Posts Made By: Alan Friedman

I went back and balanced images from two consecutive nights to be better matched in color and contrast - I enjoyed looking at them side by side -

best,
Alan

I balanced the color and contrast of these images taken on two consecutive nights - I enjoyed looking at them side by side.

best,
Alan

Great job, Robert on such an elusive target!

Alan

First from a series of IR lunar images captured last week using my 10" A/P mak at 7400mm FL. Seeing was 5/10 throughout - aligning on multiple regions in the image helped improve the final image.

150 of 1100 frames were selected from the capture using the B&W DMK21BF04.

best,
Alan

I spent quite a bit of time on this and am pretty happy with the result, though I think the resolution limit imposed by the seeing conditions is more apparant here than in the previous image. 268 frames were chosen from 1100 through the 10" mak and DMK21BF04 webcam.

What I wouldn't give for a chance to stand on the floor of this crater and look up!!

best,
Alan

Hi Robert -

That is a very fine image - in those conditions I would have gone back to bed. Steady seeing is out there somewhere around the corner, I hope!

Alan

Hi all-

Hope you don't mind the brief step outside the solar system -

I've been wanting to try using my B&W webcam on a small bright deep sky
object and had a first opportunity from the dark skies of Cherry
Springs State Park and Black Forest Star Party last weekend.

The skies were very dark - the seeing quite unsteady with much
scintillation. The luminance image is made by stacking streams with 30 second exposure frames (max for the DMK21BF04) - a total integration of about 45 minutes using the 10" mak/cass at f9.8. The video frames were surprisingly low in noise - some hot pixels (of
course I forgot to do a dark frame) and a little amp glow were removed in Photoshop. I shot RGB frames using the traveler which was piggybacked on the 10" and 1200 mount. The low res color images were pretty hard to work with - I had to do a substantial amount of color
tweaking in Photoshop.

I haven't done any deep sky work in quite a few years. For processing I used my planetary techniques in Photoshop. I was surprised and pleased that the webcam could do such a decent job.

best,
Alan

Hi -

I am a neighbor from the solar system forum and haven't done much deep sky imaging in a long time - but I did have a chance to image M57 from Black Forest Star Party this past weekend using my DMK21BF04 firewire webcam. The camera allows a maximum exposure of 30 seconds - the luminance for this image was created from a stacking of about 90 frames = 45 minutes of exposure through my A/P 10" mak/cass at f9.8. The color was captured at low resolution through a 4.1" refractor and RGB filters - and was compiled as an LRGB with quite a bit of tweaking in Adobe Photoshop using the techniques I use for planetary imaging.

I was excited to see that it is possible to get decent results on small relatively bright objects with the webcam.

best -
Alan Friedman

Hi,

Here is a view down into Active Region 798.

Zeiss APQ 130 at f15/ with Coronado Solarmax90
130 frames from 900 taken with my DMK21BF04 monochrome webcam.

best,
Alan

Stepping back a little bit gives a better view of the level of disturbance that active region 798 has made in the atmosphere of the sun. Per spaceweather.com - the nine X class CMEs that this region has produced so far has made Sept. 2005 the most active month on the sun since March of 1991!

a mosiac of 8 webcam frames using my APQ130 at f11 with 90mm Coronado H-Alpha filter.

best,
Alan