Home/BlogI got sucked back in when I learned about the ZWO ASIAir controller that “simplifies” some of the tasks that kept me from improving my telescope skills, so the telescope just sat for several years.
But the learning curve was still pretty steep. I now have an autofocuser, a guide scope and camera, and it took me forever to get the autoguiding to work (which I had to make myself understand and use because my new telescope mount has a periodic error in the gears that makes little star streaks back and forth).
Anyway, after I practiced enough in my suburban, moderately light-polluted backyard with some pretty good results, last night I took the rig out to a dark sky location on Alabama’s Lake Guntersville. This is the result: 4.25 hours of 5-minute images processed in Pixinsight and stretched and color-enhanced in Adobe Camera Raw. I was blown away… click on it to do some pixel-peeping.
That is inspiring Roy. Behold the heavens! It’s now wallpaper.
Cool… me too. 🙂
Pretty cool.
Gorgeous!
Does the software allow you to change the colors?
The Webb telescope makes photos like this, at a cost of about $10,000,000,000. I bet your costs were SIGNIFICANTLY less….
Yes there is some control over color balance, which is always somewhat subjective in astrophotography. In this case I used Pixinsight’s Gaia star database with Spectrophotometric Color Calibration, which does a global RGB adjustment of star colors based upon known standards and makes a neutral background for the dark sky. Apparently because of the dark sky site, no additional color changes were needed, I just boosted the intensity of all the colors. But in my light polluted backyard, it is much more difficult and I have to make some color changes.
I bought a SeeStar S50 from ZWO a little over a year ago. Where I live in the suburban Northeast, I can do OK but it’s hard to work around the trees and the weather. If I visit my in-laws in Nevada, it becomes a much more effective due to lower light pollution and generally cloudless skies. It does not deliver near the quality that you,ve got but it’s a great gateway device for introducing astrophotography to a beginner.
Yeah, the Seestar50 is getting really popular. Some people are getting amazing results by stacking many hours of images.
That gets a WOW!
A beautiful view of the Horsehead nebula!
Truly a bucket list level accomplishment.
Truly a bucket list level accomplishment.
thanks for sharing and enjoy getting sucked back in 🙂
Great work Dr. Spencer!!!
Looks like this month will be less than before,
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https://oz4caster.wordpress.com/cfsr/
What are the big stars in the picture?
The Seahorse in the middle looks pretty cool.
They still use Stefan-Boltzmann Emission law as the radiative energy Absorption Law.
It is a non scientifical approach. It is not acceptable.
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https://www.cristos-vournas.com
D.O.E. Panel to Question Climate Science Was Unlawful, Judge Rules – The New York Times https://share.google/y81VqxNjURD3J3yDK
Jaw, meet floor. Wow.