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September 2010

Hyades in the Dust

Posted: September 26th, 2010

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Sometimes, when I'm at a dark site, working on any given project, I run into "dead" times. Moments when there's no point in spending time shooting at my chosen targets. Perhaps because they're already too low in the sky, maybe because they aren't high enough.

When these moments are long enough, an hour, maybe more, I often improvise, and do a quick capture of "something" I haven't even thought of it... Many times these shots don't go anywhere. But sometimes, they marvel me.

This image is one of such. During one of the New Moon nights of September 2010, when I was done for the night working on a project, I improvised just a few shots to the Hyades, in Taurus, being this an area it has always interested me visually, despite it's not a usual astrophoto target.

The image bears very little data for astrophotography standards. All four filters gathered light for less than one hour combined. It's so little data because as I said, it was just something improvised to "kill" time...

So just about 1 hour of data, and just a bit longer spent on processing the image, rendered however what I feel is a refreshing view of one of the areas of the sky that, despite being quite visible, even to the unaided eye, at moderately dark sites, it has received little to no attention from the amateur astrophotography community.

Because this was the last unprocessed data I had at the time, when I calibrated and stacked the images at home, at first I was simply getting the image "done", but the moment I saw a hint of galactic cirrus in it (and as you may guess I always look for any faint signal the image may offer), I became interested! Considering the little time spend, I'm actually very happy the way it turned out.

The composition didn't aim for many goals either. I wanted to place the star Aldebaran at a location in the field of view that would support and balance the image. Not in the middle, but somewhere where it would give enough weight so as to become the "holding point". From my perspective I believe I achieved that simple goal.

This was the first image I processed only with PixInsight 1.61, from the very first stages of calibration, registration and integration.

As for the galactic cirrus (the faint background dust clouds), I have compared the field with its corresponding area from the IRAS survey and the background clouds match quite well, in some cases being virtually identical structures, so I have no doubt the signal is good. The only area that doesn't match is around Aldebaran: in the IRAS data you can see structures around it, but in my image there's just brightness and you cannot see any structures. Here's a screen shot of that area as captured in the IRAS survey, after placing dots over the location of the main stars, to better compare both images:

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Milestones and Accolades

Posted: September 20th, 2010

However humble in my accomplishments, I was suggested - almost convinced - that my web site should have a page containing any milestones and accolades I have achieved in astrophotography. Here are the most significant ones I recollect at this time:

Was added to SBIGs Hall of Fame in 2011. Although the current description of this award in their web site is a bit vague, SBIG has described their Hall of Fame to be a recognition given to imagers who push the envelope in amateur astronomy.
Received the 2010 Pleiades Award from the Advanced Imaging Conference Board of Directors in December 2010. The Pleiades Award is an award for "rising star astrophotographers".
Received the 2011 AANC Amateur Award from the Astronomical Asociation of Northern California, for "outstanding and continuous support in distinguishing and fostering Amateur Astronomy".
I have given talks, workshops and presentations at many different events:
- Advanced Imaging Conference (AIC) in San Jose, California
- Pacific Astronomy and Telescope Show (PATS) in Pasadena, California
- Australian Astro Imaging Conference (AAIC), Surfers Paradise, Australia
- San Jose Astronomical Association, San Jose, California
- etc.
Several of my images have appeared in magazines and publications such as Astronomy Magazine, Sky and Telescope, Ciel et Espace, National Geographic, etc. and TV programs for TV channels such as the BBC, National Geographic or The Discovery Channel.
Winner in the Deep Sky category for the 2009 Astroimaging Contest, by Astronomy Magazine.
2010 Best Astrophotographer of the Year, by the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, Deep Sky Winner.

Also a highly-commended entry in the Deep Sky category for the same competition in 2011. It is worth mentioning that later the R.O.G. used my 2011 highly-commended image - and not any of the 2011 winning images - for the front page of the announcement of the 2012 edition of this event.

Last, in 2012 I ended up in second place in the Deep Sky category. In all, three significant results three years in a row in this highly regarded contest.
25 Images featured in NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day between March 2009 and February 2013 (I'll be updating dates and numbers every once in a while, should more images appear on the APOD)
Two of my Orion wide field images were used in the Orion's flyby scene for the Hubble 3D movie (by the way, if you haven't seen the movie, you should!). This was kind of cool because they actually transformed my flat 2D image into a 3D stellar field!
Some of my images, such as the Witch Head and Rigel, have been used in the Discovery Channel series Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking.
The Orion's Deep Wide Field image showcased at the Rubin Museum in New York City for 6 months, between December 2009 and May 2010 during their "Vision of the Cosmos" exhibit.
Many of my images have appeared in calendars from different sources. Perhaps one of the ones I am most proud of, leaving aside religious ideologies, was the addition of one of my images to the Vatican Observatory Calendar.
Too many to mention individually, many observatories, planetariums, books, including book covers, and other media have used some of my images in one way or another.

The Orion, From Head to Toes image was selected by Bad Astronomy (Discover Magazine) as the #1 top astronomy picture of 2010. This was also the first time this award was given to an amateur image, which in previous years it was always given to images produced by professional observatories or space telescopes. Out of the other 13 images that made it to the top list, only one was also produced by an amateur astrophotographer, being the remaining 12 images from professional and space observatories.

A few words about the competitive aspect of this discipline

Anytime we embrace a career, a hobby or something we like, we often thrive to become better at it.

Some disciplines encourage competition against others. Astrophotography is not one of them. Sure, some people may want to produce better images than such or such person, but what does better mean in a discipline where you are reflecting in an image your own interpretation of what's being photographed? I will never produce an image of an object that is simply better (or for that matter, worst) than other astrophotographers, no matter how skilled or how novice they are, because astrophotography is not about everyone portraying the same image with the only differential variable being "quality". Yes, quality matters, and it takes time, experience and skills, but fortunately, it is not the only variable in an astrophoto. Personal goals matter as much as anything else, and if there's one thing about personal goals is that they are, well, personal. How do you measure that, against others? You can't.

