Milky Way Panorama

 September 13 2015

8 image Panorama of the Milky Way (LRGB) Nikon D610 + Nikkor 50mm f1.8 @ 2.8

September 12, 2015 was a perfect night for stargazing. There was no moon, no wind and the skies are clear. I headed out to Pasqua Lake for a nights stay at our friends cabin and i thought i would like to do a proper field test for my Skywatcher StarAdventurer mount. Unlike my full size equatorial mount, the StarAdventurer is a no brainer when it comes to portability. At around 10 P.M, I headed out and did some static shots before polar aligning. Polar alignment was quick and easy. I really love the illuminated polar scope.  At first, I used my 14mm f2.8 lens but found out it was too wide to do a proper panorama without stretching the edges, good thing i had my 50mm f1.8 on my bag. I pointed the camera where the Milky Way is rising and manually aligned my field of view. After some test shots i thought i had the Milky Way centered. I started at the horizon and  worked my way up with a 5 minute exposure each.  There was still a bit of light pollution so i had to balance the ISO and exposure time and settled at ISO 800.

Before processing after stitching, horizon glow on the left

I used Photoshop CS6 to automatically stitch the images and did some quick color adjustments on Lightroom before importing it back to Photoshop.  There were lots of stars on the image and they obscure the details of the Milky Way so i removed some of them using the dust and scratches filter. I tried using the LRGB process and found out it was the best way to bring out the details for  shots with a bit of light pollution. A 5-minute shot has plenty of details  in it but remember that it increases the light pollution background as well. LRGB or Luminance +RGB (red, green,blue) is a process where you have a color data and a black & white data from the same image and you process them separately  and later on blend them together using the Luminosity blend mode on Photoshop . This gives you way more data to work on  the raw image files. I am still working on my image editing process for astrophotos, but  my field test for the StarAdventurer was pretty successful and I  would do a Milky Way panorama again under real dark skies...hopefully next summer.

Pleiades (M45)

August 23 2015

(M45) The Pleiades Star Cluster taken from my light polluted backyard

The Pleiades

Nikon D610 + Skywatcher ED80

Skywatcher EQ-3 Synscan + Orion SS Autoguider 

5 minutes x 46 @ iso 400

Stacked in DeepSkyStacker

Andromeda Galaxy first attempt with ED80

August 09 2015

M31 as photographed under light polluted skies

The Great Andromeda Galaxy (M31)

Nikon D610 + Skywatcher ED80

Skywatcher EQ-3 Synscan + Orion SS Autoguider 

3 minutes x 30 @ iso 1600 

Stacked in DeepSkyStacker

This is my first attempt to capture M31 under light polluted skies using the ED80. Trying to photograph galaxies from a red zone (light pollution is high) is nothing short of challenging and can be at times frustrating. After polar alignment and a 2-star calibration, i looked thru the 28mm eyepiece and saw M31 as a faint smudge.

M31 thru a 28mm eyepiece

M31 sits high enough at the horizon at this time of the year (August) but the light pollution just gets in the way, and the only way to capture all the faint details is thru a really dark sky, far away from city lights. I used a UHC-S filter for this image and i am suspecting that, although it minimizes light pollution, it also cuts some of M31's detail. 

The Andromeda galaxy is a very large object in the sky that its apparent diameter is six times that of a full moon, but it is so far away at 2.5 million light years that it's light is faint and will appear as a fuzzy star when viewed from earth.

M31 is as large as 6 full moons

My quest for a better imaging conditions of M31 will continue. The dark skies are calling...

Fire in the Sky

July 10 2015

Aurora

Aurora Borealis

Nikon D610 +Rokinon 14mm f2.8

30 secs ISO 3200  

 

The weekend trip down at Pasqua Lake with some friends turned out to be a great night. I purposely did not bring  my telescope rig this time since the skies looked a bit overcast with all the forest fires up in the North. The Milky Way was hardly popping out, with the low horizon so hazy that i decided its not worth spending time to photograph it. Then i received an aurora activity alert on my phone. Mother nature decided to put up a show that night. The sky lit up with shimmering waves of green and purple light.  I could hardly wait to start shooting as i climbed a nearby hill to have a better view. It was such a beautiful sight. With gentle warm breeze blowing, it was so quiet  as i sat there alone atop of the hill, looking up the stars and marveling how vast and beautiful our universe is.

