Fall 2006 Photo Gallery

This semester we tried a few new things, bringing the 8" f/4 Meade LXD75 into the mix on some of the later photos. I've also bought Noel Carboni's Astronomy Actions for Photoshop and begun climbing with the sharp end of the rope, belaying up my students with each pitch (how's that for some rockclimber lingo!). Actions are a great feature in Photoshop. We had some enthusiastic students and were lucky enough to have a quite beautiful comet grace the evening sky for weeks in October and November. This gallery will grow as more students finish their projects. Well done, gang! All images below were dark subtracted, flat fielded and single-shot color converted using sRGB+gamma in CCDOPS5, stacked in Registax 3, and post-processed in Photoshop as described. Final images were reduced from 16bit TIFF to 'save for web' jpegs, using 72 pixels/inch and quality such as to keep the full size image to less than 200K in size. All imaging was done from Cabrillo Observatory.

Comet SWAN. Aaron got this beautiful image of the comet on Oct 26 from Cabrillo Observatory using the 8" f/4 LXD75 and ST2000XCM. The comet was about magnitude 4.5. Chip temperature -30C, a 5x5min stack tracked on the comet itself. The overexposed head make for a bit of a shakey stack, as you can see by the stars following a bit of a wandering path. This was shortly after the comet had an major outburst, raising its brightness by a factor of 4 and producing a beautiful gas tail, glowing in blue due to cyanogen emission. Dark subtracted and flat fielded in CCDOPS5, stacked in Registax 3. Despeckled, cropped, contrast adjust, and 'smart sharpen'ed in Photoshop CS2.

Comet SWAN. Oct 26. Ingrid had more luck in stacking her 6x5min set taken right after Aaron's at left. Notice that the better stacking led to more delicate detail coming out in the tail. Beautiful image! and from light polluted Cabrillo Observatory with a 30% cresent moon not far away. The comet was close to earth and moving rapidly, hence the need to stack on the comet itself. In hindsight, I should've recommended a 2 or 3 minute exposure length to better bring out detail in the tail.

Gamma Cygni Emission Complex. Sept 22 under moonless skies. Jennifer made this 3x5min stack from Cabrillo Observatory with the Megrez 80mm f/6 refractor and ST2000XCM. A remarkably fine image given the faintness of the nebula and being at Cabrillo Observatory. Post-processed in Photoshot CS2 with curves, despeckle, slight saturation enhancement to bring out star colors.

The Veil Nebula. Nov 10. 6x5min stack, marred by some fogging on the corrector plate of the 8" f/4 Meade LXD75 reflector, and perhaps a bit of cirrus cloud and the waning gibbous moon behind the eastern hill at Cabrillo College. Correct stacking was difficult. Post processing in Photoshop CS2: smart sharpen, curves, despeckle. For such a faint nebula, it turned out very well under difficult conditions.

The Iris Nebula in Cepheus. Aaron tried a more challenging object here. This small dust nebula requires excellent seeing and guiding for our rather wide field optics. 3x5min stack on Oct 27 with the 8" f/4 Meade LXD75 scope and ST2000XCM. 32%+ moon was 4 degrees up for the first exposure. Cropped, curved, despeckled, and slightly color saturation enhanced in Photoshop CS2. Sized and JPEG'd for the web as final step.

Iris Nebula Redux. Now, here's the previous image but this time additionally run through Astronomy Actions: 'make stars smaller','space noise reduction' and 'color blotch reduction', then re-curved in Photoshop CS2, and size/jpg'd for uploading. Much improved!

Moon. Nate started with an image I took of the moon and had some fun with it in Photoshop. What were you smokin', man?

Moon. Francisco went with a less psychodelic look for this straight up image of the region south of Copernicus and the lunar Apeninnes

The Pinwheel Galaxy M33. C.J. Nugent processed this exquisite image of the galaxy M33. I did a little final touching up with Astro Tools actions, but the starting stack 3x5min was already looking very nice. Good work, C.J.!

The Pacman Nebula. Dominic processed this 3x5min stack of this very faint nebula. Close up, it's clearly over amp'ed, but at small scale it looks nice!

Veil Nebula. Jason did this image of the eastern side of the Veil Nebula, 3x5min stack, pumping up the color and playing with the color balance. I did a re-crop and also ran it through Astro Tools actions 2x 'make stars smaller'.

Moon. Nicole created this image of the Copernicus region, with a bit of solarizing in Photoshop.