View allAll Photos Tagged autostakkert
The long route to get to here- 426 images takes with Canon EOSR and Tamron G2 150-600. Imported to Lightroom for basic adjustments, sent to PIPP for cropping and centering, sent to AutoStakkert 3 for stacking, sent to Registax for wavelet sharpening and then imported to Photoshop for minor touchup.
Taken with a Skywatcher ED80 Refractor and Canon 600D. A Baader Astrosolar Filter Cap fitted to telescope. Best 20 of 32 images stacked in Autostakkert after centering and cropping with PIPP. All images in JPG.
The seeing was not very good and variable (5-7/10) and the image was very smudgy sometimes.
The video was taken through a 10 inch ACF from Meade with 2x Hyperion Barlow lens, which gives me around 5 m focal length. In order to reduce the effects of the seeing and atmospheric dispersion I used a red interference filter (from the RGB filter set) which has an upper limit at the IR side.
35% of 1200 images of 5 ms each stacked in Autostakkert and sharpened and brightness/contrast adjusted in PS.
Tracking was very bad that night and is the reason why the video was so short. North is to the left. I orientated it that why because of the format of the image.
Click on the image to enlarge.
Philips Toucam Pro II 2 minutes video > SharpCap > PIPP > AutoStakkert > Registax 6 > Photoshop. Sky-Watcher 150P Explorer Newtonian, 2x Barlow, Baader Neodymium filter.
Sol Regiones Activas 12846 y, 12863
Comparando imagen filtro Continuum y filtro K-line
Foto 1 (arriba) Baader Solar Continuum Filter 1¼" (double stacked) (540nm)
Telescopio: Skywatcher Refractor AP 120/900 f7.5 EvoStar ED
Cámara: ZWO ASI178MM
Montura: iOptron AZ Mount Pro
Filtros: - Baader Neutral Density Filter 1¼" (ND 1.8, T=1.5%)
- Baader Solar Continuum Filter 1¼" (double stacked) (540nm)
Accesorios: - Baader 2" Cool-Ceramic Safety Herschel Prism
Software: FireCapture, AutoStakkert, Registax y Photoshop
Fecha: 2021-09-03 (3 de septiembre de 2021)
Hora: 13:42 T.U. (Tiempo universal)
Lugar: 42.615 N -6.417 W (Bembibre Spain)
Vídeo: 1 minuto
Resolución: 2216x1620
Gain: 173 (33%)
Exposure: 0.032ms
Frames: 2289
Frames apilados: 25%
FPS: 38
Sensor temperature= 40.2 °C
Foto 2 (abajo) Baader K-Line Filter 1¼" (double stacked) (394nm)
Telescopio: Skywatcher Refractor AP 120/900 f7.5 EvoStar ED
Cámara: ZWO ASI178MM
Montura: iOptron AZ Mount Pro
Filtros: - Baader Neutral Density Filter 1¼" (ND 0.6, T=25%)
- Baader K-Line Filter 1¼" (double stacked) (394nm)
Accesorios: - Baader 2" Cool-Ceramic Safety Herschel Prism
Software: FireCapture, AutoStakkert, Registax y Photoshop
Fecha: 2021-09-03 (3 de septiembre de 2021)
Hora: 13:56 T.U. (Tiempo universal)
Lugar: 42.615 N -6.417 W (Bembibre Spain)
Vídeo: 1 minuto
Resolución: 2136x1754
Gain: 115 (22%)
Exposure: 0.032ms
Frames: 2163
Frames apilados: 20%
FPS: 36
Sensor temperature= 42.2°C
152mm TecnoSky Refractor, 135mm D-ERF, Daystar Quark Chromosphere & PG IMX174. Best 20% from 2000+ frames captured, Autostakkert, IMPPG then into PS for tweaking.
