The MidWest Astro-Imaging Conference is less than two months away (June 20-21, 2008), so there's still time to register but don't delay.

Jerry Bonnell, co-editor of Astronomy Picture of the Day, will provide a brief look at the history and operation of APOD and will discuss recent submissions with an eye toward those from the amateur community.

Renowned imagers Jay GaBany and Ken Crawford will share their insights on bringing out the details of your image with key factors such as clarity, composition and saturation to make your images memorable.

 Industry experts Jim Burnell, Doug George, Mike Unsold, Warren Keller, Neil Fleming, Robert Reeves, Bob Denny and Bob Pilz will cover various topics and workshops including Photoshop, Maxim DL, AIP4Win, CCDStack, ACP Observatory Control, as well as CCD, DSLR, DSO, Narrowband and Lunar imaging.

The 2008 Conference will also include vendor exhibits, over $4,000 in door prizes, breakfast, lunch and beverage service on both days, free wireless Internet access through the facility, free shuttle service to and from the Marriott Hotel.

See the conference website for more details. http://www.mwaic.com

Al Degutis
Midwest Astro-Imaging Conference Chair

Since I dont own a tracking scope, focusing is rather difficult as the image is moving in the field of view. With a webcam, it should be possible to have some kind of electronic tracking feature that shows a smaller region of the total ccd image area and follows the object as it moves. That would also help reduce the effect of vibrations when adjusting the focusser. As long as the object is on the detector, it ought to be able to display a stationary image without telescope tracking. The software can raise warnings as the object approaches the edge of the field of view. No doubt some of you have seen Registax do this when processing AVI's, but I want something that does this live, while the camera is imaging.

Does anyone know of software that does this? I could possibly program it myself, but would like to know what other options there are. I checked the Meade Autostar suite, as I'm curious about using their LPI imager camera, but its not clear if this feature exists in the program. Thanks for any info.

After waiting (for what seemed like) a very long 3 weeks, there was finally a decent clear night in the UK last night. Im fairly new to astrophotography and ive never used the Meade DSI before so i thought id just do some test exposures of M42 to get a feel for it. However, when i came to stack them in DeepSkyStacker, the image became quite distorted. Upon further inspection, it appears as though my original frames (prior to stacking) are also distorted, though this is not visible unless the brightness/contrast is increased. Any ideas as to what is causing this and how to fix it?

Thanks in advance!
 

Hi!

 I am extremely new to amateur astronomy leave alone imaging. I have a Philips TouCam webcam, and had an excellent opportunity to videoshoot the Saturn. While the planet looked magnificient in the eyepiece, when I inserted the webcam (with the Mogg adapter), I could not get the image to focus properly. All along I could only see a highly over-exposed image of a disk with handles on two sides.

Finally I did take the video and attempted to clean it up using registax, to no avail. The image is still as over exposed and not quite like even a half good job.

I would appreciate if you gurus could throw some light on how best to get the images of a decent (if not professional) quality. I would also like to understand typical gain, hue, saturation and other variables that need control.

Thanks and Regards

 I've been observing for about a year now and I'm looking for something better.  Does anyone know what kind of camera I should get for my Dobsoinan because i have no idea what kind to get.  Does anyone mind clearing the field of Astroimaging up for me because I'm lost. Please and Thank You

hi guys,

I know this comes late, as there is a new and full scale version of this software on the market.
however, on request of many I have created a simple tutorial on 2 procedures I really love to perform in PixInsight LE.
The full scale version I know is capable of wonderful things, but is quite complicated, I think...
at least this is what keeps me from digging through this new software...(particularly the wavelet-function)
So still, I do 2 major steps in my DSI processing with Pix Insight LE.

there is one tut covering

- the creation of an arteficial flat; and one that covers

- background-noise processing with a mask

the arteficial flat is interesting for all those operating One Shot Color CCDs, as it is difficult to gain a decent flat with OSCs.

http://www.stargazer-observatory.com/reviews.html

perhaps you find these useful.
please make sure to scroll down !

i wasn't sure where to post this.

does anyone know how to determine the magnitude of the faintest star visible in a digital photograph?  i've recently taken some images and tried to compare them to some charts that i have, but the charts do not show stars to faint enough mag.  i've looked around online and found the same issue.

my motovation for figuring this out is purely fun.  i'm just curious to know what mag. i've been able to detect.  i was hoping for more detaled charts if anyone knows where i can download them.  if not, there must be a way to calculate the magnitudes from comparing to known stars in the field right?

either way, any advice is welcomed. TIA

When I open my 300 pictures of saturn taken with my DSI imager and chose my alignment points and hit stack...it process the whole thing...and skips to wavelet...but just shows a completely black screen. I tried it with my pics of the moon, and it did the same. What's the deal? Can anyone please help?

Hi

 I am experimenting fiddling with my pics in Adobe's Photoshop Elements 6................I can stack images.......but I don't how how to subtracts the Darks that I have taken.......could someone give me some advice please?

 Many thanks,

Nick

Hi everyone, I'm Warren. Though Jeremy's published me in the online magazine, I didn't know about the fine forums here! While Yahooing (is that a word- I like it better than Google!) today, I came upon it and wanted to join. I especially appreciated Jay's comments on sampling in another CCD forum.

I currently use an SX SXVF-M25C O-S-C camera (7.8 micron pixels). Anyone interested in One-Shot-Color specifically, join us at Yahoo OSC group http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SXV-OSC/. Scopes other than the TV60is are in flux due to a recent wind storm! www.billionsandbillions.com/equipment.html near bottom. Please take some time to enjoy the site and images.

Anyone looking for good Postprocessing information, I'll also invite you to peruse www.ip4ap.com and mention that the site will soon be updated to announce the tutorials available on DVD as well as streaming. This will be from AVA, but drop me a line if interested now. We seem to be down at the moment- sorry!

Thanks everyone, and glad to be here!

Best, Warren Keller

I use MaxImDL to process my images, but the trapezium area of M42 is always bloomed (overexposed?) when I try to bring out the fainter areas.

How do I balance this?

I take images ranging from 15 seconds to 180 seconds and combine for processing.

Here is a link to how my photo turns out.

http://www.nondecaffeinated.com/m42_2.png 

Thanks for any help. 

Hi all,

Well, I finally tried my hand at astroimaging with my Canon Rebel XTi. I snapped a few shots of the Orion Nebula and processed them with DeepSkyStacker. What I ended up with is a greyscale image of pretty much just the "core" of the nebula and the darkness around it. I can barely make out some of the nebulosity surrounding the core, but that too is in greyscale. Why is that? Does it seem like I didn't capture enough color for the software to use? Here's some of the technical stuff:

ISO 800, 30 second exposures
7 light frames, 3 dark frames, 3 offset/bias frames

I probably could've captured more detail with longer exposures, but the fact remains: why are my images coming out in greyscale. I processed the same seven frames in Registax and the final image came out in color.

Thanks in advance,

Joe
 

I was under the impression that programmes such as registax could be used to stack photos of faint objects in order to produce a brighter image. I am using a Canon Rebel digital camera which produces JPEG images.

The loading and processing with registax v4 went fine.  But the stacked image is not any brighter than the original ones. What should I do next?

At the end of the processing, the cropping feature is available but not the "View full image" option which would help if one wants to crop the image. At least the "View full image" option was available at the beginning  of the process. 

Any help would be appreciated