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Another shot of the Milky Way from last September, taken from a beautiful hill, away from direct car lights but still with some light pollution close to the horizon.
Thanks to all for your kind visit and comments - stay healthy and keep looking up!
Technical info:
Date: September 10th, 2021
Location: Chalkidiki, Greece
Camera: CANON EOS 6D
Lens: Tokina AT-X 11-16 F2.8 Pro DX II@16mm
SKY: 12 exposures x 15 sec each, ISO 6400, f/2.8, calibrated with darks and stacked in Sequator.
FOREGROUND: 3 exposures x 2 mins each, ISO 3200, f/4, stacked in Photoshop. Composite image was done in Adobe Photoshop CC.
All images were taken from the same place without moving the tripod and in quick succession.
Unconceivable distances, uncountable stars, relentless motion, primordial elements. Everything about space seems so extraordinary and out of grasp for humans - and yet the stars have always been friendly company for seafarers, philosophers and farmers since the dawn of time. The myths of ancient people about them have survived until today and are still a beloved theme for poets and writers.
Some of the most beautiful star myths are about the Milky Way - a celestial river comprised by billions of stars that have sent their messengers of existence (a.k.a. photons) towards our planet thousands of years ago. This majestic arc of light shines brilliantly every clear night away from manmade light pollution, and is predominantly visible on summer nights, when our gaze of the night sky is turned towards the center of the Milky Way. This band is bisected by obscuring clouds of interstellar dust, thus forming the “Great Rift”.
Since the formation of our planet, we have travelled about 20 times around the center of our Milky Way, in a motion that lasts more than 220 million years, a period sometimes called a “Galactic Year”. So, this majestic light has adorned our night skies since the dawn of time and before any form of life existed on this beautiful planet.
The bright beacon on the left just above the treetops is planet Jupiter, which was prominent last summer as an evening object.
Thank you all for your kind visits and comments - stay healthy and keep looking up!
Technical info:
Date: August 30th, 2021
Location: Kassandra, Chalkidiki, Greece
Camera: CANON EOS 6D
Lens: Tokina AT-X 11-16 Pro DX II@16mm
SKY: 14 exposures x 15 secs each, ISO 6400, f/2.8, calibrated with separate darks and stacked in Sequator for reducing the noise.
FOREGROUND: 5 exposures x 2 mins each, ISO 3200, f/5. All images were taken from the same spot, without moving the tripod and in quick succession.
Standing still under the band of the Milky Way - the Celestial River of uncountable stars of our own Galaxy - this boat rests quietly on fine grains of sand created long ago. How long ago is exceedingly difficult to answer since the erosion of rocks and the formation of sand is an ongoing procedure.
Another interesting question is whether there are more grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth than there are stars in the whole Universe. And although one might argue that the stars probably outnumber the grains of sand, the only certain thing is that every single grain of sand and every single cell of our body, has been at some time part of a stellar interior, since all the heavy elements of the Universe have been created in the interiors of stars and have being ejected to interstellar space by exploding stars, only to be incorporated by next generation stars and ultimately into what now comprises our Solar system and our bodies. We are all made of stardust after all.
Thanks to everyone for visiting my photos, for all your faves and comments, I deeply appreciate it! Wishing you all the best! Clear skies and health to you and your families.
Technical info and some personal thoughts:
Photographing the Milky Way from that place on the beach proved problematic, since the wide angle lens at f/2.8 captured an annoyingly great amount of light pollution from the distant village, even in ten-second exposures, so I had to take many shots to find the best settings, as a balance between capturing more of the starlight and less of the light pollution. Clearly not the best place to photograph the Milky Way, but it is so relaxing to be on a beach on a clear, moonless summer night, under the canopy of stars with no people around, contemplating the mysteries of the Universe, that I could not resist it!
Date: June 28th, 2020
Location: Kassandra, Chalkidiki, Greece
Camera: CANON EOS 550D
Lens: Tokina AT-X 11-16 F2.8 Pro DX II@14mm
SKY: 10 exposures x 10 sec each, ISO 6400, f/2.8, calibrated with separate darks and stacked in Sequator for reducing the noise and light pollution
FOREGROUND: 3 exposures x 2 mins each, ISO 1600, f/5, stacked in Photoshop
Final Composite image was done in PS CC 2020.
Processing: Sequator, Adobe LR, Photoshop CC 2020.
© All rights reserved.
