The Astronomy hobby thread

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Well...I've registered a business name with the Secretary of State, and in 48 hours I will be Axis Squared LLC. Telescope blueprinting, observatory design, mount rebuild and upgrades. "Good at telescopes, bad at grammar..."

I have bought a few thousand dollars worth of used inventory (for a fraction of it's value). All of it will be torn down and put back together, hopefully better

Fltatbutt, send me your CGEM, give me a month and I'll give you something better in return. I'm picking up a CGE later this month, and I have an AVX in the "shop" that I got this weekend. I'm looking at an Orion Sirius EQ-G and several 8 inch SCTs of various brands and styles.

I've also accumulated several hundred dollars in extra accessories that keep getting "thrown in" to my purchases...


I hope you're all happy, this thread was one of the things that pushed me into this!

That's freakin' awesome. I wish I was in the market for something.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by bugstrider

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Very nice.

[bugstrider]

Originally Posted by masraum

Very nice.

Thanks! Although I can not take credit for this awesome shot.

I like to share what I find, thinking you guys might like it.


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[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by masraum

That's freakin' awesome. I wish I was in the market for something.

www.AxisSquared.com
www.instagram.com/axis_squared

The social media is a work in progress, I'm not used to being open and vocal while I'm working. I normally hiss and spit when someone comes in the garage while I'm working, now I need to invite the whole world in there??? Gaaa!

[slodave]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Home
www.instagram.com/axis_squared

The social media is a work in progress, I'm not used to being open and vocal while I'm working. I normally hiss and spit when someone comes in the garage while I'm working, now I need to invite the whole world in there??? Gaaa!

Gave a like to your IG. Good luck with this venture!

[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Home
www.instagram.com/axis_squared

The social media is a work in progress, I'm not used to being open and vocal while I'm working. I normally hiss and spit when someone comes in the garage while I'm working, now I need to invite the whole world in there??? Gaaa!

Bookmarked ya! Time to get on Cloudynights.com and introduce yourself as a vendor.

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Fltatbutt, send me your CGEM, give me a month and I'll give you something better in return.

How so? I'm intrigued.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

How so? I'm intrigued.

Meaning I'll strip it down, clean it out, adjust everything that can be adjusted, and put it back together. Document the whole thing, including whatever kinda of raw data I can think of (like worm gear backlash before and after, etc). Some new hardware, maybe clean up the powdercoat, shine it all up, and ship it back to you better than before.

I'll do it cheap as well, as long as I can document it as a case study for future customers.

I'm not quite to the point of wanting to take someone else's stuff yet, but soon. Let me tear down the CGEM I have now so that I learn on my own inventory what NOT to do!

[bugstrider]

More 8K shots of the moon. Not mine

These were zooming in on the above shot. Just shows the level of detail on a 8K image



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[Rusty Heap]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/nasa-publishes-images-of-the-meteor-no-one-saw/ar-BBV729X?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=mailsignout#image=BBV729X_1|1




if a meteor explodes in the middle of an ocean, an no one hears it,,,,,,, did the tree really fall in the woods?

[Rusty Heap]

https://fstoppers.com/aerial/drone-versus-dslr-astrophotography-can-mavic-2-take-down-nikon-352660


Drone vs DSLR imaging.

Drone, I'm impressed!!!

[masraum]

Very cool article about getting clear photos through bad/variable seeing conditions.

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-blogs/imaging-foundations-richard-wright/lucky-imaging/

his month we are going to take lunar astrophotography one more step and talk about a widely employed technique for high-resolution images of the Moon called lucky imaging. This technique is used to record hundreds or even thousands of images over a short timespan in order to capture some images when the seeing is momentarily steady. Lucky imaging isn't just useful for the Moon — everything here applies just as readily to the planets and even high-resolution images of the Sun (through appropriate filters, of course).

