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Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253)

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Posts Made By: Gianluca Valentini

March 30, 2008 03:00 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

NOAA 988

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
Hello everyone,
after a long time I'm back to solar imaging grin grin grin

The sun has given us a sign of life and the hunting season is on!

Here is an h-alfa shot taken with the 180 TEC and Solar Spectrum .3A. The ERF was totally open at 180mm ad the focal length is 5000mm. Camera: Lumenera Infinity 2-1M approx 60 of 500 frames in registax and then PS.

Ciao
Luca

April 2, 2008 12:43 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

988 again

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
Hi guys!

at the cost of boring you all, I post this further image of sunspot 988.
Set-up is the same of the previous image, but with 110mm aperture and 2500mm focal.
Registax and PS for the final touch.

Ciao
Luca 8)

April 2, 2008 08:16 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

A planet!

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
It has been a while since my last planet smile

Monday night we had good seeing right before the fog came in from the sea and I decided to take a look at Saturn. Well I could watch Saturn at 600x and it was magnificent in the eyepiece! Last time I had observed a planet it was with my C11 and the difference was astounding grin

I took a luminance with the Infinity 2-1M and RGB with the Skynyx 2-0C. A few frames were captured because the fps was very low as I needed a very long exposure and very high gain to get enough light. I'm not used to that anymore wink

So TEC APO180FL at F 35 (Powermate 5x) on AP1200GTO, registax (300 frames for L and 500 RGB). LRGB in PS: I found out that re-sizing and aligning the RGB to the L channel is not a walk in the park. I don't think I did the best job at it. I may give it another try.

Thanks and ciao

Luca

April 10, 2008 11:19 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

NOAA 987 & 988

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
Hello guys,

it's raining here and it will be for the next 3-4 days :C

So processing old captures is the way to kill time!

Here is a shot from march 29th at 2500mm focal. Reduced to 80% size and 80% quality to fit size limit.

Hope you like this one too 8)

Luca

May 3, 2008 04:22 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Prominence today

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
Hello guys,

I've had a little time to glance at the sun today and, although the disc was a red desert, the limb was animated by a number of interesting prominences 8)

The seeing wasnt bad, so I took some films and here is the 1st image of the largest of the proms today.

A small picture, but the sun is a little stingy these days and we must take whatever it serves wink

Ciao all

Luca

July 20, 2008 09:09 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

105min of THE predatory bird!

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
Hello guys,

I managed to begin a project of mine, i.e. image M16 in emission lines.

This is the 1st part and I did not resist processing it (although hastily) and posting it. There is still a lot of "stuff" to be processed out, but the exposure was not long enough to push stretching.
I intend to at least double the exposure time to 4hrs and then stretch aggressively.

This the first result:
105min h-alpha in 15min guided subs with TEC180 and STL11K. Obviously the image is reduced to 40% size and 80% quality to fit here.

It may take me a while to finish it, but that's the beauty of astroimaging: the subject is always there ready and smiling for the next shot grin

Ciao
Luca

PS one more thing that may take me from completing this project soon is that my wife is entering now the labour phase to give birth to our first child, Leonardo, and that might get in the way a little wink

July 29, 2008 05:58 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Never previously imaged Leonardo's Nebula! Pic replaced!

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
GOTCHA! the only way I had to attract a number of observers to this post was to tickle your curiosity!

However, this is, in reality a picture of my 1st child: Leonardo! and the post title is partially true: he's never been imaged before this time smile

His mother and I are already crazy about him.
I just hope he'll leave me some time to take some images in the near future.

Sorry for the OT guys grin

Luca


August 11, 2008 10:56 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Some new data for my eagle

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
Hello guys,

my first child is proving to be extremely nice to us and sleeps at night! This allowed me to add some data to my e-line M16 project.

I attach a 100% crop of the central are of the image. It is a 4 hr h-alpha exposure (in 15 min subs) with my TEC180 and STL-11K (riding on my AP1200).

As I'm writing, the camera is collecting SII data grin

I'm not very experienced at processing DSO's images so please comments and tips are always welcome.

Ciao
Luca


August 29, 2008 03:27 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

Another attempt at processing my birdie.

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
Hello guys,

I've tried once more to process my M16 image following some of the advices you all gave me (I still have to contact Floyd who kindly offered to share with me the processing steps he used on my data, but haven't had much time with the new baby and all wink )

Here I started with DDP in CCDStack and that gave me a good starting point with the area of the pillars less bright and more contrasty. The rest I've done with applications of curves and then sharpening of the high S/N area and blurring of the low S/N ones.

As usual all your comments are more than welcome.

Ciao
Luca

October 6, 2008 12:11 AM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Deep Sky

My 1st narrowband color image!

Posted By Gianluca Valentini
Well guys, I eventually was able to put together a tri-color narrowband image of M16.

I messed up a lot of things and the process was difficult and very, very long. But I am kind of proud of my 1st result smile I even had to collect binned data for OIII to be able to get enough exposure to put together this image. Probably I will have to wait next year to get better SII and OIII data sad . It proved a lot more difficult than I thought and a lot more difficult than H-alpha. But I moved one step toward learning how to do it grin


It is not finished and still needs some work, but this is the first try so I was not expecting too much from it.

Ciao all

Luca

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