---------------------------------------------------------
10" GSO Dobson Deluxe non-motorized
IR cut filter
Camera: ZWO ASI462MC
Captured by FireCapture with following settings:
Resolution: 1936x1096
duration 60s
exp 18.00ms
gain 50
frames 3334
Profile=Saturn
Stacked in: AutoStakkert! v3
Postprocessing by Registax (Wavelets)
Final postprocessing by Gimp:
duplicate layer/layer mask
Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises) is a 345 mile wide flat landscape with a ring of mountains and hills surrounding it. Amazingly a soil sample was successfully brought back to Earth in 1976 by the Russian Luna 24 probe. It is thought to be a staggering 4 billion years old.
Having not taken many Day 4 images I am pleasantly surprised with how this image turned out.
One of the hardest parts of imaging the moon is getting the exposure and contrast just right and in this image I think it is largely correct.
Taken 23rd April 2015 - Celestron 8SE
ZWO ASI 120MCS
Stacked in AutoStakkert 2.20
Post Processed in Registax 6
Total stacked frames: 5384. Best 1346 frames used.
for sure, but it seems that I have got some extra grip on solar imaging :)
I was very pleased with the contrast of the chromosphere images produced by PST-DMK23 combo. But... While the proms were visible through the eyepiece, they were hardly (or not at all) detectable on the images. All attempts to drag them out in processing resulted in appearance of otherwise undetectable defects including residual shot noise and smearing/charge leaks, not to mention the artificial feel of the images. What to do?
The obvious feature of Coronado PST is the "sweet spot" of a size about 1 mm in terms of real image size. It is located in the middle of the FoV and becomes overexposed first.
I have thought of it as a problem. But this time I have noticed that if the prominence falls into the sweet spot, it pops out.
The second point is that PST works at its full power at EFL of 800 mm. So here comes obvious conclusion: if I want prominence, I need to place it into the sweet spot.
By using focal extender/Barlow lens the size of the sweet spot on imaging sensor becomes larger, and the image becomes more uniformly illuminated.
The resulting image show both increased contrast of "surface" details and proms on the limb also stand out more prominently :)
Next new step was to apply wavelet sharpening, which I had kept disregarded for a while. Wavelets were applied using AstraImage software. Some practice is required and maybe more frames are needed for better wavelet processing, but wavelets really add to the resulting contrast.
Even more extra contrast can be obtained by high-pass filtering, but it comes with the cost of finest low-contrast details. Here the victim is the long singular spicule in the lower left corner of the image. Now it is barely seen if the image is viewed in darkened room. So high-pass filtering perhaps should be omitted.
16.03.2015, 09:29:23 GMT+4.
TIS DMK23U274 via 2x Barlow lens on Corondo PST.
Stacked 20% of 1200 frames acquired in 1 min. Flatfield was acquired by defocussing the image with the same camera setting.
Stacking and correction in Autostakkert!2. Resulting image was deconvolved (Cauchy type, 0,3 pixels, 9 iterations) and wavelet-treated in AstraImage PRO 3.0. High-pass filtering was done in Photoshop.
Tycho ha un diametro di 85 Km e ha un'età di circa 100 milioni di anni, quindi relativamente giovane. Si trova nell'emisfero sud e possiede una raggiera molto estesa che occupa molta parte della faccia visibile della Luna. Il suo nome ha origine dall'astronomo Tycho Brahe.
Dati:
Celestron 114/910 Newton
Montatura eq2 con motore AR
Camera planetaria QHY5L-II-C
Barlow 2x Celestron Omni
Filtro UV IR cut
Sharpcap per acquisire 2 video da 3000 frames ognuno
Autostakkert!3 e Registax 6 per elaborare circa il 40% dei frames totali
GIMP per luminosità e contrasto nel risultato finale.
Luogo: Cabras, Sardegna, Italia
Data: 13 maggio 2022 23:54 UTC
Fase della Luna: Gibbosa crescente al 93%
Taken 1902 UT. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Sky-Watcher Explorer 200P telescope. Prime Focus.
