Category Archives: Photography

AstroBlog 2019.008.2 – Jupiter with a Celestron NexStar 4SE and an iPhone

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As mentioned in my previous post (AstroBlog 2019.008.1 – Saturn with a Celestron NexStar 4SE and an iPhone), I went out on July 12 with my son’s Celestron NexStar 4SE, stock alt-az mount and tripod, iPhone XS Max, 25mm plossl, and the Celestron NexYZ phone adapter.

As with the shots of Saturn, I started with single frames of Jupiter. Settings were f/1.8 (set by iPhone hardware), ISO 24 to avoid blowing out the planet’s details, and a simple 1/10th of a second duration:

Cropped, you can see some details:

I doubled the ISO to 50, same duration:

And cropped again:

There seems to be a bit more detail in the top half, but less detail in the bottom. Then again, on a 4″ scope wiht my iPhone, I’ll take it! 🙂

For the second part of my processing, I worked with a 3 minute video, ~1900 frames:

Initially, I tried working with PIPP and then Autostakkert but it is REALLY hard to process the image when it wants you to place little place markers on the image — in fact, it tells you NOT to try it for planetary items. I told it to find its own, the auto option, but it only found 7 (it wants a minimum of 24):

I manually added another 14 to get to 21. In the end, not sure it was worth it:

I tried again, this time with some quality control built in, and with only keeping the best 40% of images, and again with 7 placemarkers:

Cropped, still not sure there’s much else there:

I tried it again with 40% of the best images plus 29 separate place marks, and got this:

Cropped, I get this:

More work, but it seems fainter to me, less detailed.

Finally, I tried processing it in Nebulosity, which is almost a sucker’s game for planets. First, it won’t take videos, so I processed it in PIPP first (noise filter, stabilised for planetary images, object detection, centred the object, rotated it 90 degrees counterclockwise, quality estimation and reordering by quality, output as individual TIFF files) and then opened them in Nebulosity. Second, Nebulosity is NOT designed for planetary stuff at this resolution as it wants me to identify and click on features that are all blurred most of the time. Plus, I’d have to manually process EVERY frame of the ~1900+ frames. I tried that in auto mode but it just blurred everything out. I tried a second time, focusing on the best 50 or so images of the first 400 based on a quality estimate by PIPP, then let it stack them, cropped it down to something usable, and finally ended up with this:

While they’re all interesting, I feel like I barely improved in a couple of them beyond what I had in the single frame shot! But I’m learning at least…I think.

An online friend took a stab at processing my videos and got this:

Which looked like one of my early results too.

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AstroBlog 2019.008.1 – Saturn with a Celestron NexStar 4SE and an iPhone

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My son recently acquired a Celestron NexStar 4SE in June, and on July 12th, the night was looking a bit clear. He was heading to bed but gave me permission to play with his scope. Alignment worked perfectly, I tried for a few things to see, etc. And that was my intent — solely to test the alignment and take a peek at the moon and planets.

Except I was curious how it would fare with my iPhone for simple astrophotography. I captured the images and video, but then I let them sit in my folders for a bit. So much so that when I finally did start playing with them, I totally forgot they were taken on the 4SE, not my standard 8SE. I was a bit disappointed with my processing, but when I realized earlier today they were all on the 4SE, my expectations changed!

So the equipment was a Celestron NexStar 4SE, with stock alt-az mount and tripod not set in wedge mode, iPhone XS Max, 25mm plossl, and the Celestron NexYZ phone adapter. By the time I started imaging, the moon had set behind the neighbour’s house, so I was focused on planets.

First up is the first single image. Camera settings were f/1.8 (hardset in the phone), ISO24 so it isn’t overblown, and duration of 1/9s. I took a series of them with a remote shutter release to prevent shaking. The result is a little faint, but something there that is clearly Saturn.

