This October I got a chance to take my Mallincam DS10c Video Astronomy camera, Celestron 8” F10 telescope and Celestron Evolution Alt/Az Mount to Texoma Shores Resort campground in Oklahoma with nice dark Bortle 4 skies. There were light clouds when we first arrived but good weather most nights and temperatures of around 50-60 degrees. This time of year, we were able to get a site with no one beside us at the edge of a field with good overhead viewing.
I was able to leave my telescope set up and covered during the day right next to our RV and car. As evening approached, I could easily uncover the telescope, perform an Auto Align with my Star Sense accessory and start viewing fairly quickly. I began with a Mallincam Universe Focal Reducer and a 10mm spacer on the DS10c on a diagonal attached to my C8 telescope.
My exposure times of deep sky objects were around 1-5 seconds with darks applied and using average stacking of 10 – 60 images for near real time viewing on my laptop screen of what the camera was “seeing” through my telescope.
The object, exposure, gain, histogram and sharpness settings are noted with each image. I used video mode (rather than looping mode) since all exposure times were less than 5 seconds. After slewing to a target and adjusting the settings for the best image, I turned on live frame averaging and enjoyed viewing the target details unfold!
In the following deep sky images, the one on the left is what I saw on the screen (no post processing) updating every 1-5 seconds depending upon the exposure setting, and I could zoom the image to see more detail. The image on the right is cropped (like a zoom) from the left image and is a slightly enhanced image of the target. I spent less than two minutes of “post processing” using the regular Microsoft Photos Edit/Enhance/Adjust functions to crop and produced the image on the right to show up better on the web. My camera settings are noted after the target name where s=seconds, g=gain, h=histogram range, vh=the histogram values were varied while stacking for Live HDR effect, srp=sharpness, stk=#stacked with averaging, b=binning value. The distance from earth is listed at the end in lightyears (kly=thousand light years, Mly=million light years)
If you right click on an image and select Open image in a new tab, then click on the new tab you will see a bigger version of the image.
The object, exposure, gain, histogram and sharpness settings are noted with each image. I used video mode (rather than looping mode) since all exposure times were less than 5 seconds. After slewing to a target and adjusting the settings for the best image, I turned on live frame averaging and enjoyed viewing the target details unfold!
In the following deep sky images, the one on the left is what I saw on the screen (no post processing) updating every 1-5 seconds depending upon the exposure setting, and I could zoom the image to see more detail. The image on the right is cropped (like a zoom) from the left image and is a slightly enhanced image of the target. I spent less than two minutes of “post processing” using the regular Microsoft Photos Edit/Enhance/Adjust functions to crop and produced the image on the right to show up better on the web. My camera settings are noted after the target name where s=seconds, g=gain, h=histogram range, vh=the histogram values were varied while stacking for Live HDR effect, srp=sharpness, stk=#stacked with averaging, b=binning value. The distance from earth is listed at the end in lightyears (kly=thousand light years, Mly=million light years)
If you right click on an image and select Open image in a new tab, then click on the new tab you will see a bigger version of the image.
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M27 Dumbbell (or Apple Core) nebula - 5s 160g 0-255vh 200srp 60stk – 1400ly
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M17 Omega (or Swan) nebula - 5s 160g 0-100h 200srp 20stk – 4200ly
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NGC891 Spiral galaxy - 5s 160g 0-100h 200srp 10stk – 32Mly
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M13 Hercules Cluster - 2b 1.2s 160g 0-100h 200srp 40stk – 23kly
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M16 Eagle (or Star Queen) nebula - 5s 160g 0-100h 200srp 10stk – 5700ly
Having noticed Jupiter, Saturn and Mars shining brightly in the sky, after a couple of days I removed the Universe Focal Reducer and attached my 2.5x Barlow to check them out. These were very short exposures due to their brightness. Exposure time for planets were 2-10 milliseconds (ms) with 15-38 gain. The following images were “post processed” using the regular Microsoft Photos Edit/Enhance/Adjust functions to crop and enhance the details of the image I captured from the screen. There are really good planet post-processing applications that can scan through many images and only combine the best ones to produce much better detail. I just had fun live averaging all images and quickly seeing what I could see. The full field of view image is on the left and the cropped/enhanced image is on the right.
