Observers at the Edge

Here's an image of my posse at the recent trip to Lassen Natl. Park.  Beset by smoke and clouds for days we were treated to an exceptional sky on our last night.  From this vantage point in the parking lot it looked like we were perched at the edge of the earth - looking out into the vastness of space.  The Milky Way had that sugary texture one sees in very dark skies.  Inky dark lanes run throughout.  So remarkable to us and yet only a few generations past were skies like this commonplace for most peoples on earth.

The "teapot" pouring star clouds right down the barrel of that Schmidt-Cassegrain

Two observers using the large Schmidt-Cass (one at scope, the other hidden at right using charts).  One imager huddled over laptop with his refractor illuminated by the glow of red LEDs.  My gear is hidden in the background but you can see my laptop silhouetted against the horizon.

We often have to remind each other to take our eyes off our equipment and just - look.  All too rare and never enough time to let the experience soak in.  That's why we have to go out and do it again.  And again.

Observers at the Edge

Taken at Bumpass Hell parking lot, Lassen Natl. Park,   August 18, 2012
Canon T2i (stock), Canon EF-L 24 mm @f2.0
Manfroto Tripod (stationary), set inches off the ground
Composite of two frames, one focused on stars, one on foreground

Each exposure 10s @ ISO 3200

vignetting and lens correction in Lightroom 4
Composited in Photoshop

final adjustments and noise reduction in Pixinsight

Star Fire

A dark sky outing with friends to Lassen National Park in Northern California was hampered by two large forest fires in the area.  For multiple nights we dodged smoke and clouds for a glimpse through to some of the darkest skies California has to offer.  Finally on Saturday night, August 18, the smoke and clouds had abated and we drove up to the Bumpass Hell parking lot full of anticipation for a night of imaging and observing.

As we entered the Park an ominous white cloud billowed high in the West.  A new fire had started from a lightning strike only a few hours earlier.  As darkness fell the eerie glow would presage the dangerous fire that it would become over the next 48hrs.

The conjunction of Mars, Saturn and Spica (lower left) in the fiery glow of the Ponderosa Fire.  

Click on either image for a larger version where you can toggle the annotation.

The Ponderosa fire is still burning - nearing 25,000 acres with up to 50 homes and structures burned.  Evacuation warnings have gone out to the little town of Mineral where we stayed.

The fire glow over the ridge died down with the coming of night and we enjoyed a nearly perfect night of observing.  It was a very narrow window as I am sure the smoke from this fire has darkened the skies over Lassen again.

Star Fire

Taken at Bumpass Hell parking lot, Lassen Natl. Park,   August 18, 2012
Canon T2i (stock), Canon EF24 mm f1.8
Manfroto Tripod (stationary)
Mosaic of 4 frames, each 8 sec exposures @ ISO1600

no dark or flat subtraction
vignetting and lens correction in Lightroom 4
frame stitching in PTGui Pro

final adjustments and noise reduction in Pixinsight

Pleiades Rising

Trying to make the best of a trip to New Mexico during the full moon and monsoon season.  Don't get me wrong - the skies are spectacular.  I'm just haven't learned how to best capture what I'm seeing and feeling.  I have plenty more day shots that I like but haven't decided if I want to "cross the streams" on what would otherwise be a astronomy centric blog.  If I did it would increase the rate of images I post given the glacial pace of astro-imaging this year.

Here come the Pleiades again.  click to enlarge

The moon is two days shy of full and is swinging low on the horizon about 30 degrees outside of the right side frame.  The full width is about 170 degrees but the above image is a little less than that since I cropped out my shadow which was on the left side of the frame.  Only the brightest stars are visible because of the short exposure and moonlight.  You can see the Pleiades rising just above Kitchen Mesa, the large rock face in the left hand frame.

I experimented with a number of ways to capture/process this.  It is a two frame mosaic with each frame processed with 4 different exposures using Photoshop's HDR function.  I certainly do wish for more tools in the PS HDR module but at this point I don't do enough HDR to justify a specialty package.  I stitched the two frames using PTGui Pro since PS couldn't figure out how to stitch this correctly.  After that I did some final tone/exposure/noise reduction in Lightroom.

Pleiades Rising

Taken at Ghost Ranch, NM   July 31, 2012
Canon T2i (stock), Canon EF-S 10-22mm @ 10mm  f3.5
Manfroto Tripod (stationary)
two frames, each frame with 1, 2, 4, 15 sec exposures @ ISO1600

no dark or flat subtraction
vignetting and lens correction in Lightroom 4
HDR combine in Photoshop
frame stitching in PTGui Pro

final adjustments and noise reduction in Lightroom 4

Venus. Done. Now give me some deep sky!

With eclipses, transits, and other astronomical events of note behind us I'm returning to my first love.  Wide field deep sky imaging.  But I really should post at least one picture of the transit before continuing.  I'm still going to work on assembling the time-lapse but haven't had time for the frame by frame alignment required.

Venus in mid-transit.  One of 298 frames.  Movie adaptation to be released...later.

