Eta Carinae Nebula

I was so excited to go back again to Caliraya with my family. And the weather last Saturday was promising that I imagined myself imaging the southern skies with a wide grin on my face. Hopes were high when we arrived at Caliraya Lake with the blue sky mirrored at the waters. "This could be it," I said to myself, as I gazed over the southern sky, somehow imagining the Great Eta Carina Nebulae just hovering above the mountaintops. I hurriedly set-up my gears and prepared for a good night of southern sky imaging. Darkness fell and soon my scope was aimed at the Eta Carinae Nebulae. That was the first time I used the Megrez 90 and Zenithstar80 tandem for dual camera imaging, which saved me a lot of time in image acquisition. But of course all good things must come to end as my batteries were eventually gets depleted. I was able to shoot a good 45 minutes of images before the batteries drained out. As usual, I did a quick processing to see how the nebula looks like. Hmm... not bad.... not bad at all....

California Nebula during Easter

This work-break allowed me to finally process and add color data to my previous H-alpha only NGC1499. The H-alpha subs were taken two years ago and they were among the first lights of my H-alpha filter. The color subs were taken in Buso-buso during the Christmas break-New Year's Eve in fact. Early in processing, I was getting errors during registration of the images as the H-alpha and color subs were of different scales and orientation-taken with 558mm F.L. Megrez 90 and 200mm F.L. lens respectively. After three attempts, I stopped, went outside for fresh air and had snacks. I went back in front of the computer and tried again. It took me five attempts before I got it right-it seemed. Talk about processing! Usually its harder than image acquisition.

Crescent Nebula

The Full Moon beamed that clear night as I reminisced my time under starry skies. How I wished I was there at a dark hill with only starlight illuminating the sky! I reckoned that the closest to this astro-tripping was to do some exercises in image-processing. so, I brought out my previous capture files and decided to do some redux on the Crescent Nebula. I remembered that I acquired the subs at home and at Buso-buso. I again quickly did processing and compared the result with the previous I had. Well, slight improvement but an improvement nonetheless, enough to quench this astro-thirst at the moment.

Rho Opiuchi Region

I'm used in seeing red in nebula. So the colorful image of the Rho Opiuchi region is something I'm not at home with. Even this was my second try at this region, there's still something unfamiliar. The colors were off, framing was even off and the imager (me!)was obviously off. I struggled with my autoguiding when I took this image. As expected, processing was also challenging. I really wished I had everything prepared then. But, this was the only object visible that night of seemingly endless clouds. So, "carpe diem". Seize the day, err.. night!

Amateur Astronomy Picture of the Day (2nd time)!

I was elated upon learning that my lunar eclipse image made it as the AAPOD for 24 February! The composite image was actually taken during the total lunar eclipse last 10 December 2011 and was submitted the day after. I was pleasantly surprised that they eventually chose it. This is my second AAPOD and hopefully not the last. Really made my day!

Congratulations! tani
Earth's Shadow on the Moon
http://astronomy.fm/aapod/2012-02-24/Earth%27s+Shadow+on+the+Moon.html
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Re-processed Seagull Nebula

A good astro-friend gave me a book on astro-processing. I applied the new techniques on my recent seagull image and here is the result. I increased the contrast to darken the background and cropped the whole image to center the seagull.

The Seagull in Flight (IC 2177, Gum 1)

I thought of processing the images I took last New Year's Eve in Buso-buso. I actually took shots of two objects-the California and Seagull nebulae. However, during processing only the seagull was workable as the California nebula was constantly reporting stacking error due to large difference in image size. I wanted to preserve the extent of the nebula so I was careful in using the contrast control. I was not really very happy with result but I can't figure out what's wrong but anyway here it is: