My First Planetary Nebulas

[ballaratdragons]

Well, after a prod from Ric, I spent last night (Sunday Night) imaging Planetary Nebulas. :cool:

The thin fog and condensation was a real pain, but I kept persisting until I was completely fogged out. :mad2:

But I still had fun getting them :) :thumbsup:
Thanks for the prod, Ric.

Modified Toucam, ED80, Little Toucam IR filter, Focal Reducer.

1. The Blue Planetary NGC 3918 - 6 x 160 seconds
2. The Grey Planetary NGC 3195 - 8 x 160 seconds
3. The Saturn Nebula NGC 7009 - 8 x 160 seconds
4. The Spiral Planetary NGC 5189 - 8 x 160 seconds
5. The Helix Nebula NGC 7293 - 16 x 200 seconds (ruined by Amp Glow due to longer exposures)

[iceman]

Well done Ken, a great start to the PN collection.

The angular size of the helix compared to the others is significant!

[Dennis]

Wow - what an amazing collection Ken! Top job, your dedication and persistence amazes me.

Cheers

Dennis

[jjjnettie]

Flipping fantastic Ken.
Me hats off to you.

[Ric]

Hi Ken, top imaging you've done a great job with all of them.

The Saturn Nebula has it's little ears visible and the Helix is a ripper with a lot of detail and colour being captured. That amp glow must be sooooo frustrating though.

The Spiral Planetary looks like a very interesting object, I"m going to earmark it myself for imaging.

Cheers

[h0ughy]

Wel done Ken! Fantastic effort

[erick]

Really neat, Ken! What isn't in reach of you and your webcam?!

You are way ahead of me. I have down, on my observing list, a goal of trying to spot my first PNs this coming Friday night through my dob. :P

[jase]

Good stuff Ken. Make sure you catalogue everything and provide accurate coordinates - I will buy the multi-dvd set titled "Ken's rendition of the Digital Sky Survey" once you've completed the PGC galaxies as well. :lol:;)

[RB]

"Ken the Toucam Legend" !

Well done mate.

:thumbsup:

[matt]

Onya Ken:thumbsup:

Keep pushin' that little silver marvel:D

[sheeny]

That's seriously well done Ken!:thumbsup:

Are you subtracting darks? I would've thought the amp glow would also appear in the darks and could be largely removed...:shrug:

Al.

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks everyone, yeah it was a buzz imaging them.



Al, I stacked versions of each. With darks, and without darks. The without comes out better. And no, Darks don't remove Amp Glow, it has to be removed in PS using 'Gradient' but on the Helix it took out the Helix too. A royal pain.

Any exposure over 120 seconds and the Amp glow starts killing the images, and I'm not talented enough to do the 'Amp Off' mod, so I keep persisting.

[ballaratdragons]

Al, here is the stacked image with Dark Frame subtracted. See how it just doesn't work properly. It turns the Amp Glow into a wierd black area and degrades the nebula.

[Garyh]

Well done Ken!!! its amazing what that little cam can do with someone who knows how to use it!!!

[davidpretorius]

bloody hell, you keep amazing me!

[ballaratdragons]

:lol: I keep being amazed by this little cam!

[[1ponders]]

Fantastic results Ken! I'd love to see a "Ken James ToUcam Planetary Collection that they said couldn't be done" ;) :lol:

btw how do you do your dark subtraction? In Registax or in Photoshop?

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks Paul.

1. I'm not intested in imaging Planets. I' have tried over 2 years and haven't improved. Probably no passion there for planets so I probably don't try hard enough.

2. I subtract the darks in Registax, in the stacking process. :) but I rarely subract darks. It seems to weaken the data.

[[1ponders]]

Whoops, that should have read Planetary Nebula :P

Maybe try the subtraction in photoshop and see if that makes a difference.

[ballaratdragons]

Ahhhh, give me time. :lol: My Astronomik IR/UV Filter should arrive tomorrow :thumbsup:



Dunno how to do it in PhotoShop. I don't know how to do layers. I tried with 'Neil Carboni's Astronomy Actions' with poor results.

[[1ponders]]

You shouldn't need to do layers. Open both images (Light and Dark) into photoshop.

Select your light image then go >Image>Apply Image> in the top drop down box select your dark> go to the blend box at the bottom (leave the other boxes as background and gray) and select >subtract with opacity 100, scale 1 and offset 25 and click> OK.

Now go into Edit>Fade Apply Image and adjust the slider until you are happy (do this straight away, don't do anything else or you won't get the Fade selection). And that is it. You can also play around with the opacity, scale and offset in the apply image dialogue box as well and see which works the best.

See how it goes for you.

[mill]

Ken as always you and the toucam are one :)

[ballaratdragons]

Thanks Paul, how's this?

I don't particularly like it. Lot's of detail has vanished! :lol:

[[1ponders]]

Ok, well that didn't work :P

Do you have a light source somewhere nearby that might also be contributing to the gradient? Also it looks as though your darks were taken at a different temperature than your lights. See how you have black dots in some of your stars. That could be why that happened. When do you take your darks in relation to your lights and what sort of temperature difference would there be? For every 6 degree drop in temperature you will halve your dark current, though I'm not sure if that includes amplifier noise.

[ballaratdragons]

I found a Dark of the same exposure time and similiar temperature. Looks a bit better!

[[1ponders]]

There could be a whole range of things going on. How do you process your darks?

[ballaratdragons]

Process darks???

I just take em.

[[1ponders]]

:lol: Do you just run the AVI through Registax using the built in Dark process?

[[1ponders]]

Do you have Virtual Dub and DeepSky Stacker?

[ballaratdragons]

I have Deep Sky Stacker but I've never been able to get good images out of it. I can't work it out.

That's why I keep using Registax 3. I can't even work out Registax 4 :lol:

[[1ponders]]

That's a shame. If you could convert your avi of lights and darks to individual bmps using Virtual Dub, you could then load them into Deepsky Stacker and see how it processes them.

As for V3 and V4 of Registax, I found that 4 does a better job in this department.

[ballaratdragons]

I don't use avi's. They are long exposure single images and are 24 bit .bmp's out of the camera.

[[1ponders]]

Ok, :confuse3: Any chance of zipping some up and emailing them to me so I can have a bit of a play with them?

[ballaratdragons]

Paul, you are going to want to kick me :whistle:
I don't know how to 'Zip' things and send them. Laurie had to send me a special program just so I could 'Un-zip' things :ashamed:

I don't know much about computers at all. :shrug:

Leave it till tomorrow when I'm not so tired and I might be able to concentrate on how to zip.

My poor ol' brain is going round in circles after your processing instructions.
:lol:

[[1ponders]]

I'll pm you tonight Ken and we'll look at it. I'd like to have a go and see what else can be done. It would be a shame if it we could do more with the amp glow, being able getting rid of it would really cap a great picture.