Hello all. I will introduce myself.
I'm Mike van den Berg from the Netherlands.
I live near Amsterdam.
I've been doing astrophotography from my backyard observatory for about 30 years.
Started with black and white film Kodak TP2415 and in 1995 switched to digital astrophotography.
In 2016 I decided to stop the hobby because of the extremely bad conditions in the Netherlands.
In addition, it gets worse every year.
But after dramatic developments in my private life I picked up the hobby of astrophotography again.
But no longer from the Netherlands.
I decided to go remote and chose Roboscopes.
As of today, I applied to be a team member of pier 14.
I love widefield imaging.
So far my introduction.
May I already be so free to make some suggestions for photographing a number of deep sky objects.
I would like to list the following objects.
There are also objects that are not visible now, but try to choose it so that the system can pick up an object that is conveniently placed at any time of the year.
In short, choose such that the objects are spread over the entire northern starry sky and a small part of the southern starry sky.
Here are some suggestions: M11, M31, M42, M45, M78, M81, IC63, IC342, IC405 & 410, IC434, IC1396, IC1805, IC1848,IC2177 (Seagull nebula), Sh2-240, Sh2-157, SH2-155. Abell 426 (Perseus Cluster), Abell 2065, Abell 2151 (Hercules Galaxy Cluster), Abell 1656 (Coma Galaxy Cluster), IC2118, NGC2264, NGC6946, NGC1499, Double Cluster in Perseus, NGC2237, UGC10822 (Draco Dwarf), Sh2-205, Vdb14&15.
I understood that the exposure time per sub is on average 2 minutes.
So I stick to that. As for the filters and exposure times, we can talk about it.
I also understood that you are working on some beautiful mosaics.
Only downside is it takes a lot of time. But a few of mosaics per year should be possible.
Especially those objects located in the Milky Way.
Mike
I'm Mike van den Berg from the Netherlands.
I live near Amsterdam.
I've been doing astrophotography from my backyard observatory for about 30 years.
Started with black and white film Kodak TP2415 and in 1995 switched to digital astrophotography.
In 2016 I decided to stop the hobby because of the extremely bad conditions in the Netherlands.
In addition, it gets worse every year.
But after dramatic developments in my private life I picked up the hobby of astrophotography again.
But no longer from the Netherlands.
I decided to go remote and chose Roboscopes.
As of today, I applied to be a team member of pier 14.
I love widefield imaging.
So far my introduction.
May I already be so free to make some suggestions for photographing a number of deep sky objects.
I would like to list the following objects.
There are also objects that are not visible now, but try to choose it so that the system can pick up an object that is conveniently placed at any time of the year.
In short, choose such that the objects are spread over the entire northern starry sky and a small part of the southern starry sky.
Here are some suggestions: M11, M31, M42, M45, M78, M81, IC63, IC342, IC405 & 410, IC434, IC1396, IC1805, IC1848,IC2177 (Seagull nebula), Sh2-240, Sh2-157, SH2-155. Abell 426 (Perseus Cluster), Abell 2065, Abell 2151 (Hercules Galaxy Cluster), Abell 1656 (Coma Galaxy Cluster), IC2118, NGC2264, NGC6946, NGC1499, Double Cluster in Perseus, NGC2237, UGC10822 (Draco Dwarf), Sh2-205, Vdb14&15.
I understood that the exposure time per sub is on average 2 minutes.
So I stick to that. As for the filters and exposure times, we can talk about it.
I also understood that you are working on some beautiful mosaics.
Only downside is it takes a lot of time. But a few of mosaics per year should be possible.
Especially those objects located in the Milky Way.
Mike
0
Undo
Votes
Hi Mike,
Steve did recently mention your interest in this syndicate so welcome and thanks for all the interesting information about yourself. I've been admiring the images you've posted throughout the time I joined roboscopes, so really looking forward to what you can do with this pier.
That's an interesting list of targets you've suggested and if you find enough time to read through our old posts you'll find a lot of your targets already there as suggestions.
You'll already know that the scope and camera orientation are being adjusted, so from that point we start off from scratch again, apart from a 4 panel mosaic of the Sadr region that Richard has organised. I have nothing in particular that I would like to have imaged until the end of August, so please feel free to post all your current suggestions for what is now on display in the sky.
