Posts Made By: dietmar hager

hi Jim,

congrats on your nice first light image!
m81 is a tough target since clors are hard to get.
you did a nice job on her. also detail looks very good.

I notice quite some clipping in the histogram.
the histgram should look like a "bell-shape" image.
you can go IP4AP with Warren.
here is the link.
it is a fast and most efficiant way to get acquaintenced with Photoshop and processing astro-images.
http://www.ip4ap.com/

good luck and have fun!

BTW:
plase find time to share some data on the image...

hi folks,

this is a first light image taken last night with my new planetary equipment:
DMK 21AF04 and Atif filterwheel with Astronomik filters.

seeing was not exactly at its best but it was fun to image solar sytem objects after all.

please find the images here:

http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/Saturn-LRGB.html

and moon:
http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/VA.html

thanks for looking,

Dietmar

hi guys,

this is OT, o.k. but since the most of you I know are active in this thread I post this here:
I am back now from the NEAIC/NEAF show in Suffern New York.
I did enjoy many aspects of that event:
- first of all, it was so great to see at least some of you face to face after being 'online-friends' for so many years!
- certainly I did enjoy the privilege to be a speaker to the conference and THANK you all for the very nice feed-back!
- Warren gave 2 great workshops which will help to boost processing abilities of many new imagers.
- Don Goldman did a great job talking about the principals of narrow band filters, how they are manufactured and what is important before picking these. what I really appreciated was, even though he was there as an exibitor his talk did in no sense turn out to be an ad! well done!
- RJay GaBany's talk was my favourite, as I love the way as he illustrates our colorful universe.
- Neil Fleming's results in NBI is astounding! (as we all know!) he is located in the middle of highlighted Boston (which I did not recognize so far) and yet cranks out some supber stuff in this field!
- Ken Crawford disclosed some processing secrets in his talk, which I did not know yet. another boost for my AIP.
...I cannot name all talks and workshops, since I did not attend them all. I spend a lot time talking to you, which was my first place intention.
- the NEAF show is really huge! it was impressive to see - I guess - a couple million astro-stuff standing around there...boy, if money wasn't a matter...

well so, for all who weren't there, you did miss one heck of a show guys!!!

you can find some images I have taken here:
http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/various03.htm

PLEASE:
send me your images you have taken during the meeting!
thanks.

be well,
Dietmar

hi Tom,

congrats on a very well deserved APOD!
http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/view_photo.asp?pid=16547
perfect stars, guiding and color!

hi folks,

it's been a while...
I don't know how it is on your location guys, but here wheather has turned really nasty in the last year(s).
meanwhile we hold at 1 decent night every 4-5 weeks...getting worse I am afraid...

so this is the reason I decided to finish this project on NGC 4214.
I intended to go real deep with both, lum and rgb.
all I got within 1 monnth is 2 hours lum and 50 min each channel...
not much and therefore quite tough to process.
also there are not many images on the web...at least I did not find a lot.

nevertheless it is a beautiful and fascinating galaxy I think!
I love all those irregular ones. and to the bottom left I think we see a small 'traveller' that might get cought or might have been caught by gravity of 4214. perhaps one of the tidals R Jay has published together with his pro-friend is yet to be formed,...or it is just not visible in this image, since my lumin. data is so slim... )-:

please find the image(s) and all data on my website:
www.stargazer-observatory.com/4214.html

thanks for looking guys!
Dietmar

hi guys,


this is the result of three nights. it is a small galaxy in the constellation Draco, quite close to Ursa Major.

images and data are on my website please:

http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/ngc5907.html

I will now see to collect some intersting data on the galaxy.

thanks for taking a look!

hi folks,

with this project finished, I used up all my data that was hovering on the external drive, that I have almost forgotten... (-;
what started last year was continued these days and finally lead to this result on this beautiful trio.
http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/draco3.html

BTW: d3 makes a nice target for visual observation as well!
you need a couple inches though... (-:

thanks!

hi folks,

in two nights I imaged M3, which is such a beautiful cluster!
tight though and therfor tough to process, it is so cute to see the
center split in the TMB scope.


one night granted very nice conditions; the second one, when I did the
colors was very windy and seeing was bad.


Since I wanted to have a nice FOV I decided to image with the 5" f/9
TMB SApo, which was a good idea, as seeing was so bad the second
night, I could not have guided for 2050mm FL.
I wanted to do the colors in 1x1,...but I should have decided
differently...seeing,...exposure time...f/9 is quite s l o w.


please find all data and images on my website:
http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/m3.html


thanks for taking a look.
your comments are appreciated

hi friends,

this is a result of 2 nights.
transparency was regular, but seeing was very differing again.
the borderline of clear skies and clouds/upcoming front was too close to my place.
so seeing was not at its best, varying from FWHM (focus) 1.8 (rarely) to 4.0 arc seconds !
mostly I had around 2.5 only...
(watching the guide-star was somewhat funny: changing its shapre from pin point to snowball...too bad)
I intended to operate the scope at f/18 with the barlow,...no chance, yet...
I took different exposures for luminance in terms of exp-time:
2 min, 4 min and 8 minutes.
also, since I collected almost 2 hours of 2x2 binned RED, I used this fr the outer shell as an additional layer to lum, to enhance what was not there...(-;

all data and all imegs including the enlarged crop is here please:

http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/m57.html

thanks for looking guys,
Dietmar

...I do not.........not entirely.

I am not sure if I missed a previous discussion on this subject:
is there a consensus on judging seeing with this FWHM methode...?
any standard???
I am talking about the life-view-window when focusing on a star...


which stars are allowed to be used, to have this FWHM as a standard-
instrument...?
- hight above horizon?
- stellar magnitude?
- spectral class of star?
- luminance filter or none?
- type of CCD?
- software used for evaluating seeing via FWHM (life-view)?
- etc...?


it is my humble but e x p l i c i t experience over the years that:


- there is a huge difference in those values if you use an OSC or mono
CCD (I am talking about the focus window - so life-view)
- if you take another star you will get different FWHM values
- if you take another software it will also differ significantly - it
should not, but it does, that is a fact!
- pickering suggests something else than FWHM tells you about seeing.
- people use this values as a 'pseudo-standard' obviously, not
realizing that different software was used, and therefor they compare
incompareable things...(?)


there seems to be no standard on this subject,...?
so, I do not trust these numbers.


I rather got with pickering's scale, even if this is very much
dependant on personal experience and of course this scale was made
with a scope, only a couple of HR deep sky imagers use: a refractor...
(-:
{[(which quite frankly in my eyes is the very best dedicated telescope
for any kind of high resolved photography... *GGG* - don't take that
too seriously, I am only joking)]}


honestly: any thought on this?
I'd really appreciate clarification - if there is such - cos I am
afraid by posting these numbers we are comparing apples and pares, as
we say here in austria...


if there is no standard, we could think of one, shouldn't we ?


best regards,
Dietmar


PS:
BTW: FYI I have added a crop on one of the luminance layers of the M57
image I recently posted, that is supposed to illustrate what was in
the data I acquired. DDP+ sharpen, pos constr. deco in CCD stack,
wavelets in registax and smart sharp as well HP filter was globally
applied to that crop)
http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/m57.html