Use without permission is illegal
*Note. If you have your monitor calibrated for video games, this will appear very dark.
IC 1396A is the Elephant's Trunk nebula, located in the constellation Cepheus. The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396, at an estimated distance of about 2,500 light years.
At the heart of the nebula lies the open star cluster Trumpler 37, where several hot, young stars (less than 100,000 years) are thought to be forming. These stars emit copious amounts of hot plasma winds and energetic particles that ionize the gas in the nebula and causing it to glow with the characteristic red light of hydrogen atoms. The winds are also sculpting the nebula creating the central cavity, but also compressing the gas in dense regions and triggering a new generation of protostars, hidden inside the dust.
At the estimated distance of the nebula, the Elephant's Trunk is about 20 light-years long.
Thanks to all for your continuous support and kind comments. I wish to all my Flickr friends a happy and relaxing summer and looking forward for your beautiful photos and stories!
Technical Info:
Telescope: Orion EON 80ED refractor, F = 500 mm, f/6.25
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Mount: Vixen Sphinx
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: 80/400 Skywatcher refractor - SkyWatcher SynGuider
Light frames: 24 x 5 mins (total: 2 hours), ISO 3200, Custom WB, calibrated with darks
Date: 17-18 October 2020
Location: Chalkidiki, Greece
Software: SiriL (calibration, background extraction, registration, stacking, color calibration, stretch), StarNet++, Adobe Photoshop CC 2022 with Astronomy Tools Actions.
According to Greek mythology, Zeus was the father of the Olympian gods and Thunder God. The ancients gave this name to planet Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.
As the planets revolve around the Sun, they are seen from Earth moving between the constellations (the stars of course are much farther away than the planets). Jupiter crosses all zodiac constellations once every 12 years and comes close (astronomical speaking) to the Earth once every year (“opposition” in astronomical terminology), so it looks particularly brilliant in the sky.
This past summer, Jupiter was placed between the constellations of Scorpion and Sagittarius (in fact inside the border of Ophiuchus), in an area where the band of our Milky Way Galaxy ("the Celestial River") is most prominent. In the area of Sagittarius and within tens of thousands of light years away from us, lies the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, where a massive black hole exists. The density of the stars in this area is tremendous, while dark areas of interstellar dust run through the galactic band and conceal the numerous stars behind them.
Jupiter is the bright “star” to the right of the Galactic band. On the other side of this band is planet Saturn (“Cronus”), the father of Zeus according to Greek mythology (the brightest “star” left from the band of the Milky Way and just above the middle of the photo).
This photograph was taken during the annual astronomical excursion of amateur astronomers from all over Greece, outside the village of Filippaioi in mountainous Grevena. As the intense lights from the urban web threatens to eliminate the stars from the night sky, astronomers - professionals and amateurs - gather in remote areas to study and record the beauties hidden in the night sky.
As we approach the New Year celebration, I would like to say goodbye to 2019 with this photo, hoping that you will forgive me for posting a summer photo at the heart of winter!
Let me express once again my gratitude to all of you for your faves and comments, but mostly for your wonderful photos that always inspire the rest of us! Please keep them coming!
I wish everyone a happy New Year, with many beautiful moments enjoyed and captured!
Technical data:
Date: August 3rd, 2019
Location: Filippaioi, Grevena, Greece
Camera: CANON EOS 550D
Lens: Tokina 11-16@14mm, f/2.8
Light Frames: 5 x 19 sec, ISO 6400, calibrated with darks and stacked in Sequator
Processing: Adobe LR, Photoshop CC
Special thanks to Alan Dyer for his fine pdf books of how to photograph and process Nightscapes and Timelapses.
This is a re-edit of an earlier (badly edited) shot of mine. I recently calibrated the screen of my new laptop using the Spyder 4 Express. I suspected the screen was too "cool", but it was worse than I expected and now many of my previous photo's appear(much) too warm, even though I didn't have a heavy hand setting the temperature. I suppose I also need to get use to a different shade of grey.
Salar was formed as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes. It is covered by a few meters of a salt crust, which has an extraordinary leveling with variations of average altitude of less than one meter throughout the entire area of the Salar. The crust serves as a source of copper salt and a pool of brine, which is extremely rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves, a resource that is in the process of being mined. The large area, clear sky and exceptional leveling of the surface make Salar an ideal object to calibrate the altimeters of Earth observation satellites.
