Tag Archives: astrophotography

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M42 from Sydney

Image of M 42 (The Orion Nebula) from my backyard, 15 km North from Sydney’s city center, on 10th Mar 2020.

Equipment: Skywatcher Black Diamond 80 (F=600mm, f/7.5), Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 (mount), ZWO ASI178MC (main camera), ZWO ASI120MM + Orion 50mm guidescope (guiding), 2″ UHD Optolong filter, and ASIair controlling everythin (using my son’s iPad).

This image combines 60 x 20s light frames, and 21 x 20s dark frames. Aligned and stacked with SiriL, stretching, colour contrast, saturation, levels, and luminosity with Photoshop.

Full resolution image in my Flickr.

Credit: Ángel R. López-Sánchez (AAO-MQ).

Test of M8 from Sydney

Test image of M 8 (The Lagoon Nebula) from my backyard, 15 km North from Sydney’s city center, on 21st Aug 2019.

That was my first attempt to get the new equipment working. I was testing the Skywatcher AZ-EQ6 mount and the ZWO ASI120MM (guiding) and ZWO ASI178MC (main camera) with the ASIair. But I had plenty of problems to get the guiding working as the mount was not properly aligned to the South Celestial Pole (over Sydney, very difficult to see the faint stars using the polar scope of the mount). I had to use the drift method. After that, getting the ASIair properly guiding was hard as I couldn’t find any easy manual and never used PHD for guiding before.

This image combines 25 (of a series of 60) good 180s frames using the ZWO 183MC and my Skywatcher Black Diamond 80 (F=600mm, f/7.5. No darks, flats, biases or light pollution filter was used for this.

Later it was also tricky for me to play with the raw data: I have never used a color camera producing .FITS files before! It took me some time to get a good free(*) software for it and I found Siril. But the “bayer” decomposition didn’t work well with the ZWO cameras and my images had very weird colours.

In March 2020 I learnt a couple of extra things, including changing the bayer matrix from RGGB to GBRG for ZWO cameras and… bingo! So here it is the test image I got that night more than half a year ago! And still testing the equipment!

Ah, yes, stretching, colour contrast, saturation, levels, and luminosity with Photoshop.

Full resolution image in my Flickr.

Credit: Ángel R. López-Sánchez (AAO-MQ).

(*) Don’t get me wrong… I’ll get PixInsight eventually, when I get everything working well.

Amateur Astrophotography from Siding Spring Observatory in March 2020

Posted on March 2, 2020 | 2 comments

OK, I’m trying something different here today.

Instead of just providing the link to the Twitter thread, I’m compiling all the tweets I sent about my amateur astronomy session at Siding Spring Observatory last night, 1st March 2020, while finally testing my new equipment (mount and cameras) from a dark place.

The Twitter thread starts here.

Preparing my telescopes for playing tonight 😉

OK, good news: I did the polar alignment of the mount using 3 methods (@zwoasi ASIAir + guider / canon 5D, eye using polar scope of mount) and all agree!! I got an accuracy of 16” in total, which I think it is awesome!

Yep, this is now working! It took me an extra while to get the calibration of the auto-guiding good, but now errors are within 0.4-0.6”, which is great… so observing again Carina Neb. 3 min, Skywatcher BD80+ZWO 178MC, single 3 min exposure, no filter, from Siding Spring Observatory.

So here I am, in the bed at my room at the ANU Lodge at Siding Spring Observatory, controlling my amateur telescope at 50m using my son’s iPad… I’m sleepy so I’ll probably let it running and get some sleep

zzz moved it to M83 and it works… 5 minute exposures, now applying a small dithering between exposures…. launched 40 and continue zzzz

Results! Carina Nebula, 52 x 3 min exposures, almost perfect guiding, processed with Siril, color/stretch with Photoshop, using Skywatcher BD80 & @zwoasi 178MC. No light pollution filter, from Siding Spring Observatory last night, 1st March 2020. Only 2 darks & no dithering.

The center of the Carina Nebula with massive star Eta Carina.
Full resolution in my Flickr.

Please, do compare it with the image of the same nebula I took from Sydney, 60 x 60s exposures, fair guiding, @Optolong_filter light pollution filter last Thursday night (basically same processing).

Carina Nebula, 27 Feb 2020 from my backyard in Frenchs Forest, 15 km N from Sydney’s city center. Skywatcher Black Diamond & ZWO ASI178MC. 60 frames x 60s each, aligned & stacked with Siril software, color + extra processing with Photoshop. No darks, no flats, but the Optolong UHC light pollution filter was used.
Full resolution in my Flickr.

Something else learned with this (although later I remembered I read about it before): if the tracking+guiding is excellent you HAVE TO DITHER the field between frames. Otherwise you’ll get these low-intensity stripes that are impossible to remove…

Luckily, I DID dither for M83: 40×5 min exposures, almost perfect guiding, processed with Siril, color/stretch with Photoshop, using Skywatcher BD80 & @zwoasi 178MC. No light pollution filter, from Siding Spring Observatory last night, 1st March 2020. Only 2 darks used!

Spiral galaxy M83. Full resolution in my Flickr.

2 Comments

Posted in Astrophotography

Tagged 2020, astrophotography, Carina Nebula, M 83, Siding Spring Observatory

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The Milky Way over Siding Spring Observatory

The Milky Way over Siding Spring Observatory, on Friday 23rd Aug 2019, 9pm local time, during a Stargazing event as part of a tour for Australian Geographic.

10 x 30 seconds exposures taken using a camera is a CANON 5D Mark III in a tripod (no tracking). The lens was a Samyang 14mm at f2.8.

RAW to TIFF conversion in Photoshop, star alignment and median stacking with Siril software.

The high-resolution image is available in my Flickr.

Credit: Ángel R. López-Sánchez (Australian Astronomical Optics, Macquarie University) + all participants.

1 Comment

Posted on August 26, 2019 in Astrophotography, Outreach

Tagged 2019, Amateur Astronomy, astronomy, astrophotography, Outreach, SSO, Stargazing

Pocket guide to the Moon

Posted on July 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

It’s 50 years! since Humans first put our feet on the Moon. For celebrating this achievement, ABC released a special “Stargazing ABC” show, Moon and Beyond. Hosted by Professor Brian Cox and Julia Zemiro, and with the participation of Greg Quicke and Prof. Tamara Davis, the show revisited what the Apollo mission meant, imagine future space exploration, checked what takes to become an astronaut, and investigated Australia’s space agency.

I was invited to be part of the live audience for this show, that was recorded on the 24th of June. It has been my very first time attending a TV show recording… that was quite interesting. If you watch the show you’ll see me from time to time sit in the very first row 🙂

In parallel to all of this, ABC has also released a “Pocket guide to the Moon“. Narrated by my friend and colleague Prof. Fred Watson, it is a guided tour of the Apollo sites, stunning lava plains and craters that dot the lunar surface.

Both my son and me have participated in the “Pocket guide to the Moon” providing some of the Moon images that are included there, as during this year we have been compiling many shots of the Moon in different phases with my telescope. And we both are in the credits, of course!