AAI Imaging Challenges

Comet Holmes Images

Oct/Nov/Dec 2006 Challenges

July/Aug/Sept 2006 Challenges

May/June 2006 Challenges  

March/April 2006 Challenges

January/February 2006 Challenges

December 2005 Challenges

October 2005 Challenge

Comet Holmes - Erupting Comet

Member Entries

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Clif Ashcraft‘s Comet Holmes Image

Email excerpt from Clif Ashcraft - Oct 27, 2007 10:50 PM

I took a set of 12 images of comet Holmes tonight (Oct. 27) around 10:20 to 10:40, four each through I, R, and V photometric filters on the ST-8 attached to my 12.5" reflector working at a focal length of 179 inches. I combined them in Photoshop to make a false color image mapping IRV to RGB. The result is shown below. The star-like nucleus of the comet is nearly centered on the outer coma, however the brighter inner region is offset. I wonder if this is the beginnings of a tail? This comet could get interesting!

Note the small red star just outside the coma at about 10oclock. It was only prominent in the images taken through the I filter.

October/November/December 2006 Challenge

Member Entries

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Ed Carlos‘ Pinwheel Galaxy (M33) Image

Ed Carlos‘ Andromeda Galaxy Group (M31/M32/M110) Image

Image taken Oct 21 2006 8:30PM - 10:30PM

The above images were taken by Ed Carlos using the club‘s CCD camera ST8XME with his personal Orion 120ST telescope mounted on an lxd55 mount.. The images were taken as 30x10 second exposures ; one for each LRGB color for each a total of 20 minutes. The imaged was stacked and processed using the CCDOPS and Adobe Photoshop software.

Seeing conditions at UACNJ/Jenny Jump State Forest was clear with some haze but steady and temperature was 37 degrees for Oct 21 2006.

July/August/September 2006 Challenge

Member Entries

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Ed Carlos‘ Dumbbell Nebula (M27) Image

Image taken Oct 14 2006 8:30PM - 10:30PM

The above image was taken by Ed Carlos and his twelve year old  son Kevin Carlos using the club‘s CCD camera ST8XME with a 6.3 focal reducer and the 24 inch telescope. The image was taken as 60x10 second exposures ; one for each RGB color and two clear for a total of 50 minutes. The imaged was stacked and processed using the CCDOPS and Adobe Photoshop software.

Seeing conditions at Sperry observatory clear and steady and temperature was 48 degrees for Oct 14 2006.

Clif Ashcraft‘s Lunar Terminator Image

Email Excerpt from Clif Ashcraft

Dated: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 08:48:41 PM

Here‘s a last quarter terminator strip where I have identified 16 of the Lunar 100 features, including number 94, a large crater near the lunar south pole seen in profile on the limb.

Clif

Clif Ashcraft‘s Jupiter Image

Email Excerpt from Clif Ashcraft

Dated: Monday, July 10, 2006 12:59:20 PM

Here‘s all my images from last night. Seeing was unsteady and there was variable thin overcast which greatly attenuated the light from Jupiter even when it was visible. S/N ratio is poor in the images, as is the resolution. I can see, however, that the new red spot has not yet rotatated past the GRS and its color is still reddish. A reddish coloration is apearing in the STropical Belt near the northern rim of the GRS. South is up in these images.

Clif

March/April 2006 Challenge

Challenge No. 2 Jupiter 
Image of the the Jovian King with an extreme challenge of Jupiter‘s satellites and GRS

Challenge No. 3 Lunar Terminator
Image must have a lunar feature from the Lunar 100

Member Entries

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Clif Ashcraft‘s Jupiter Image

Email Excerpt from Clif Ashcraft

Dated: Monday, May 24 and 26, 2006

May 26 excerpt:
Although it was very murky last night, it was reasonably steady and I was able to get some images of Jupiter. I had to use maximum gain and the slowest exposure of 1/25th of a second to get usable videos at 15 fps. After processing, s/n ratios were poor and resolution not much to brag about. The new red spot should be visible on these pictures, but it is not very evident. The wider white condensation in the south tropical zone between the GRS and the new spot is visible, but the new spot remains elusive. The image obtained at 9:55pm probably shows just a hint of the new spot just above and to the right of the GRS.

