Astro shot - Propeller nebula

Holy poop...that is amazing!!
I don't have enough "wow" words to describe I good that looks.
 
Thanks very much all for looking, glad that you like it.

Regarding focal length, it was only 500mm, but the chip on the camera is very small at 1.4MP and 1391 x 1039. Many of the larger nebula's can be captured with a 300mm lens.
 
Simply beautiful, lovely colors. Would also love to know what you need to try and capture something like this.
 
Thanks Alan and Carol. Regarding capture ......

...... The kit I use is here

The camera is an astro cooled CCD camera capable of cooling to 27 degrees below the ambient temperature. This helps combat noise as each exposure is 25 minutes long. I am able to do that as the smallest scope and gold camera is setup for guiding, so it locks onto a star and will keep that star in the same position all night. Connected through to the mount, that means I can get these long exposures.

The camera is a mono one and the way to get colours is to take images using different colour filters then merge them at the processing stage.

If anyone is still awake :D .... This image is taken using narrow band filters, which only pick up a small bandwidth of certain lights. A number of 25 minute exposures were taken with each filter, for example 19 for one of them, and then they get stacked together in order to effectively boost the signal.

In total, this is a combination of 48 x 25 minute exposures.

Happy to answer any other questions, it's very technical and probably boring to most, and I am also very much an amateur :)
 
Whew - glad i asked!!
Very much a specialist genre. Look forward to seeing more!
 
Well worth the kit and the effort to be getting images like that, didn't realise so many filters and exposures were required to do stuff like this, always thought they just put a camera on the end of a telescope haha :bonk:

Nice one, hopefully we'll see more of these.
 
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Great picture and some really interesting kit you've got there.
 
Thanks all, glad that you like it. It's complicated stuff and the capture is only half of it. The processing is probably the hardest part of all. An image will take many hours to process. It's mad :)
 
Thanks for your kind words Christine - My images are very mediocre to some of the fantastic stuff posted on Astro forums and my kit is equally mediocre in comparison!!
 
Stunning!! Really love the colours.
 
Fantastic image!
Can that kit be used in urban environments with light pollution or do you have to trek out to a field in the middle of the night? :)
Also, if you don't mind, what does a set up like that typically cost?
 
Thanks Anand and Richard.

Narrowband imaging (instead of RGB imaging) can be done in urban environments with light pollution as the bandwidths of the light you are catching with the various filters is different to that of light pollution.

Regarding cost - In order to start out with a basic setup that will give you a fighting chance you'd need at least £3k in my opinion. That would get you a mount that tracked, a small refractor scope and a small chip astro cooled CCD and filters. It can be done far cheaper, but it is a very difficult hobby and so I like to make it as easy as possible with kit made for purpose, not trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

If you are interested, there's some good astro forums out there with a wealth of information and helpful folks.
 
swag72 said:
Thanks Alan and Carol. Regarding capture ......

...... The kit I use is here

The camera is an astro cooled CCD camera capable of cooling to 27 degrees below the ambient temperature. This helps combat noise as each exposure is 25 minutes long. I am able to do that as the smallest scope and gold camera is setup for guiding, so it locks onto a star and will keep that star in the same position all night. Connected through to the mount, that means I can get these long exposures.

The camera is a mono one and the way to get colours is to take images using different colour filters then merge them at the processing stage.

If anyone is still awake :D .... This image is taken using narrow band filters, which only pick up a small bandwidth of certain lights. A number of 25 minute exposures were taken with each filter, for example 19 for one of them, and then they get stacked together in order to effectively boost the signal.

In total, this is a combination of 48 x 25 minute exposures.

Happy to answer any other questions, it's very technical and probably boring to most, and I am also very much an amateur :)
Click to expand...

Wow, thanks for taking the time to post that up. Very impressive setup.
 
Amazing picture, if that was printed in a magazine you'd think it was from the Hubble. Very, very nice picture

Alan
 
Thank you both again. The hardest part of all is the processing and one image is likely to take approx 6-8 hours to process. This has been the hardest part to try to get right - Taking the images is a doddle in comparison!
 
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