We are in the process of completing the collection of data for a 3 panel mosaic of the North American nebula region. I don't know off hand what the job numbers for that mosaic are, but I can easily find out. So maybe Steve or Phil will make those available to you whilst we are waiting for new data. There may also be some data already collected for one or two of the items on your list that can be shared as well.
Great hearing from you and looking forward to sharing ideas in the months ahead.
Cheers,
Ray
Steve did recently mention your interest in this syndicate so welcome and thanks for all the interesting information about yourself. I've been admiring the images you've posted throughout the time I joined roboscopes, so really looking forward to what you can do with this pier.
That's an interesting list of targets you've suggested and if you find enough time to read through our old posts you'll find a lot of your targets already there as suggestions.
You'll already know that the scope and camera orientation are being adjusted, so from that point we start off from scratch again, apart from a 4 panel mosaic of the Sadr region that Richard has organised. I have nothing in particular that I would like to have imaged until the end of August, so please feel free to post all your current suggestions for what is now on display in the sky.
We are in the process of completing the collection of data for a 3 panel mosaic of the North American nebula region. I don't know off hand what the job numbers for that mosaic are, but I can easily find out. So maybe Steve or Phil will make those available to you whilst we are waiting for new data. There may also be some data already collected for one or two of the items on your list that can be shared as well.
Great hearing from you and looking forward to sharing ideas in the months ahead.
Cheers,
Ray
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
Hi Ray, many thanks. We will cooperate. I want to take a very deep image of M31. According to the catalogues M110 is at the rim of M31. I have also seen it by one astrophotographer, Robert Gendler, it's gorgeous. M31 is nearly 3 degrees and the field of view approximately 5 by 3 degrees thus a nice composition. I'm thinking of 100 subs of 3 minutes per channel LRGB. And for the core 1 minute per sub.
0
Undo
Votes
Hi and good evening Mike,
That is a favourite of mine. We attempted this at the start of this year but bad sky conditions delayed its capture and by the time we received all the data back, there were no useable blue subs, I think it may have been due to focus issues at the time. It was then too late in the season to capture any more data. I only posted a monochrome image back then from the data we collected. There was also an early issue with an obstruction in the imaging train which cast a dark semi circular shadow on part of each image, and involved some cropping of the final image.
The field of view afforded by this scope is superb for m31 with plenty of space around it, yet also yielding a good degree of detail. I'm very keen to go along with this at the earliest opportunity but we may need to slightly reduce those integration times you've suggested. I'll look for the data we collected before and check what exposure times we used. Maybe we could some take some additional hydrogen alpha data as a separate submission. Doing them separately means that we can get the lrgb data back without waiting additional time for the Ha.
Kind regards,
Ray
That is a favourite of mine. We attempted this at the start of this year but bad sky conditions delayed its capture and by the time we received all the data back, there were no useable blue subs, I think it may have been due to focus issues at the time. It was then too late in the season to capture any more data. I only posted a monochrome image back then from the data we collected. There was also an early issue with an obstruction in the imaging train which cast a dark semi circular shadow on part of each image, and involved some cropping of the final image.
The field of view afforded by this scope is superb for m31 with plenty of space around it, yet also yielding a good degree of detail. I'm very keen to go along with this at the earliest opportunity but we may need to slightly reduce those integration times you've suggested. I'll look for the data we collected before and check what exposure times we used. Maybe we could some take some additional hydrogen alpha data as a separate submission. Doing them separately means that we can get the lrgb data back without waiting additional time for the Ha.
Kind regards,
Ray
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
Hello Mike and welcome to Pier 14.
I live in a rural area of the UK, and although we have reasonably dark skies, we also have lots of cloud. And that is what brought me to Roboscopes.
I look forward to collaborating with you, the group interests are sufficiently diverse to make sure we are always getting new data to work on from this wonderful rig.
Just as background I spent five years in the Netherlands starting in 1993 when I was working for a Unilever subsidiary. We lived in Scheveningen and I worked in Gouda.
I live in a rural area of the UK, and although we have reasonably dark skies, we also have lots of cloud. And that is what brought me to Roboscopes.
I look forward to collaborating with you, the group interests are sufficiently diverse to make sure we are always getting new data to work on from this wonderful rig.
Just as background I spent five years in the Netherlands starting in 1993 when I was working for a Unilever subsidiary. We lived in Scheveningen and I worked in Gouda.
0
Undo
Votes
Mike,
What a really splendid mosaic you've just posted on the forum, which illustrates the advantage that piers 6 and 14 have around this time of the year. Having had visitors staying with me for the past two and a half weeks I've some catching up to do particularly with that one.
