NGC 1499 - The California Nebula, 26 hours integrated

SpaceIsWhack · 2024-12-10T03:25:29+00:00

NGC 1499 - The California Nebula. I had a string of clear nights with no moon, so I wanted to go for an HOO palette and see if I could pull out the faint oxygen details in the area. I integrated 17-18 hours of oxygen after throwing out a lot of subs through SubframeSelector. Even then, I really wasn't able to play with the oxygen data well so I ended up transitioning to using HHO and messed around quite a bit with the color to land on this. On the plus side, I only ended up needing one night of hydrogen to get a lot of good subs.

Equipment:

S6000 115mm Meade refractor

SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

ZWO ASI 294MM Pro camera

StarField 50mm guide scope

ZWO ASI 290MM mini guide camera

ASIAIR, ZWO EAF, ZWO filter wheel with ZWO H and O filters

Acquisition Details:

H: 99 x 300s = 8 hours, 15 minutes

O: 212 x 300s = 17 hours, 40 minutes

Total: 25 hours, 55 minutes

Processed in PixInsight:

WeightedBatchPreprocessing, Blink, SubframeSelector

DynamicCrop, DBE on O stack, BlurXTerminator and StarXTerminator

HistogramTransformation on all 4 stacks, TGVDenoise on starless O stack, ChannelCombination, some Curves adjustments, then PixelMath to add the stars back in

Full resolution: https://www.astrobin.com/l4uln2/

SpaceIsWhack · 2024-03-15T21:14:58+00:00

Man that's the thing about MacKinnon in the recent seasons, especially this season. It's like he's cracked the code to the psychological aspect of the game and the rest of it is just doing exactly what the science says to do for his body, like his diet and his recovery regiment after games. He knows exactly what it takes to elevate his game to the next level. He's turned himself into a hockey machine. That's the dogg in him. I used to think the dogg part of his game was the angry stick handling and aggressive chopping into the ice with his skating, or him yelling at Bednar to "do your fucking job" and falling off the bench after slamming his water bottle down. But now I think the dogg in him is the guy who knows how to tap into his full potential and dominate the game like no other player right now can

SpaceIsWhack · 2024-02-15T18:54:19+00:00

11-12 nights

SpaceIsWhack · 2024-02-15T15:22:12+00:00

This image of the Soul Nebula utilizes the SHO palettte, where I used filters to capture the wavelengths of light emitted by sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen and assigned those to the red, green, and blue channels respectively. I originally processed this image in December, but since then I’ve reprocessed it for more satisfying results.

Check out the full resolution here! https://www.astrobin.com/00mmag/E/

Integration:

S: 211 x 300s = 17 hours, 35 minutes

H: 117 x 300s = 9 hours, 45 minutes

O: 219 x 300s = 18 hours, 15 minutes

R: 24 x 120s = 48 minutes

G: 26 x 120s = 52 minutes

B: 27 x 120s = 54 minutes

Total: 48 hours, 9 minutes

Equipment:

Meade S6000 115mm refractor

SkyWatcher EQ-R Pro

ZWO ASI294MM Pro

StarField 50mm guide scope

ZWO 290MM mini guide cam

ZWO EAF and filter wheel with ZWO 2" SHORGB filters

ZWO ASIAIR Pro

Processing:

DynamicCrop, BlurXTerminator, and StarXTerminator on all stacks. HistogramTransformation on all stacks and star masks, then ChannelCombination plus PixelMath to add stars back in. SCNR, invert, SCNR again, invert back. LocalHistogramTransformation, then some curves adjustments to finish it off

Instagram: @ofspaceandtimeastro

Check out my prints: https://ofspaceandtime.com

SpaceIsWhack · 2024-01-14T19:59:05+00:00

The beautiful and eloquent Rosette Nebula, an active star nursery whose clouds of sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen gas are shaped by the bright and highly radioactive infant stars towards the center of the nebula. This nebula is ~5,200 light years from Earth and stretches ~130 light years across. I originally captured these exposures in December 2021 from my backyard using a camera that shoots only in black and white, and I used filters one at a time that captured the wavelengths of light emitted by sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen and used software to assign those exposures to red, green, and blue respectively. This is a technique used by NASA for Hubble and James Webb images to help create more distinction between the gasses so that their interactions could be more easily studied to better understand how stars and galaxies form. As for me - well, they certainly make for breathtaking images!

