) file, and the 1^st on of those I've tried of this type. What do you think of it?

Planets first. 

Jupiter with moons just visible, 1 on left, 2 on right.

Saturn

Unfortunately, there was enough high cloudiness that clear images just weren't going to happen, but fun to take anyway.

Next, we'll go to the moon.

Virtual Moon Atlas showing area around Tycho.

My image showing the same area

The bottom image is my image of the area around the crater Tycho. For identification purposes, I've included a screen shot of the program Virtual Moon Atlas (which I recommend; it's free and VERY good) identifying craters and features in the general area. Tycho is “naked eye” at full moon with the crater ejecta basically pointing to it.

Now to a few deep sky images. Over the course of 2 nights, I managed to image about 25 target galaxies. By that, I mean that I imaged not only the galaxy I wanted to image, but several other galaxies as well. For instance, in the image below, the “target” is identified as NGC3729. But there are 6 other galaxies in the image as well. I've included a screen shot from the program Megastar 5 that shows all the galaxies. The group around Hickson 56 is, of course, small and dim in my image, but I'm using a small telescope to get these images.

Megastar 5 screen shot of area around NGC3729.

My image of NGC3729 and 6 other galaxies.

All of the galaxy “targets” are on the Herschel 400 list and a lot of them are elliptical galaxies. These typically show up a elongated “smudges”.

NGC3610

Some of the galaxies conform to the common image of a galaxy.

NGC3938. Arrow points to another galaxy.

Lastly, I have tried taking a “movie”, actually about 200 separate images, of the motion of the night sky. In this case, we are watching the constellations of Orion and Canis Major as they are setting. I thought it turned out pretty well, all things considered.

M31 Revisited

This time, we will be revisiting one of the “old friends”, the Andromeda galaxy. This time of the year, it's almost directly overhead. But, so are a LOT of clouds. This has been a terrible year for astronomy so far :).

M31

 

This is the “original” image taken in 2015. (That appears to have been a good year; at least not as cloudy.) To get oriented, North is at the top of the picture and East on the left side. If you were looking due South at the sky, this would be the correct orientation. The big galaxy is M31. The smaller “blob” in the lower left corner is another galaxy, M32. M32 is a satellite galaxy of M31 (also implying that it is gravitationally bound to it like our moon is to earth).

M31 with globular cluster marked.

Notice this this is the same image with 10 small white circles. Those circles, as it turns out, are circling globular clusters located in M31. You will need to magnify the image to be able to see them, but they are there. It is not new knowledge that globular clusters are around other galaxies. What is new for me is that I imaged them! And didn't even know it! I would expect the Hubble telescope to be able to do this, but not me. I found an article on an astronomy web site about seeing these visually, which would take a BIG scope, but one that many amateurs might own. My eyes aren't good enough to see them even with a big scope, so I decided to check my images. And there they are. I have another image of, basically, the “top” half of M31 (assuming this is the bottom half), and I found another 15 or so in that image.

Of course, we have globular clusters around our own galaxy. Here is of the “gems”,M13, seen below. 

M13 in Hercules

 

M13 is in the constellation of Hercules and is usually a summer constellation. Why usually? It's important to realize that the constellations can be visible a fairly large portion on the year, depending how late you want to be up at night. For instance, Hercules can be seen at 6 AM late November through May. However, most people don't do their observing in the early morning, but after supper and before midnight. Therefore, it is more commonly seen around 10 PM May through November. All this assumes you have very good horizons. Another way to say all this is that Hercules is above the horizon when it is dark enough to see it during those times just mentioned (basically all year, depending on where you live).

Lunar Images

With Christmas so near, I haven't been doing much imaging. It's also been quite cloudy and rainy. Georgia , ot at least Atlanta, is on track for 2018 to be the 5^th wettest year “on record.. Getting images of the moon is actually a fairly quick thing to do.

November 16th image. Ignore "Ken's Canyon".

The first image is around the north end of the moon. The identification was put there for someone else, but it works well here. This image was taken the night of November 16^th.

December 17th image.

This is a mosaic of 7 images taken the night of December 17^th. As you can see, the terminator is in nearly the same place on the moon (as one would expect). The mosaic just allows you to see along the entire terminator, which is usually the most interesting area of the moon. This image is also interesting to me because I was able to show on the November image that the mount was tracking too fast. For the December image, I slowed the mount down 1% and got much better tracking. Unfortunately, the unsteady air more than made up for the previous poor tracking.

Since it is so close to Christmas, I want to wish any readers of this blog a very Merry Christmas.

Revisit of NGC253 Plus A Comet Plus Stars

Below is the same data for NGC253 as the previous post, but I have changes the processing. I think the colors are rendered better. At any rate, I like this one better, even if it was a little harder to do.

NGC253 Reprocessed.I like this one better.

Comet 46P is in the night sky now, and may become a naked eye comet before Christmas. Below is an image taken the night of November 28, 2018. You can see that it looks different than the nearby stars. However, it doesn't seem to have the tail most comets will have. Maybe I should say the prominent tail most comets have. It appears to have a very very faint tail going from upper left (ie, right at the comet) to lower right. I really have to squint to see it.

Comet 46P. Comet is "fuzzy star" in center of picture.

PROCESSING FUN

Below, an image of NGC613, a galaxy in the constellation of the Sculptor.

NGC613

It's an interesting looking galaxy in it's own right. However, when I process to bring out the very faint details, instead of the 2 prominent spiral arms, 3 more faint ones can be seen. I think that's pretty cool.

NGC613 cropped and brightened a LOT.

Finally, we have 2 images of NGC288, which is a globular cluster, also in Sculptor. For the 1^st image, the one below, I combined all 10 second exposures (ie, 25 lum at 10 secs, 11 red at 10 secs, 11green at 10 secs, and 11 blue at 10 secs).

NGC288 10 sec exposures.

Compare that one to the one below. The difference between the 2 is that the RGB channels of the one below are each 1 minute exposures (ie, lum the same, but red is 5 exposure at 1 min, green is 5 exposures at 1 min, and blue is 5 exposures at 1 min.). Obviously, more stars can be seen in the 1 minute exposure image (even though the lum channel is exactly the same), but the colors of the stars has shifted decidedly to the red. I wonder why that is.

NGC288 1 min is RGB(5), still 10 sec in Lum(25).

NGC 253

Well, I had a fairly clear night last night (November 10^th), so I decided to try NGC 253 again. This time, I imaged it in color (LRBG for the techies). I still think that being low on the horizon is causing me some trouble, but this image is, I think, at least respectable.

NGC 253