Hope you don't mind me asking but what did you use to combine the individual stacks to make the mosaic, whatever it was made a really good job of it. Also, given that there were a fair number of subs that suffered from bad imaging conditions, did you use the new 'Normalise Gradient' script recently released for pixinsight, and use its percentage slider to exclude any of them?
Exciting times ahead with the milky way region and its many great targets on display right now. I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to discuss between us the first targets to be submitted. Maybe with the view of only submitting, for now, those ones that are setting, those that have risen for at least an hour after the start of astronomical dark and any where their declination only allows a short imaging window. The list you gave would be a good starting point and we could initially pick suitable items from that list, plus any that Richard would want. Personally right now I've more than enough to be getting on with and my next submission, Simeis 147, which off hand I think is Sh 2-240, is on your list but not yet risen.
I will create a new post titled July and August targets for some discussions and suggestions anyone has as to how best to proceed from now on.
Fantastic image Mike.
Cheers,
Ray
Cheers,
Ray
What a really splendid mosaic you've just posted on the forum, which illustrates the advantage that piers 6 and 14 have around this time of the year. Having had visitors staying with me for the past two and a half weeks I've some catching up to do particularly with that one.
Hope you don't mind me asking but what did you use to combine the individual stacks to make the mosaic, whatever it was made a really good job of it. Also, given that there were a fair number of subs that suffered from bad imaging conditions, did you use the new 'Normalise Gradient' script recently released for pixinsight, and use its percentage slider to exclude any of them?
Exciting times ahead with the milky way region and its many great targets on display right now. I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to discuss between us the first targets to be submitted. Maybe with the view of only submitting, for now, those ones that are setting, those that have risen for at least an hour after the start of astronomical dark and any where their declination only allows a short imaging window. The list you gave would be a good starting point and we could initially pick suitable items from that list, plus any that Richard would want. Personally right now I've more than enough to be getting on with and my next submission, Simeis 147, which off hand I think is Sh 2-240, is on your list but not yet risen.
I will create a new post titled July and August targets for some discussions and suggestions anyone has as to how best to proceed from now on.
Fantastic image Mike.
Cheers,
Ray
Cheers,
Ray
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
0
Undo
Votes
To those who have not yet tackled the ngc7000 mosaic, a word of caution. If like me you use the weighted batch preprocessing script in pixinsight but also rely on it to select a registration image for you to align all the subs, you will need to remove 3 subs from the oxygen data for the 3rd panel, sh2-119. The 3 oxygen data files were captured on June 15th at 03:19:53, 03:25:32 and 03:29:56 and for some reason are all iimages of a slightly different area of the sky. The script decided to use the middle of those 3 subs as the reference image for me. The result was just 3 registered oxygen aligned subs! Needless to say I was not a happy bunny. 
Either remove those 3 subs or more sensibly pick and allocate your own registration image.
Either remove those 3 subs or more sensibly pick and allocate your own registration image.
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
Hello Ray,
You have the 3 panels.
Every panel has been processed independently.
![20210626_181751[1].jpg](https://www.roboscopes.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&controller=attachment&task=download&tmpl=component&id=815)
Then you use the procedure Image registration to make a template.
![20210626_182113[1].jpg](https://www.roboscopes.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&controller=attachment&task=download&tmpl=component&id=816)
I have chosen IC5070 as the reference image.
Then you put the lower left triangle on the image of NGC7000.
Then you get the right image and chose this as the new reference image:
![20210626_182141[1].jpg](https://www.roboscopes.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&controller=attachment&task=download&tmpl=component&id=817)
Then you put again the lower left triangle of the window on the Sh2-119 image.
You get the final template:
![20210626_182249[1].jpg](https://www.roboscopes.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&controller=attachment&task=download&tmpl=component&id=818)
Again you use the image registration procedure to align the panels with the template, be aware of the settings:
![20210626_182340[1].jpg](https://www.roboscopes.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&controller=attachment&task=download&tmpl=component&id=819)
And you will get for example the NGC7000 panel:
![20210626_182445[1].jpg](https://www.roboscopes.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&controller=attachment&task=download&tmpl=component&id=820)
The resulting images has to be saved to use GradienMergeMosaic.