Cropping it makes the image a little clearer:

The best one of the set of 55 images is this one:

Cropped and flipped, it looks like this:

I tried stacking the photos using Affinity, with noise reduction, keeping 75% of the images, and this is what I got:

I took a video file too that night:

If I take that video, and run it through the astro programs PIPP and Autostakkert, with stacking, cropping, brightening, etc., I end up with this:

A different set of settings, without the brightening, game me this:

If I push that through Registax and play with basic wavelets and brightening, I get this:

The video file has 1200 images/frames, so it should be showing me way more data, but I’m not that great at processing yet.

I wanted to go back and try a stack in Nebulosity 4 (which an online friend uses with great success for DSOs), even though it is not able to handle videos plus it isn’t necessarily the best option for processing planets. Nevertheless, I force-fed it the 55 images, normalized them, culled for quality, and then stacked the final 45 images. This is the result:

Which an online friend took, downloaded, and re-colorized to be a bit more “normal” for Saturn, to give me this:

And another friend did this off the original video:

The stacking options of PIPP/Autostakkert with 1200 frames gave me almost the same outcome as Nebulosity with 45 images. Overall, I’ll settle for either one for an early effort, whether it was with a 4SE or the 8SE. Auspicious progress.

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AstroBlog 2019.005.3 – Imaging the stars

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After capturing Jupiter and the moon on June 11th, I tried for a couple of stars. I seem to need to boost my ISO and turn down duration. For all photos, I’m using:

  • Celestron NexStar 8SE
  • 25mm plossl
  • iPhone XS Max, f/1.8 lens
  • Night Cap software

For Antares, I used ISO 5000 and 1/3s for duration. Not great, but a start:

For the second star, I have a note that says it was Polaris as a double-star with one in behind, but I’m not positive that was what I ended up imaging. ISO 8000, 1/4s for duration.

And since my wife loved Antares twinkling and shifting, I tried a short video of it. Not the best, will definitely need some work.

But at least the moon and Jupiter are coming along.

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AstroBlog 2019.005.2 – Imaging the Moon

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Continuing my imaging attempts on June 11th, I did some more of the moon from my backyard. All of the images are single frames with the iPhone, only flipped horizontally (I have a diagonal so have to flip the image to get it “right” looking). For all photos, I’m using:

  • Celestron NexStar 8SE
  • 25mm plossl
  • iPhone XS Max, f/1.8 lens
  • Night Cap software

Settings of ISO 24 and 1/250s were the sweet spot for me for the night given the brightness of the moon. I did a series of single frames, and this was the best:

Then, because I had a series, I tried stacking them in various software packages. This was the best one I got, but way too pale, will need to work on that if I want to get true 3D depth in some of the images.

For fun, I used the zoom feature on the iPhone just to see what I would get, and I took three shots, capturing the craters Plato, Copernicus and Tycho. From the original, I even played with creating a map and then the three breakout images (note that in the map, the three images are not crops but actual full images that follow):

Plato, left of centre:

Copernicus in bottom right:

And Tycho in the top centre (with the small round mountain in the centre):

My workflow seems to be working well for the moon shots at least, so I should be able to do some documenting of various features for different days of the lunar cycle. Might take a few months I suppose, but should be fun.

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AstroBlog 2019.005.1 – Imaging Jupiter

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Back on June 11th, I did some more testing of my imaging capabilities in my backyard, going for Jupiter initially. All of the images are single frames with the iPhone, only lightly tweaked in various edit photos and flipped horizontally (I have a diagonal so have to flip the image to get it “right” looking). For all photos, I’m using:

  • Celestron NexStar 8SE
  • 25mm plossl
  • iPhone XS Max, f/1.8 lens
  • Night Cap software

The first image is okay, and I’d love to know what the settings were, but for some reason, the EXIF data didn’t save it. I have no idea why, I didn’t change anything and all the others record it. Some banding, plus a visible moon.

If I crop it, not much different but the black doesn’t overwhelm it as much.

For the next batch, I set my ISO to 24 and then I played with duration a bit.