Canon 1200D camera. 49 exposures each 1/250 second. ISO-100.
Cropped and processed using PIPP, AutoStakkert!2, Registax 6 and GIMP 2.8.
---------------------------------------------------------
Timestamp: 10.5.2022 21:39:24 CEST
10" GSO Dobson Deluxe non-motorized
Barlow lens 2.5x
IR pass filter
Camera: ZWO ASI462MC
Captured by FireCapture with following settings:
Resolution: 1936x1096
duration 15s
exp 10.00ms
gain 50
frames 958
Profile=Moon
Stacked in: AutoStakkert! v3
Postprocessing by Registax (Linked Wavelets)
Final postprocessing by Gimp:
Sharpen + denoise + exposure increase + crop
Luna del 09/07/2016
Apilado 9 de 78 tomas video RAW de Magic Lantern.
SW Dob 8" f/6 - Canon 60D - ISO 400 - 1/400s - Barlow 2x - Foco primario
Procesado: PIPP - AutoStakkert - Adobe Lightroom
I embarked on a mammoth lunar imaging session on 10th February so I could produce an animation showing the sunrise over some prominent craters. I've already shared the video I created with the data but am now sharing the still images. If you didn't see the animation you can watch it here:
I was imaging from15:45 UT until 22:30 UT and during that time the Moon changed its illumination from 69% to 72%.
Taken from Oxfordshire with a William Optics 70mm refractor and ASI120MC camera through a Celestron 3x Barlow. A 2,000 frame video was shot with SharpCap and depending on the quality graph I stacked either 50 or 25% of the frames using Autostakkert! 3. Processing with Lightroom and Fast Stone Image Viewer.
Jupiter 9th Jan 2024(17:09 UT) together with Io and its shadow. Good seeing conditions. This image consists of 4 images de rotated in Winjupos, each image the result of stacking the best 1,500 frames from nearly 10,000 frames captured in 3 minutes. Captured using Firecapture V2.7, Processed using Autostakkert V4, Registax V6 and Winjupos. Equipment used, Celestron C14 Edge HD, CGEPRO Mount, ZWO ASI224MC camera, Carl Zeiss 2X Barlow.
Captured on December 1st, 2019.
**Equipment:**
* TPO 6" F/4 Imaging Newtonian
* ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
* Skywatcher Quattro Coma Corrector
* ZWO EFW 8x1.25"/31mm
* Astronomik LRGB+CLS Filters- 31mm
* Moonlite Autofocuser
**Acquisition:** (Camera at Unity Gain, -20°C)
* Astronomik Red filter used to combat atmospheric seeing
* Exposure- 0.874ms
* 5000 frame capture
**Capture Software:**
* Captured using Sharpcap and [N.I.N.A.](nighttime-imaging.eu/) for filterwheel and focuser control
**Processing:**
* Best 15% of frames stacked in Autostakkert with 3X Drizzle
* Registax Wavelets for sharpening
* In PixInsight:
* DynamicCrop to 16:9 aspect ratio
* Curve stretch
* LocalHistogramEqualization
* HistogramTransformation to reduce black point
* Another CurveTransformation (slight S curve)
* Fastrotation
* Annotation
Best 50% of 4000 frames with Autostakkert, applied 1.5 drizzle. Northern Polar Ice Cap is visible as well as some potential dust storms.
