Another great video. As I am visual-only, I have always appreciated the lovely star clusters and the color of the stars. I have been thinking about starting AP but the hurdles of cost and learning curve are giving me pause. It's good to see AP capture the natural colors of the night sky. I appreciate your descriptions of your AP processes (your concise explanation of dithering is the most clear I have come across). That's a fine scope (of course I'm a SV fan) that is in good hands. Looking forward to more.
Thank you Larry! I've had my binoculars in hand several of these past sessions, and I sure do appreciate the views. AP is a bit of a commitment, and it was much harder in years past - especially prior to my observatory. I really enjoy the EAA concept (electronically assisted astronomy) - watching my sessions one frame at a time from the comfort of my home with family and friends is actually very cool... Thanks for sharing Larry - all the best!
Keeping my AT115EDT for sure! I love the telescope. I will likely use the Stellarvue SVX090T for traveling. My thought is if I am going to invest the time and $ traveling to a dark sky site, I want to bring along a high performance instrument. Either would probably be fine, but the SVX090T is more compact - so easier to pack. Cheers and thanks for the comment!
Nice wide field image David. Clusters can look really good, especially if there is a reasonable amount of colour variation between the stars. For something a bit different last Winter I captured a wide field image of the Heart Nebula but instead of pairing it with the Soul Nebula I paired it with the double cluster instead. The image also included open cluster NGC 957 and of course the clusters associated with the Heart Nebula. Personally I have a liking for globular clusters, I think than can look as spectacular as galaxies in wider field images.
Funny you should mention the Heart and Soul Nebulae. I was originally going to do a grab on the Soul Nebula that evening, but had a last second change of heart (pun intended). Wide field astrophotography is fun, and it is hard not to include clusters. I do love the globs as well - but I really like to capture globs with longer focal lengths - giving a chance to resolve as much of core as possible. Having said that, there is absolutely no reason why globs can't be featured as part of a wider field... I think we have had this discussion before! I'm going to get a couple with this rig before I bench it at the end of summer - promise! Thanks for sharing, as always!
Nice video. New follower. A couple of questions. 1. Why bother with Gimp for saturation and levels when you have the Color Saturation & Curves Transformation Processes in PI that do the same thing? 2. Why did you shoot the UV/IR (Lum) data if you ended up only going with RGB? I don't bother shooting Lum data for clusters and nebulae but do use it on galaxies. BTW, I have the StellarVue SV70T and absolutely love that little scope.
Welcome to the channel and thanks for the comment. You are correct, I could have used Pixinsight to address both levels and color saturation - and I often do... I use GIMP mostly because I have a color profile setup for my Epson Printer and I generally print every photo form my Journal. For one reason or another, the final touches in GIMP translate really well to my printed image... AS for the IR/UV cut filter data - glad you picked up on that. I generally shoot IR/UV data in all my sessions (broadband and narrowband) and I did use it when I was working on this workflow. Ultimately, I did not like the results from the LRGBCombination process - for THIS image. I ultimately cut that out of my workflow summary to avoid confusion for the viewer. Having said that - I should have clarified that I shot the Lum data but ultimately did not use it in the final image... Cheers and thanks again for the thoughtful comment!
Something I notice that your image has in common with my recent m13 and m92 images, is some reddish haloing around some yellow stars. Does this bother you? We both are using the Zwo broadband filters. Thanks in advance with your feedback.
Hi, Douglas - thanks for the question. Halos sometimes bother me! More often it is the halo artifacts that result from the Oiii filters. There is always going to be some haloing with stars, always. More so on the brighter ones. With respect to the coloration of the halo, I think this is going to be affected mostly from processing techniques (assuming a monochrome camera with filters). In narrowband processing I generally wind up with some magenta at the fringes of the star that extends into the halo. I control that with ColorSaturation tools targeting the magenta band. With RGB data, I will first rely on Spectrophotometry (SPCC) to color calibrate the stars. It generally works well for me. However, I do notice that when using certain sharpening tools on stars, the fringes can become "ring like". For this reason, I rarely sharpen my stars. I actually like a softer presentation of stars - which will often include some degree of haloing! Truth be told, we would probably be better served by premium filters - but, I do like my ZWOs, and the price is hard to beat! Cheers!
Great content as usual, David! Thank you for all the detail and background, I really enjoy that.
Thanks, Greg. Your continued interest and support of the channel is much appreciated!
Thanks for the great continued content, David!
My pleasure! Hope you are doing well Leland! All the best to your family!
I like your time lapse technique. Great presentation.