Starting at 4s (remember it stacks a series of images for anything over 1/2s):

With cropping:

When I dropped to 1/50s (i.e. .02s), here’s what I got:

I then took a series of three at 1/125s:

I’m pretty happy with those as basic intro to the workflow, early days for trying, and single frames. Most people having a lot of success with the iPhone (or Android for that matter) on imaging planets are doing videos and then ripping and stacking them. All things considered, I’m pretty happy. The low ISO keeps the planet from washing out, although I lose the moons of course.

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Photo organizers

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After playing around with some Photo editors, I realized that some of the functionality I was hoping for at a slightly higher level was in fact more for a photo organizer / management program than an editor. So now I’m going down a different rabbit hole looking at free ones.

First up, surprisingly, is Adobe Bridge. I say surprisingly because I just blew all the old copies of all Adobe products OFF my system, so why would I download it? Well, just to try it. And I’m underwhelmed. It’s okay, and if I was into tagging or keywords, sure. One thing it does REALLY well is handle metadata. There’s even a view mode i.e. kind of like details in a file listing where you have about eight columns of metadata with dates, times, keywords, ratings, etc. Not bad, but nothing I really need. Pass.

Now, with the behemoth out of the way, I am moving on to XNViewMP, one that I am really interested in. I have already used XNView in the past, nowhere near using the full power of the tool, and this version is the upgrade. Heck, I’m impressed when I get to the first folder of files. It shows me it in “preview” thumbnail mode, but below each photo is a bunch of EXIF data. Fantastic. Different “views” show different info, but the default includes dates, sizes, and then lens mm (irrelevant for the iPhone ones), f stop, exposure duration, and ISO. Sweet. File conversions to other formats are built in, which is useful for comics and memes in making them all JPGs (better for sharing on social media). And BAM! it allows me to flip horizontal too, without changing the quality or file size. Double sweet. Let’s see what else it can do.

Change thumbnail size, occasionally useful. Add tags and ratings, doubtful (although the ratings are nice — six levels of excellent to poor, but also separated from the tags which allow for personal / work / etc.). Resizing for email, always useful. Upload, probably not the tool I’ll use. Some GPS work that I’ll probably ignore (I try to turn it off on my photos). Oooh, nice, I can edit the EXIF thumbnail, which annoys me sometimes with not matching the proper orientation. I like it.

Oh, interesting, there is even a decent screen capture option with a built-in delay so you can tab over to get it looking right on your screen. It could even tell when I told it to look that I had a webpage over in Firefox and gave me the option to capture just that. Sweet Jesus, this thing has some features I never even knew I needed! Including a CREATE function for file listings, contact sheets, a banner even…wow. This software is downright awesome. I’m in love. Now, if it would only let me do a bunch of internal editing. 🙂 Okay, okay, that’s not the point of this post. Just saying. Oh, and it does a bunch of other things including batch processing, most of which I can do in my file explorer, so not as critical.

While I’m already in love with the XN software, I thought I would check out its cousins:

  • XNConvert — I didn’t see any reason to download this, as XNView already includes conversion. But not like this…every mask / filter / tweak you ever thought of doing, you can do in this batch tool. Denoise, blur, crop even. I don’t know when or if I would ever use it, but it’s a lot of power at once.
  • XNRetro — allows you in theory to provide just a bunch of filter looks to existing photos, but it actually does more than that…you can adjust brightness, contrast, colours, etc. all manually too in a VERY simple interface. I tried it on my darker-than-desired shot of Jacob inside a tube slide, and although 20 retro looks/colours, 15 lightings, 5 vignettes, and 30 frames later and it wasn’t really doing anything for me, it is still nice to have, and free, so might as well leave it installed. I could play with brightness, contrast, etc. myself, not really the point of looking for simple “out of the box” adjustments though. Weird that it runs as a standalone file, i.e. doesn’t need to be installed. Could probably run it from a USB key if you wanted to.
  • XNSketch — allows you to convert your photo into something like a sketch or oil painting. Nothing awesome, although I confess I thought the photocopy effect looked the most realistic of a bad photocopy from the past. Okay to leave it installed, nothing exciting when trying it on a pic of Jacob and Andrea. However, I did a sketch version of my telescope setup and it is pretty sharp. Definitely some interesting possibilities for the future.
  • XNShell — by installing this, it adds a bunch of the functionality of XNView to my context (right click) menus in file explorer or my replacement program. Including horizontal flips. Nice.