Even with very fast exposures, the atmosphere is still seething. No matter how fast your shutter speed, you may still shoot blurry or distorted images. However, there are fleeting moments of stillness where your target comes through exceptionally clearly. For these tiny fractions of a second, an image can be recorded at a very small pixel scale, often as small as 0.1 arcsecond per pixel. How can we grab an image during this fleeting window of opportunity?

What we can do is play a statistics game, similar to casting a wide net in fishing: If we take as many images as possible — say, hundreds or thousands of them — very quickly, we can employ special software that analyzes all of those frames and picks out just the sharper images. Unless seeing is especially bad, there will always be a few good images that are usable. We can even combine, or stack, these images like we do with deep-sky photos to get smoother images with very little noise. Really smooth images are important, and I’ll circle back around to this in a bit.
The Setup

For this kind of work we want long focal lengths and small pixels (Very much unlike deep-sky astrophotography). This often yields extraordinarily slow-focal-ratios we’d normally run screaming from, such as f/30 or more. For really bright objects such as the Moon, this doesn’t hurt us nearly as much as you’d think. I use a large reflector (a 12-inch Newtonian), or even my 6-inch refractor which does a great job with a 2X or 4X Barlow or Tele Vue Powermate installed.

A high speed “video” camera then completes the ensemble and we capture video files consisting of as many frames as possible. USB 2.0 can work, but USB 3.0 is often preferred as it allows more frames to be collected as quickly as possible. Either color or monochrome cameras will work nearly as well, and while I prefer to image the planets with a color camera, for the Moon I like to stick with monochrome, as the Moon is fairly monochromatic anyway.

The two programs I use for recording video files are FireCapture and SharpCap. I recommend that you save your files in the .SER file format rather than .AVI, since AVI is often compressed. Even when AVIs are RAW, most programs don’t know how to display them properly. SER files, on the other hand, store uncompressed raw data with greater than 8-bit depth.

My own preference is to always shoot at my camera's maximum bit-depth to yield the greatest dynamic range – especially on the Moon. Many astrophotographers who produce images far better than mine may disagree and prefer to use 8-bit depth so they can collect more frames in less time for later processing. The video frames are combined and stacked into an image with far more than 8-bits, so there’s merit to this approach. As the cooks say, sweeten to taste. If using SER, there aren’t many programs outside of astronomy that know what to do with them, but you can download a free SER player here.

Speaking of dynamic range, you'll want to change the exposure time or frames-per-second, rather than the camera's gain setting, to adjust brightness. For bright objects such as the Moon, if you increase camera gain, you’re really just sacrificing dynamic range. Changing exposure time or frames-per-second, on the other hand, will give you a little more of an edge when trying to get those faint details in dark areas on the Moon without blowing out the highlights of nearby crater rims.

Once you’ve captured a few thousand frames, you'll need a program that will pick out the sharper images and combine them for you into a final very smooth and clean image that you can then sharpen and tweak. The one I use most often for this is Autostakkert!. RegiStax is also a great option.

You could simply pick the sharpest frame from all of your images, and then perhaps tweak it a bit with Photoshop using levels and curves to increase contrast. For better results though, you can combine a few hundred or more sharp frames, so that with careful sharpening you can bring out some of the finer details. The image has to be smooth before you can start sharpening up the details, otherwise you’re sharpening noise and image artifacts can begin to take on the appearance of features that simply aren’t there.

Another important feature of both AutoStakkert and RegiStax is the alignment process. Atmospheric turbulence is not uniform and like trying take a photo at the bottom of a swimming pool — even if the sharpest image is very clear, it may still be distorted in varying degrees around the frame. By setting dozens (or hundreds) of alignment points, sophisticated algorithms will attempt to warp all of the images in the stack to match. Combining hundreds or thousands of images like this, gives a reasonably accurate representation of the lunar surface.

Most lunar imagers use both Autostakkert! and RegiStax in their workflow, because Autostakkert! does not include robust sharpening tools. RegiStax has a powerful multi-radius sharpening tool based on wavelets that works wonderfully well. I’ve heard wavelets referred to as voodoo, but it’s a standard multi-resolution image analysis technique and there’s quite a bit of science behind it.

