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Old 30-12-2011, 12:57 AM
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colinmlegg (Colin)
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Thanks Andy, Wayne.

Wayne, best to shoot RAW if you have a big enough card. I find that gives me more options later in post. I use After Effects for compiling the video, but other options include Quicktime Pro and Virtual Dub (among others). With After Effects you can ingest the RAW files direct, but it's more expensive than the others. Alternatively, you can convert the RAWs to 16 bit Tiff and ingest those. The key to good quality video is to work with the best material for as long as possible and compress only at the last step. Hope that helps.
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Old 30-12-2011, 02:11 AM
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26 degree tail on 30/12

I just had a look at Comet Lovejoy with 7x50 binoculars. The 26 degree tail (in pa 230) seems to end near the mag 5.8 star SAO 252400.
The tail is fainter than the Norma Star Cloud.
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  #403  
Old 30-12-2011, 06:11 AM
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kinetic (Steve)
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30th Dec 2011

Apologies for the blue halos again on the cheap std lens/ Pentax DSLR.
This is the 2nd set of two sets this morning, suburban Adelaide.
This comet aint over yet...at least photographically.

Glen's assessment seems spot on again (previous thread)

Steve
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  #404  
Old 30-12-2011, 07:18 AM
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Colin.. do you shoot full size RAW for timelapse or sRAW? it's a serious battle trying to shoot full RAW all the time especially for longer sequences.. big headaches!

Wayne.. Sony Vegas is another option that's quite capable but cheaper than After Effects. I believe the latest versions can work with RAW files too. The Pros tend to use After Effects though..

Also check out the Lightroom plug-in LR Timelapse. It helps you interpolate adjustments across a set of RAW images. Would it make it possible to use VirtualDub after exporting a set of JPGs from LR having done most of your adjutments there..

Phil


Quote:
Originally Posted by colinmlegg View Post
Thanks Andy, Wayne.

Wayne, best to shoot RAW if you have a big enough card. I find that gives me more options later in post. I use After Effects for compiling the video, but other options include Quicktime Pro and Virtual Dub (among others). With After Effects you can ingest the RAW files direct, but it's more expensive than the others. Alternatively, you can convert the RAWs to 16 bit Tiff and ingest those. The key to good quality video is to work with the best material for as long as possible and compress only at the last step. Hope that helps.
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  #405  
Old 30-12-2011, 07:53 AM
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ZeroID (Brent)
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Since my couple of pix late last week we ain't seen blue sky here, let alone a comet !!
Currently persistiticating down after a week of low grey all sky nebula.
I've had the tracking camera mount loaded to go in the garage and I think it will probably rust away before it sees any sky again.
Thanks to all the peeps posting cool comet pix but boy is this frustrating !!!!
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  #406  
Old 30-12-2011, 09:14 AM
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Yes, thank you all for the ongoing wonderful images and time lapses.

Also has been clouded out up here for quite awhile. Glad I was able to see the comet and get some images at its brightest.

Comet Lovejoy is about its make its closest approach to us (early January), then adios amigo.

What a joy it has been though, one of my big highlights for the year, and some super images from everyone, including Colin, Grahame, Wayne, Ian, Andrew, Lester, Paul, Rob, Kearn, Terry ... and maaaaannny more.

This has been a great thread with lots of interesting info, big thanks to Ian and co for keeping us beginners informed!!
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  #407  
Old 30-12-2011, 09:16 AM
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Astroman (Andrew Wall)
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Good work everyone, I am happy, I won a weekly contest with one of my images got a full licenced copy of BackyardEOS for my sleepless efforts, worth it I think.
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  #408  
Old 30-12-2011, 09:32 AM
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renormalised (Carl)
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See....these images of ours are paying off Good one, Andrew!!
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Old 30-12-2011, 09:33 AM
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Wouldn't want to know Liz....just looked out the window....50 or so km away it's bright blue sky!!!!. Here, wall to wall cloud!!!!.
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  #410  
Old 30-12-2011, 10:03 AM
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Hi Glen,

cheers for that observation. That peice of Norma Starcloud has been a handy benchmark to compare the tail brightness with. Kinetic's shots from this morning show it well.

Kearn,

mate I thought that we had it bad here in Jan '07. The least amount of sunshine hours for a January in the 84 year record! Your conditions sound like something out of Dante's Inferno! I clocked up about 1,000 km of travelling trying to find holes in the clouds that January.

No worries about the tail estimates that people are putting in. It is good to have the visual and the technical estimates thrown in to the mix. I believe in alerting people to the fact that the tail maybe longer than the eye can see. Great to see that you could see it out to the Coal Sack. I was hoping that the 'black window' in the Milkyway would come into play around now.

Looks like I'll be waiting until Monday night before I get another look. I'll be able to do some serious tracking on this now that the head is above my power lines at home.