I almost don’t need to continue, I already have success! But okay, why not?

I’ll give StudioLine Photo Basic 4 the next test slot. Okay, weird startup. It wants to save its data in C:\StudioLine. Why would it think anyone would want it in the C:\ root as opposed to under \Data or \Documents or \Pictures? Or even \user\blah blah blah. Whatever. Okay, time for abandonment. Like a few of the other classic “managers”, it wants you to import everything into a database. I don’t have time for that, I’m modifying locations and files on the fly. The database just can’t keep up. I played with a few settings, and almost nothing was intuitive to me. Pass, uninstall.

FastStone Image Viewer has a simpler interface, very clean and clear. Easy to navigate because it looks like a file manager. A few clicks, and I can flip pics horizontally with lossless JPEG format. Resizing for email or other purposes is pretty easy, with option to just copy and save to another folder. All of it from the right-click / context menu. I tried full view mode, which was a good option. And from that view, taking my mouse all the way to the left pulls up a sidebar-like set of menus (resizing, files, rotations, colors, effects); going to the top gives you a filmstrip of other files; going to the bottom is a navigator menu with the most used options from the main menu I think; and over to the right gives you all the EXIF data. My scroll wheel takes me to the next photo in the filmstrip. There’s a crop and heal function for a shirt with a stain, but I’m no artist at fixing blendings. Lighting adjustments on a dark pic of Jacob on a tube slide were pretty basic. And it has options to create Contact Sheets, etc. Overall? A pretty good tool. But doesn’t do anything that XNViewMP can’t do, and most not as well. Pass, uninstalling.

Moving on to Magix Photo Manager. On the install, I normally accept default installs, but for these, I’m afraid things are going to change my Picture File Associations, so I’m going custom. And this one? It was going to install something called Music Maker too (for soundtracks for videos)? No warnings, not a question, just extra bloat to install by default. Not impressed. Equally, there was a bloatware program called SimplyClean…default in custom was NOT to install, wonder what default was in regular install. I hate software that does that. Not many options that I want for stuff. However, it does have an option for basic facial recognition, which could be useful, but it didn’t seem to recognize Andrea or Jacob in two photos taken seconds apart. Pass, uninstall. Except after I was done, there were three extra remnants left that I had to uninstall manually. I don’t know if it’s malware, or what, but seriously unimpressed.

Apowersoft Photo Viewer was next on my list. It was pretty basic, and it really was mostly a viewer, but even the basic editing didn’t integrate well. Nothing to write home about, pass/uninstall.

Nomacs Image Lounge. The program did nothing for me, nothing to make it stand out. But I would remiss in mentioning that it has a basic Mosaic option I haven’t seen in any other program i.e. take a photo, tell it a batch of other photos, and have it create a mosaic by arranging tiles of all the other photos into the shape of the original. I tried it with a basic print of the moon, and only a handful of images for it to work with, but it turned out well enough for me to keep it as an option to try some other time with much more complicated inputs.

Okay, so what’s next. DigiKam. Okay…oops, it says I have it already installed. Not promising if I don’t even remember still having it. Well, at least I can update to the latest version, right? Okay, so I have no idea what’s going on. In my folder for Pictures, I have one called Working, and in it I have the batch I’m playing with called B1 as the folder. Digikam won’t show it to me. It won’t even show me it exists. Okaaay, so I went to my sub-folder that has my latest imports in it. Nada, doesn’t like that folder either. There are four or five sub-folders under it, but even with REFRESHING the folder, it doesn’t do squat. Trying to import the folder or files doesn’t help either. WTF? Okay, well bye bye, thanks for coming out. Oh, wait, it comes with another program called ShowFoto. Which kind of does the same stuff as other organizers, but not well. Okay, enough time wasted. Uninstalling. I think I only had it in there because it handles RAW. And then, wtf, the importing of a folder created some sort of recursion within the folder. 10K files duplicated, and 20GB of data later, it looked like there was no end. So I zapped the directory. Yikers. No idea what that was about. But definitely glad I removed it.