FireCapture v2.3 Settings
------------------------------------
Scope=Orion XT8-i
Camera=ZWO ASI034MC
Filter=CH4
Profile=Mars
Diameter=12.42"
Magnitude=-0.64
CM=53.6° (during mid of capture)
FocalLength=4240mm
Resolution=0.29"
Filename=220940.avi
Date=240514
Start=220940.334
Mid=221127.155
End=221313.977
Duration=213.643s
Date_format=ddMMyy
Time_format=HHmmss
LT=UT-5h
Frames captured=4000
File type=AVI
Extended AVI mode=true
Compressed AVI=false
Binning=no
ROI=384x384
FPS (avg.)=18
Shutter=46.79ms
Gain=26
Gamma=50 (off)
WRed=25
AutoExposure=off
WBlue=87
USBTraffic=82
Brightness=0
Histogramm(min)=0
Histogramm(max)=188
Histogramm=73%
Noise(avg.deviation)=n/a
Limit=4000 Frames
Lots of filaments today... They are of two types - thin and relatively short, with crisp outlines, or large and more cloud-like.
WARNING! Sun is dangerous, use proper filters for observing and imaging!
Aquisition time (start of the session) : JD2456745,89619213 (29.03.3014 13:30:31 MSK - this is my local noon time, highest elevation of the Sun above horizont).
Image orientation: totally scrambled
Equipment:
Canon EOS 60D (unmodded) coupled to Coronado PST via Baader Planetarium Hyperion Zoom 8-24 mm Mark III click-stop system eyepiece and Baader Planetarium M43-to-T2 conversion ring and mounted on SkyWatcher NEQ-6 PRo mount.
Aperture 40 mm
Native focal length 400 mm
Projection zoom setting: 16 mm
Effective focal length 900++ mm
Tv = 1/10 seconds
Av (effective) = NA
ISO 400
Exposures: 75% of 54
Processing: images were converted to monochrome and exported as 8-bit .TIFFs. Images were assembled into stack in ImageJ and saved as .AVI. AVI was processed in Autostakkert!2.
Resulting image was subjected to Richardson-Lucy deconvolution in AstraImage 3.0 (Cauchy type PSF, size 2,1 units, 8 iterations).
High-pass filtering and no coloration made in Photoshop.
Finally, Image was scaled down to have Solar disk diameter about 1500 pix.
Notes: tracking is good! 1/10th of second @ISO400 is much better than 1/50th @ISO1000.
Jupiter as secondary capture target. Captured with Celestron NexStar 8SE, ZWO ASI120MC and Celestron 2X barlow.
Photograph is bit blurry due to thin cloud layer at target area.
Image processed using AutoStakkert and RegiStax with 500 frames.
Location: Maharagama, Sri Lanka at 3:25 AM (IST).
Solar activity and prominence today.
Imaged on May 8th 2020.
Tech details:
500 frames of Sun, 0% gain, 14.9ms exposure
500 frames of Prominence , 70% gain, 80ms exposure
Equipment:
Scope: Coronado PST
Mount: NEQ6
Imaging camera: ZWO ASI130MM
Software: SharpCap 3.2, AutoStakkert, Registax, Lightroom, Photoshop
A view of the northern end of the Apenninus mountain range. Also visible are the craters Archimedes, Autolycus and Aristillus.
In the centre of the image is the landing site of Apollo 15, Hadley Rille.
Taken 29nd December 2014 - Celestron 8SE
ZWO ASI 120MCS
Stacked in AutoStakkert 2.20
Post Processed in Registax 6
Total stacked frames: 4157. Best 831 frames used.
Taken 2048 UT. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Sky-Watcher Explorer 200P telescope. Prime Focus. Canon 1200D camera. Best 50% of 37 exposures used. Each 1/400 second. ISO-100. Cropped, stacked and processed using PIPP, AutoStakkert!2, Registax 6, Irfanview and GIMP 2.8. That is a lot of processing!
Equipo:
Celestron CPC 925 a F/20
Cámara QHY-5III 174M
Filtros RGB
Foto por Andrés Molina.