Then you chose GradientMergeMosaic:
![20210626_182535[1].jpg](https://www.roboscopes.com/index.php?option=com_easydiscuss&controller=attachment&task=download&tmpl=component&id=821)
And you will get the mosaic.
I hope that this will be clear enough for you.
Mike
You have the 3 panels.
Every panel has been processed independently.
Then you use the procedure Image registration to make a template.
I have chosen IC5070 as the reference image.
Then you put the lower left triangle on the image of NGC7000.
Then you get the right image and chose this as the new reference image:
Then you put again the lower left triangle of the window on the Sh2-119 image.
You get the final template:
Again you use the image registration procedure to align the panels with the template, be aware of the settings:
And you will get for example the NGC7000 panel:
The resulting images has to be saved to use GradienMergeMosaic.
Then you chose GradientMergeMosaic:
And you will get the mosaic.
I hope that this will be clear enough for you.
Mike
0
Undo
Votes
Mike,
Thank you so much for those very helpful and instructive steps on how you created that mosaic, really appreciated. That will save me so much time by not needing to experiment with things.
I see you've been busy and already shared that mosaic of the Rho Ophiuchi region. Really colourful and detailed image, I'll be keen to try that one next. A few more images like that from you Mike and then posted in the gallery and we'd have every reason to expect one or two more people at least to subscribe to this syndicate. Admittedly it is a lot of money to invest to join the Syndicate but these images which do require a good amount of integration time, make it a much more convincing argument.
Regards,
Ray
Thank you so much for those very helpful and instructive steps on how you created that mosaic, really appreciated. That will save me so much time by not needing to experiment with things.
I see you've been busy and already shared that mosaic of the Rho Ophiuchi region. Really colourful and detailed image, I'll be keen to try that one next. A few more images like that from you Mike and then posted in the gallery and we'd have every reason to expect one or two more people at least to subscribe to this syndicate. Admittedly it is a lot of money to invest to join the Syndicate but these images which do require a good amount of integration time, make it a much more convincing argument.
Regards,
Ray
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
That's funny ( Old Eyes) . We were nearly neighbours.
I live in Noordwijkerhout 25km from Scheveningen.
Hmm! My kids went to school in Wassenaar and Duinrell was a regular weekend visit. We used to sail at Vlietland and the Space Expo at Noordwijk was another popular visit for the kids. We had a great time when we were there!
0
Undo
Votes
Good afternoon gentlemen,
I've just looked at the data for the Cygnus loop (veil nebula) and to me it looks like the hydrogen and sulphur data stacks are not in proper focus, unlike the oxygen data which is very crisp.
I'd like to suggest that this is resubmitted asap, subject to someone else first verifying my findings.
Any thoughts on what else we should submit once we get the go ahead? I've created a post for such suggestions under July and August targets.
Cheers,
Ray
I've just looked at the data for the Cygnus loop (veil nebula) and to me it looks like the hydrogen and sulphur data stacks are not in proper focus, unlike the oxygen data which is very crisp.
I'd like to suggest that this is resubmitted asap, subject to someone else first verifying my findings.
Any thoughts on what else we should submit once we get the go ahead? I've created a post for such suggestions under July and August targets.
Cheers,
Ray
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
0
Undo
Votes
Hi Mike,
For some reason I cannot see the job that you have submitted for M31 in the submission list, so wonder what you have entered regarding filters and exposures. I'm particularly interested in what you've entered for the collection of Ha data, as I know that Steve's keen that we do collect that. Would you mind replying and confirming when you have a spare minute that you are indeed doing so, with the sub lengths and numbers.
Cheers,
Ray
For some reason I cannot see the job that you have submitted for M31 in the submission list, so wonder what you have entered regarding filters and exposures. I'm particularly interested in what you've entered for the collection of Ha data, as I know that Steve's keen that we do collect that. Would you mind replying and confirming when you have a spare minute that you are indeed doing so, with the sub lengths and numbers.
Cheers,
Ray
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
0
Undo
Votes
Hi Mike,
What a tragedy with all that rain. Sincerely hope you are okay.
Regards,
Ray
What a tragedy with all that rain. Sincerely hope you are okay.
Regards,
Ray
Ray
Roboscopes Guinea Pig
- Page :
- 1
There are no replies made for this post yet.
Be one of the first to reply to this post!
Be one of the first to reply to this post!
Proud to use
Resources
Company Details:
Roboscopes
802 Kingsbury Road
Birmingham
B24 9PS
United Kingdom