May 24 excerpt:
Here is a set of 12 images of Jupiter I got between 10 and 11:30 last night. Seeing wasn‘t great and I had to stop down to 7" aperture. Fair amount of detail visible. Still didn‘t get Red Spot Jr. Wasn‘t due until about 1am, and it had clouded up by then.

Clif

Research Committee M51 Image - May 23, 2006

Image of M51 and NGC 5195 was taken by the Research Committee members - Ed C, Kim S, Elvira P, Phil S, Joann L. The group used the AAI ST8XME with the 24 inch cassegrain at prime focus using a 6.3 focal reducer. The image is composed of 24x15 second exposure (one for each LRGB) stacked using CCDOps and cropped edit using Photoshop

March/April 2006 Challenge

Challenge No. 2 Saturn
Image of the Ringed Planet with an extreme challenge of Saturn's satellites

Challenge No. 3 Lunar Terminator
Image must have a lunar feature from the Lunar 100

Member Entries

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Clif Ashcraft Jupiter Image

Email Excerpt from Clif Ashcraft

Dated: Monday, April 10 and 13, 2006

April 13 excerpt:
Here's the pictures from the morning of the 11th. Turns out the GRS is just rotating into view upper right. Probably should have been imaging at 5 AM:

April 10 excerpt:
We had a period of relatively good seeing last night and I got a couple of decent images of Jupiter with the webcam on my 12.5" reflector. South is up in the photos. The satellite Europa is also visible in the images. Seems to be the opposite side of the planet from both the Great Red Spot and the new Red Spot "Junior". Tonight if it is clear I might get to image them.

Clif

Ed Carlos M81 Group Image - Mar 18, 2006

Image of M81, M82 and NGC3077 was taken by Ed Carlos using an Orion 120ST/F5 refractor and a Canon 10D at prime focus. The image is composed of 12 20 second exposure stacked using Registax and cropped edit using Photoshop

Dale Gary Abell Cluster 799 Image

Email Excerpt from Dale Gary

Dated: Sunday, March 19, 2006 6:08:51 PM

I was looking for something to image last night and came across Abell 799, a cluster of galaxies. Although none are large in angular size, I liked the many small spirals, so decided to try to image it. Here is the result. This is an LRGB stack of 20 s exposures, combining 115 luminance, 18 red, 18 green, and 32 blue. Anything fuzzy, especially the reddish objects, are galaxies.

Regards, Dale

Research Committee M82 Image

High over cast clouds, mediocre seeing and waxing Moon at Crandford, NJ.  Image was taken by Research Comittee members with SBIG ST8XME, 24inch cassegrain telescope using our newly purchases Celestron 6.3 focal reducer adapted to a two inch barrel by Ted Agos.

M82 LRGB (2L, 1R,1G, 1B) all 24x15seconds.

Clif Ashcrafts M81 Images

Email Excerpts from Clif Ashcraft

Dated: Sunday, February 19, 2006 11:28:32 PM

Look what 100 seconds does for M81. I was using f/6 prime focus on the 12.5 inch but with 2x2 binning it is effectively f/3. You go fairly deep pretty quickly. I used the clear filter only for this shot.

Date: Sunday, March 05, 2006 11:00:09 AM

I got the black "camo cloth" shroud finished for my 12.5" scope and used it and my new light box to take a picture of M81 last night. I used track and acquire mode on my ST8 and took the following exposures: 50x10sec clear unbinned and 10x10sec red 3x binned, 15x10sec green 3x binned, and 20x10sec blue 3x binned. After the imaging session I took flats for each exposure and used the sum over track list utility to prepare tracked flats to go with each exposure, saved the results out as TIFF files and put them together in Photoshop using the LRGB method. The result is shown below. I may have used too much blue in the RGB background since the galaxy didn't come out with the faint golden color you were getting for spiral galaxies. There is a faint broad diffuse light bar coming in from the lower left of the frame aimed directly at the galactic nucleus which may be a light leak since it did not show on the flats. There was a crescent moon in the sky at the time, and I think it was shining on the inside of the upper part of my secondary end ring opposite the focuser and reflected some light into the tube leading to the CCD. I have a a lightweight painted flat black inside extension of the secondary end ring which I was unfortunately not using. I'll try again using it to see if the light bar goes away. Note that my unbinned luminance exposure did not reach nearly as deep as the 2x binned exposure I took last week. It makes a big difference whether you are shooting effectively at f/6 or f/3!