Imágenes:
Apilado de 500 imágenes por cada canal LRGB
procesado con PIPP, Autostakkert, Registax 6 y Photoshop CC 2019
Taken with a Skywatcher ED80 Refractor fitted with a Baader Astrosolar Filter and a Canon 600D at prime focus.20 jpgs stacked using Autostakkert 2. PIPP used to centre and crop each jpg before stacking, PIPP outputs the jpgs as 8bit tiffs
01.09.18 00.45BST Moon (Waning Gibbous 72% illuminated)
Altair Astro 72EDF f/6
Altair Astro Hypercam IMX183C PRO TEC
SkyWatcher AZ-GTI mount
SharpCap 3.2 Pro
Best 100 frames stacked with AutoStakkert 3
Post processed with Photoshop CC2018
Jupiter's 2015 Opposition, shot at 2am on February 7th.
This was taken with a Canon T4i at prime focus on a 127mm Celestron 127SLT telescope (1500mm focal length).
A 2000 frame AVI was captured with BackyardEOS at 5x zoom. The best 25% were stacked in AutoStakkert and processed in Registax and Lightroom.
Taken with a Coronado PST and 2 x Barlow + ASI120MC camera.
I was imaging prominences around the entire solar disc between 11:00 - 11:15 UT. Between 500 and 1,000 frame videos were captured and the best 250 frames were stacked using Autostakkert! 3.
Jupiter, Imaged on the 15th March 2017 at around 23:28
Made up of 4 videos totalling 7920 frames (after a 75% selection in AutoStakkert) - 5m42sec of data..
Edited in RegiStax 6 for wavelets and then de-rotated and stacked using WinJUPOS.
My best images of Jupiter yet, I still have focusing to work on, I guess I need an evening of good seeing and more patience...
+INFO: wanderermab.wordpress.com/Meseta-de-aristarco
El pasado 8 de abril la luna tenía un toque especial a través del telescopio, en las aguas oscuras más allá del terminador se colaba un leve cabo que se veía evolucionar a lo largo de las horas. Como si de una bajada de marea se tratase.
SW Maksutov MC 102/1300 - ZWO ASI120MM
SW AZ-EQ5
FireCapture, PIPP, AutoStakkert!, RegiStax, LR 6.0
19.02.2015, around 11:00 GMT+4
Evolution of the prominences along the eastern limb of the Sun in comparison with yesterday's image.
I have pushed the brightness of proms to get the fine things out and... See supplementary material in "comments" section :)
Acquisition: Coronado PST, 1/2 of Meade 2x Barlow lens and TIS DMK23U274, alltogether on tabletop Celestron CG-4 with motor.
Processing: Autostakkert!2, AstraImage PRO 3.0 and Photoshop.
Technical note: if the size of a frame is something like 1080x960, Autostakkert!2 opens the movie but scrambles the contents. I have used ImageJ to open the film and resave it as a sequence of tiffs. Strange, but it comes out flipped in comparison with the image in capturing software.
Mosaic of the Moon
For 8k resolution click:
c2.staticflickr.com/6/5801/22778236457_f34265852e_o.jpg
Distance: 368615km
Phase: 56%
Date: 19/Nov/2015
Equipment:
Apo 130mm f7
QHY5L-II Mono
CGEM
Software:
AutoStakkert, Registax V6, Photoshop CC
Mount: SkyWatcher Star Adventurer
Camera: SONY α6500 (model ILCE-6500)
Adapter: スターベースオリジナル Tリング用ワイドリング60W(M52P=0.75メスネジ), ビクセン Tリング(N) ソニーE用
@ ISO100 1/80ss x36 2018/02/05 2:02-2:05 (summer time 3:02-3:05)
Software: AutoStakkert! x3 drizzle, FlatAide Pro, RawTherapee
2019年１月２１日、ブラジル、ポルトアレグレ市
Sony a6500
Takahashi FS-60Q
1/200s, ISO100
RAW画像をPIPPで正方形に切り取って、AutoStakkert_3.0.14_x64で75％ドリズル３倍スタック、
Fitswork447とRawTherapeeで仕上げました。
Jupiter 1st April 2025 (20:03 UT) , average seeing conditions. This image consists of 8 images de rotated in Winjupos, each image used the best 2,000 frames from each 7,000 frame AVI captured in 75 seconds.. Captured using Firecapture V2.7, Processed using Autostakkert V4, Registax V6 and Winjupos. Equipment used, Celestron C14 Edge HD, CGEPRO Mount, ZWO ASI224MC camera, and Carl Zeiss 2X Barlow. No ADC.