My final step is to bring the image into Photoshop. I like to have a lot of good tools in my toolbox, and for my way of thinking Photoshop gives me the best control when I start tweaking contrast with curves and levels. Of course, you may also want to watermark your image too because by now after all, you’ve put a lot of work into this.

[Eric Hahl]

/\
That's pretty much what I do for Planetary and Lunar imaging. I use a 14" Modified Schmidt-Cassegrain at 3556mm, sometimes coupled with a 2x or 4x Powermate.

I capture video with Firecapture, usually 10,000 frames or so at about 80-90 frames per second.

Still learning the nuances of AutoStakkert and Registax.

My latest Moon shoot...

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

/\
That's pretty much what I do for Planetary and Lunar imaging. I use a 14" Modified Schmidt-Cassegrain at 3556mm, sometimes coupled with a 2x or 4x Powermate.

I capture video with Firecapture, usually 10,000 frames or so at about 80-90 frames per second.

Still learning the nuances of AutoStakkert and Registax.

My latest Moon shoot...

Very nice. It was always interesting to me to look at the moon at high mag both to see the moon but also to see the effects of the atmosphere and seeing. It's so much more clear to see than when looking at DSOs. Not in a long time and not with anything remotely similar to your gear, but I've used registax a few times. It's good stuff. I haven't ever done the video thing. I know that has been the method for capturing planetary stuff for a while.

[flatbutt]

I haven't had a clear sky in weeks! The DarkSky site keeps saying it'll be clear but uh-uh nope no way....

[Pazuzu]

Eric, tell me about the SkyWatcher refractor in one of your first pics, is that a 120? Do you like it?

That's a company that didn't even exist when I was in astronomy, and now everyone seems to love them. I've been ignoring them thinking they were some cheap Vixen knockoff from China, but it appears that they have some high end equipment at a 60-70% price point compared to the big boys.

I'm considering a 102 or 120 from them as a scope that I might want to actually keep, instead of fix and sell. In fact, there is an underpriced 102 on Ebay right now...

I've decided to keep the Orion Sirius EQ-G that I picked up, I've played with it a few nights and it feels really intuitive to run. I was going to keep one of the AVXs that I have (I think I have 4 of them in inventory right now...) but the EQ-G just kinda feels better.

Of course, I might be picking up an old school Super Polaris with the C8 tube on it...or the C8 Powerstar that I have torn apart right now...or the Meade LX-200 7 inch MAK that I have...so many choices...

[Eric Hahl]

Well, they are definitely made in China. The 100ED And 120ED utilize Fpl-53 glass as the ED element and pretty good scopes for the price.
I liked my 120 for visual use but had sold it to get a triplet or quad for imaging. I decided later that I liked the inexpensive doublet for visual and ended up getting the Teleskop Service TS 125 f7.8. It also uses the Fpl-53 element. It has been super and I recommend it over the skywatcher.
You can find various versions from stellarvue, William optics and more.

[tcar]

Question:
Can one see the Israeli moon lander crater with a telescope?
Sea of Serenity, I think?

I saw the image from the Lunar Orbiter... pretty amazing.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by tcar

Question:
Can one see the Israeli moon lander crater with a telescope?
Sea of Serenity, I think?

I saw the image from the Lunar Orbiter... pretty amazing.

I'm going to say, "no way," but for a bunch of nerd astronomy buffs on the subject...

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/510678-theoretical-max-magnification-for-the-moon/

[Eric Hahl]

Captured my first long focal length image the other night. M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. These two, interacting galaxies are 23 million light-years away from us and about 3/4 the size of our own galaxy.

Shot with Atik 16200 mono camera, 16, 3 minute sub exposures combined for 48 minutes total expose. This is the luminence channel only. I will get red, green, and blue to add color to the image later.

Scope used was 14" Meade ARC with reducer at approximately 2500mm focal length.

These 3 minute sub exposures are un-guided and show the true potential of the mount once guiding and periodic error correction are added.