Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #astrophotography

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#Astrophotography

Yay! I was able to get two nights of photos after TWO months of no night sky! (Thanks Vancouver)

This is the Great Orion Nebula. I added Hydrogen Alpha capturing to really highlight the nebulosity around the main Nebula.

@QHYCCD #qhy268m
/1 The Great Orion Nebula in H...
The Orion Nebula (M42) is about 1,350 light years away from us. It is a star formation region ("stellar region") where new stars are being throughout the cloudy areas. The dense colored region is home to the most amount of star formation (star chart overlay).

/2 My photo with a star chart ...
Within the dense region of the Nebula, the youngest and brightest stars in the Nebula are thought to be as young as 10,000 years old (about when the Sabre Tooth Tiger went extinct).

/3 A closeup of the region whe...
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🔭 #Astrophotography 🔭
Eastern Veil Nebula

This is the remnant of a supernova occurring 10-20k y ago. The star involved was much larger than our sun, & when it occurred, our ancestors would have seen it in the daytime sky!

HSO custom palette by me: shot from Vancouver, BC

/1 The Eastern Veil Nebula, rendered in:  Mostly Hydrogen: Red
Here is the full Veil Nebula (you can see the Eastern Veil Nebula rotated in the left of this image) in traditional RGB imaging. This is how it appears with a "regular camera" and no narrowband processing.

/2 The full Veil supernova remnant, rendered in traditional RGB
We've also been able to observe the expansion! Comparing two @NASA photos 18 years apart, a subtle shift in the filaments is seen relative to the stars.


/3
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#astrophotography

If you had told me 2 years ago that I'd be able to take pictures like this from my light-polluted Vancouver balcony, 🤯🤯.

Not even slightly visible to the naked eye in the city, this rich nebula of Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Sulfur is known as the Pelican Nebula.
far les saturated but just as clear!

(i like this better, I think!!!)
a closeup of the "pelican" - can you see the pelicans head?
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#astrophotography

Two stunning Nebula, rendered in a "Cyberpunk" palette created by me! On the top left we have the "Bubble Nebula" (~8000 LY away), & in the bottom middle we have the "Lobster Claw Nebula" (~11,000 LY away), close to the constellation Cassiopeia.
Here's a closeup of the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) - which is created by stellar winds created by a seething star about 50x larger than our sun, and the gas pushes out from it in what's called a "stellar wind", sweeping up the cold gases around it, and creating the "bubble form."
And this is the Lobster Claw Nebula (Sh2-157), an emission neubla with both Hydrogen Alpha (in my rendering, the purple red), and Oxygen-3 (in my rendering, the bluish purple), residing anywhere between 8k-17k light years away from us!
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#Astrophotography

As the clouds roll in and I have to put my telescope away, I decided to spend a night with the incredible North American and Pelican Nebula. 2.5 hours each of Ha (red-orange), Sii (orange-green), and Oiii (Blue). narrowband image of the North American Nebula on the left, a
I had taken an image of this area last year, and was quite happy with it! But with my new narrowband system, I can get so much more data and really get details that the other system couldn't. The old picture was 14 hours of data, the new one is only 7.5h! side by side comparison of old image and new image
Here is an animation at 100% crop so you can see the difference in quality.

I am a very geeky, very happy astrophotographer :)
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#astrophotography

5,000 light years away from us, in the constellation Cygnus, exists the "Crescent Nebula" (I call it the "Brain Nebula"). There is an "shock wave" of blue moving outward and a shockwave moving inward at about 2,000 km/sec.

/1 Image
Pulling back we can see tremendous nebulosity of the Sadr region.

The central star of the Crescent Nebula will eventually explode in a supernova explosion.

/2 Image
Zoomed out even further (as part of my 4 panel mosaic) we can see the bright star Sadr.

/3 Image
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Reprocessing old data as I get ready for some clear skies later this week! This is the Tadpole Nebula, projected in HSO colour scheme. 100 light years across with and 12,000 light years away from us.

Right next door... is...

/1

#astrophotography
The Spider (IC 417) and Fly Nebula (NGC 1931), two stellar nurseries with young, open star clusters. Of course, the Tadpole Nebula, too, is full of young stars being created!

For a larger view...
/2
This is the full scene! For scale, the small "fly nebula" on the right is 10 light years across.

What a beautiful target!

#astrophotography

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Few things make me happier than a clear night sky!

Bonus points: can you find the big Dipper?

Answers below!

#Astrophotography

/1 My telescope pointing to the night sky! The Big Dipper is ri
The Big Dipper is a collection of bright stars from the constellation Ursa Major, with a very recognizable shape. It's probably one of the easiest constellations to recognize, and because it's so bright, if you can see the night sky in the northern hemisphere, you can see it!

/2 The big Dipper highlighted
The big Dipper is also an *excellent* compass. The "distal part of the bucket" points towards the north star, telling you what direction celestial north is!

