Gallery Page IX

These are my first attempts image with Rent-A-Scope's CCD imager. The idea is that you access these scopes over the internet and take images with their high end equipment. I've shot a few 2 minute images and everything looks like "junk" on the raw "FTS" images but I can see "something" on the "JPGs" that they make. This is what a 120 second raw exposure of NGC 2403 (A Galaxy in Camelopardis) looks like after cropping and stretching after conversion of a FIT file to a JPG with GIMP.

Now here is the same image with dark frame subtraction in Astrovideo followed by Cropping, stretching, scaling to 80% and application of a mild Gaussian Blur in GIMP.

 This was kind of "ok, lets just do some random stuff and see what happens evening."  So I shot NGC 2359 and with stretching you can see that "something" is there on this 10 minute exposure. It is seen below; after dark frame subtraction in Astrovideo and stretching in GIMP.The camera is a IMG3200E; the scope a Tak 150 FCT. Astrophotography is hard! Maybe I need to select really bright targets to start out with.

The above image is Thor's Helmet, the PN, NGC 2359. This is one 600 sec exposure with dark frame subtraction in Astrovideo and stretching  in GIMP. If you look a reference image you will see that the shape is right but there is no depth to the image. I guess it needs more exposure or fancier image processing. The camera used is a IMG3200E; the scope a Tak 150 FCT. Astrophotography is hard! Maybe I need to select really bright targets to start out with.

This is a 120 sec frame from the 300mm Mewlon scope with no dark frame subtraction of the galaxy NGC 2403. This was processed in FITSX which was used to: do unsharp masking, smoothing, cleaning up of the back ground and convert the data to a JPG and GIMP. Notice the "hot stars".

This is the same image minified by a factor of 50% rather then cropped.

This is 20, 120 sec frames added in FITSX and manipulated in GIMP.

This is 8, 300 second frames of IC 405, no dark frame subtraction. Processed with FITSX and GIMP.

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