BRAVO, Patrick! Was that from Standbury Park? I wanted to do some phtography last night but the blasted weather prediction called for fairly cloudy skies and I didn't. Obviously I should have. Want to give us exposure times? A lovely photo. -- Joe ROBERT MARILYN GRANT <cincoymaya@msn.com> wrote: Great photo, Patrick! I find myself captivated by the detail in it. Bob Grant ----- Original Message ----- From: Patrick Wiggins To: utah astronomy listserve utah astronomy Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 6:08 AM Subject: [Utah-astronomy] M-51 Played hookey from taking data tonight and played around with M-51. http://gallery.utahastronomy.com/main.php?g2_itemId=10620&g2_page=2 patrick _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://gallery.utahastronomy.com Visit the Wiki: http://www.utahastronomy.com --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.

Thanks, Chuck, I missed that the first time I clicked on the link. I'd still like to see the breakdown of lrgb or rgb. Or perhaps all are equal? Best wishes, Joe Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote: The exposure times are in the photo caption, Joe. On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 1:00 PM, Joe Bauman wrote:

. Want to give us exposure times?

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Hi Joe, On 06 May 2008, at 13:00, Joe Bauman wrote:

BRAVO, Patrick! Was that from Standbury Park?

Yes.

I wanted to do some phtography last night but the blasted weather prediction called for fairly cloudy skies and I didn't. Obviously I should have.

Don't feel bad. I was sure I was going to get clouded out so I didn't have any plans for data or pretty pictures last night. But then I walked out to tend to the bird feeders around dark and was surprised to see the sky was clear. On 06 May 2008, at 15:35, Joe Bauman wrote:

Thanks, Chuck, I missed that the first time I clicked on the link. I'd still like to see the breakdown of lrgb or rgb. Or perhaps all are equal? Best wishes, Joe

Not certain what you mean. See if this helps: I took 20 one minute unfiltered frames and followed that with 15 two minute exposures through the blue filter, 5 more two minutes through red and a final 5 two minutes through the visual filter (I don't have a green filter but Jerry Foote assured me the visual filter would work). Subtracted master 1' and 2' darks from their respective frames. (Next time I plan to go with all 2' exposures so I only have to deal with a single master dark.) Applied master clear, red, blue and visual flats to each of the corresponding clear, red, blue and visual frames. Removed three bad columns that have developed in the camera's chip from all 45 images and removed most of the hot and cold pixels. Unfortunately I could not remove them all. Same for the occasional cosmic ray hit. Registered all 45 images so they all aligned properly. Added all frames of each color into a master frame (ie all of the reds into a single master Red, all of the blues into a single master BLUE and so on.) Then put the master clear, red, blue and visual frames together to come up with the final image. All of the above was done with CCDSoft except for removing the bad columns and the hot and cold pixels. Those removals could have been done with CCDSoft too but I would have had to treat each frame separately. Fortunately I found a couple of freeware programs on the Software Bisque list serve that take care of such chores automatically. There were a number of "gottchas" along the way that I can't explain but I think I'm slowly coming up with a "standard" recipe for how to do this stuff. Does that help? Cheers, patrick

Hello Joe, On 06 May 2008, at 22:15, Joe Bauman wrote:

What I was wondering is whether each color exposure was equal, but I didn't express that well.

I may have finally come across what you were looking for (I'll learn this stuff yet). The way CCDSoft works is you first open the four (luminance, red, green and blue) filtered images and then click on an icon labeled "Color Combine". That opens another window where you tell the software where each of the 4 images are and then click on "Combine". Then some magic happens and the color image appears. However, after reading your message from this evening I went back and looked at the Color Combine window and saw that while the software makes the ratio choices automatically it will also allow the operator to change those settings. The automatic settings for the M-51 shot were Red ratio 1.0, Green ratio 1.0, Blue ratio 1.0, Luminance transparency 1.0. Is that what you were looking for? BTW, I spoke with Jerry Foote a few hours ago. He's my mentor in this stuff. Up to now all of my pictures have been binned 3x3. He's suggesting I try shooting the luminance frames at 1x1 and the colors at 2x2. 1x1s will take 9 times the exposure length of 3x3 but I'm interested to see how thy look (I tried to find out tonight but it clouded over). Next I'll need to figure out how to use CCDSoft to merge 1x1 and 2x2 images.

I have a few bad pixels as well. When you got rid of yours, was that programmed in before you took the views, or processed afterward?

Afterward. In a three step process using two softwares. Something called PicFix works with CCDSoft to remove the bad columns and another software called Scrubber works with CCDSoft to remove first the cold pixels and then the hot pixels.

PS: Gotta brag. Our son, Sky, successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis yesterday at the University of Arizona.

Kudos to The Doctor! (Not to be confused with the Time Lord of the same name. <g>)

Also, just FYI and way OT, I should be on Ch. 7's Utah NOW, Friday evening at 8:30 p.m., discussing why the supposed daguerreotype of Joseph Smith isn't him.

Excellent. I just set my DVR. Cheers, patrick