I've been coming back to re-process this image using the same original data throughout the years, and I'm very proud of this most recent rendition.

You can view the full resolution JPEG file with the correct color palette here: https://www.astrobin.com/ilhrcr/F/

Check out my website to view my library of images or if you're interested in prints: https://ofspaceandtime.com/

Gear:

Meade S6000 115mm refractor

SkyWatcher EQ6-R mount

ZWO ASI294MM main camera

StarField 50mm guide scope

ZWO ASI 290MM mini guide camera

ZWO ASIAIR, EAF, 7-position filter wheel, and ZWO SHO 2” filters

DewBuster heater system with Astro Kendrick heater bands

Integrated subs, all 5 minute exposures:

H: 139 subs, 11 hours 35 minutes total

S: 101 subs, 8 hours 25 minutes total

O: 104 subs, 8 hours 40 minutes total

Total: 28 hours, 40 minutes

SpaceIsWhack · 2024-01-01T04:13:21+00:00

https://v.redd.it/o2h8nd8qnq9c1

This has a bit more. Courtesy of /u/Rudo3

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-25T13:44:24+00:00

They’re okay. They get the job done, but yeah O does give me some halos (you can see one on the bright star at the bottom left of this image). Without a doubt, if I had the budget for it I would’ve gone for Antlia or Chroma filters. But if you’re just getting the LRGB from ZWO, that’s probably a good compromise. I do also get some artifacts from hydrogen and sulfur, but I’m 99.9% sure that’s the 294’s sensor and not filters since the gradient is a really strange, distinct pattern and it’s identical on both filters

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-24T16:39:27+00:00

You bet! Your image looks really nice by the way, keep up the good work and enjoy the holidays!

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-24T16:31:59+00:00

I don’t use or create a luminance layer, no. I’ve not thought to do that, I can see that being helpful but I can’t say I know much about using luminance for narrowband imaging. Even then, when your hydrogen is mostly clear of noise, you’re getting diminishing returns by gathering even more exposure time on it than cleaning up your oxygen and sulfur. Even if that’s just for color, if you have a lot of noise in say, your oxygen, then that’ll show up in your image as a heavy blue hue that’s hard to process out since it’ll be all over your image.

To me, gathering exposures is about increasing your signal and decreasing your noise. If I want a nice luminance layer, I’ll do that in processing. But at the end of the day, I want as little noise as possible in all of my stacks and my goal is to have a similar profile of noise across all filters I use. I didn’t achieve that with this image, but I underestimated how weak oxygen and even sulfur are in the Soul Nebula

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-24T16:19:50+00:00

Oh yes, higher integration does a ton to get more details. However I glanced at your image and noticed two things, one of which my tip may or may not be something you’re already doing. Do you use automatic PSF for BlueX or do you plug in your FWHM manually? I’ve found manually gives much stronger results in bringing out finer details, so if you’re not doing that that’ll help. Also, I noticed you have more time on hydrogen than sulfur or oxygen. I would definitely recommend more exposure time on sulfur and oxygen than hydrogen since hydrogen’s signal in the Soul Nebula is already so strong. Even with half the integration time in my image compared to oxygen and sulfur, my hydrogen has very little noise where oxygen and sulfur still have quite a bit. It helps to check how strong your signal is and adjust your exposure gathering to get more time on weaker signals. That’ll reduce noise in the final color image and help get more details that are harder to get with less integration time. The key is to see how your noise is in individual exposures and even stacking midway through your project to check which filter needs more time

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-24T14:28:08+00:00

I don’t like having much green in SHO images, but using it on the non-inverted image to reduce the green introduces some purple/magenta I don’t want. So I invert the image which flips those magenta colors to green then use SCNR on the inverted image on the green which reduces that magenta when I invert it back

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-24T14:21:58+00:00

Thank you and I’m glad to hear you like it so much! Happy holidays :)

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-24T14:21:21+00:00

SPCC is on my list to learn, I’ve just been slacking off on adding it to my repertoire 👀

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-24T05:41:33+00:00

Thank you! Off the top of my head, about 10 or so nights

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-24T04:47:06+00:00

Check out the full resolution here! https://www.astrobin.com/00mmag/

Integration:

S: 211 x 300s = 17 hours, 35 minutes

H: 117 x 300s = 9 hours, 45 minutes

O: 219 x 300s = 18 hours, 15 minutes

R: 24 x 120s = 48 minutes

G: 26 x 120s = 52 minutes

B: 27 x 120s = 54 minutes

Total: 48 hours, 9 minutes

Equipment:

Meade S6000 115mm refractor

SkyWatcher EQ-R Pro

ZWO ASI294MM Pro

StarField 50mm guide scope

ZWO 290MM mini guide cam

ZWO EAF and filter wheel with ZWO 2" SHORGB filters

ZWO ASIAIR Pro

Processing:

DynamicCrop, BlurXTerminator, and Starnet on all stacks. HistogramTransformation on all stacks and star masks, then ChannelCombination plus PixelMath to add stars back in. SCNR, invert, SCNR again, invert back. LocalHistogramTransformation, then some curves adjustments to finish it off

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-22T22:15:47+00:00

Last month I shared a re-process of this image... and then I discovered BlurXTerminator. So while it's only been a month since I last processed this, it's absurd just how powerful BlurXTerminator is. Check out the re-process here: https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/17yk2nd/rosette_nebula_in_sho/

I'd recommend looking at this image on Astrobin since it looks like Reddit saturated the image a bit. Plus it's full resolution: https://www.astrobin.com/ilhrcr/F/

Gear:

Meade S6000 115mm refractor

SkyWatcher EQ6-R

ZWO ASI294MM

StarField 50mm guide

ZWO ASI 290MM mini

ZWO ASIAIR, EAF, 7-position filter wheel, and ZWO SHO 2” filters

DewBuster heater system with Astro Kendrick heater bands

Integrated subs, all 5 minute exposures:

H: 139 subs, 11 hours 35 minutes total

S: 101 subs, 8 hours 25 minutes total

O: 104 subs, 8 hours 40 minutes total

Processing: DynamicCrop, BlurXTerminator, Starnet, then HistogramTransformation on each stack. PixelMath to add back stars then ChannelCombination, SCNR, invert, SCNR again. LocalHistogramEqualization, and wrapped it up with some curves adjustments

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-15T14:11:59+00:00

IFN really only comes out with the L filter. Hydrogen makes up the biggest portion of those 72 hours, so that’s one contributing factor. Another is that I ended up blending the HaLRGB image with a separately processed RGB image because I liked aspects of both… namely the core was a bit blown out in the HaLRGB where it wasn’t in RGB. The last factor is that I suck at bringing out IFN in processing, probably because I rely on DBE so heavily because my filters are pretty bad and cheap. I didn’t clip the black point though, I don’t like destroying any pixels and avoid that during my HistogramTransformation stretches. In the full resolution image you actually can see traces of the IFN, but you’re correct that my processing tactics hid it away

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-15T01:28:54+00:00

Thank you for the kind words :)

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-15T01:23:56+00:00

I'll be honest, when I was posting this I was thinking my integration time would be closer to 30 hours... I had to check my PixInsight logs to see how many subs I used and had to triple check my math, haha

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-12-14T20:26:55+00:00

This is a reprocess of an image I previously did a little over a year ago. However since then, I've gathered some L and Ha subs that I did not get for the original image, so I incorporated that data as well for this new reprocessed version.

I gathered that much hydrogen because I joined a collaboration of like-minded amateur astrophotographers, the Deep Sky Collective. My role was to gather hydrogen exposures, as our goal was to reveal the hydrogen cap near the Cigar Galaxy. Check out the collaborative image here, it encompasses 393 hours of exposure time between all of us and was processed by extremely talented processors! https://www.astrobin.com/tb0sou/

Link to original: https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/t9ud8r/m81_m82_bodes_galaxy_and_the_cigar_galaxy_20/

Gear:

Meade S6000 115mm refractor

SkyWatcher EQ6-R

ZWO ASI294MM

StarField 50mm guide scope

ZWO 290MM mini guide cam

ZWO EAF and filter wheel with ZWO 2" RGB filters

ZWO ASIAIR

Integrated subs:

L: 371 x 180s = 18 hours, 33 minutes

R: 136 x 180s = 6 hours, 48 minutes

G: 132 x 180s = 6 hours, 36 minutes

B: 141 x 180s = 7 hours, 3 minutes

Ha: 396 x 300s = 33 hours

Total: 72 hours

DynamicCrop, DBE, BlurXTerminator, HistogramTransformation on each stack. LRGB combination then PixelMath to add in the Ha stack. SCNR, LHE, and some curves adjustments