***
PS. After Bolivia, Elon Musk says capitalists can overthrow any government they want.
Billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk has come under fire after welcoming last year’s overthrow of Bolivian president Evo Morales in what was seen as a bid to obtain the country’s lithium reserves.
In response to a tweet on Saturday that accused the U.S. government of forcing Morales out, allowing Musk to access Bolivian resources, he wrote: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
Hundreds of Bolivia’s Indigenous population were massacred following what was branded “a fascist coup” against Morales, who is currently in exile in Argentina.
Bolivia has between 25% and 45% of the world’s known lithium reserves, an estimated 21 tons, most of which is in the Salar de Uyuni salt flat.
Lithium is a crucial component of the batteries used in Tesla vehicles and other electric cars, as well as computers, smartphones, and other equipment, and its value is set to skyrocket as sales of such vehicles increase.
peoplesworld.org/article/after-bolivia-elon-musk-says-cap...
Knowing that I was shipping my camera off today to be cleaned and calibrated, I had to get out yesterday.
Being "camera-less" for the next few weeks brings about an uneasy feeling of dread...or maybe it's just the holidays!
millimeter by millimeter I'm trying to calibrate the focal length of a camera which I am currently building.
But sometimes failures are the things of Lomo beauty.
I have a new PC monitor which has has not been calibrated yet... so, as Bertrand Russell asserted, how do I know what I see, is what you are seeing? My view of photos can be influenced greatly by if they are viewed on my phone, tablet or PC monitor, so I often wonder if I see, what you are seeing?
Messier 97 (top) and Messier 108 (bottom) in Ursa Major are two celestial objects that appear to be close to each other but in reality are separated by an immense distance in space.
M97, known as the Owl Nebula, is a planetary nebula located inside our own galaxy at about 2,500 light-years away and has a diameter of about 2 light years. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1781 and it was included in the famous catalogue of Charles Messier as entry 97. Two prominent dark spots inside the nebula give the appearance of an owl’s face.
A planetary nebula is formed by the expanding shell of gases blown off by a dying star at the last stages of its life. The expanding shell is heated by the radiation of the central star (a very faint 16th magnitude star in this case) and it glows mostly in green light of oxygen atoms. The nebula will completely disperse into space over the next several thousand years, while the central star will cool and fade away over the next several billion years.
The estimated age of the Owl Nebula is about 6,000 to 8,000 years.
Galaxy M108, the Surfboard Galaxy, is harder to see in a telescope than M97, because its light is spread out over a larger area. It happens to lie near the same line of sight as M97 but is located at about 45 million light-years away. M108 is an edge-on spiral galaxy, heavily obscured by dust. It was also discovered by Méchain.
Technical Info:
Telescope: Orion EON 80ED refractor, F = 500 mm, f/6.25
Camera: Canon EOS 600Da
Mount: Vixen Sphinx
Filter: none
Guiding: 80/400 Skywatcher refractor - SkyWatcher SynGuider
Light frames: 6 x 5 mins (total: 30 mins), ISO 1600, Custom WB, calibrated with darks.
Date: 26 April 2022
Location Bortle scale: 4
Software: DSS, Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom classic.
NGC 281 is an emission nebula located in the constellation of Cassiopeia. E. E. Barnard discovered this nebula in August 1883. At the center of the Nebula lies open star cluster IC 1590, which contains several massive stars, each many times the mass of the sun. These stars are extremely hot and produce large amounts of ultraviolet radiation. The radiation and the strong stellar winds erode the nebula from the inside out, giving it its shell-like appearance. Colloquially, NGC 281 is known as the Pacman Nebula, for its resemblance to the video game character.
Its estimated distance is about 10,000 light-years away from us.
Thanks to everyone for viewing - clear skies!
Telescope: Orion EON ED 80/500 refractor
Mount: Modified Vixen Sphinx Equatorial Mount
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: Skywatcher 80/400 refractor, Skywatcher Synguider
Light frames: 15 x 6 mins (total: 90 mins), ISO 1600, Custom WB, calibrated with darks
Date: September 29th, 2019
Processing: DSS 4.2.3, Adobe Photoshop 2020 with Astronomy Tools Actions Set (spikes added to the brightest stars).
Bonjour, je crois que j'ai quelque problème avec mon écran. Moi, sur la mienne je voir les photos claires, mais, il y a des gens qui me disent qu'elles sont forcées. J'ai commandé un Spyder 5 pour calibre mon écran.
