Astro 8A: Observational Astronomy

Spring '18 Photo Page

         

 

 


Alia Wolken. Nebula (Messier 78) in Orion constellation. Telescope: 12’ Meade. Camera: ST2000XCM. 3x5 min exposures. February 13th, 2018 at around 8:30 pm at the Cabrillo Observatory Dome. Sky conditions: clear, chip temperature: -30 degrees celsius, due south so tracking was a little sketchy (no longer in Y direction), no moon, dry and cold outside. CCDOPS: dark subtract - 30 C, color conversion process sRGB+gamma and flat field correction. Saved as TIF files (5.2MB each). Stacked 3 frames in RegistaxV5.1, alignment method: default, align box size 128, lowest quality: 0. Saved TIF file with 10.9 MB. Opened file in Photoshop, reduced green saturation, increased blue and red saturation, make stars smaller x 2, local contrast enhancement, space noise reduction x 2, blemish remover (remove bad pixels). Sized 10x8 inches and saved as .jpg format for the gallery print.  

 

Alia; on time, sized right

For my photo, I chose to photograph Messier 51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy. I used a 12' Lx200 Domescope telescope with a ST 2000-XCM Camera to capture my 3x5min exposures. My astrophotography images were capture on May 5, 2018 when the night sky was clear.


After getting my images from the observatory, I used CCDOPS and Registax to stack my images using an alignbox size of 32. When I initially tried using an alignbox size of 64, my final stack failed and came out really blurry. With the 32 I ended up with a solid final stack however.

Once in photoshop I opened my stacked image and I utilized a few photoshop commands. My goal was to reduce the fuzziness of my image and to make the colors of the galaxy stand out, and by tweaking some settings I was able to achieve just that. A list of some of the tools I took advantage of include; Hue saturation, levels and curves, unsharp mask, and space noise reduction.

Tony; sized right sent at gifs not jpgs. Photo on time, dimensions right, but label not till Tuesday.

  Erica Montanez

Object: Cigar Galaxy, Catalog #: NGC 3034

          Date:3/6/18 Time:21:30

Telescope:Lx200 Dome Camera:ST 2000

3x5min Exposures

 

Erica; on time, sized right

Hale Brewer

Astro 8
Spring 2018

Messier 42 in Orion Constellation, February 13, 2018. Three images of five minute exposure each. Taken with CCDOPS5, dark subtracted, flat field corrected, and converted into color using sRGB+gamma transfer function. Saved as a 16 bit TIFF file. Used Registax3 without image adjustments. Used photoshop to adjust curves and levels, sharpened image and adjusted noise. Used astronomy tools actions; space noise reduction, make stars smaller, and local contrast enhance.

Hale - on time, sized right

Jenna Bontadelli
NGC 2403
Camelopardalis
12” Meade
ST-2k/Standard Image
3x5min exposures

Jenna; on time, sized right. Label late, on Sunday

Jonah Ridgley. Comet, PanSTARRs. 12" Meade. Cabrillo Observatory Dome. CCDOPs: Version 5. dark subtract, flat field correction. Registax: version 6.1 stack 3 frames. Photoshop: curves and levels, Saturation (bring out color), space noise reduction, crop and size for print and gallery.

Jonah - borrowed, on time sized right

Lyndsey Mott. Object: Heart Nebula, Catalog #: IC 2805 in constellation: Cassiopeia. Date: 3/6/18  Time: 8:30 PM Sky Conditions: Cloudy in some areas but stars were visible, a lot of cirrus. Moon was not visible in the sky. Temperature: -27 High:+37Magnitude: 6.5. Processing Software: 12 inch LX200 telescope, ST 2000XCM camera

Lyndsey Mott

Steps: Took four different photos of the nebula, altered image and added color in CCDOPS, stacked all images using Registax, and lastly I used photoshop to make my nebula brighter because it was not showing up very well.  I made the stars smaller maybe three times and I made the sky a little darker so the red color of the nebula would show up more.  I used the saturation affect the most to eliminate green and blue stars as well as enhancing red stars to make the heart nebula brighter overall. 

