Chris Wage Astrophotography

pig roast

20 Oct 2018

My brother had a pig roast this weekend! We had a few guys orchestrating things for the weekend, and I saw this as a clear opportunity to volunteer for overnight pig-watching duty. Why? You can probably guess. Turns out astrophotography and pig-roasting have something in common: they both require staying up all night. So, I gave Andromeda and Orion another whirl. Now, I imagine you’re getting a bit sick of photos of the same targets – I am too. But, in the interest of PseudoScience, I am trying to target the same things over and over so I can appreciate the more subtle improvements. Also, the moon was high and bright, so I needed targets that were brighter lest I not get much at all. Orion was also a choice target for this particular weekend, as the Orionid meteor shower was peaking.

  • Subject: Andromeda (M31)
  • Camera: Sony A7S II
  • Telescope: Astro-Tech AT72EDII
  • ISO: 2000
  • Shutter Speed: 60”
  • Light Frames: 240
  • Dark Frames: 10
  • Flat Frames: 20
  • Offset Frames: 20
  • Software: Pixinsight - DynamicCrop, DynamicBackgroundExtraction, Background Neutralization, Color Calibration, SCNR noise reduction, Histogram Transformation, Curves Transformation, Unsharp Mask

Not as much color as I’ve gotten in the past, and not super great – owing both I think to the high and bright moon washing things out, and the fact that, well, I was drunk and distracted by monitoring a roasting pig.

  • Subject: Orion (M42)
  • Camera: Sony A7S II
  • Telescope: Astro-Tech AT72EDII
  • ISO: 2000
  • Shutter Speed: 60”
  • Light Frames: 240
  • Dark Frames: 20
  • Flat Frames: 20
  • Offset Frames: 20
  • Software: Pixinsight - DynamicCrop, DynamicBackgroundExtraction, Background Neutralization, Color Calibration, SCNR noise reduction, Histogram Transformation, Curves Transformation, Unsharp Mask

Same goes for Orion – not quite as much color/detail as I got from truly dark skies. Notable, however, is that the field flattener seems to have helped quite a bit – still not perfect, but you can see that the corners are much less distorted. Still a lot of noise making it difficult for me to pull detail out of the dust lanes which were definitely there, but just too comingled with noise :( The core was a bit overexposed, too – something I could correct by taking some shorter exposures and compositing with the rest, but I had my hands full managing to take darks/flats/offsets while dealing with the pig, so .. next time, maybe.

The meteor shower was pretty fun, though. I spent a good amount of time in the hot tub with a glass of bourbon watching meteors while the pig cooked and my camera did its work. Highly recommended. There were a few bright meteors I hoped passed close enough to Orion itself that they’d be captured in a frame – and I was right! One of them went right through the frame:

… and another towards the bottom of the wider frame. It might give you some appreciation for how bright these meteors were, since this one was visible at near daybreak:

And, just for fun, here’s an animation of my exposures of Orion as they were rudely interrupted by the rise of our brightest star, the Sun – quickly putting an end to my night of astrophotography:

Next up: I bought a guidescope! I am hoping to actually try guiding to see if it improves detail. Should be fun!