Reprocess - False Colour
Lunt 35mm Ha Solar Telescope
Skywatcher x2 Barlow
DMK21AU618
Captured: FireCapture - 5000 frames @ 60 fps
Stacking: AutoStakkert!2 - Best 25%
Postprocessing: Adobe Photoshop CS2
Taken during the May 2013 Astrocamp event in Cwmdu, Wales.
Mars, the 4th planet from the Sun. Its days and seasons are similar to those of Earth, and it may have been hospitable for life long ago. Evidence suggests that Mars once had a dense atmosphere with a warm climate and liquid water oceans like Earth. Today, Mars is a barren wasteland and its vast quantities of water have been frozen in time for billions of years. Mars also has two tiny moons which are captured asteroids.
This was the highly anticipated 2020 Mars opposition. Opposition occurs once every 26 months for the red planet. Its surface was entirely obscured by a global dust storm during the 2018 opposition, so I was glad to capture some details this time. The tiny southern ice cap can be seen at the 7 o'clock position. The dark regions are areas swept clean of dust, leaving dark, rocky material exposed.
200 x 1/50 second ISO100 (best of 10,455)
Phase angle: 2°
Apparent magnitude: -2.6
Apparent diameter: 22"
Distance from Earth: 0.421 AU
Atmospheric seeing: 3/5
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Camera: Canon T3i
Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 f/6.0 Apochromatic Refractor
Barlow: Antares 3x Triplet Barlow (effective magnification is 4.932x for 2373mm focal length at f/29.66)
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G
Captured with EOS Camera Movie Record
Processed with PIPP, AutoStakkert! 2, PixInsight, and Paint.NET
I ran afoul of Lightroom's flickr sync when I changed some settings and lost my title and description, but I think I've pieced together most of what was here before:
The dog got me up around 2am and the moon looked great! I stacked about 5000 frames in Autostakkert!2 that were cropped from their video frames using PiPP.
Lens: Olympus E-Zuiko AUTO-T 200mm f/4.0
Deuxième essai de capture à la webcam de l'année dernière. Un peu plus douce niveau traitement cette fois.
Acquisition vidéo de 19 secondes à 30 images par seconde.
Capture SharpCap
Empilement Autostakkert
Traitement Registax
Webcam spc900nc + Barlow x2
Skywatcher 130/900 sur eq2 non motorisée
3 x 2min derotated
Transparency (3/5)
Seeing (2/5)
C9.25 EDGEHD (F=2350mm)
ZWO120MC
SharpCap
Winjupos
AutoStakkert
PixInsight
The Moon
Frosty morning in Stourbridge, UK. About 0700.
Olympus OMD10 III, Altair Lightwave 72ED scope. 4K video, best 1200 frames out of 1350, PIPP, Autostakkert, GIMP.
As some folks may know I have been practicing astrophotography and microscopy at one point or another though-out most of my entire life. I was also extremely fortunate to have had a 35 year long career as a scientist for IBM, et. al. where a large portion of my work was in the development and implementation of microscopic imaging systems for our analysis labs. Starting with the earliest
'frame grabbers / digitizers' that began to appear in the 1980's connected to analog video cameras on our microscopes. Having the rare benefit of combining my passions in life with a life-long career in science I was also applying these same digitization techniques to planetary, lunar, and solar imaging at the time. Over the intervening decades I built an observatory at my home (currently on it's third incarnation shown here - www.flickr.com/photos/homcavobservatory/49507532468/ ) and began to indulge in astrophotography while my fascination with the microscopic world never faded. As such, having accumulated a variety of cameras and lenses, some of which were purchased for just a few dollars at swap tables like Stellafane and taking an 'early' retirement a few years ago, I rekindled my interest in microscopic imaging. Encouraged by some early tests using one of my DSLRs,
(linked here - www.flickr.com/photos/homcavobservatory/albums/7215769327... ) I've begun to construct a prototype system in my home with a camera originally purchased for use with our telescopes. The attached is a 3 minute slideshow of the initial tests of this prototype microscopic imaging system.