Vous pouvez me laisse un commentait. Merci!
Hello, I think I have some problem with my screen. Me, on mine I see the clear photos, but there are people who tell me that they are forced. I ordered a Spyder 5 to calibrate my screen.
You can leave me a comment. Thank you!
© Michel Guérin. Tous droits réservés - All rights reserved ©.
Merci beaucoup pour vos visites et commentaires ♥
Thank you very much for your visits and comments ♥
Talk about a coat of many colours these ducks stop you in your tracks just so beautiful.
When this one stopped on the bough of a tree it was all I needed to get me snapping.
This was the 1st day out after calibrating the lens a few weeks ago and am very happy with the result . They really brighten up a dark forest and to see them wild in he Forest of Dean is quite an experience.
Please do not use my images in any way without my permission they are copyright protected !!
Please take A look in Large !! press L
Thanks to everyone that takes the time and makes the effort to comment and fave my pics its very much appreciated
Regards Clive
Was out with Graham Stirling on his last shooting session for a while.
Earlier in the eve Grahams shot: www.flickr.com/photos/grahamstirling/5697860344/in/photos...
Breaking the rules with this shot, but it seems to work for me. As usual after a frustrating beginning as the ten stop is too dark but the Lee combo is too light I got some decent long exposures. Zoomed in without foreground to capture the castle which looking quite spooky with the mist. 50 seconds exposure at F14.
I need to find a 5 or 6 stop filter that will be good for sunsets before it gets darker. if anyone knows of something that would do please let me know.
Also viewed some of my images on Grahams monitor as he has it calibrated and was shocked to see how over saturated they were so toning mine down a bit.
Best seat in the house for a sunrise I would say. Incorporating the infamous lamppost and bench that appears in a lot of my images captured here, always trying to get this scene with the lamppost on as apposed to off giving that mystical feel.
If you have a calibrated monitor this scene should display ok and not look too dark..
An image I shot some 4 years back now with my previous camera, of the City Walls/Chester Cathedral on a misty morning. I have the latest versions of Lightroom//Photoshop now, and felt this image was worth re-processing, utilising a calibrated large monitor. It doesn’t get misty that often in Chester (maybe 2-3 times a year usually in the Autumn), and the Cathedral is simply not visible, this is the only time I have had these conditions where you can see the turrets and spires, I won’t give up though! 📷😊
The nebula is in Canis Major approx. 15000ly away and is approx. 30ly wide. The nebula is more like a bubble inflated by fast winds emanating from the Wolf-Rayet star at the center. This star is thought to be in a brief pre-supernova stage of its evolution. The blueish green colour shows that there is a strong oxygen emission from this nebula.
This image is comprised from pre-calibrated images provided by iTelescope, I’m not 100% which telescope was used. The total integration time is 180 minutes.
Filters and exposure:
6 x 600s Blue
6 x 600s Green
6 x 600s Red
The images were registered and stacked using AstroPixelProcessor before final editing in Adobe Photoshop 2022.
About 10,000 years ago, a bright new star appeared in the stellar firmament on a place that we now consider part of the constellation Cygnus (the Swan). It shined brilliantly for a few weeks before becoming so dim again to be invisible to human vision. Astronomers have calculated its position and age by studying the light reaching us from an extended filamentary cloud of interstellar gas known as the Veil Nebula. It is catalogued as entry 6960 in the New General Catalogue of Deep Sky Objects and classified as a supernova remnant, the expanding debris from the exploded star, plowing through interstellar matter and exciting hydrogen (red color) and oxygen atoms (blue - green) to make them glow. The distance to this object is not accurately measured but is about 1,500 light years away.
The Veil nebula is an extended object and consists of different parts, each catalogued with a different name. This image was shot with a small refractor telescope and a DSLR camera and depicts the Western part of the nebulosity, which is often referred to as the Witch's Broom nebula, the Filamentary nebula or the Lace-Work nebula.
The bright star at center is 52 Cygni, which is unrelated to the nebula itself since it is located much closer to the Earth, at about 200 light years. It is therefore a foreground star, just as all the other visible stars of our Milky Way Galaxy. The spikes by the way are an artifact, usually produced by images of reflector telescopes, but in this case digitally added with computer software for aesthetic reasons.
Thanks to everyone for viewing - clear skies!
