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Reply To: Some recent astronomy pics from the Paul Rix Observatory (a.k.a my back yard)

Home Forums General Discussion Some recent astronomy pics from the Paul Rix Observatory (a.k.a my back yard) Reply To: Some recent astronomy pics from the Paul Rix Observatory (a.k.a my back yard)

#1937284
Paul Rix
Participant

Here are a couple more. I have just started using an new camera and these are the initial results.
NGC2903 again. The new camera does a much nicer job IMHO giving a cleaner image with less noise.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/PaulRix/Astronomy/ngc2903finished.jpg

The Horsehead Nebula again. Unfortunately, Orion was getting pretty washed out with light pollution near the horizon when I took this. That is why the contrast is not as good as it could have been. Even so, I think it is a better image than my last attempt (except for the contrast).
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/PaulRix/Astronomy/horseheaddsipro.jpg

The new camera is monochrome, so to get colour images, I have to take four sets of data using filters for Red, Green, Blue and Luminance. The Luminance set contains the majority of the detail and takes longer to capture. I then use Photoshop to merge the colour data to give the final image. More time consuming than a one shot colour camera, but the sensor is more than twice as sensitive when compared to the previous camera and the lack of a bayer matrix on the chip means that each image is much sharper. The image of NGC2903 is the first I have done where the data was gathered on two separate nights. I took the Luminance and Blue data on Friday night and finished up the Red and Green data on Saturday. For some reason, I find that pretty amazing. Hopefully the new camera (a Meade Deep Sky Imager Pro) will allow me to get some really nice images over the next few months.