This was taken today with the Lunt 80mm solar telescope. The best of 10000 images were stacked. They were taken with a video cam at a rate of 8/second.
Author Archives: astrolavista
Astrobin Gallery
Below is a link to my Astrobin gallery. After about a year and a half of acquiring and processing images I finally made it to the Astrobin “leaderboard” which is reserved for the top 100 Astrophotographers out of 5000+ contributors from all over the world. Given that I am always dumbfounded by what those in the top 10 are able to accomplish, I am happy to at least be a placeholder in the top 100. The nice thing about Astrobin is that you can see what equipment and processes others are using to produce their images. Then you just learn by doing. Some Astrobin contributors are just getting started and have a few images taken with a modest telescope and a videocam or dslr. Others have sophisticated setups in dark sky areas. Some even use source material from the Hubble or large professional telescopes. I am amazed by what some people can accomplish with the smallest of setups in the most light polluted cities. It is an interesting place to browse and learn.
Solar Prominence 06/02/2016
This was taken with an 80mm Lunt Solar telescope and a Dakin 2.4x Barlow.
Sombrero Galaxy – M104
Shown below are three new versions of the Sombrero Galaxy. The original data involved a total imaging time of 5.6 hours and 79 photos through LRGB filters and the Celestron EdgeHD 11.
Black Eye Galaxy -M64
From Wikipedia:
“The Black Eye Galaxy (also called Evil Eye Galaxy; designated Messier 64, M64, or NGC 4826) was discovered by Edward Pigott in March 1779, and independently by Johann Elert Bode in April of the same year, as well as by Charles Messier in 1780. It has a spectacular dark band of absorbing dust in front of the galaxy’s bright nucleus, giving rise to its nicknames of the “Black Eye” or “Evil Eye” galaxy. M64 is well known among amateur astronomers because of its appearance in small telescopes. It is a spiral galaxy in the Coma Berenices constellation.”
This was taken through the Celestron EdgeHD 11 inch telescope. A total of 138 images were stacked for a total imaging time of 7.5 hours
Whirlpool Galaxy – Color
The subexposures for this stacked image were taken with LRGB filters. The total exposure time was about 25 hours with the Celestron 11 inch telescope.
From Wikipedia:
“The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a, M51a, or NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. Recently it was estimated to be 23 ± 4 million light-years from the Milky Way, but different methods yield distances between 15 and 35 million light-years. Messier 51 is one of the best known galaxies in the sky. The galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195, are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may even be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy is also a popular target for professional astronomers, who study it to further understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions.”
2017 Astro La Vista Calendar
Whirlpool Galaxy in Greyscale
Solar 05/23/2016
Both images were imaged with a Lunt 80mm solar scope and an Imaging Source camera at 30 FPS. The first image was magnified an additional 2.5x with a Barlow lens. Ten thousand images were taken in each case and the best 20% were stacked. The images were captured with IC Capture, stacked in Autostakkert, sharpened in Registax, and then processed in Photoshop.
Mercury Transit in Greyscale
