Abell 2199 Galaxy Cluster in Hercules

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Pete
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Re: Abell 2199 Galaxy Cluster in Hercules

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Andy,

SGP seems to have a strange plate solve approach. Does one really have to include an image of the field that you want to image? Normally one simply provides coordinates.

Pete
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AndyG
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Re: Abell 2199 Galaxy Cluster in Hercules

Unread post by AndyG »

Pete wrote: SGP seems to have a strange plate solve approach. Does one really have to include an image of the field that you want to image? Normally one simply provides coordinates.
Pete,

There are several ways to set the target coordinates:
  • Enter the RA/Dec coordinates under Location in the Target Settings window (click the gear symbol to the right of the target name in the Target List)
  • Provide a reference image in the Target Settings window (this is the way you mentioned I think), click Solve or Blind Solve to plate solve and automatically fill in the Location coordinates.
  • Open an image file, right click, select Plate Solve, then select "use as reference image for <pick target>" when the solve completes.
  • Use the Framing and Mosaic Wizard to search for an object by name (or coordinates), and frame it interactively using an image that SGP downloads automatically from Simbad.
  • Take a frame with the camera using Frame and Focus, right-click a point on the image, select "Center Here".
Most of those methods are geared towards framing a "pretty picture", but you do have the option of simply entering the coordinates in the Target Settings window.

Hope that helps...
Andy
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Pete
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Re: Abell 2199 Galaxy Cluster in Hercules

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Thanks Andy. My problem runs deeper than that I guess. Software Bisque's The Sky is infamous in how it hogs the ASCOM serial port. And the root cause of my problem is that for automatically entering DEC coordinates to the SBIG camera's AO I need to have The Sky 6 talking to my Meade scope as well as to Bisque's CCDSoft camera control software. Other software would label the coordinates & time into the .FIT files but it wouldn't automatically correct the guide calibration to different declinations. If I were viewing one object this wouldn't be a problem but when viewing half-dozen an evening that's a savings of 20 or 30 minutes total with not having to recalibrate the guide software.

Pete
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NGC7000
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Re: Abell 2199 Galaxy Cluster in Hercules

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bluemax wrote:You posted at 4:25 AM, must be a nighthawk! How the heck do you image all night and work all day?
In a word, Frank. He's young. :lol:

Really nice, Andy. And yes, it does look like a Hubble image.

Tom
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"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence." - Louis Pasteur
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Apollo XX
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Re: Abell 2199 Galaxy Cluster in Hercules

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So I've had this image as the background on our home desktop for the past week or so, and I've been noticing what I believe could be a bunch of interstellar medium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_medium laced throughout the image. Has anybody else picked this up? I don't think it's just noise or some other imaging artifact. In the full-sized image there are variable areas of "haze", for lack of a better word. I'm thinking it's some sort of space stuff. Kinda neat, I think.

Mike M.
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens." - Anaxagoras
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AndyG
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Re: Abell 2199 Galaxy Cluster in Hercules

Unread post by AndyG »

Apollo XX wrote:So I've had this image as the background on our home desktop for the past week or so, and I've been noticing what I believe could be a bunch of interstellar medium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_medium laced throughout the image. Has anybody else picked this up? I don't think it's just noise or some other imaging artifact. In the full-sized image there are variable areas of "haze", for lack of a better word. I'm thinking it's some sort of space stuff. Kinda neat, I think.
Mike, I'm pretty sure what you are seeing are artifacts of the processing. I think there is way too much light pollution around here to pick up any IFN. There was tons of noise in the background and my flat-frame calibration left behind some artifacts which became sort of "clumpy" after the calibrated frames were stacked.

Often when I process, I have to clip the low end of the histogram to remove the light pollution artifacts. The result is I lose a lot of detail, but also remove the artifacts. In this image I opted to leave the background a little lighter so as not to lose the faintest galaxies, but the result of that was the lingering LP and flat framing problems.

I gave a little presentation last Saturday showing the raw and calibrated frames.. missed seeing you at the meeting!
Andy
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Apollo XX
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Re: Abell 2199 Galaxy Cluster in Hercules

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Thanks Andy. I was camping up at Salisbury Beach last weekend but would've loved to have been there to see your presentation. I've just been dipping my toes into the waters of astrophoto processing and could really use a better understanding of the things you're talking about. Especially the light pollution artifacts. I recently did some 60 second DSLR exposures of the Ursa Major area from the street in front of my house, and after pulling back the initial overexposure the sky background came out red. I could get it to go towards black, but like you were saying lost a lot of detail. Previously, Bill Gucfa had talked about using a different white balance to combat the effects of local lighting, but when doing so I also lost any differences in the colors of the stars. I don't want to hijack this thread, so I'll start another and post my images there, then maybe people can chime in with suggestions.

Mike M.
"The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens." - Anaxagoras
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