Research Committee's Leo Triplet Image - Feb 19, 2006

The Research Committee's Leo Triplet image using ST8XME and 4 inch Margaret Salter Telescope on the 24inch telescope on Feb 19, 2006. The image is a set of LRGB images stacked using Adobe Photoshop - Luminance 24x15 seconds, Red 24x15 seconds, Green 24x15 seconds and Blue 24x15 seconds unguided.

On attendance for this session were Ed Carlos, Elvira Pratch, Ray Shapp, Kim Schoenholtz, Al Witzgal.

January/February 2006 Challenge

Challenge No. 2 Saturn
Image of the Ringed Planet with an extreme challenge of Saturn's satellites
Planet Saturn
Magnitude: 0.6
J2000 RA: 8h47m49.40s DE:+18°32'12.2"
Date RA: 8h48m09.91s DE:+18°30'51.5"

Challenge No. 3 Lunar Terminator
Image must have a lunar feature from the Lunar 100

Member Entries

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Joanne Lynch and Al Witzgal's Saturn Image - Feb 19, 2006

The two images of Saturn above were taken by Al Witzgal and Joanne Lynch using the AAI Club's TouCam Pro II and the 10inch refractor telescope.

Clif Ashcraft's Horse Head Nebula - Feb 19, 2006

Email Excerpt from Clif Ashcraft

Dated: Sunday, February 19, 2006 11:28:32 PM

The next picture is my first shot at the Horsehead with the ST-8. I only have my photometric filter set in place in the camera and I am using the R, V, and B filters as if they were R, G and B. The V and B are pretty close to G and B as usually used for color pictures, however the R filter is more of an orange color. The picture shown below is a composite of 100 sec B filter (blue) 3x binning, 100 sec V filter (green) also 3x binning and 100 sec R filter (actually orange) also 3x binning and 500 sec no filter at 2x binning. I combined the B, V and R in photoshop as though I was combining a true RGB set of exposures, expanded the image by 1.5 to make it match the white light in size then overlayed the white light on the RGB using the luminance method of combining in photoshop. Sorta like the real guys do LRGB only using a photometric RVB filters (that's all I have in the camera at this point). I used dark frames, but no flat frames because I don't have my shroud for the trusses finished yet, and flats are very difficult to do if you have any light leaks.

Clif.

Research Committee's Horse Head Nebula - Feb 19, 2006

The Research Committee's second attempt to image the Horse Head Nebula using the ST8XME and 4 inch Margaret Salter Telescope on the 24inch telescope on Feb 19, 2006. The image is composed of two stacked and tracked images - first is 15 images and second is 24 images with each image exposed for 15 seconds unfiltered and unguided.  Included in the image is the Flame Nebula.

On attendance for this session were Ed Carlos, Elvira Pratch, Ray Shapp, Kim Schoenholtz, Al Witzgal.

Research Committee's Horse Head Nebula - Jan 26, 2006

The Research Committee's used the ST8XME and newly mounted 4 inch Televue Genesis on the 24inch telescope to image this Horse Head Nebula on Jan 26, 2006. The image is composed of two stacked and tracked images - first is 40 images and second is 20 images with each image exposed for 15 seconds unfiltered and unguided.

On attendance for this session were Ed Carlos, Hank Adams, Philip Salimbene, Kim Schoenholtz and Elvira Pratch and Anthony Espinosa.