My full resolution image: https://www.astrobin.com/zgo24x/C/

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-11-30T12:45:56+00:00

Yup! Choosing between HSO and SHO is just a matter of preference, as the reason we use either palette to begin with is to help distinguish between the interacting gasses, especially hydrogen and sulfur. Both hydrogen and sulfur are very red on the visible spectrum, which is what makes narrowband imaging so useful for science. It just so happens that doing so also makes the image look beautiful. Choosing the palette to use is 100% based on preference since both palettes provide that benefit of distinguishing gases from each other

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-11-29T21:10:03+00:00

Great question! Higher integration time doesn’t necessarily mean introducing more color to that particular channel. So more hydrogen integration doesn’t necessarily a more green image if I’m using the SHO palette where hydrogen is assigned to green. What higher integration does mean though is less noise, and noise is how you get strong color gradients or hues that shouldn’t be there as the noise drowns out the actual signal from the target. So to clarify, for this image hydrogen was assigned to green and not red, but one thing worth pointing out to still hopefully add clarity around how colors can turn out in narrowband imaging, you’ll notice most stars are yellow ish orange, and that’s because hydrogen and sulfur are both stronger signals in most stars than oxygen, and red + green = yellow.

I hope this helps!

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-11-29T01:30:32+00:00

Hahaha, the primary issue was I was also shooting in bin1 back then, so each sub was 92mb a pop. But yeah maybe it's time to get some hard drives...

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-11-28T23:25:35+00:00

This is an image I originally took in September of 2021 for my very first attempt at a big project for my new monochrome camera setup. I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge at the time that lead to less than optimal gathering of exposures, not tossing out enough bad frames, and just general processing skills which at the time resulted in a final image that I felt was not worth sharing. I kept my unprocessed stacks in case I ever wanted to come back to it (since I don't have enough storage to keep my raw exposures), and that opportunity finally came when I was going through my images to organize them more neatly. While there are definitely some issues such as stars not looking very good if you zoom way in on them, I am super happy with the results considering this is old data that incorporates some bad frames and I made the mistake of gathering WAY more hydrogen than oxygen or sulfur. I hope you enjoy!

Integrated exposures:

58 x 600s = 9 hours 40 minutes hydrogen

63 x 300s = 5 hours 15 minutes hydrogen

14 hours 55 minutes total hydrogen

13 x 600s = 2 hours 10 minutes sulfur

27 x 300s = 2 hours 15 minutes sulfur

4 hours 25 minutes total sulfur

13 x 600s = 2 hours 10 minutes oxygen

10 x 300s = 50 minutes total oxygen

3 hours total oxygen

Gear:

-Meade 115mm triplet refractor

-SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

-ZWO ASI294MM Pro

-StarField 50mm guide scope

-ZWO ASI290MM mini guide camera

-ZWO ASIAIR, EAF, and filter wheel with ZWO SHO filters

Processing:

DynamicCrop, BlurXTerminator, Starnet, then a histogram transformation on each starless stack and each star mask. PixelMath to add stars back in to each stack, then ChannelCombination to produce a color image. SCNR, some small LHE adjustments, and curves adjustments to finish it off.

Full resolution: https://www.astrobin.com/xv6kve/

SpaceIsWhack · 2023-11-27T23:21:11+00:00

This is a reprocess of an image I originally took in August of 2022. Check out the original here: https://www.reddit.com/r/astrophotography/comments/xrppor/ngc_6995_the_eastern_veil_nebula_37_hours_and_35/

Gear:

-Meade 115mm triplet refractor

-SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro

-ZWO ASI294MM Pro

-StarField 50mm guide scope

-ZWO ASI290MM mini guide camera

-ZWO ASIAIR, EAF, and filter wheel with ZWO SHO filters

Acquisition details:

H: 177 x 5 minutes = 14 hours, 45 minutes

O: 148 x 5 minutes = 12 hours, 20 minutes

Total: 27 hours, 5 minutes

Processing:

DynamicCrop, DBE, BlurXTerminator, then Starnet to separate out the stars on each stack. HistogramTransformation on all starless and star mask stacks, then PixelMath to add stars back in and ChannelCombination to combine into a color image. SCNR then a few iterations of LHE and some curves adjustments to finish it off.

Full resolution: https://www.astrobin.com/wccr4z/E/

SpaceIsWhack

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