As such, the true astrophotographer only competes against him/herself, so that your next image poses challenges that if you can overcome, it demonstrates you've become a bit better than you were last time. Again, better here needs to be measured against your own goals. I've said time and again, astrophotographers should not look upon other colleagues as a reference, but if anything, as an inspiration for a job well done. Your work becomes yours only when you aim to produce images that meet your goals and standards, not the goals and standards of others.

Sometimes it is what others say or do what let you know that your work did stand out, for whatever reason. Recognition is nothing but the feedback of others letting you know that something you did, sometimes, was worth doing for something more than your personal satisfaction. And that too can be cool.

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Andromeda (M31) versus Triangulum (M33)

Posted: September 17th, 2010

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This large panorama (a 3x4 mosaic) presents an unusual view that confronts two of the largest galaxies (as seen from Earth) in the night sky: the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33).

The Andromeda Galaxy (top left corner) is a spiral galaxy approximately 2,500,000 light-years away, in the constellation of the same name. The Triangulum Galaxy (bottom right corner) is also a spiral galaxy, at approximately 3 million light years distance in the constellation Triangulum. The bright star in the middle is Mirach, a red giant star about 470 times as luminous as the sun and approximately 200 light years away.

Between them, and invading the entire scene, the often very elusive galactic cirrus clouds can be seen.

Because of the large field of view required to capture these two galaxies in one image, there aren't many images, if any, presenting these two galaxies in the same composition. For that reason, I find this image to be of unusual beauty as well as perhaps a bit thought provoking.

CAPTURING THE DATA

I had to go "at it" several times for several reasons, so in the end the image is a potpourri of data captured in Spain in August, at the DARC Observatory early September, and at the Central Nevada Star Party last weekend. Same scope and camera, but different skies, different exposure times, different amount of subframes, and in one case, even different binning! This mosaic has it all! (BTW I do NOT recommend messing up like that at all - there are "reasons" for all of this, it's just too long of a story :-)

The FOV can be captured - with the FSQ+reducer and the STL11k - as a mosaic of 3x4 (12 frames), but in reality I ended up shooting 26 different frames, each with its LRGBs... This is because once I was done with the data I captured while in Spain, I didn't like the final FOV, so I rotated it, and then I had to capture more frames to "fill up" the holes, then creating seamless frames became very difficult - first because I used different binning and timing, and second because adding frames to an already processed mosaic is often a VERY BAD IDEA. So anyway, I went again and captured more data at the CNSP last weekend to have frames that would match better when building the mosaic. Even with that, some differences can be obvious if you pay attention, but the only way out of it would be to retake the 3x4 frames that make up the FOV and process them all together at once (and I've rather move onto other projects).

GOALS / INTERPRETATION / FINAL FOV

I was hoping Mirach (the star in the center) didn't end up dominating the image so much. Knowing how bright it is and that it was going to end up in the middle of the image, this was wishful thinking, but in the end I think it balances the image somewhat ok - kind of like the mid pivot of a seesaw between the two galaxies. Not quite the effect I was hoping for, which was more the effect of "confronting" these two monster galaxies, with the added challenge that the galaxies are very far apart and the attention may get lost, not sure where to focus, and Mirach constantly becoming the safe harbor of our attention, but I think something can be made out of it. Or maybe I'm reading the image backwards!!

PROCESSING THE GALACTIC CIRRUS

The signal from the galactic cirrus is quite real, not artifacts, not gradients. Now, if we were to capture it deep enough, and in a perfect world, the cirrus should look a lot wispier than in this image. Instead, it looks more like a blur.

To see what I mean, if I do a heavy stretch on the raw data, I can tell the visible cirrus clouds are quite wispy. Look at this crop of one of the areas (top-middle, though the very top in this stretched image doesn't appear in the final image because it was cropped out):

(yes, in the above image you can clearly see one seam :-)

It would be amazing if this kind of detail could be brought to the final "pretty" image, but unfortunately it was very hard to do, for me at least (it's really dim stuff), so I settled with being able to bring the signal above the noise, but heavily blurred. Also I didn't have a lot of data, so I simply didn't have the know-how or the means of better bringing out this signal that was sitting right with the noise.

BTW the blur doesn't come from applying noise reduction but from separating large and small scale structures in the image. The "à trous" wavelets tool in PixInsight however tends to produce this effect when you abuse it, and although perhaps there's a way to preserve some of this appearance by breaking and processing the image in more than 3 scales, I didn't experiment with that and instead went for what I already know how to do: breaking the image in just 2-3 scale layers (wavelet planes), operating on them separately and then adding them back, rescaling. I don't know if what I just said makes sense but I hope to explain it in detail during my presentation at the Advanced Imaging Conference next month (October 2010).

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From the Trunk to the Bubble

Posted: September 8th, 2010

The above image is a 3x4 mosaic (12 frames) I captured during my visit to Spain the summer of 2010, over 4 nights. It is in fact the very first astroimage I captured from Spain.

Beginning at the lower left, the large emission nebula is cataloged as IC 1396. Hundreds of light-years across and about 3,000 light-years distant, it contains a dark, winding, tendril-shaped feature popularly known as the Elephant's Trunk. Near the top middle, the bright nebula with an embedded star cluster is NGC 7380. At the upper right lies NGC 7635 (the Bubble Nebula) and star cluster M52.

Although the final result wasn't quite what I had envisioned, it's clear that this area is extremely rich and gorgeous - awaiting for a better representation!

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