Telescope: Orion EON ED 80/500 refractor
Mount: Modified Vixen Sphinx
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: Skywatcher 80/400 refractor, Skywatcher Synguider
Light frames: 10 x 6 mins (total: 1 hour), ISO 1600, Custom WB, calibrated with darks
Date & Location: 9/5/2019 - Chalkidiki, Greece
Processing: DSS 4.2.3, Adobe Photoshop 2020 with Astronomy Tools Actions Set (spikes added to the brightest stars).
Messier 20 (M20, NGC 6514) in Sagittarius is a magnificent deep sky object that combines an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (red), a reflection nebula (blue) and a dark nebula that divides the emission nebula in three parts, thus giving it the name the Trifid Nebula. The Trifid Nebula lies in a rich area of the Milky Way, with adjacent Messier objects M21 (open star cluster, at upper right) and M8 (Lagoon, a part of which is visible at the left edge) visible in the same binocular field of view. The region is also filled with other emission nebulae such as NGC 6526 (top left) and Sh2-26 (bottom left).
The Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes revealed hot, young energetic stars at the central region emitting radiation and stellar jets that tear apart the gas and dust from which stars are born.
M20 is estimated to be about 5200 light years away, at which it spans a diameter of about 10 light years across.
Clear Skies to all!
Image Details:
Telescope: Orion EON 80mm/f6.25 ED refractor
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da, no filter
Mount: Modified Vixen Sphinx (NexSXW)
Guiding: Skywatcher SynGuider with 80mm achromatic refractor, mounted side by side
Exposure: Total 16 mins (8 x 2 mins), Daylight WB, ISO 1600, calibrated with darks and bias frames
Location: Vavdos, Chalkidiki - 14/07/18
Processing: DSS 4.1.1, Photoshop CS6
A friend informed me of this very rare visitor to our tiny island. I personally am not a fan of shore bird. I went and was taken aback how tiny and cute this little fellow is. Love those gorgeous eyes.
Finally satisfied with the IQ I am getting from all the effort of calibrating the 4/3 lens to the EM1.3 body. Minus 4.
Thank you my friends for popping by.
I really appreciate your visits, comments & favourites.
Wishing all my Flickr friends a Happy Sunday
Thank you
💓💓💓💓💓
Here's the first of waaaay too many shots i took on my recent trip to colorado. I haven't been posting in a while because i've been so driven to sort through all of them.
ALSO...i recently calibrated my monitor. i'd be interested to hear how everything looks on your end of the screen cus im havin a hard time adjustin to the new darkness over here.
Open star cluster NGC 6939 (bottom center) is visually located close to the star Eta Cephei inside our galaxy, but in reality it lies more than 4,000 light-years away from us (this value is a bit uncertain). Its apparent magnitude is 7.8, meaning it can only be seen with binoculars or with a telescope.
By pure coincidence, less than one degree away lies the face-on galaxy NGC 6946 (center of image), an entirely separate galactic system outside our own Milky Way, at an estimated distance of about 25 million light-years (according to recent measurements). Because many supernova explosions were recorded at the last 100 years in this galaxy, it got the nickname of "Fireworks galaxy".
Both objects were discovered by William Herschel in 1798.
Thanks to everyone and clear skies!
Details:
Telescope: Orion EON 80ED
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Mount: Vixen Sphinx
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: Skywatcher 80/400 refractor - SkyWatcher SynGuider
Light frames: 12 x 5 mins (total: 60 mins), ISO 3200, Custom WB, calibrated with darks
Date: 25 October 2019
Processing: DSS 4.2.3, Adobe Photoshop 2020 with Astronomy Tools Actions set (spikes added to the brightest stars)
On a warm summer night looking south from a dark sky location, we can imagine a mythical creature straddling the celestial river (Milky Way): a half-man, half-horse Centaur, which represents the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). Hidden among the dust lanes of our Galaxy’s spiral arms and placed at about 5,500 light years away, there is a cloud made of gas and dust that can be even seen with unaided eye or better with a pair of binoculars. This is entry #17 on Charles Messier catalogue of deep sky objects, also known as the Omega nebula (last letter of the Greek alphabet), the Swan nebula, the Checkmark nebula, the Lobster nebula or the Horseshoe nebula.
Astronomers besides calculating its distance are also telling us that the Swan nebula is a region in space consisting mainly from Hydrogen gas (HII region) and that it contains many young stars hidden inside (a stellar nursery, like the better known Orion nebula), that emit radiation and triggering the hydrogen atoms of the nebula to shine with its characteristic red light.