 

Lindsey, on time, sized right

Robert Riemer, M94, Spiral galaxy, 12" Meade LX200, 4/17/18. Exposures: 3x5min. Sky: Partly cloudy, no moon, object high in northern sky away from clouds. CCDOPS: Dark subtract -22C, flat Field, Color process sRGB+Gamma. Registax: Stack 3 frames. Photoshop: Levels (darken background), Exposure (increase), Curves (adjust image brightness), Saturation (increase), Crop (center object)

Robert. No thumbnail submitted. Otherwise on time, full size was correct

M43 orion constellation 
Dark sky pretty clear sky. -30 chip tempature. Dry night, no wind, no moon . 
Editing:
Dark subtracted and did the flats, did not edit much because it was already a great picture. Messed around a bit in photo shop to find the best results.

 

Eddie, M43. On time, sized right, but formatted label

Shani Levy-Richards. Flame Nebula (NGC 2024). 12 in. Meade, ST2000XCM, 4x5 min, Nov. 13, 2018, 22:10-22:30, Cabrillo observatory Dome, clear sky, no moon, -20 degrees, over northeastern horizon, no light pollution. CCDOPS: Version 5.5. Dark subtract -20 C, Flat field, color process sRGB+gamma.Registrax: Version 5, stack 4 frames Photoshop: version 2017.1.1, Levels, Image rotation- 90 degrees, Healing brush, filter > sharpen, Brightness/Contrast > Contrast 10, Brightness 0.

Shani - I had to convert 4.5meg tiff to jpg. otherwise OK on time


 

NGC 2903 - April 4, 2018, Joshua Berman, Exposure: 5min. Telescope: LX200 -12". Camera: ST200xcm @ Cabrillo Obs.
The object was 74 degrees above the horizon there was no moisture or frost on the lens, no light flooding from the moon, but there was light cirrus present. Three five minute exposures were taken with the ST200XCM camera with a chip temperature of -25 degrees through the LX200 12" dome telescope. CCDOPS5 was used and each image was dark subtracted, color processed, then sRGB+gamma transfer function was used. The images were stacked in RegiStax 5. The stacked image was then edited in Photoshop CS2 where the photo was cropped, brightness and contrast was altered, luminescence was stretched using levels and curves, green saturation was reduced, space noise was reduced, and light pollution was removed.

On time, but thumb wrong size 300dpi, thumbnail sized right

NGC 247, Cetus Kylie Reed

Date Taken: Unknown (borrowed picture)
Sky conditions: Unknown
4 images. CCDOps: dark frame correction -30°, flat field correction 'sep-3-15,' color process 'single-shot color: SRGB=gamma.' Images stacked in Registax 5.1 without image adjustments. Photoshop: Curves- output 2 input 19, Noise- despeckle, Blur, Crop, Contrast +3, Saturation +12

 

on time, slightly formatted label, sized right

The Wizard Nebula - NGC7380        Jake Bowles


Image taken by a different student in september of 2015

3 images with 5 min. exposure each. CCDOps dark
frame correction -25°, flat field correction 'Sept-25-2015'
color process 'single shot color: sRGB+gamma.'
Images stacked in Registax 5.1 without image 
adjustments. Photoshop: Curves: input95, output67, 
Levels: reduced   -.14, saturation +8, cropped, 
unsharp mask +10%, despeckle, reduce noise: 