Thank you very much! I will include in my next video of M13, which should drop before the weekend!
Another great video. As I am visual-only, I have always appreciated the lovely star clusters and the color of the stars. I have been thinking about starting AP but the hurdles of cost and learning curve are giving me pause. It's good to see AP capture the natural colors of the night sky. I appreciate your descriptions of your AP processes (your concise explanation of dithering is the most clear I have come across). That's a fine scope (of course I'm a SV fan) that is in good hands. Looking forward to more.
Thank you Larry! I've had my binoculars in hand several of these past sessions, and I sure do appreciate the views. AP is a bit of a commitment, and it was much harder in years past - especially prior to my observatory. I really enjoy the EAA concept (electronically assisted astronomy) - watching my sessions one frame at a time from the comfort of my home with family and friends is actually very cool... Thanks for sharing Larry - all the best!
Astro Tech 115, are you going to keep it or is this Stellarvue going to be a replacement?
Keeping my AT115EDT for sure! I love the telescope. I will likely use the Stellarvue SVX090T for traveling. My thought is if I am going to invest the time and $ traveling to a dark sky site, I want to bring along a high performance instrument. Either would probably be fine, but the SVX090T is more compact - so easier to pack. Cheers and thanks for the comment!
Nice wide field image David. Clusters can look really good, especially if there is a reasonable amount of colour variation between the stars. For something a bit different last Winter I captured a wide field image of the Heart Nebula but instead of pairing it with the Soul Nebula I paired it with the double cluster instead. The image also included open cluster NGC 957 and of course the clusters associated with the Heart Nebula. Personally I have a liking for globular clusters, I think than can look as spectacular as galaxies in wider field images.
Funny you should mention the Heart and Soul Nebulae. I was originally going to do a grab on the Soul Nebula that evening, but had a last second change of heart (pun intended). Wide field astrophotography is fun, and it is hard not to include clusters. I do love the globs as well - but I really like to capture globs with longer focal lengths - giving a chance to resolve as much of core as possible. Having said that, there is absolutely no reason why globs can't be featured as part of a wider field... I think we have had this discussion before! I'm going to get a couple with this rig before I bench it at the end of summer - promise! Thanks for sharing, as always!
Nice video. New follower. A couple of questions. 1. Why bother with Gimp for saturation and levels when you have the Color Saturation & Curves Transformation Processes in PI that do the same thing? 2. Why did you shoot the UV/IR (Lum) data if you ended up only going with RGB?
I don't bother shooting Lum data for clusters and nebulae but do use it on galaxies.
BTW, I have the StellarVue SV70T and absolutely love that little scope.
Welcome to the channel and thanks for the comment. You are correct, I could have used Pixinsight to address both levels and color saturation - and I often do... I use GIMP mostly because I have a color profile setup for my Epson Printer and I generally print every photo form my Journal. For one reason or another, the final touches in GIMP translate really well to my printed image... AS for the IR/UV cut filter data - glad you picked up on that. I generally shoot IR/UV data in all my sessions (broadband and narrowband) and I did use it when I was working on this workflow. Ultimately, I did not like the results from the LRGBCombination process - for THIS image. I ultimately cut that out of my workflow summary to avoid confusion for the viewer. Having said that - I should have clarified that I shot the Lum data but ultimately did not use it in the final image... Cheers and thanks again for the thoughtful comment!
Something I notice that your image has in common with my recent m13 and m92 images, is some reddish haloing around some yellow stars. Does this bother you? We both are using the Zwo broadband filters. Thanks in advance with your feedback.
Hi, Douglas - thanks for the question. Halos sometimes bother me! More often it is the halo artifacts that result from the Oiii filters. There is always going to be some haloing with stars, always. More so on the brighter ones. With respect to the coloration of the halo, I think this is going to be affected mostly from processing techniques (assuming a monochrome camera with filters). In narrowband processing I generally wind up with some magenta at the fringes of the star that extends into the halo. I control that with ColorSaturation tools targeting the magenta band. With RGB data, I will first rely on Spectrophotometry (SPCC) to color calibrate the stars. It generally works well for me. However, I do notice that when using certain sharpening tools on stars, the fringes can become "ring like". For this reason, I rarely sharpen my stars. I actually like a softer presentation of stars - which will often include some degree of haloing! Truth be told, we would probably be better served by premium filters - but, I do like my ZWOs, and the price is hard to beat! Cheers!
@@AstroDNAObservatory feel the same about the filters, hardware is expensive enough! Thanks.