Can't quite see it here but the next "bright star" in that direction is Polaris, the north star.

/3 Using the big Dipper to find Polaris
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My first ever attempt at using my 3 nanometer filters. This allows light into the camera at only one specific wavelength: 656.3nm +/- 1.5nm. This means that pretty much all the light pollution is shut out.

Here is the horsehead nebula in Hydrogen Alpha!
#Astrophotography
/1
This is a total of 80 minutes of exposure, and the fine details like the mists of gas rising from the ridge near the Horsehead itself are 🤯🤯.

As I add more data (soon this nebula unavailable to me, will need to wait until November!), this will get smoother and more defined.
/2
By combining it with RGB colour data (Hydrogen alpha is in the red spectrum), I can really make the colours pop!

I'm working on a final version, and it will be GLORIOUS!

/3
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The Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49); captured in Hydrogen alpha-Oxygen3-Oxygen3 detail, and full colour stars.

This nebula is 65 light years across and about 5,000 light years away.

#Astrophotography

Thread: how do I do this?!

/1
I have taken a picture of this before... it was one of my best taken from my DSLR + simple star tracker setup.
However, you can see that the detail with the telescope+guided mount is much sharper.

With hydrogen & oxygen filters, I can separate the data cleanly, too.

/2
Incredibly, the photo is taken from my balcony in Vancouver, where there is a tremendous amount of light pollution, AND it was taken pretty much directly pointing at a 3/4 moon. It was not a DARK sky at all.

/3
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The wonderful Messier Object M45 (The Seven Sisters, Pleiades). It's famous as the @Subaru_corp logo ("Subaru" is the Japanese name for this cluster!). It is the closest Messier Object to Earth! The bright stars lighten up the gas remanents of their formation.

#astrophotography
[/1]
I've revisited this object after a year of #astrophotography practice, and what a difference a year makes! The left is in Dec 2020 with my DSLR setup, on a tripod outside of Vancouver. The right is with my setup on my balcony in Downtown Vancouver.

[/2]
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I spent 20 hours shooting the leftmost star of Orion's belt. This is everything my camera revealed in that time. Space is a vibrant place, filled with colors and structures your eyes aren't sensitive enough to resolve. #astrophotography #space #opteam
Even after 20 hours of exposures, the area is incredibly dark. This is how the unedited image looked, but there is a LOT of data hidden within it. This is a 32bit stacked file, and every detail you see is hidden in here. some deep space objects are VERY faint.
In case you were curious about the framing of this image. That's where all this stuff is, within that square. While much fainter than the prominent orion nebula, the horsehead and flame can be faintly see in in this image.
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This morning I captured a detailed picture of our moon, but what's that at the bottom? #astrophotography #space #opteam
The ISS, as it sailed past the moon at over 17,000mph. It was only in the frame of my camera for 1/25th of a second.
"Lunar Approach" is my latest limited print release. Available in limited quantities for each style. Get the print here on my website, where you can also learn more about this image: cosmicbackground.io
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The longest eclipse of the Century. This composite image was created by combining 7 HDR shots of the moon during various stages of the recent partial lunar eclipse. Earth is so amazing, even our shadow is beautiful. #astrophotography #space #opteam Image
Thank you for your recent support on my last print- it sold out much faster than expected! I'm releasing this one in a few more sizes and styles (but still limited quanities). Will look awesome on metal. You can find it here: cosmicbackground.io Image
The full size image is over 350 megapixels- but only patrons have access to it. You should join if you haven't already- super cheap plus you get all my work in super high quality right to your inbox. My patrons are what enable me to do this full time! patreon.com/posts/58946620 Image
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I spent 20 hours taking pictures of messier 78 to try and capture the faint dust surrounding the nebula. Here’s the result: #astrophotography #space #opteam
This is the scope I used (obviously not in the daytime).
This is the unedited image. This is not a joke. The raw data usually only shows as a handful of stars. All the data in the image is hidden in this 32bit file. If you ever want to take a crack at processing this, these files are available to patrons patreon.com/ajamesmccarthy
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Some #Astronomy highlights for November 2021:

3rd: A good chance to see #Mercury this morning and just above it is the 3% lit crescent #Moon. Look E at 6am. Good photo opportunity.

3rd: The dwarf planet Ceres is very close to the star Aldebaran in Taurus this evening.
4th: The less than 1% lit #Moon is below #Mercury this morning at 6am. A very tricky spot before the Sun rises.

5th: The ice giant #Uranus reaches opposition today.

6th: The Galilean moon Callisto transits across #Jupiter's disc this evening from 16:45 to 21:20 UT.

#Astronomy
7th: Look low to the SW from 5pm to see bright #Venus to the left of the 11% lit crescent #Moon. Good photo opportunity.