It has been too long since I've really adorned the hair-shirt.  I've missed the unique pain of sleepless nights with endless hours fighting optics, weather, and electronics problems, followed by more hours of processing.  I'm not the most efficient (far from it), accomplished (light years away), or clever imager but I hope some other poor soul starting off can gain some measure of assistance by reading of my accounts.  Or at least a chuckle at my multitude of travails.

I always seem to bite off more than I can chew and this upcoming project will be no different.  The benefit of wide field is the variety of objects that can be captured.  It allows for greater creativity with framing.  But sometimes even a single wide frame isn't enough and that's where a multipanel mosaic comes in.  I've only attempted one two panel mosaic previously so why not make it harder by going for six?

A close friend encouraged me to post progress along way.  Too much focus on the finished product he says.  He's right ... accomplished imagers already know what is involved.  If things work out well you end up with a nice image with no one is the wiser of the struggles to get there.  As the title of of the blog implies - imaging is hard work.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  The pros only make it look easy.  A tribute to their skill honed from thousands of hours of focus.  The rest of us need to bumble along ... but oh what fun!

So.  Posts to follow will chart the journey of this mosaic.  Warts and all.


Taken in my backyard in San Jose, CA  Jun 5, 2012 7:00pm PST
Canon T2i (stock), Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L + Extender EF 2X III @ f8, Baader solar filter
AP900 mount
1/800 sec exposure @ ISO100
post-processed in Lightroom 4, Pixinsight (colorized to my taste)

Goodbye Venus ... till Tuesday

After yesterday's successful capture of the crescent Venus I decided to try one last time.  Planetarium software shows Venus about 3.75 degrees away from the Sun this morning - and should be safe to image.    After making absolutely sure the sun was outside of the frame I removed the Baader filter and snapped off a sequence of exposures.  The keeper was at 1/3200sec ... a little faster than yesterday.

Goodbye Venus ... see you in silhouette on Tuesday

You can readily see the large gradient from being so near the Sun.  If there were a second frame adjacent on the right side the Sun would be in about the middle.  I think we can safely say that Venus is lost in the glare now ... we'll have to wait until Tuesday when she does her once a century glide across the solar disk.


Taken in my backyard in San Jose, CA Jun 3, 2012, 10:51am PST
Canon T2i (stock), Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L + Extender EF 2X III @ f8
AP900 mount
1/3200 sec exposure @ ISO100
post-processed in Lightroom 4 and PS5

Venus revealed: T-3days

This morning I took a couple more images of the sun to verify exposure conditions and then thought about Venus, unseen in the glare of the Sun, racing towards her date.  But is she really unseen?  

I checked planetarium software and it shows Venus is currently about 5 degrees away from the Sun.  The field of view of my camera with 200mm and 2x telextender is about half that in the long direction so in theory the Sun should be outside the field.  Could a picture be had?

Keeping the solar filter on ... I slewed to the position of Venus and verified that no part of the Sun was visible in the frame.  Then off with the filter and took an exposure series all the way to 1/4000 which is the limit of the T2i.  Focus was kept the same as when I was imaging the Sun so if Venus was in the frame I should see it.  In the glare of daytime I couldn't see anything on the camera back but once inside I could see Venus quite clearly in the fast exposure frames. 

Three days before "new" Venus

Since we are only 3 days before transit when Venus will be directly between Earth and Sun only a slight sliver of a crescent is visible.  Pretty neat!  

Tomorrow, exactly 24hrs after this image Venus will be 3.75 degrees from the Sun.  The apparent motion is now about 1.75 deg/day (about 3.5 moon diameters).  With care it might be possible to get another picture tomorrow morning.  After that it will be too close and lost in the glare of the Sun ... at least for my gear.  Still it is pretty neat to see her one last time before she reappears against the disk of the Sun on Tuesday afternoon.


Taken in my backyard in San Jose, CA  Jun 2, 2012 10:30am PST
Canon T2i (stock), Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L + Extender EF 2X III @ f8
AP900 mount
1/2500 sec exposure @ ISO100
post-processed in Lightroom 4

Transit Practice

With excitement for the coming Venus transit this coming Tuesday (June 5) I ordered me up a Canon Extender EF 2X III to double the focal length of the 200mm lens.  As I learned from the annular eclipse the image scale (for the sun) with the 200mm is pretty meager.

I took the following picture yesterday and while the sun still doesn't fill much of the frame it is more than  adequate for my transit purposes.  All I really want is a record of having lived through it and if all goes well assemble an image sequence into a movie.

Here is the full frame with the T2i.

Ol' Sol

I took that image, brought it into Pixinsight for enhancement and colorization.  Here is the result after a heavy crop.

Detail visible after processing in Pixinsight.  Please click for larger size - it's much nicer.

Focusing is a challenge ... in full daylight it is difficult to see the camera screen.  Autofocus does work but I'm not absolutely certain if I could improve on that with manual focus or not.  The above was focused manually using the buttons on the control box for the robofocus.  While it was the best of the lot it a moment of good seeing could easily account for the improvement.


Taken in my backyard in San Jose, CA  May 31, 2012
Canon T2i (stock), Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L + Extender EF 2X III @ f8
Baader solar film over lens cap
AP900 mount
1/640 sec exposure @ ISO100
post-processed in PixInsight