This image of the Swan nebula was taken with a small refractor telescope and a DSLR camera (see details below) and besides the main nebula it also reveals other wisps of nebulosity close by and of course the numerous stars of our Galaxy placed much closer to us than the nebula itself.
So, what’s your favorite nickname for this object?
Thanks to all for looking and clear skies to everyone!
Telescope: Orion EON ED 80/500 refractor
Mount: Modified Vixen Sphinx
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: Skywatcher 80/400 refractor, Skywatcher Synguider
Light frames: 5 x 5 mins (total: 25 mins), ISO 1600, Custom WB, calibrated with darks
Date & Location: 2/9/2019 - Chalkidiki, Greece
Processing: DSS 4.2.3, Adobe Photoshop 2020 with Astronomy Tools Actions Set (spikes added to the brightest stars), finished in Lightroom CC
From the banks of Loch Creran towards the mountains on a bright sunny day .
I used my new calibrated sRGB monitor when processing this so although the tones are correct on that I am getting such different colours and vibrancy when I look at this on my laptop, my mobile and my ipad. Which one to trust!!!
I don't have a drip kit. Just a bowl of milky water and a sponge for a drip source.
Illimination: Single flash triggered by my semi-calibrated eyeball.
RKO_8954. A Common Redshank being forced from the iron fence by a Black-tailed Godwit!
Acceptable sharpness despite the focussing problems with camera and lens. Somehow they can't cope falling down! All fixed now and calibrated again..... Need to test them in the coming days!
Copyright: Robert Kok. All rights reserved!
Please do not use my photos on websites, blogs or in any other media without my explicit permission.
Thanks for visiting, commenting and faving my photos. Its very much appreciated!
Variegated geranium blossom. Dedicated macro lens. No crop. No post processing. Best viewed on your computer's calibrated monitor with screen resolution 1600 x 900 or larger. :)
I usually avoid including quotes with my photos. But with this one I will.
"Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time - like to have a friend takes time. ”
- Georgia O'Keeffe
Last night 06/18/2019 from the balcony of my house: Moon-Jupiter conjunction at 02.00 AM.
To the right of the Moon you can see Jupiter surrounded by its 4 satellites: Callisto, Ganimede, Io and Europa.
This image is take from two differents shots with a 300 mm. lens, one calibrated on the Moon and one on Jupiter and its Galilean satellites.
When I looked at the photo on my Mac at home it did not look as dark as it does here on my job computer. Difficult with different screens which are not calibrated...
Well anyway, it was a lovely evening :)
A single 5 minute shot of Comet Leonard, tracked. A single shot is a bit noisy, even calibrated with flats and bias frames. 135mm Sigma Art lens at f/2, ISO200, Nikon D810A on a Celestron CGEM2 mount, with PHD2 guiding on the comet itself. This worked well enough that I will have to move my setup to be able to get more shots, and I will have to look into stacking of comet shots, never done it!
Lagoon Nebula (M8) in the constellation Sagittarius.
One of the finest star-forming regions in the sky, faintly visible to the naked eye.
Image details:
Telescope: Orion EON 80mm/f6.25 ED refractor
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da, no filter
Mount: Vixen Sphinx (NexSXW)
Guiding: Skywatcher SynGuider/80mm refractor
Exposure: Total 14 mins, Daylight WB, ISO 1600, calibrated with darks, no flats
Salar was formed as a result of transformations between several prehistoric lakes. It is covered by a few meters of a salt crust, which has an extraordinary leveling with variations of average altitude of less than one meter throughout the entire area of the Salar. The crust serves as a source of copper salt and a pool of brine, which is extremely rich in lithium. It contains 50 to 70% of the world's lithium reserves, a resource that is in the process of being mined. The large area, clear sky and exceptional leveling of the surface make Salar an ideal object to calibrate the altimeters of Earth observation satellites.
following the first good night's sleep in ages, I'd been writing emails and trying to catch up with stuff... after uploading the last of Rob's grain the day before. He shouted from the stack yard, 'Rick, you've got to see this'...
my first proper out of camera horizontal pano. I did make sure it was a steady movement on the slowest burst, but compared to the stills, each frame had some movement blur. There won't be a 'next time' for this shot, but I reckon I will avoid bursting, so to speak, and simply take static shots. Also, I'm going to take up my son's offer of a lens hood for xmas, as I had to spot out loads of rain on the lens>
Learnt too, that you can't play around a lot with colour as the rainbow is very sensitive to it.
