arminmanhard
... and What the Telescope Saw
This is the other half of a pair of images, which were recently created on a beautiful Saturday night, with a barbecue with friends from the Volkssternwarte München on the side. For the other image, see: Where the Telescope Looked...
This was the main course of the evening: NGC7380, also known as the Wizard Nebula, in the constellation Cepheus. It is one of the of the better recognizable shapes of all the nebulae out there. I had seen many beautiful examples of this object here on Flickr, and thought it would be framed nicely on the telescope and camera I had available here. Indeed, I think the framing turned out well!
In contrast to many other images of this object, this one was taken without any filters with a color camera, i.e., it's what the eye could see if it could see colours at night, and if it could do long exposures. Accordingly, the stars appear very dominant here, since they are not suppressed by narrowband filters. But I think it gives the image its own appeal and offsets it a bit form the others. Let's just imagine the many stars are the sparkles set off by the Wizard's magic! Also, I still find it fascinating what wonders you can wrestle from the light-polluted Munich downtown sky with (moderate!) digital post-processing.
Image information:
Acquisition: 345x 30s
Camera: ASI 294 MC Pro, Gain 120, Brightness 30
Acquisition software: SharpCap Pro, live stacking mode with sigma clipping and digital gradient reduction
Correction: 256x flats with flat-darks, 120x darks
Filters: none
Telescope: Meade LX200 16" Schmidt-Cassegrain, f/10
Reducer: Starizona SC corrector, x0.63
Effective focal length: 2524 mm
Mount: custom-built, stationary equatorial mount, no guiding
Post-processing:
SiRiL: Photometric calibration with plate solving, fine background removal, first de-noising step
Fitswork: sharpening, wavelet noise reduction
Luminar 2018: final touch (sharpening, saturation)
... and What the Telescope Saw
This is the other half of a pair of images, which were recently created on a beautiful Saturday night, with a barbecue with friends from the Volkssternwarte München on the side. For the other image, see: Where the Telescope Looked...
This was the main course of the evening: NGC7380, also known as the Wizard Nebula, in the constellation Cepheus. It is one of the of the better recognizable shapes of all the nebulae out there. I had seen many beautiful examples of this object here on Flickr, and thought it would be framed nicely on the telescope and camera I had available here. Indeed, I think the framing turned out well!
In contrast to many other images of this object, this one was taken without any filters with a color camera, i.e., it's what the eye could see if it could see colours at night, and if it could do long exposures. Accordingly, the stars appear very dominant here, since they are not suppressed by narrowband filters. But I think it gives the image its own appeal and offsets it a bit form the others. Let's just imagine the many stars are the sparkles set off by the Wizard's magic! Also, I still find it fascinating what wonders you can wrestle from the light-polluted Munich downtown sky with (moderate!) digital post-processing.
Image information:
Acquisition: 345x 30s
Camera: ASI 294 MC Pro, Gain 120, Brightness 30
Acquisition software: SharpCap Pro, live stacking mode with sigma clipping and digital gradient reduction
Correction: 256x flats with flat-darks, 120x darks
Filters: none
Telescope: Meade LX200 16" Schmidt-Cassegrain, f/10
Reducer: Starizona SC corrector, x0.63
Effective focal length: 2524 mm
Mount: custom-built, stationary equatorial mount, no guiding
Post-processing:
SiRiL: Photometric calibration with plate solving, fine background removal, first de-noising step
Fitswork: sharpening, wavelet noise reduction
Luminar 2018: final touch (sharpening, saturation)