preserve details +13%, whites - 26, 

Jake, on time, sized right, but formatted label

Pinwheel Galaxy - M101 - Ursa Major: 3 five minute exposures were taken on the ST2000xcm through the 12" f/6.3 Meade telescope, 5/1/2018 at 21:25:15. It was a clear night, no clouds, chip temperature was -27 degrees, very light humidity, light frost on top right corner of lens, moon below horizon, and very light wind. Dark subtraction, flat-field correction, and color transferring using the sRGB+Gamma transfer function was done to all three images in CCDOPS. Said pictures were then each saved as a 16 bit TIFF file. After being corrected, the images were stacked using Registax 5.1 with no image adjustments and with the threshold set at 0 so all pictures would be stacked. After successful stacking, the resulting image was editted in Photoshop. I started by playing with the Levels followed by the Hue. There was frost in the top right corner of my image so I cropped it using the rule of thirds and made the galaxy the main focus point of my picture. After cropping I used Unsharpen Mask to crisp my picture up a bit. Afterwards my picture was too grainy so I went a little bit more mild with it. I then played with the curves again to make the colors look perfect. After I did the Photoshop Actions Make Stars Smaller & Local Contrast Enhance. At this point my picture was looking perfect so I resized it to as close to 8x10 as I could at 300 pixels per inch and saved it for my print picture. I resized once more with the width at 1024 pixels and 72 pixels per inch for my gallery picture. I resized one final time at 3" wide and 72 pixels for my thumbnail.

 

Evan Crocker. No name on label. On time, sized right. But images would not download

edited the three images taken at the observitory using CCDOPS to correct the Darkframe using the darkframe correction provided to me as well as correcting its flat feild to correct the dark corners around the image and trun it into a colored image instead of black and white used Registax to combine all three images into one image and then used adobe photoshop to play with the color curves of the image in order to produce the image you see the final step was to edit the colors a little more to remove a lot of green from the photo

 

Dylan. M16. on time, thumbnail wouldn't download, instructor resized the full size to get thumbnail. No names or other ID info on label submitted.

 

Adjusted the curve using Ctrl+M to darken the blacks and make the light pop.

Added magenta hue to get rid of the green tint

 

Brandon. Sunday late, no names on images. Thumbnail same big size as full-size image. no frame, illegible label hand-written

IC 1795 in Cassiopeia - Three five minute exposures were taken with the ST2000xcm through the 12"f/6.3. Each image was dark frame corrected and and colorized using sRGB+gamma. All three corrected colorized images were stacked in Registax 4 using the standard method with 0% lowest quality. The stacked image was then edited in Photoshop CC using astronomy tools to reduce the noise and star size. Luminescence was adjusted using level and curves, then balance, and finally the saturation. The image was finalized using the healing brush. The image was then sharpened and printed. 

 

Carly. Borrowed shot. First submission had 3.5meg for fullsize. thumbnail sized right.

Alejandro Jacobo. Messier 58, Barred spiral galaxy. 12" meade Lx200, ST2000xCM.
May 1st,2018 Cabrillo Obervatory 4x5 min. damp, no moon Altitude of 61 degrees.
CCDOPS: Dark subtract -27 c, Flat field, Color Process sRGB+gamma.Registax:
Stack 3 of 4 frames (1 of the images was off). Adobe Photoshop: Levels (Darken
Background), Healing Brush (remove dead pixels), space noise reduction x 3,
Crop and size for print gallery

Alejandro. Late for images and labels, late Tuesday.

Unknown Galaxy, 12" f/63, 5X5 min, Februrary 25, 2015 05:27:17 UT, Cabrillo Obervatory Dome CCDOPS: Version 5 Dark Subtract -23, Flat Feild, Color Process sRBG+gammy, Registax: Version 6.1, Stack 4 frames Photoshop: Version CC 2015, Noise Reduction, Raise Contrast, lowered green (To mitigate artifical noise), crop and print size of galaxy

 

Vincent. Very late (Wed finals week) Borrowed photo. wrong sizes for both thumb and main image

Eagle Nebula (M16), Photo by Gene Salamin, Processed by Victoria Roberson, Spring 2018, 3 exposures at 300 seconds on Cabrillo Observatory Dome. 

 

Victoria; late Tue