Well, I’m going to keep plowing ahead. I tweaked my anti-virus and anti-malware and my firewalls to max, even though I already had it on high alert and was only downloading based on high-end sites reviewing the software and certifying it safe to try.

Photo QT Image Viewer is next up. A fairly decent photo viewer. With an odd “transparency” model built in to see the apps running behind it. In full pic mode, I can lock the metadata info bar on the left, decent layout. But nothing exceptional, and XNViewMP blows it away by a mile. Moving on, uninstalling.

And last, but not least, is WildBit Viewer. The viewer was basic except when it comes to EXIF / metadata — it had it laid out in SPADES. Almost worth it to keep it just for that. But most of that I never use beyond the basics. The editor is decent, but when I saved a flipped image, it dropped the size by 30%. Nope, can’t have that. Okay, I’m done. Bye bye.

Looks like XNViewMP was the clear winner. Good to know. And soon I’ll have all the bases covered. Now I want to see what’s out there for facial recognition and mosaics.

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Photo editors

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Since I’m getting into the whole AstroPhotography thing, at least insofar as I’m doing iPhone stuff at the eyepiece, I decided I would play with some software to see how easily I could stack some stuff. Although I’m mainly interested in single-frame stuff, planets are proving elusive for single frames. So I went with what I already had installed, and didn’t have a lot of luck out of the gate.

But I began to wonder if I’m jumping too far ahead. Interestingly, I noticed I was having troubles even with just basic photo processing. While I had an old unreliable version of Photoshop, Lightroom, and even Photo Essentials, I’ve never liked what they do to my photo organization. I want something that does what I tell it to do, and nothing else — so I blew all three of the Adobe products off. I can always put them back if I need the power, but for now, gone with the wind.

Designing a test batch

I decided I’d play with two sets of files. First are my moon shots from a few nights ago — they all need flipping left to right (horizontal). Second is a photo from a few years ago with Andrea and Jacob, and it’s a great shot except for a stain on her shirt. I cropped around it previously, but the shot is decent, so I’d like to just remove the blemish so to speak.

Starting the product review

I tried PhotoScape X, which was from the Windows store. I’m a little worried it doesn’t even seem to show up in my “installed files”, yet it is indeed installed. Individual photo editing seems non-intuitive, but I loved the viewer mode — it let me, for example, provide a horizontal flip on all of my moon photos in one go without reducing the file size, something other apps seem to mess with or requires me to do it one at a time. I might keep it around just for that, unless I can’t find something else I want to keep that has that functionality too. $52 if I want to upgrade to pro mode though. But the simple photo editing seemed complicated — I couldn’t even figure out how to get back to a simple pencil / paint brush editing tool.

Next up to try is inPixio Photo Clip 9, which is a free photo editor. Although as it turns out, it isn’t actually free. Almost all of the good functionality is reserved for the premium version, which is $30-$40 Canadian. Seemed too simple in format, with many missing obvious functions even for a quick touch-up. Except the photo eraser and photo cutter work fine. Not quite what I’m looking for, but an interesting set of features. I’m not a big fan of crippleware, so I uninstalled.

I tried DarkTable which was billed as a good RAW editor and manager, which was fine, but again, the interface didn’t wow me. I did manage to figure out how to do some spot removal on some photos, but nothing else about the tool excited me. And since I’m rarely using RAW right now, I uninstalled, and moved on.

