Posts Made By: John Theodossy

I am trying to mount my ETX125 tube on a GEM, but am having trouble findings rings that will fit. I did get the Orion rings designed for the Starmax 127 (144mm rings) but these were just a little too small. I have been able to find several places that have 144mm rings and 182mm rings but nothing in between. Any thoughts? What am I missing?

Thanks
John

I have new equipment on the way and have been searching for better software to go with it. I currently use mostly Registax and Photoshop. I also have a registered copy of Astrovideo that I have used for webcam and videocam images.

Aligning DSO images is my greatest weakness currently. Do you all think these programs are enough and I just need to get better at processing with what I have, or is it worth getting a more dedicated DSO imaging program?

I have looked around and it seems AstroArt and RegiStar are both quite popular. RegiStar seems fairly limited in what it does, although it sounds as if it does it well. Does AstroArt do everything that Registar does and more, or is it not as good at image registration?

Thanks for your thoughts and advice
John

...fly


Kodak DC4800

Like Jim I am also suffering from poor viewing conditions. No rain, but very hazy, so here goes another...

This guy was putting on quite a show. This is from Waimea Falls on Oahu. The hen was about 3 feet to my right and this guy was ready to go.

"Ultra Wide 30 mm Knight OWL Eyepiece
Our Top of the Line Series 80° Field Multi-coated Eyepiece"

Anyone heard of or used one of these? They are going for $99 on the auction site. Seems too good to be true.


John

Hello all,
I am working on a set of wide-field images around NGC 7000 (North American Nebula)and trying to figure out the correct order for processing steps. I have 3 seperate images that the tracking was good enough to process, each is 10-15 minutes. Not really long enough, but it's what I have. I have been able to tease some detail out of each image individually, but want to stack the 3 together to hopefully pull out more detail and reduce noise.

I assume I should remove the gradiant from each image seperately, before doing anything else. Is it best to next align and stack the "flattened" images before further processing (stretching curves etc.), or is it better to process each image individually and then stack the processed images? Alternatively, do you all think the "raw" images should be stacked prior to removing gradiants and then subtracting out the "final stacked gradiant"?

I am experimenting with different approaches on small scanned images before I scan in at a higher resolution. Finally, what scanner resoultion do you all use on prints or negatives for best results (I am using an Epson 2400 scanner that is 48bit and can can prints or negatives up to 4800dpi optical resolution, but these are HUGE files that are slow to work with).

Sorry for such a long post. Thanks for any and all suggestions.

John

Hello all,
I am working on a set of wide-field images around NGC 7000 (North American Nebula)and trying to figure out the correct order for processing steps. I have 3 seperate images that the tracking was good enough to process, each is 10-15 minutes. Not really long enough, but it's what I have. I have been able to tease some detail out of each image individually, but want to stack the 3 together to hopefully pull out more detail and reduce noise.

I assume I should remove the gradiant from each image seperately, before doing anything else. Is it best to next align and stack the "flattened" images before further processing (stretching curves etc.), or is it better to process each image individually and then stack the processed images? Alternatively, do you all think the "raw" images should be stacked prior to removing gradiants and then subtracting out the "final stacked gradiant"?

I am experimenting with different approaches on small scanned images before I scan in at a higher resolution. Finally, what scanner resoultion do you all use on prints or negatives for best results (I am using an Epson 2400 scanner that is 48bit and can can prints or negatives up to 4800dpi optical resolution, but these are HUGE files that are slow to work with).

Sorry for such a long post. Thanks for any and all suggestions.

John

Looking for advice for improvement. Not the most steady seeing and some chromatic aberration present due to Mars being only about 35* above the horizon. Saw the earlier post regarding "nudging" the colors in Photoshop to get rid of some of the color shifting, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Anyone have a refernce for this technique? Any other advice.

Thanks
John

Acquistion:
8"LX200
CanonZR50 DV camera afocal on 20mm Plossl, optical zoom to desired image scale.
7/26/03, 0800 UT.

Processing:
AVI converted to BMP in AVI2BMP. BMP images loaded into Registax for registration and stacking (133 of 840 images stacked). Wavelet processing in Registax, saved as JPEG. Despeckled, sharpen and blur, curve and color adjustments in Photoshop.