COPYRIGHT, PLEASE NOTE

All the material on this website is copyrighted to J-P Metsavainio, if not otherwise stated. Any content on this website may not be reproduced without the author’s permission.

Have a visit in my portfolio

Thursday, January 31, 2008

M82 Galaxy with & without H-alpha light

Details: Guiding with active optics, SXV-AO with single shot QHY8 cooled 6mb astrocamera. Platform, LX200 GPS 12"@f6.3 Exposures: RGB with IDAS LP filter, 11x900s. 6x1200 + 6x2400s with 7nm H-alpha filter. Same galaxy but without H-alpha information. 11x900s with IDAS LP filter

IC 1848 detail, with color

Exposures: H-alpha 7x900s + 5x1800s + 3x2400s.
RGB with IDAS LP filter: 4x900s
Guiding with active optics, SXV-AO with single shot QHY8 cooled 6mb astrocamera.
Platform, LX200 GPS 12"@f6.3

Monday, January 28, 2008

IC 1848, start of the project

Last night I started a new project with IC 1848.
Here is first Ha exposures, 5x1800s and 7x900s.
I'll shoot more lights for H-alpha and color in near future, if weather allows.
This is a very dimm target for my focal lenght, LX200 GPS 12" @ f6.3
It will need an other five hours of exposures, I think.
Camera: QHY8 cooled 6mb color cam.
Guiding: SXV-AO active optics system

Thursday, January 24, 2008

IC 1805 core, color added

The core of IC 1805 4h of H-a
LX200 GPS 12" f6.3 + SXV-AO (Active Optics system) and famous QHY8
Added 2h of RGB data trough UHC-s filter
WORK FLOW
H-alpha RGB combination method under PS:
Both, H-a and RGB, processed first separetly by usual manner.
H-a converted to RGB format + Blue&Green channels filled with black.
(Reult is a Red image)
Red image is pasted top of the RGB as "lighten"
Red images gamma set to litle bit lighter, about 1,25
Flatten image.
This image is then copyed to top of the original grayscale image in "lighten" mode.
Flatten image.
This image is pasted to top of the RGB Ha combination image and used
as luminance with about 50% opacity.
Color balance + other small tweaking.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Horsehead nebula

I just found this data from my hard drive.
I shoot this one 25.12.2007, only 1,5 hours of H-aplha light 900s subs.
Very bad seeing, stormy and target was only about 15-20 degree
from horizont.
Lx200 f6.3 + QHY8 + Baader 7nm H-a filter.
Guiding SXV-AO (helpped somehow with extremy bad seeing)

Friday, January 18, 2008

Elephant trunk Nebula, reprocessed

I did this object again from the scratch.
H-alpha blending to the RGB-data was not too good in ealier version.
This time the method was:
R-channel = Ha80% +R
G-Channel = as it
B-channel = Ha15% +B
+
Ha luminance 49%
After this I added some saturation and use the Ha luminance again with 40% opacity+Color balancing. This method is similar to LLRGB method, where luminance data is used twise.
From the Ha data i used only the first 4h and skip the last 2,5 hours, becouse the later data
was effected by strong wind and bad seeing. Partly for that the stars are much tighter.
Active optics was used for both, Ha and RGB, datas.

Bubble 100% grob from the center part.

This is the full resolution sample from Bubble Nebula image.

Bubble reprocessed

This is a last reprocessed Bubble nebula, I promice.
From the scratch this time.
H-alpha luminance and RGB combination is more complicate, than I tought.
80% Ha >R-channel, 15% Ha > B-channel and G-channel 0%
Ha R-channel then used as luminance with 25% opacity.
2h RGB with UHC-s
4h H-alpha 7nm
More natural appearance this time, I think.

Monday, January 14, 2008

QHY8 Narrowband information, update

I have recived info about QHY8's Bayer matrix filter's spectral responce: Blue portion of the Bayer matrix in QHY8 = 460nm Green portion of the Bayer matrix in QHY8 = 540nm In Baader UHC-filter O-III and H-beta are in same block.