I'd love any feedback on the greyscale gamut or colour, as I still haven't a clue what my pics look like on a calibrated monitor... I use my old Samsung TV :-)
Μ45 Pleiades Open Star Cluster in Taurus
The blue reflection nebula that surrounds the stars is not the remains from the gas cloud that gave birth to the stars, but rather a chance cloud of gas and dust that the cluster is passing through.
Distance about 450 light years.
Details:
80 mm ED refractor/ Vixen Sphinx Mount
Canon EOS 20Da
14 x 3 min light frames, calibrated with dark frames.
ISO 1600, Daylight WB
Processing: Images Plus, Adobe Photoshop
D'une vision gourmande de l'assiette de la photo précédente (DSC_4029) à une vision plus sobre, quasi ascétique....
Ces fruits (et légumes) produits dans le jardin sont pleins de défauts d'aspect mais cent fois plus sains et meilleurs au goût que ceux calibrés, aseptisés, cultivés hors sol, voire bourrés de produits chimiques organoleptiques, que l'on peut trouver au marché ou dans les magasins.....
From a greedy vision of the plate of the previous picture (DSC_4029) to a more sober, almost ascetic vision....
These fruits (and vegetables) produced in the garden are full of defects of appearance but a hundred times healthier and better in taste than those calibrated, aseptic, cultivated above ground, or even stuffed with organoleptic chemicals, that can be found at the market or in stores.....
DSC_4024
We wandered the neighborhood the other day so Vaughn could take pictures with his newly calibrated 150-600 lens. We followed the thrashers song and got shots of him on the jumping cholla.
Auf der "MS Finnmarken" (Museumsschiff der Hurtigruten) im Hafen von Stokmarknes
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On the "MS Finnmarken" (museum ship of the Hurtigruten) in the port of Stokmarknes
This is the last one from that day. I think.
And it is no 100 of the photos I have here on flickr.
November 1, 2007 Explore #384
here you can buy a quality print!
To fully enjoy my photos your screen has to be calibrated!
Well I did get a pretty cool present from my daughters and their significant others for Christmas. It is the Star Adventurer tracking mount for taking night photos of the sky.
So I spent the past few days reading up on how to use the unit, make sure it was calibrated and then aligning it properly with the north star so that long exposures can be taken of night sky elements.
Finally had a clear night to try out the alignment with Polaris which turned out pretty cool. Then mounted my 300 mm lens on the Canon 7D Mark II to try it out taking some photos of Pleiades, a formation of baby stars in the sky.
Given there were some thin clouds and moisture haze in the sky as well as a near quarter moon adding light that would be better off not there, and taking this from my yard in Baltimore County which is not even close to a 'dark' sky ... it was some cool practice to see that I was able to get the unit aligned correctly so that 1 to 3 minute exposures could be done. It was able to even pick up some of the gas there around the stars even under the partial moon and city lights impacting the sky.
This capture here was at ISO 800 and just over 70 seconds, and at f/8 to get some star bursts.
Given I have enjoyed viewing this stellar object through a telescope many years before ... the amount of light being picked up here by the longer exposure is so much better than what the eye can see through the scope.
Looking forward to using it under much darker sky conditions ...
OBJECT: M45 (NGC1432), Pleiades (The Seven Sisters), RA 03h 47min, DEC 24°07’, apparent magnitude approx 2, apparent dimension 110’, FOV 4,1° x 2,7°.
GEAR: Nikon Z7 Kolari Full Spectrum + Nikkor 500/5,6 PF, Astronomic UV/IR/L2 Clip in filter, Dew heater strip, Sensor pixel scale 1,75 arcsec/px, tracking mount iOptron CEM60EC - 3 star alignment, no auto guiding.
ACQUISITION: November 6, 2021, Struz, CZ, Subexposure 180s, f 5,6, ISO 1600, Interval 15 s, RAW-L, Lights 21x, Darks 20x, Bias 15x, Flats 15x, DarkFlats 10x. Total exposure time 63 min. Night, no wind, 0° C, No Moon, Backyard - Light pollution - Bortle 5.
STACKING AND POST PROCESSING: AstroPixelProcessor (stacking, background neutralisation, light pollution removal, calibrate background and stars colours) , Adobe Photoshop CC 2022 (stretching, black and white point settings, star reduction, enhance DSO, noise reduction, contrast setting). No cropped, image size 3840 x 2560 px.
