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M1 Crab Nebula

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markt
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« on: December 07, 2010, 11:44:45 pm »

Thought I would share this image with you all...  I've recently started using the 2 metre Faulkes Telescopes in Hawaii and also Australia as part of my GCSE astronomy lessons.  This is one of the ever increasing number of remote controlled robotic telescopes that are available worldwide for astronomers to use.  The pupils absolutely love it and are really quick to pick up on how to operate it. 

This image is a RGB shot - 40 seconds with each of the three coloured filters.  We download the basic FITS image files, open them in FITS Liberater in Adobe Photoshop, stretching the levels a bit, shadows and highlights, de-dust and de-scratching the image, despeckle and some unsharp mask.  These are then re-saved and opened in SALSAJ and combined from 3 seperate images in a RGB composite, aligning the 3 channels.  This is then saved again before being opened up in CS4 again before one final tickle with the cosmetics...

Anyway, here's the picky...



All this deep sky imagery is fairly new stuff to me I have to say so i'm pretty pleased with these results we got this afternoon.  If anyone knows of any good deep sky processing tutorials, or free/share ware that does this I would appreciate if you could point me in the right direction.  Also, if anyone fancies having a go at a re-process of my raw data then drop me a  pm and i'll happily email you the FITS files to play around with - would be interesting to see what others get from the same data!

The pupils were really pleased with this image as it was a better image than the one of M1 in their text book.  I would liked to have collected somemore data for this and stacked it to do a bit of noise reduction, but bless them the pupils don't have the patience for this and just want to move onto the next object.

All good fun anyway!  Enjoy!  Roll Eyes
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paulster78
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« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2010, 11:56:58 pm »

Mark im no expert but thats a cracking result-some vibrant red/orange and green colours there, good job!
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John9929
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« Reply #2 on: December 08, 2010, 12:32:42 am »

Thats a beautiful image Mark, both you and the kids have done a fine job. Never ceases to amaze me the results the kids can get with these scopes, and they enjoy it as well. I am no expert in the processing either I'm afraid, but there are those on here more up to speed and I'm sure will only be too glad to help. I have about 100 free mins on the "Rent-o-scopes" at Mayhill NM USA but have never found out yet how to use it. Some of these days I'll surprise myself! Great image, congrats to the kids!
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« Reply #3 on: December 08, 2010, 06:25:00 am »

That's a great image Mark, so impressed with you and the students in acheiving that level of quality with so little time spent on it.
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Anton
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« Reply #4 on: December 08, 2010, 09:34:01 am »

Great result you must be really pleased with this rewarding project.

Thanks
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markt
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« Reply #5 on: December 08, 2010, 08:56:48 pm »

Thanks for all the kind words guys!  Much appreciated!

Here's another image we took, again using the Faulkes Telescope, of the galaxy NGC 253 - another RGB image (37secs this time).



We were really excited when we compared this one to the Hubble image, which, we thought, wasn't really that much of an improvement on ours...



We have the scope in Hawaii booked for half an hour in the morning and all are looking forward to it!
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hal2000
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« Reply #6 on: December 08, 2010, 10:26:47 pm »

Absolutely first class. Well done to you all.
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Big Dipper
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« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2010, 07:44:01 am »

Wowzers - look at the structure in NGC253!!

When I was 'inbetween scopes' three years ago I signed up to the Slooh robotic scope for a while. I believe that they have now got sites in Australia & Chile, as well as the existing site in the Canary Islands (sigh - if only we had skies like that in the UK)!

On the question of online processing tutorials for deep sky objects, I actually did a compilation for one of my other forums not so long ago which you will find here. The list includes free useful plugins for Photoshop and note that the final tutorial by a Donald Waid also contains some 'how to' videos which your students may find interesting.

BTW if anyone in your class is thinking of looking into deep sky astro imaging more deeply, they would do well to buy Making Every Photon Count by Steve Richards as a 'stocking filler' this Christmas. Steve is a well known UK based amateur astronomer & imager & also contributes to the Sky at Night magazine each month, too.
Incidentally I did a review of the book which you will find here.

HTH.  Smiley
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Andy
markt
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« Reply #8 on: December 09, 2010, 07:22:05 pm »

Thanks for those links Andy, slowly working my way through them.  Bad weather in Hawaii this morning so no observations i'm afraid - seems we're not the only country to be plagued by clouds!
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markt
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« Reply #9 on: December 18, 2010, 11:33:32 pm »

Again, thanks for those links Andy, after reading through and digesting them I had another go at reprocessing NGC253.



I'm pretty pleased with the improvement!

Mark Smiley
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Big Dipper
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« Reply #10 on: December 19, 2010, 04:06:32 am »

Only 'pretty' pleased mark?!! That's got to be an all time understatement! You've brought out the dark lanes & overall structure beautifully. Well done.
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Andy
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