Another popular one is Affinity. It’s not free, runs about $50, but it has a free trial, so why not try it? Well, for one thing, as soon as I loaded it, it told me there was a newer version. Really? Why didn’t it check that before installing? Okay, whatever. And of course there are a bunch of pop-ups. Ads for a workbook to buy. Sales on iPad versions. Try the Designer companion app for free. Save on everything in the store. Or just buy it outright. Grrr…so I got past the ads, it IS a trial version after all, and under the menu, the first thing I see is an option to do a stack. I have three pics of Jupiter that are sitting in my trial zone, so I tried it. Straight-through, no problem, stacked! Complete with adjustments, slight rotations, nicely done. It’s a little washed out when done, but I don’t think that’s the program’s fault.

I played with the stacking on two sets of Jupiter images, did okay. Tried it on a batch of moon images, there’s no “best of” option, it just did its best to include all of them. Final image was okay, but a bit blurry, which isn’t much worse than the originals. It would do in a pinch.

I switched over to the picture with the stain, and while I have no real talent, I could make it work well enough with various brushes and tools to get it to look like the stain was gone without leaving a giant colour difference in the same spot. Not awesome, but that is the painter, not the brush.

I had one more “backup” picture to play with. Taken the same day as the shirt photo, it has Jacob inside a tube slide, and while one or two of the shots at the top of the slide are okay, inside the tube it is VERY dark and almost impossible to see his face. More like a silhouette in a couple of shots, which were easily discarded. It’s far from an amazing shot, just playing with perspective and it didn’t work out. But, I opened the file, played with a bunch of preset lighting options, and after a bit of trial and error, I managed to get the colour down, the light up, the contrast showing, and it’s an usable shot. Not worth the effort, he’s too pale by the time I’m done, but there are other options I could perhaps try and get a better outcome, lighting up some areas but not others perhaps. Nevertheless, it worked. Decent tool.

And, finally, I opened something called the BATCH MODE, and it lets me do a bunch of macros including taking a bunch of files and changing the format, as well as a series of macros (converting to sRGB, stripping metadata, converting to black and white, and HELLO, flipping horizontally). Nice.

I am BARELY scratching the surface of this software and it already can do everything I want. The stacking isn’t amazing, but I’ve got astro software to do that. We have ourselves a contender, even at $50. And if you had a complicated workflow that was streamlined, you can record it as a macro. Sweet.

Next on my list is the everlasting Paint.Net. No, not quite the old Windows program, although lots of people have thought so. Will it do the job? Sure. But so will Windows Photos. And nothing in batch mode. Pass.

Also on my list was Photo Pos Pro v3, yet another free photo editor. After launching, it asked me if I wanted the PRO interface or the Novice interface. Yes, this is a good level question for me. 🙂 Novice it is. But then it asks me about my preference for colour schemes — classic / bright, high contrast (dark background), or silver. High contrast it is. So I played with the order this time…I started with the dark slide photo. One series of “AUTO FIX” options later for brightness and I got everything I got earlier. For the stain, I could probably get better at it, but it wasn’t awesome tool design, even in pro mode. But they have something called a “recovery brush”, and without knowing more about it, just gave it a go. It literally removed the stain and left the underlying shirt the matching colour nearby. Like a facial blemish removal tool, but there was a separate one for that. Decently done. For the “batch” mode, though, I found two problems. First, I tried switching between novice and pro mode, and to do so, it says you have to first save the image, and asks you if you want to save with three options: YES, NO, CANCEL. Presumably you should be able to say no, i.e. you don’t want to save, you just want to switch, but no works the same as cancel, you just go back to the same screen without changing modes. I had to close, say no to saving, and then reopen after switching. That’s just silly. Second, to get into batch mode, it has a great menu offering you the chance to add a bunch of scripts to run and add a list of files to process. But there’s no indication of where to find the scripts or how to create them (like a macro). Some decent tools, and since it’s free, I’m tempted to leave it installed.

Saving the big boy for last

For anyone who has ever looked at free photo software, the big boy on the block is Gimp. Short for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, Gimp has been around a long time. And I have never liked it.

Too complicated, too bloated, didn’t like the interface. I’ve downloaded it in Linux versions, Windows versions, you name it, I’ve tried it and despite being free, I have ALWAYS uninstalled it. But someone whose methods I’m trying to emulate often tweaks his final astro photos in Gimp, so I thought I would give it a try again.