Clif Ashcraft - Saturn - Feb 3, 2006

Email Excerpt from Clif Ashcraft

Dated: Saturday, February 04, 2006 12:56:09 AM

This evening I went out to my observatory around 6:30 and got some moon images, however the seeing wasn't anything to brag about and the images were only so so. I went out again around 10 pm to image Saturn. Much better seeing. I was able to use the full aperture of my 12.5" reflector, which is critical for Saturn since it has a much lower surface brightness than either Mars or Jupiter. I coupled the telescope to the webcam using my 5x Powermate. This gives f/30 and an efl of 375 inches. I took two videos at 30 fps for 4 minutes each, 1/33 sec exposure and maximum gain. I could tell it was going to be good, because I could see banding on the planet while I was doing the imaging. When I processed the videos in Registax, I found I could keep a fairly high fraction of the frames and get a good signal to noise ratio. I stacked 2000 frames from one video and 2500 from the other, and made a stack of the two images later in Photoshop to get the best result: a stack of 4500 frames out of 14400 from both videos. I kept the image as a 16 bit TIFF file during processing until I had to convert to JPEGs for your use. The JPEG is attached below, scaled up 2x. Nice colors in the cloud bands. I also discovered that if I pushed the processing, either in Registax or later in Photoshop, I could recover an image of Tethys just below and to the right of the planet. I checked both Guide and Starry Night, and that is the expected position. Not that much of a feat, since the satellite is 9.9 mag, however it is hard to see it on the same exposure that works for the planet. The pushed image showing Tethys is also attached. I am sure that if I used less amplification to get a wider field I could image several more of the moons. Note the interesting color contrast between the left and right sides of the crepe ring in the pushed image. I don‘t understand what causes this, but it is reproduceable and is not chromatic aberration in either my scope or the atmosphere, and it seems to be a function of the sun to Saturn to earth angle. Probably some kind of chromatic light scattering effect by oriented ice particles in the ring. Hey, maybe it‘s some kind of sundog! A similar, but fainter color contrast also shows up in the B ring. You can see it in the larger picture below as a bluish cast to the left side and a pinkish cast to the right side. I have not seen these effects written up anywhere other than one of the on-line discussion groups where I brought up the subject and a few other guys commented that they had seen it too but didn‘t understand it. I‘ll be in tomorrow a bit after noon to clean and center the 10" objective. Al will not be able to be there since he has to work this Saturday. See you when you get in.

Clif Ashcraft

December 2005 Challenge

Hank Adams' Challenge Bright Kuiper Belt Object

Challenge No. 2 Lunar Terminator
Image must have a lunar feature from the Lunar 100

Member Entries

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Dale Gary - 2002 RX211 - Dec 22, 2005

Email Excerpt from Dale Gary

Dated: Thursday, December 22, 2005 12:19:07 AM

  I tried to do Hank's challenge on 19 Dec., but I could not detect 2004 PC112. Perhaps it is not as bright as was suggested? I could find no magnitude estimate anywhere. Meanwhile, however, I observed my first NEO (Near Earth Object), 2002 RX211. It is now passing Earth and is quite bright (mag 16.2), and moving very fast compared to ordinary asteroids. I am used to integrating for 5 minutes or so, but when I did that for this asteroid it left a streak! I am sending an animation to Ed Carlos, who may post it.

  So, if anyone would like a new challenge, here is the information for the next few nights, from the Minor Planet Center:

2002 RX211
Date           UT          R.A. (J2000)    Decl.           V     Sky Motion
                 h  m  s                                                     "/min P.A.
2005 12 22 000000    03 46 08.6       +12 13 11   16.2   3.05  043
2005 12 23 000000    03 49 34.0       +13 05 55   16.2   3.01  043
2005 12 24 000000    03 52 59.0       +13 57 23   16.2   2.96  044
2005 12 25 000000    03 56 23.5       +14 47 33   16.3   2.91  044

Regards,

Dale

Clif Ashcraft - 2004 PC112 - Dec 11, 2005

Email Excerpt from Clif Ashcraft

Dated: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 3:04:43 PM

Here‘s my first attempt at 2004 PC112. It was taken the evening of December 11th and is a stack of 10 exposures, 20 seconds each at the f/6 Newtonian focus of my 12.5" reflector. Moonlight and clouds have prevented getting a second shot to confirm movement of the KBO. It might also be the fainter object just to the left of the indicated object. North is up in the photo. The faintest stars are on the order of 16 or 17 mag.

Clif Ashcraft

October 2005 Challenge

Mars WebCam Imaging Challenge

Member Entries

More images can be found at the Research Observation and Reports Page

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Clif Ashcraft - Mars Oct 5, 2005

See description in at the Research Observation and Reports Page

Ed Carlos - Mars Nov 25, 2005

See description in at the Research Observation and Reports Page

Dale Gary - Mars Nov 1, 2005

See description in at the Research Observation and Reports Page

Contact person: AAI President