A real gem in the night sky, this globular star cluster is M13 (13th entry in Charles Messier's catalogue of deep sky objects), the Great Hercules Cluster in the northern hemisphere sky. It is visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy patch of light under a clear, dark sky. Located about 25,000 light-years away from Earth, this globular cluster is made up of several hundred thousand stars and occupies a region of space that measures around 150 light-years in diameter. The stars of M13 are about 12 billion years old, an age comparable to the age of the Universe itself (about 13.7 billion years).
Look at it with a small telescope and the view is filled with countless sparkling stars. With larger telescopes and in deep exposures the tremendous number of stars becomes evident. One can only imagine the view from a hypothetical planet around a star close to the center of M13, a night sky filled with thousands of stars brighter than the brightest stars in our own night sky.
The faint 12th-magnitude galaxy NGC 6207 can be seen below and to the left of M13. It is a spiral galaxy located about 40 million light years away that appears by chance close to M13. Between M13 and NGC 6207 lies another smaller and fainter galaxy - IC 4617, which is more than 10 times farther away than NGC 6207. Can you spot it?
Telescope: Orion EON ED 80/500 refractor
Mount: Modified Vixen Sphinx (NexSXW)
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Light frames: 28 x 3 minutes (total: 84 minutes), ISO 1600, Daylight WB, calibrated with darks
Guiding: Skywatcher 80/400 refractor, Skywatcher Synguider autoguider
Date & Location: 3/5/2019 - Chalkidiki, Greece
Processing: DSS 4.1.1, Adobe Photoshop CS6 with Astronomy Tools Actions Set (spikes added to the brightest stars)
This is a photograph taken with a small refractor telescope and a DSLR of two Deep-Sky objects located in the Northern Hemisphere constellation of Cassiopeia, the Queen. Although they look like being close to each other, they are located far apart from each other, both of course belonging to our Milky Way Galaxy collection of stars and nebulae.
The object at center is M52 (Messier 52, NGC 7654), an open star cluster of about 200 stars at an estimated distance of about 4,000 to 5,000 light years. It was discovered by Charles Messier on 1774. These stars were born from the same interstellar nebula of gas and dust about 35 million years ago, so this is a young star cluster by astronomy standards. This object, visible with a small telescope or even binoculars under clear, dark skies is sometimes called the Salt-and-Pepper cluster.
To the right of M52 we can see the Bubble nebula (NGC 7635), which was discovered by W. Herschel in 1787. This object is located further away from M52, at an estimated distance of about 11,000 light years. The Bubble Nebula is a strange planetary nebula, formed from a fast stellar wind of a hot, young, massive star located inside the nebula. As the wind comes off the star, it pushes the surrounding gas to form a giant sphere that is surrounded by a molecular cloud. The high-energy ultraviolet light from the star ionizes the gas atoms, causing them to glow. The star that illuminates the Bubble is some 25 to 40 times as massive as our Sun and thousands of times brighter. This Wolf-Rayet star will probably end up exploding as a supernova.
The Bubble nebula is much dimmer than M52 and requires a large telescope to be seen. Finally, at the upper right we can see a smaller nebula, which is catalogued as NGC 7538, at about 9,000 light years, a region of active star formation containing a protostars with a mass of about 300 solar masses.
I photographed these two objects back in 2017 but this time I managed to collect about 1,5 hours of data with the use of a CLS light pollution filter, so hopefully a better result was obtained.
Thanks to everyone for viewing - clear skies!
Details:
Telescope: Orion EON 80ED
Camera: Canon EOS 20Da
Mount: Vixen Sphinx (NexSXW)
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: 80/400 Skywatcher refractor - SkyWatcher SynGuider
Light frames: 20 x 5 mins (total: 100 mins), ISO 3200, Custom WB, calibrated with darks
Date: 26 October 2019
Processing: DSS 4.2.3, Adobe Photoshop 2020 with Astronomy Tools Actions set (spikes added to the brightest stars).
Leica M8 plus Voigtlaender 35/1.4 at F8. I am noticing that my 'good' eye is not good enough for using the optical viewfinder competently and that guessing becomes more than 50% of calibrating the shots. Just like driving the car in the night. It is amazing how good the brain is in complementing the deficiency of our senses. This is a close-up at about the limit of what the lens can do (approx. 70 cm).