As soon as I open it, I remember why I don’t like it. The User Interface is ugly and unfriendly. But I digress.

The stain on the shirt? Able to be removed with the healing brush. Took me a second to find it, but just layout issues, not a design flaw.

The dark slide shot? I couldn’t figure out to easily make the changes. I could make some, but beyond that, not so much.

Stacking? Not really relevant, but sure, I could do it as layers, manually.

And no “batch” processing mode to flip a bunch of photos horizontally. Sigh.

I wish I liked Gimp, I really do wish it. But I just plain don’t.

A backup question

So, if one of the things I want to do is batch process some images, like flipping them horizontally, is a photo editor even what I’m looking for? I do have XNView installed, which is a viewer and organizer. And it will let me select multiple images, convert them even to other formats (I have a bunch of GIF comics that I flip into JPGs before sharing on FB, for instance), and while I have only used the program for conversions, I realized that it does let me do a series of basic tweaks, like flipping. Through lossless JPGs. Which makes me wonder about some of the other processing? Should I have been looking for a better view and organizer rather than an editor?

And the XN group have other tools…like XNConvert which does even more than the viewer does, and also free. XNRetro adjusts lighting. And for no reason that I need, XNSketch will convert your photo into a cartoon version. Me thinks I have another category to look through before moving on to Astro processing tools.

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AstroBlog 2019.004.9 Imaging Nebulae – Scope, iPhone and 25mm plossl

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When I bought my new iPhone, I chose one that would allow me to do astrophotography with my telescope. If you’ve been seeing my last few posts, you see some of the results. The moon was easy. Planets? Not so much, but I’ll get there, even if I have to use filters or stack some images or shoot video. Stars are not as easy as I hoped, still getting a lot of blurry results on the bright ones. But as per my last post, I was able to get globular clusters. I had high hopes for that, as I got something previously with my wife’s iPhone 6 plus and the default software; with my new iPhone and Night Cap software, I knew I would “get there” eventually, just was pleasantly surprised to get there on the first real go at it. I still need to hone my technique, but it’s good enough for me for now. I took a shot at Ceres to try an asteroid, but well, I’m not likely to do much on that in the short or even long-term.

Which leaves me two outstanding targets, and the ones that the astrophotographers who use webcams and DSLRs manage to accomplish daily — a galaxy and a nebula. Galaxies only ever look like faint fuzzies to me, particularly in my light polluted skies of a suburb in the city, and I’ve never really done a true dark sky location. But nebulae? I’ve seen them. Orion was easy, the Veil popped when I used a filter. So I know I *CAN* see nebula, but I wasn’t optimistic I would get much easily with my phone setup. But I gave it a go. I’ll share it in numerical order in the Messier catalog.

First to share is one of the ones that I am most proud about, and super excited. M8 aka the Lagoon Nebula has some amazing colour in it when you do some long-exposure shots with high-end setups. But you know what? A 10s exposure at ISO 9216 also gave me a bit of colour (top centre, a bit of red to the right):

Holy doodles! I did it! Still need to work on my technique, and it would be better without the suburban light pollution or the moon overlighting the sky, but I got it! I’d like to thank the academy for this honour…hehehe. Mostly I should thank my friend Loren who inspired me with his shots and advice on an active FB group. But I’m not done! Here is M8 again, with even MORE colour, although a bit fuzzy too. Remember this is a single frame exposure, not complicated stacking or retouching in any software:

M16, the Eagle Nebula, shows only a bit of a faint glow, so maybe I shouldn’t get completely cocky yet:

M17, the Swan Nebula, looks like a smudge:

Here it is again, but ooh, I managed to centre the smudge (hey, I’ll take what I can get for success):

I confess that I saw these in reverse order i.e. the smudges before the Lagoon ones with colour, so it was more of a build-up for me. I was like, “Okay, well, there’s something there, and if I stare long enough, I can imagine a bit of colour. It’s promising at least.” M20, the Trifid Nebula showed up as only a faint glow/fuzziness:

And because I was still a bit cocky, I also tried for an open cluster nebula, NGC6572. Nada.

