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Friday, October 24, 2014

First light image, for my new observatory setup, finalized




This is an official first light for my new imaging setup. It's mechanically and optically much more advanced, than my old setup. It's also much more photon hungry due to good image scale, around one pixel/arcsecond.
For example, I needed only 2,5h of H-alpha exposures per panel to have a very good signal in this image.
This is a really capable set of tools for my art. 

The first light image

I selected a well known and popular target for the first light. It's so much imaged, than it's easy to make comparisons between my old images and others in the web. How ever, I wanted to have a little different view to this target and decided to shoot a two panel mosaic out of it. The idea was concentrated to the dark dust lanes and filaments in the area, not the eye catching gas formations itself.

The Pelican Nebula
in constellation Cygnus, click for a large image

Image is in visual spectrum from emission of the ionized elements. The original image is ~8000x4000 pixels.

Pelican Nebula in mapped colors
Click for a large image

Image is in mapped colors from emission of the ionized elements, Red=Sulfur, Green=Hydrogen and the Blue =Oxygen.

Vertical versions
Click for a large image





Orientation

The white rectangle shows the area of interest. Colors are also borrowed from this older wide field image.

Technical details

Processing work flow
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack2.
Deconvolution with a CCDStack2 Positive Constraint, 33 iterations, added at 50% weight
Color combine in PS CS3
Levels and curves in PS CS3.

Imaging optics
Celestron Edge HD 1100 @ f7 with 0,7 focal reducer for Edge telescope

Cameras and filters
Imaging camera Apogee Alta U16 and Apogee seven slot filter wheel
Guider camera, Lodestar
Astrodon filter, 5nm H-aplha

Total exposure time
H-alpha 2,5h / panel

Colorimages
Colors are taken from an older wide field image of the area.
The wide field image can be seen here:
http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2011/12/cygnus-mosaic-18-panels-and-22-x-14.html


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