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Jupiter - 7ms 13g 0-255h 20stk
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Mars - 2ms 15g 0-200h 20stk 200srp
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Saturn - 10ms 38g 0-255h 300srp 40stk
Later in the week, I installed my Hyperstar focal reducer which produces a nice wide Field of View at F2. With this configuration, the Hyperstar and the DS10c camera are at the top end of the telescope.
As before, the images below on the left are what I saw on the screen (no post processing) updating every 1-5 seconds depending upon the exposure setting. The images on the right are cropped (from the left image) and I only spent 1-2 minutes to quickly enhance the image using the regular Microsoft Photo viewer/editor.
If you compare the following M27 image on the left to the previous one of M27 without the Hyperstar installed you can get a feel for how much the Hyperstar increases the Field of View.
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M27 Dumbbell (or Apple Core) nebula - 1s 70g 15-150h 20stk – 1400ly
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NGC891 Spiral edge-on galaxy - 3s 80g 50-150h 30stk - 32Mly
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M82 Bode's (or Cigar) galaxy M82 1s 80g 35-150h 10stk
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NGC7293 Helix Nebula - 3s 80g 75-255h 20stk - 790ly
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NGC253 Sculptor (or Silver Dollar) galaxy - 1s 80g 25-150h 20stk - 12Mly
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M45 Pleiades (or Seven Sisters) cluster 3s 80g 25-150h 20stk - 430ly
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NGC7635 Bubble nebula - 3s 80g 40-200vh 20stk – 1400ly
There is not much to zoom into the North American Nebula, so only the full unenhanced image is shown below.
There is not much to zoom into the North American Nebula, so only the full unenhanced image is shown below.
NGC7000 North American nebula - 2s 80g 35-100h 20stk - 2600ly
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M16 Eagle nebula - 1s 80g 50-150h 20stk - 5700ly
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M8 Lagoon nebula - 750ms 35-150h 20stk - 4300ly
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M20 Trifid nebula - 850ms 35-150h 200srp 30stk 5200ly
Here is another image of both M8 and M20 in the same field of view.
Here is another image of both M8 and M20 in the same field of view.
M8 & M20 Lagoon & Trifid nebula - 750s 35-150h 30stk 100srp - 4.3kly & 5.2kly
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M17 Omega (or Swan) nebula - 1s 80g 54-150h 20stk - 4200ly
I wondered why I had difficulty when I tried observing the Whirlpool galaxy one night. With a little extra exposure time applied I realized why, looked up and saw how low the Whirlpool was on the horizon!
I wondered why I had difficulty when I tried observing the Whirlpool galaxy one night. With a little extra exposure time applied I realized why, looked up and saw how low the Whirlpool was on the horizon!
M51 Whirlpool galaxy - 1s 80g 40-150h 200srp 40stk - 28Mly ... Tree - about 40 yards
This image of the Andromeda Galaxy particularly stands out in my mind from this trip and nicely shows how big the field of view is with the Hyperstar installed. This is using a 3 second exposure time and average stacking 20 images. The initial image appeared after 3 seconds and then updated every 3 seconds averaging the next image. This is how it looked on the screen after 1 minute. Periodically I am reminded just how amazing video astronomy is and how fortunate we are to live in a time we have the tech available to see this while there are still dark skies nearby we can go to.
This image of the Andromeda Galaxy particularly stands out in my mind from this trip and nicely shows how big the field of view is with the Hyperstar installed. This is using a 3 second exposure time and average stacking 20 images. The initial image appeared after 3 seconds and then updated every 3 seconds averaging the next image. This is how it looked on the screen after 1 minute. Periodically I am reminded just how amazing video astronomy is and how fortunate we are to live in a time we have the tech available to see this while there are still dark skies nearby we can go to.
M31 Andromeda Galaxy - 3s 80g 50-150h 20stk – 2.5Mly
We liked being at this nice, quiet out of the way campground, and I really enjoyed the dark skies! It was just a days drive from our home. My wife and I have already talked about planning another trip there next year.
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