Slipping over to the Dark Side

In February 2012, I decided to try just a little bit of the image processing I had been reading about:

• Nebulosity to take the shots, stack the subs, crop and “Adjust Color Background (Offset)” ; then save as a “16-bit color TIFF file”.
• The TIFF file then imported into Pixelmator to do several steps of “Levels” .
• Pixelmator to directly transfer the file in iPhoto where the last adjustments were made.

In an effort to get some better shots to test out the processing, I drove an hour south to a small town blessed with the name of Mooball. Mooball is also blessed with dark skies, though more humid than the astronomy club’s dark site at Leyburn (3 hours drive for me).

Orion and M42    February 10th, 2012

 

 

 

f/4.0   ISO800

140 x 6 second subs.

The processed result was an exciting improvement and I loved the fact that zooming in showed a better glimpse of the M42 nebula. However, this exercise was most notable for the errors it uncovered:

• I finally stumbled on the fact that I was using f/4.0 and set it to f/1.8 hereafter
• I processed a subset of the 140 subs and showed I really did not need that many
• I decided I had to do something decisive to improve my focussing after a club member took a look and said “You have donuts!”.

The Canon provides the option of using Liveview and Nebulosity provides the option of “Fine Focus” which generates a number based on the intensity of a targeted star. Focus is when you max the number. This is the option I did best with, possibly because it is based on a number instead of my eyesight. However, my manual dexterity was also at fault so I invested in some cardboard and a knitting needle. Add to that my cardboard dew protector and a telrad finder in the camera hotshoe and I was ready to have another attempt, just as soon as it stopped raining again.

 

 

 

 

Crux     3 am  March 1st, 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

f/1.8   ISO200  16 x 8sec   Fine Focus using knitting needle focussing device.

The result was a lot brighter and sharper (no donuts!) for the Southern Cross and the Jewel Box Cluster was up to 9 stars.

 

Here is one of the subs used for the above shot showing the severity of the light pollution and the impact of even a limited amount of image processing.

 

 

Scorpius  3:15 am  March 1st, 2012

 f/1.8   ISO200  16 x 8sec   Fine Focus using knitting needle focussing device.

The “tail” region of Scorpius showing the open clusters, M6 and M7. Again, this was an exciting improvement and zooming in on the two open clusters was great.

However, I was starting to think that it would be nice to get some red nebulosity. I was getting star colours but some red nebulosity would be really, really nice …… something to do with modifying the camera … I decided to look into it … while waiting for the rain to go away.