But did I mention the first one had some colour? 🙂

All in all, I’m ecstatic about the night. My first real night going hard-core on everything, and I was doing a huge star tour all at once, not taking my time with specific objects or fine tuning. About a minute an object at most. I tossed about 40% of the images I took, too rushed, too many star trails, etc. But considering I was trying for nebula and clusters, losing 40% is pretty amazing, normally you’d lose about 90% or more with the first shots. I’m not going to be featured on the Astronomy Picture of the Day anytime soon, or well, ever, but I’m accomplishing what I wanted. Souvenir shots of my observing. I’ll definitely accept these as “mission accomplished!” any night of the week.

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AstroBlog 2019.004.8 Imaging Globular Clusters – Scope, iPhone and 25mm plossl

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I love viewing globular clusters — big giant collections of stars all together. Although they tend to be bright, when I tried to image them on my old Android phone, it couldn’t even DETECT any light coming in from them. I did get one image from my wife’s old iPhone 6 Plus a year ago (ISO 7200, 10s, f/2.2):

So I knew it was possible. And with my new iPhone, these globulars were high on my imaging list, but I honestly didn’t know what to expect. For Messier 4, I tried ISO 9200 and a 10s burst, which didn’t turn out too shabby:

M5 with the same settings was much more compact and bright:

For Messier 9, I bumped ISO to 10K, still 10s, and it is easily found, albeit a bit faint:

For Messier 10, I continued at ISO 10K, 10s burst, but I did it twice about 90 minutes apart:

A little better contrast in the second, but not a huge difference. I did the same with M12, although the second image wasn’t quite as bright:

M13 showed up really bright, but also a bit fuzzy (ignore the red circle, it’s a flashlight remnant):

M14 was really faint:

M19 was small and compact:

I liked M22 as well, even if I was getting some red light from my flashlight intruding on the image:

M56 seemed super faint, but it was still recognizable:

M80 is REALLY compact and tight, almost looks like a ball:

M107 was faint and a bit fuzzy:

Moving into the NGC catalog, there are five in the list…6293:

6304, including the red flashlight problem again:

6316, so small and faint:

And 6356, again with it being small and faint, and some red flashlight intrusion:

6712 is one I liked because it is so faint yet I still managed to capture something:

Finally, I have one of an open spiral cluster, and even though I normally don’t find open clusters that interesting, you can see the lines that make up the arms of the spirals:

So a bunch of globular clusters in there, and most of them turned out. I wasn’t being particularly meticulous, just trying them out to get going, but I’m really happy with the outcomes.

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AstroBlog 2019.004.7 Imaging Stars and Asteroids – Scope, iPhone and 25mm plossl

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I tried imaging some stars, and I thought it would be relatively straight-forward. People online basically tell you to use a magnifying glass to look at your phone screen, zoom in, make sure they are pinpoints, and BAM! You’re good to go.

I’ve always loved looking at Antares, and the way it twinkles red, gold, and blue at times. It was putting on a show on Saturday the 8th, and my wife loved it. I tried imaging it later at ISO 2304 (why?) and a duration of 10s (a setting a friend online has had a lot of success with). Anyway, it did NOT turn out like my wife was used to seeing it:

I tried to grab Polaris too with a 10s duration, but for some idiotic reason, I forgot to put the ISO back down to normal and instead it went at 9000+:

And finally, just for fun, I tried for Ceres. You know, the asteroid. My friend online has a well-honed process and a much clearer scope and skies, and he does tons of asteroids, so I thought I would try it for 10s at ISO 8000:

There are a few dots just above the one in the centre at the bottom, likely too faint unless you zoom in, and according to Stellarium, that’s about where Ceres should be for the time of the picture. Maybe, maybe not.

Certainly none of them stellar examples…

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