8th: A now 20% lit #Moon is to the left of Venus this evening. Look SW from 5pm.

9th: Ganymede's shadow crosses #Jupiter's disc from 15:00 to 18:35 UT.
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THREAD: #astrophotography "stacking"

If you're following me you've seen pictures of amazing nebulas and galaxies from space.

How can I take this dark portion of the sky and get a nebula out of it? From the ground? From light-polluted Vancouver?!

Physics to the rescue! /1
In #Astrophotography, cameras & randomness of light sources in space filtering through the atmosphere produce noise.

But! The photons of space are there! So we do something called "Stacking".

Here is one 90-second exposure of the Iris Nebula. EW! barely looks like anything. /2
However, here is 5 x 90s images stacked together. as the noise is random, and the signal coming from space is constant, as we add more images, we start being able to separate the signal from the noise.

See how there is more nebula visible now? /3
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Why am i taking a telescope picture of my tablet? It's a process in #astrophotography of taking "flats". See every telescope/lens/filter/focus combination has different light properties, and if i take something that is pure white, the computer can tell the defects.

/1 Image
This is what my "flat frame" looks like. Instead of being pure white, you can see a fading away from the center (what we call "vignetting")

/2 Image
So if I don't take a flat frame, my picture would have a faded corners appearance, like so

/3 Image
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Advanced #astrophotography!!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Within the Cygnus constellation lies the bright star Sadr, and surrounding it is the Gamma Cygni Nebula and the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888). By making a mosaic (3 images stitched), I was able to capture them all!

_ /1 A mosaic image in the HaRGB palette of the Sadr region of sp
As it's a mosaic, the image is HUGE (10,000 pixels by 6,000 pixels), so I can show individual regions. This is the Crescent Nebula. A central star is in its last stages of life, so it is blowing out winds of up to 5.4mil km/hr. It looks a lot like a brain :) #psychtwitter

_ /2
The Gamma Cygni Nebula (also called the Sadr Region). The large star Sadr is about 2000 LY away and is about 150 times larger than our sun. The nebula surrounding it is about 3000 LY behind Sadr.

_ /3
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In the course of the year I've learned a lot about #astrophotography, and there is no greater manifestation of that development than M31, or the Andromeda Galaxy. I'm so proud of this image, it's what I set out to do when I started this whole journey.

Taken: July 27-31, 2021
/1 The Andromeda Galaxy
Last year, I picked up my first attempt of trying to capture andromeda. This is what it looked like. I had to find it in the sky, and without a tracker, shoot it quick enough so it didn't look streaky.

This is one shot, 1.3 seconds at ISO 3200 via Nikon.

8-sep-2020
/2 one shot of Andromeda, very grainy
I then learned about stacking, and was able to work really hard (without a tracker), taking 800 of those pictures to stack, to produce what (at the time) was just incredible to me: a close up of a galaxy from the ground.

10-oct-2020

/3 a rough image of andromeda but you can see the anatomy of it
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I captured the International @Space_Station transiting the sun today, passing right over a churning active region on the solar chromosphere. There's something different about the station today. Can you see it? #astrophotography #space #opteam
That shot was a close crop of a 140 megapixel image. When I do these, I try to capture all the activity occuring on the sun to preserve the moment. Notice the "clouds" floating on the NorthEastern limb. This is downsized, full size is on my patreon : patreon.com/posts/52972601
So regarding what's different, @astro_kimbrough and @Thom_astro installed a new solar array yesterday, to compliment the first one installed last week. You can see how they bridge the gap between the larger arrays. Amazing that we can see their hard work from Earth!
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Yesterday I took a massive 140 megapixel image of the sun. But there is something uniquely special about this image, that made it one of my most difficult shots ever. So, what is it? #astrophotography #space #opteam Image
A closer look to the active region/sunspost here reveals something unnatural, what is that ||+|| shape doing in my sun photo? Image
That's right! The ISS was transiting the sun yesterday from my vantage near the budweiser factory in Farifield. These shots require a lot of planning to pull off. For more details check my post on the behind the scenes of this image here on my patreon: patreon.com/posts/50407977 Image
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¿Queréis sacar una foto como esta con el móvil?
Os cuento los detalles en este hilo y cómo conseguirlo 👇🧵
@El_Universo_Hoy @toro_an #planetarioFoto #astrophotography
Lo primero es que, obviamente, nos hará falta además del móvil algún tipo de ayuda óptica, puede ser un teleobjetivo o un telescopio. Y no penséis que el móvil tiene que ser de última generación, en mi caso uso un Samsung Galaxy S8.
El método que utilizaremos será proyectar la imagen que sale del ocular del telescopio en el móvil. Para conseguirlo tendremos que adaptar de algún modo el móvil al telescopio, se pueden hacer apaños caseros o adquirir un adaptador como este:
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