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Posts Made By: Don McCrady

July 9, 2004 11:27 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Wide-field M11 with Scutum Star Cloud

Posted By Don McCrady

I've had some success lately applying flat fields to my images, making it much easier to process this entire wide-field view of M11 through my Sky 90 at f/4.5, and Canon Digital Rebel. In addition to the cluster, the surrounding region of the Scutum Star Cloud is also prominent, as are several dark nebula.



This image is shrunk to about 30% of original size.

Thanks for looking in.

July 14, 2004 06:42 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Lagoon, Trifid, M21, and NGC 6544

Posted By Don McCrady

I decided to be adventurous and pack all my imaging stuff out to a reasonably dark site (mag ~5.5 in the area of this target) rather than my mag 4.0 backyard (actually mag ~2.0 in the area of this target). So I drove out to Rattlesnake Lake, where the seeing is notoriously bad, although tonight it was quite good. I figured it would be cool to capture the Lagoon and the Trifid nebulae in one frame. As an added bonus, it turned out that I could get M20 and NGC 6544 as well. Here's the result:



My polar alignment was somewhat off, resulting in some fairly obvious oblong stars, but I hope I've shrunk this enough to minimize that mistake. I managed to capture 18 two minute exposures at ISO 1600 before my mount hit its RA limit (oops) and simultaneously the clouds rolled in.

The relative darkness of the sky made a stunning difference. The unprocessed image wasn't blazing pink-orange as it usually is, and the nebulae colours were somewhat discernable. I did only a minimal amount of stretching with DDP and levels to derive this shot.

Comments are welcome, as usual. Thanks.

August 20, 2004 10:19 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

M45 from someone else's Sky 90 and Digital Rebel

Posted By Don McCrady

Today's forums are brought to you by the Tak Sky 90, the Canon Digital Rebel, and the Pleiades star cluster and nebula.

Comments welcome. Thanks.

August 21, 2004 09:16 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Andromeda Galaxy

Posted By Don McCrady

I've done this one before, but wasn't particularly pleased with it due to some dust spots for which I didn't have a flat field to correct. I'm much more pleased with this one... my tracking was very accurate and I got a relatively large set of exposures to combine. I also ran SGBNR on it. I still haven't mastered all the knobs and doohicks on SGNBR, but it does do a great job of noise reduction.



(Click http://dandkmccrady.home.comcast.net/images/M31-2004-08-19.jpg for a larger resolution version.)

Comments always welcome, thanks.

September 8, 2004 06:38 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

NGC 891 and friends

Posted By Don McCrady

Imaging opportunities are becoming rare in the NW. It wasn't even supposed to be clear tonight, but it turned out to be beautiful. The temperture was a nice 50°F which is good for my uncooled camera. My spur of the moment target was NGC 891, and I was fortunate enough to capture many little nearby galaxies (most belonging to the galactic cluster Abell 347).



A full-resolution wide field view showing more AGC 347 members can be found by clicking http://dandkmccrady.home.comcast.net/images/NGC891-2004-09-08-wide.jpg (~150Kb).

This may be my last unguided astro-image. An almost-new SBIG STV Deluxe should arrive later this week, or early next week. Hopefully I'll then be able to break the 2.5 minute barrier.

Comments welcome!

February 10, 2005 05:55 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

NGC 2403 in Camelopardalis

Posted By Don McCrady

Here's about 2.5 hours worth of exposure on the large but dim galaxy NGC 2403 in Camelopardalis. It still needs a lot more exposure, and in darker skies, but I'm pretty pleased with what I got. The supernova that appeared last year is still quite visible, though I leave it as an exercise to the viewer to locate it.



(Click http://dandkmccrady.home.comcast.net/images/NGC2403-2005-02-09.jpg for a larger resolution image.)

Comments welcome.

February 11, 2005 10:08 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

NGC 2903 in Leo

Posted By Don McCrady

Here's a great barred spiral galaxy NGC 2903 in Leo. This image represents about 2.2 hours of total exposure. A couple other little galaxies occupy this field as well, notably NGC 2916 and the very dim smudge of PGC 27115.



Comments appreciated!

March 5, 2005 07:47 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

M42 from January, reprocessed

Posted By Don McCrady

I took this image back in January (and some of the composite images in December) but was never quite satisfied with the result. (You can view my last result here: http://dandkmccrady.home.comcast.net/images/M42-2005-01-02.jpg.)

The base image is a 9 stack of 5-minute images, combined using "extended add divided by two" in Images Plus. The core was then masked using the following successively smaller sub-images:

1. The same 9x5 images, but stacked using"average"
2. 5x90 second exposure, averaged
3. 5x30 second exposure, averaged
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I played with the colours a little bit too to help bring out the red, and I left the background quite a bit brighter. Here's the latest result:



(Click http://djmccradyastro2.home.comcast.net/images/M42-2005-01-02B.jpg for the full resolution image.)

Comments appreciated, thanks!

March 14, 2005 05:42 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Markarian's Chain

Posted By Don McCrady

One of our club's dark sky sites, Tiger Mountain, was finally reopened after a long closure due to logging activity. It's about mag 6.0, versus my backyard which is about mag 4-4.5. As expected, the difference in signal quality is dramatic, to say the least.

So this is Markarian's Chain of galaxies in Virgo, featuring M86, M84, M87, and a bunch of others.



Click http://djmccradyastro2.home.comcast.net/images/MarkariansChain-2005-03-12.jpg for full-resolution.

Comments welcome.

March 14, 2005 05:43 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Whirlpool Galaxy

Posted By Don McCrady

Here's another image taken from Tiger Mountain on Saturday (March 12), under mag 6.0 skies. I actually had to cut this sequence short, and only ended up with six exposures, but the dark skies really helped mitigate the loss of time.



I appreciate all comments! Thanks.