In the image can be seen, that first slot in filter contain wavelenghts between about 460-540nm. ( H-beta & O-III) When compared to QHY8's spectral responce, it looks like most of the O-III is ending up to the Green pixels and H-beta is ending up to the Blue pixels. There is overlapping and some weak parts, but least in theory, those wavelenghts can be separated in some amount. When weather allows, I'll test this under real skys. I guess, longer integration time will be needed. This is possible only with Bayer matrix color camera. When grayscale camera is used, all the information will end up to the same channel, sorry.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Narrow Band with UHC-s and H-alpha????

This is a very interesting test run! I started to think, if I use UHC-s filter to capture colors to my H-alpha luminens, what other information UHC filter might captured? The UHC-S filter is a multi bandpass filter made so that only some portions of light in the visual the spectrum are transmitted. This UHC-S will pass a total of about 100 nanometers within the 400 to 700 nma range, with high percentages of transmission of that light in the portions of the spectrum commonly emitted by emission or diffuse nebula Here is the spectral responce curve for the filter.

As you can see there is spike at about 500 nm containing both O-III and H-Beta, In singleshot camera those bands are ending up partly to Green and Blue channels!!!There is lots of H-alpha as well, but we are not interested about that, becouse we have separate 7nm H-a filter data. So this is a background and here are few samples what can be archived with that data.

This is a very first test run and there is lots of things to test, but it looks promicing so far.

All images have been taken with QHY8, a sigle shot cooled 6mb astro camera.

original H-alpha 16 x900s + 5 x 1800s light frames used. Total exposuretime about 6,5 hours. LX200 GPS 12" f6.3 + SXV-AO (Active Optics system) Elephants trunk nebula in IC 1396 This is pure RGB data with Baader UHC-filter 5x900s

Final RGB image, combined from previous images.

Lights: 5x1800s + 15x900s @H-alpha Color data: 5x900s UHC-s filter combined as HaR(Ha)GB

Hubble palette test from the same original data RGB > BRG and some color balancing Modified palette test from the same original data

Here is the same method used for the Bubble nebula image

Original RGB data.

Exposure time is 4h for H-a and 2h with UHC-s filter for RGB. HaR(Ha)GB image is combined from the data. Modified Hubble palette from the same material as the original RGB Palette variation from the same data

I hope, that someone else will test this method and report here about findings.

All comments and opinions are welcome.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

weather = %666¤@£´&&%##¤

Days are short, but weather does not give any support.
Daylight time at the moment only 4h 44mins.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Bubble with new color II

This is the new color version of the Bubble Nebula.
I tested a new method for me. After normal processing I added "Shadow and highlights" command under PS to red channel only. 33% shadows and 20% highlights at 50% range. There is now much more red nebulosity visible in the image with no extra noise. Compare this one to previous one.

Sunday, January 6, 2008

I added a new color data for the Bubble nebula.
Original color data was from spring 2007.
New data is much deeper than old one.
LX200 GPS 12" f6.3 + SXV-AO (Active Optics system)
Exposure time is 4h for H-a and 2h with UHC-s filter for RGB.
HaR(Ha)GB image is combined from the data.
60% Ha added to R-channel and luminance transparency was 70%

Saturday, January 5, 2008

IC1396 Color

Here is the, HaR(ha)GB, color version of the Trunk nebula.
Lights: 5x1800s + 15x900s
Color data: 5x900s UHC-s filter
37 flat frames + 77 bias frames, no darks.
LX200 GPS 12" f6.3 + SXV-AO (Active Optics system) 10Hz

Thursday, January 3, 2008

IC 1396 with new light.

I shoot more lights for this sculpture like object.
Now there is 16 x900s + 5 x 1800s light frames used.
Total exposuretime about 6,5 hours.
LX200 GPS 12" f6.3 + SXV-AO (Active Optics system) Elephants trunk nebula in IC 1396 with H-alpha light.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

New Years Flaming Star Nebula 2008

Flamin Star nebula
Imaging scope LX200 GPS 12" f6.3.
Camera, QHY8
Guiding SXV-AO and LodeStar 10Hz
Only two hours of H-alpha (6x1200s, 7nm), there was some major technical problems.
Color data 4x900s, UHC-filter
Color version HaRGB, 6x1200s H-a + 4x900s RGB H-alpha 6x1200s Happy New Year 2008!