Pinwheel Galaxy M101

June 21 2015

Pinwheel Galaxy

Nikon D610 + Skywatcher ED80

Skywatcher EQ-3 Synscan + Orion Autoguider 

10 minutes x 3 @ iso 1600 

Stacked in DeepSkyStacker

The Pinwheel Galaxy or Messier 101 is a spiral galaxy located at the constellation of Ursa Major, where the well known Big Dipper lies. During summer months, M101 is almost directly overhead . This image was taken at Cypress Hills Dark Sky Preserve without the use of any filters. I have tried using a UHC-S filter for this object but the resulting image was too dim even in dark skies. Imaging this faint galaxy under light polluted skies is almost impossible. You will like just get a blob of light, it's faint spiral arms will be extremely hard to resolve. A ten minute exposure @ISO 1600, the spiral arms became visible. Stacking three 10 minute exposure and more details can be seen. I am only limited by my telescope size as an 80mm scope is not really designed for targets this faint.

A closer look at Cygnus with 85mm f1.8

Deep Sky objects at Cygnus Constellation and some "air glow" not Aurora.

Nikon D610 + EQ-3 Sysncan mount

When humidity levels are too high after a thunderstorm, dew forming on the main objective of the scope is a major problem of any astro -imager.  And that is what exactly happened on my imaging session one night at Saskatchewans Cypress Hills Inter-provincial Park. So i have to pack up the scope and use a normal DSLR lens instead, mounted on a tracking mount i was still able to take pictures of the sky on a wider view. The Nikkor 85mm f1.8 lens proved to be an excellent astro lens. Corner sharpness are excellent even wide open and coma is very negligible. When used on a tracking mount, f1.8 is even too much. I had to stop down to f2.8 to avoid over exposure, or  just adjust the ISO but sometimes i can be lazy. =D

Cypress Hills Dark Sky Preserve

June 20 2015

The Lagoon Nebula (M8)

The Lagoon Nebula (M8) and Trifid Nebula (M20)

Nikon 610 + Skywatcher ED80

Skywatcher EQ-3 Synscan + Orion Autoguider 

10 minutes x 3 @ iso 3200 

Stacked in Photoshop

 Finally after weeks of waiting, i finally had another chance to re-visit a real dark sky preserve here in Western Canada, the Cypress Hills Inter-provincial Park. A four hour drive from the city, this park boasts one of the darkest skies in North America. We stayed for three nights but only on the last night i was able to get lucky when there was hardly any wind, cloud and the humidity was at acceptable levels. I wasted no time setting up my scope at the first sight of Polaris and at around 1 a.m when the Milky Way is high enough on the horizon, i slewed the scope towards the constellation of Sagittarius  and did a 10 minute initial exposure. I was elated with the results. The Lagoon Nebula stood out  clearly amidst the sea of stars on my camera screen.
I was able to take twenty more minutes of exposure for a total of thirty as i wanted to image other subjects before the skies get too light .

My Orion Starshoot Autoguider was working wonderfully that night, keeping my mount slow and steady. Dew became a problem later at around 2 a.m so i had to resort on using my wife's hair dryer on the main scope and autoguider.

It was an exhausting 3 days with hardly any sleep at night. The first day dew was such a big problem that i had to pack up the scope. The second night was still very wet with humidity but i had a fan heater to combat the dew, however my autoguider was going nuts that night. The third and last night was the best. Mother nature just cooperated.

This shot is a widefield shot of the  Lagoon Nebula or known as Messier 8 (M8) and on the upper right corner is the equally beautiful Trifid Nebula (M20).