Cheers,

Coops
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  #411  
Old 30-12-2011, 10:34 AM
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I think the tail is more than 26 degrees in Steve's image because the tail goes off the top of the image.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/a...3&d=1325189464
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Old 30-12-2011, 10:57 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by glenc View Post
I think the tail is more than 26 degrees in Steve's image because the tail goes off the top of the image.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/a...3&d=1325189464
That's a good image! The tail appeared to extend right to the edge of the Coal Sack in my images this morning, or about 29-deg, but nothing clear beyond that. No early morning for me, just a very late night. Watched the tail rising, but couldn't see anything positive visually beyond a point about the distance between A- to B-Cent below Alpha Centauri. Assuming it maintained brightness all the way down that would be 14-deg visually. Above that point there were glimpses but I certainly wouldn't be confident I was seeing anything other than a strip of Milky Way glow.

I've seen a report that the tail was clearly visible crossing the south side of the Coal Sack but I think that this was an illusion, as there's a hook of brighter sky in there that is visible anytime. I could see it clearly, apparently in line with the tail, but it's the strip that defines the beak of the Emu!

Here's my shots, deep images on the fainter parts of the tail. First a composite at 55mm:
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...sectcompsm.jpg

Second, crop from an 18mm shot, 3x3 min at ISO 1600:
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...UT18mmcrop.jpg

Third, three small gif animations, blinking this morning's field against base images to show the extent of the dim ghostly tail, which is difficult to gauge in the above shots:
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...imc29Dec11.gif
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...ima29Dec11.gif
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...ima29Dec11.gif

Cheers -
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Old 30-12-2011, 11:01 AM
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Glen,
here is a prelim panorama of this mornings(30th) results
with the QHY-8 and 80-200mm lens in the observatory.
Cropping/resizing/stitching is very cruel on resolution and
these images are a poor reflection of the full size FITS.

They do show the extent of the tail though, albeit thru suburban skies.

Edit: set 1 and 2 negatives added

Steve
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Last edited by kinetic; 30-12-2011 at 11:21 AM.
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  #414  
Old 30-12-2011, 11:49 AM
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Phil - yes RAW, mainly for future proofing. Agree it's a pita to deal with, but I picked up some 'cheaper' Transcend 64 Gig cards and 2 TB hard drives for storage. For any sort of fancy processing like stabilization, time remapping, etc. I use lower quality jpeg proxies, then replace with RAW for the final render. One other advantage of RAW over sRAW is Adobe ACR does a much better job of removing hot pixels. So much so I don't bother with dark frames.

Apologies to others for straying off topic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by philiphart View Post
Colin.. do you shoot full size RAW for timelapse or sRAW? it's a serious battle trying to shoot full RAW all the time especially for longer sequences.. big headaches!
Phil
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Old 30-12-2011, 01:56 PM
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glenc (Glen)
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I agree with Rob, the tail goes to the edge of the Coal Sack, nearly 30 degrees. The blinking image shows it well.
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...imc29Dec11.gif
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Old 30-12-2011, 03:11 PM
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Didn't the McNaught thread we had on here in 2007 go past 100 pages?
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Old 30-12-2011, 04:15 PM
Rob_K
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Quote:
Originally Posted by glenc View Post
I agree with Rob, the tail goes to the edge of the Coal Sack, nearly 30 degrees. The blinking image shows it well.
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...imc29Dec11.gif
Here's another process of my 55mm images, with high contrast. Pretty startling really, brings the faint tail up well:
http://i727.photobucket.com/albums/w...highcontsm.jpg

Shows it out to almost 32 degrees from the comet head (not in view). Hard to imagine there's not some extension on the other side of the Coal Sack, but is a very bright area that any extension would have been in. Didn't get any 55mm data on the other side of the Coal Sack, and my 18mm image didn't respond well to contrast adjustment.

Cheers -

Last edited by Rob_K; 30-12-2011 at 04:29 PM.
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  #418  
Old 30-12-2011, 04:52 PM
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kinetic (Steve)
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A short video of my 29/30 Dec DSLR stuff.
Slight curve added to frames before movie was made.
location was my backyard, suburban Adelaide.
http://youtu.be/TpJuqtITcrU

Steve
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  #419  
Old 30-12-2011, 06:12 PM
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Inspired by the animated gifs of Rob and Glen I decided to try one myself. Using the 2 14mm shots I previously posted from the 26th and 27th.

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/...rama3_0002.gif

Ian, your analysis was spot on re. the tail of the 27th. It's clear it extends at least half way between pointers and coal sack, if not further.
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  #420  
Old 30-12-2011, 07:18 PM
cstocky (Chris)
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Great animation Colin! I'd say that the tail is almost in line with Alpha and Beta Crucis! In my photo of the 28th you can definitely see the end of the tail near to the Coal Sack, however I've not tried to blink the image to see just how far it does extend. Hopefully I can snag another picture in the morning - fog is forecast though .

Cheers,
Chris
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