Fall08-Astro9

Fall '08 Astro 9A/B/C Student Photo Gallery

This was the most enthusiastic and accomplished group of Astro 9'ers yet - Congratulations, all of you, for a beautiful set of portfolios! Having that second GM8 mount setup really helped this semester - so thanks to the Faculty Grants and Student Senate Grants for helping us acquire the equipment. Unless otherwise stated, all images used the 8" f/4 LXD75 Meade Schmidt-Newtonian scope. A few were shot with the 80mm Megrez APO triplet flourite refractor. The chip temperature was -23 or -25C for all exposures unless otherwise stated. Some of our students had to leave before the above picture was taken. Holly and Mac did their images using black & white film and traditional framing - no .jpg's alas.

Fred's Gallery

Fred's shot of the Venus/Jupiter/Moon conjunction of Nov 30, with a Christmas theme

The South Pole area of the moon - Oct 9 at 3:44:04UT with ST4000XCM on the 10" f/10 Meade LX200 telescope, single-shot color RGB mode in CCDOPS ver 5. Low resolution setting (3x3 binning) Photoshop CS2: unsharp mask, Astronomy Tools : 'make stars smaller', 'deep space noise reduction', 'space noise reduction'.

Fred and Ann captured this image of the Veil Nebula with the Megrez and ST2000xcm for one of their projects, while on the Astro 28Z Mono Hot Springs trip in the Sierra...

...and they also captured this beautiful image of the Pelican Nebula on the same trip with the same equipment.

NGC 891: Greta took a 5x5min set on the famous edge-on spiral in Andromeda. I did my own processing to help her resolve some issues. Came out nice, and all from our own Observatory! Can you see the other edge-on spiral in this photo?

The Flame and Horsehead Nebulae. Fred stacked this version and polished it up in Photoshop. A 4x10 min stack with the 8" f/4 Meade LXD75 and ST40000xcm camera at Bonny Doon Airport Nov 22

The Orion Nebula. 4x10 min w/ 8" f/4 and ST4000xcm, from Bonny Doon 11/22. Fred combined a sRGB+gamma color process with DDP to bring out the center regions, and combined using the HDR command in Photoshop, as well as the usual Photoshop tricks.

The Rosette Nebula. Fred and Ann used the Megrez at Bonny Doon to put together this fine image.

Ron's Gallery

The Lagoon Nebula. Ron made this nice 3x5min stack on the 8" f/4 using DDP color.

M13 in Hercules. Ron made this excellent image of the globular with it's nearby galaxy NGC 6207 nicely composited.

The Dumbell Nebula. Ron's interpretation of this classic object, with the nearby red giant star helping frame the composition.

The Flame and Horsehead Nebulae in Orion. Ron's take on the group's 6x10min set on the 8" f/4 from Bonny Doon.

The Plieades. Ron used DDP to bring out the stars vs. the reflection nebula. 4x10min from Bonny Doon on the Megrez

The Andromeda Galaxy. Ron's composition includes NGC 205 and M32. 5x5min on the Megrez, from Cabrillo Observatory.

Gibbous Moon. Ron composed this dramatic image of the Mare Imbrium region of the moon.

The Cresent Nebula in Cygnus. Ron's stack on this difficult supernova remnant NGC 6888.

The Sculptor Galaxy: NGC 253. 4x10min on Megrez 80mm. This nearby classic nevery climbs high in our skies, but was ideally placed during our Bonny Doon expedition and Ron's here is an excellent piece of work.

NGC 891 in Andromeda. 5x5min 8" f/4, DDP color method. Ron's dark interpretation of this edge-on spiral classic.

The Orion Nebula. Ron's interpration of the group's 4x5min stack on this, the easiest deep sky wonder to get spectacular photos of. sRGB+gamma, from Bonny Doon, on the 8" f/4.

Duncan's Gallery - details of his image acquisition and processing