Rick helped me by taking 3, 5 minute exposure pictures of my M94 Spiral Galaxy located in the Canes Venatici constellation with a ST2000xcm camera using a 12" telescope, chip temperature at -20 on April 4th, 2016 at approximately 21:20, on a clear night sky with a waning crescent moon.

When I got to the computer work part of my deep sky object picture I adjusted each image by using the program CCDOps, I changed the dark frame using dk5-20.st4k I then after corrected the flat field , and added the colors to the image using RGB+Gamma. I then used a different program called Registax which is where I stacked all 3 of my images together to get the best version of all 3 images combined. And finally I moved my combined picture onto photoshop where the magic happened. I mainly just messed around with the curves and made it a bit darker, then I used the stamp tool so I could get rid of this black patch that could be seen on top of the lighter black sky. ONE thing to notice was that the actual galaxy in the sky has a black ring around it, and it is not a error in the processing.

J

Katie Carole

Astro 8A

Spring 2016

PANSTARRS Comet, taken on April 19, 2016 at 8:55 PM. Telescope used was 12” LX200, with a ST2000XCM camera. My chip temperature was -23°C.

Sky Conditions

There was a bright, 90% waxing moon, but the sky was clear with no clouds. However the camera lens seems to have been slightly foggy. My object is next to the Owl Nebula, within the Big Dipper. My comment is at a ninth magnitude. My exposure time was five minutes.

CCDOPS

I used single shot color process. I used dark subtract DK 5–23 because my chip temperature was -23°C. I flatfielded the image so that my corners were not darker than the rest of the image.

Registax

I selected all of my CCDOPS-edited photos (three of them), and aligned them using Registax 5.1. I stretched the intensity levels, processed them in color, and put the lowest quality to zero, since there were only three images. I first aligned the images with using multiple (2) stars, but when that didn't work I aligned them with my comet, which had moved a lot. I lined them up properly on the comet, which looked good, but did make all the stars blurry.

Photoshop

Dylan Walsh. Orion Nebula, M42. 12" Meade LX200 Telescope, ST2000XCM Camera. Altitude 46. 2x5 min Exposures on Feb. 2, 2016 at 21:26:22.000 Local time, Cabrillo Observatory Dome. This was taken on a cold dry night, with a clear sky, w/ a quarter moon. The lens was slightly frosted. CCDOPS: used for dark subtract: -30 C, and Flat Field, Color Process: sRBG+gamma. Registax 5.1: Used to stack 2 frames. Photoshop 7.0: Curves adjusted to adjust the brightness of the image, The sharpen filter was used to making the image less fuzzy, the stamp tool was used to get rid of the green and red dots, and the contrast was adjusted to +11 and the brightness was set to +20. Finally, I changed to 72 pixels per inch and the width to 1024. 

M66, located in the Leo Constellation.

Taken on April 5th, 2016. The sky was clear and there was no moon. Three exposures were taken with the dome telescope at around 10pm. Each image was dark frame corrected at -20 degrees celsius, and then divided by the flat field to lighten up the corners and mostly correct “the donut”.  The three images were then stacked.

In Photoshop 7, the curves of the photo were adjusted to make the sky darker and the stars/galaxy brighter. The color saturation was bumped up slightly to increase the intensity of the galaxy’s colors. The image was then sharpened to make the galaxy look a little bit less like a bright blob. The image was then despeckled to get rid of some graininess. The bandaid tool was used to erase bright blue and green specks. Using the Astronomy Tools Actions, some of the stars were made smaller, as they distracted from the main object. Finally, the image was cropped and sized for print and gallery. 

The Jellyfish Nebula, IC 443, was taken March 22, 2016 at 21:34 local time. The night sky was fairly clear with cirrus clouds and an extremely full moon. The moon was bright enough to cast shadows outside, and this caused considerable difficulty for photographing such a dim nebula. There were five exposures taken to compensate taken with CCDOPS5 and was dark subtracted. After repeating this process four more times, all the images were stacked in the Registax3 program before adjusting the image. Using Photoshop’s astronomy tools, I shifted the magnitude to 1:2 and used flat field to correct the corners, and converted the image to color using the sRGB with Gamma. During this process Becky informed me that the stars were blurry because the camera was unstable. I used DSO to reduce noise and enhance the nebula; I also reduced the stars’ brightness levels. I then used curves to darken the image, I increased the saturation and vibrancy, and finally removed some red from the background. Cropped the photo and saved it for print and gallery.