3 am shot of the Helix Nebula

[tornado33]

Hi
Got very keen to do imaging as was a very clear night with some wind to blow the fog and fireplace smoke away, so set the alarm for 3 am to get up and catch the Helix Nebula.
http://www.users.on.net/~josiah/temp/helix45min.jpg
Wind was howling when I got up, too windy for the scope but I tried anyway, the guidestar was bouncing around all over the place at times, but the errors werent as bad as I thought when I took the images.
3 x 15 min ISO 400 (total 45 mins) Forgot to do a flatfield, though I lack good software for adding in flatfields anyway. Gee the 300d is blue sensitive, in the old film days it was a real achievement to get any blue recorded, now I get more blue than red with the standard cut filter in the camera.
Scott

[h0ughy (David)]

Mr Alder,

you my friend are a very sad case, every time you get that poor old Canon in your hands it is subjected to the worst possible treatment of photon catching and you come up with pearlers like this.

[Rodstar (Rod)]

Great shot Scott. Thanks for sharing.

[fringe_dweller]

Hi Scott,
Nice one! taken under windy conditions to so true about the reversal of colour balance re film and digital - all revolving around skin tones in wedding photos they say although most common films in recent years has leaned heavily to the blue as well - its also funny there was some giant leaps in the common 35mm colour film quality at the end (such as less grainy than early stuff, 400 is only as grainy as 200 used to be, serious professional processing equipment took some big leaps, paper ect.ect.) , but it went largely unnoticed/unappreciated due to the appearance/evolving of digicams/CCD's at the same time?, imho anyway.
Kearn

[atalas]

Nice work Scott! love the Helix ,when I look at these ring nebs I can't help but imagine the star exploding and expanding.

Louie

[astro_south (Andrew)]

Nice one Scott. You even managed to snaffle the galaxy on the edge of the nebula (see upper right near the defraction spike of the brightest star on the left hand side of the pic - just within the nebula bounds.....how's that for directions!! ) I can circle it on the pic and repost it if you like!

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

WOW Scott. That is incredible.

I got very strong wind too but there is all this dark grey matter blocking the whole sky!

I still gotta wait. I wanna take photos

[toetoe (Peter)]

That was worth getting up for Scott, nice pic

[tornado33]

Thanks all. Yes I see the little galaxy, Andrew, I was happy to have caught it. I plan to get a 2 inch nebula filter in the future, hopefully that will allow more nebulosity by longer exposures without excessive light pollution.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Andrew,

You will have to circle the galaxy. I have enlarged and enlarged and I still can't see it!

[astro_south (Andrew)]

BD

as requested....see attached

[iceman (Mike)]

Wow, beautiful shot Scott, well done!

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Originally Posted by tornado33

Hi
Forgot to do a flatfield, though I lack good software for adding in flatfields anyway.

Scott:
once again, great image ...even more impressive dedication-3 am!!

BTW have you tried IRIS at all?

It handles 300d RAW files with ease and exports stacked images as PSD to Photoshop.It can also rotate and scale automatically if your polar alignment is not great (as is often the case with me), subtracts darks and flats and so on.

I am still learning how to use it but everytime I give it a spin I am more and more impressed by its capabilities

and the best part is the price -free

Recommend it well worth evaluating if you havent already done so

Narayan

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Great scott, Scott!! Which NASA site did you get that from Looks like the canon was made to do those types of shots. If you're up at 3am keep your eye out for M57 and possibly even M27. They would help make a matching trio

hey Narayan, care to put together a bit of a "how to" on Iris. It scares me just looking at it.

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Originally Posted by [1ponders]

hey Narayan, care to put together a bit of a "how to" on Iris. It scares me just looking at it.

I will try and put something together..but just remember I 'm still a beginner though..

in fact all I do is follow the illustrated tutorial step by step , but I'll add in some comments where I feel something is not very obvious



Narayan

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by seeker372011

I will try and put something together..but just remember I 'm still a beginner though..

in fact all I do is follow the illustrated tutorial step by step , but I'll add in some comments where I feel something is not very obvious



Narayan

great stuff i look forward to that

[tornado33]

Howdy all
yes I have Iris software but ive yet to work out how to use it apart from using the gradient removal function.
Scott

[Dennis]

Hi Scott

Just tried the url and came up with a "not found 404" error. However, if Andrew's "galaxy finder" image is the one - what a great image! The colours are quite electric and neon like. Great job and incredible dedication under some quite difficult and atrocious conditions.

Cheers

Dennis

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

Paul and Houghy:

I have been having real trouble with my internet at home so am never sure how long I will remain connected to the net so my visits to the forum have been sporadic and will continue to be so till this problem is fixed.

Anyway here is a link to a superb-step by step guide to using IRIS written by Jim Solomon.He also covers other stuff which you can ignore! I follow the IRIS steps more or less blindly-even when he says things like multiply something by 0.49999987635432 or something even wierder..and guess what, it works.

http://home.comcast.net/~jimc8ngt/ar...ook/index.html

couple of things though.

In Jim Solomon's cookbook he talks about a slightly older version of IRIS. if you haven't yet, you should get the latest version-released in May. For example the bug that Jim talks about (that prevented Kappa Sigma Stacking of colour images) has been fixed.

Secondly, even before you go to Jim 's cookbook you may find it useful to carefully read the tutorial:

http://www.astrosurf.org/buil/iris/roadmap/help.htm

now in a couple of places Jim Solomon's method-or sequence- is slightly different..in those cases-I use Jim's method, it works better.(especially once having stacked the images, he has some neat tricks and techniques to bring out details).

What else..in stacking I try normal addition, if I have too many ickies, I go to Kappa Sigma stacking.

You have to play a bit with the numbers in a couple of commands to see what gives you best results.

as a very brief overview this is the sequence I use:


create a working directory-Tutorial tells how

create a master offset, flat field master and dark master (Jim describes in great detail how to)

create the cosmetic file (this is the step the tutorial calls "find deviant pixels in the thermal map")-again Jim has provided some useful "how to"

convert RAW images to CFA

preprocess-convert to 48 bits

register-here I follow Jim Solomons method-I just type in the commands as he has suggested

stack

from here on I follow the steps in Jim's cookbook

especially the step before exporting to photoshop as a PSD, involving some 10 decimal place numbers....which I have not seen mentioned anywhere else, but works really well

Hope this is all not too confusing.please yell out if I need to explain anything better

also there are some power IRIS users on this forum who probably know a heck of a lot more about this software than I do, so if anyone cares to add anything to the above it would be great-remember I have only just started to to use this

PS the thing I hate about IRIS-no Undo button! be careful to save early and often!

Narayan

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Thaks for the warning Narayan. And the guide and links. Its the convoluted jargon (or should that be deconvolution jargon ) that throw me. I spend so much time trying to find your what the words mean that I get lost

Thanks again