Utilizing a ZWO ASI290MC "planetary camera / autoguider", which is normally used to guide the lager telescope mount in our observatory, connected via an adapter to a surplus industrial zoom inspection lens, it produces fields of view which when measured horizontally range from approximately 0.32 inch (8.1 mm) on it's lowest setting down to 0.048 inch (1.2 mm) on it's highest. These estimates were made using a Baush & Lomb microscope slide which has been etched with a scale (i.e. 'a stage micrometer'). Although I prefer to speak in FOV, as opposed to magnification, when speaking of images; since I've found that 'What mag. is that?' is a question often received by folks into astrophotography & microscopy, using a table I found from Palomar College, I estimated that this lens / camera combination produces a range of 22X to 150X at it's full 1936 x 1096 resolution.
Using two small wildflowers, inner and outer Blue Mud Dauber Wasp wings, and a poisonous Death Cap Mushroom as quick test samples, the images are a result of using this setup at various zoom settings with different illumination techniques, and in some cases just to see what it would look like, specialized filters (e.g. IR, UV, etc.). Shot as video clips using SharpCap Pro that were then stacked in AutoStakkert with the resulting images sent to Registax for wavelets (akin to the 'lucky imaging method' often employed in planetary astrophotography), with PaintShopPro used for final touches, annotation & compositing. As presented here, the images are uncropped and due to the fov's available, the wasp wings are actually mosaics of multiple frames at the system's lowest power / widest field of view. Due to my quick compositing resulting in a fairly imprecise alignment, the area covered by these low power individual frames used in the mosaics is fairly noticeable. As a comparison to a single frame at the system's highest power, the image showing 'blue loops' is the edge of one of the wasp wings. Due to the extremely narrow depth of field resulting from such small FOVs, I'm looking forward to trying to apply focus stacking in the future (as was done in the 'macro shot' of the female Micrathena sagittata spider linked here - www.flickr.com/photos/homcavobservatory/46215534584/in/al... ). Since this was simply a test of the system, I did not spend much time processing the individual images nor optimizing the parameters during their capture, some are fairly noisy with a less than optimal SNR. I hope to improve this with the application of noise reduction processing routines we often employ in astrophotography, and some limited hardware upgrades to the crude lighting used for these tests. I'm anticipating the latter may also enable me to being to image protozoa (i.e. 'single-celled microscopic animals'). Given the camera's relatively fast capture rate of 170 frames per second and the control software's ability to create sequences and employ ROIs, I'm hoping to utilize these capabilities for the production of high-speed and /or time-lapse videos at various FOVs.
With the onset of winter here in upstate, NY just around the corner (as clearly evident by this week's back-to-back snowfalls), at some point over the next few months I'm expecting our observatory to be locked in it's annual block of ice & snow. During these times I hope to be able to produce a variety of microscopic images, some of which may cross that thin line between surreal and simply bizarre ;) .
Mars 18th Mar 2025(20:54 UT) , under poor seeing conditions and just 9.2 arc secs in diameter.This image is made up of 5 images de rotated using Winjupos, each image consisting of the best 2,000 frames from a 12,000 frame AVI. Captured using Firecapture V2.7, Processed using Autostakkert V4, Registax V6 and Winjupos. Equipment used, Celestron C14 Edge HD, CGEPRO Mount, ZWO ASI224MC camera, Carl Zeiss 2X Barlow and No ADC.