Wide Field

June 02 2010

This is a composite of two 30 minute unguided exposures taken with my 50mm f/1.4 Rokkor PG lens @ f/2.8 piggybacked on the LX6. One exposure was taken with a Celestron LPR filter then converted to grayscale to provide contrast. The non-filtered exposure was modified to provide only color information. The two were then digitally stacked using Picture Window to give the results here.

Object: Rho-Ophiuchi/Antares Region
Date: April 28 & 29, 2003
Site: New Mexico Skies, Mayhill, NM
Exposure: 20 Min (1) 60 Min (2) @ f/4.5 (3 exposures total)
Film: Fuji Provia 400F (Pushed +1)
Equipment: Piggybacked Minolta Maxxum 9 Sigma EX 100-300 APO on 10" f/10 SCT on a Losmandy G-11.
Guiding: SBIG ST-4 at 1130mm (A0's - A4's) very windy.

Hardware & Software: Scanned with a Minolta Scan Elite II, Hamrick Software's VueScan (7.6.22). All images were processed with curves and levels using Picture Window Pro 3.1h, smoothed lightly using SBGNR and then stacked using a Registar 1.0.6. After stacking, final image tweaks were made in Picture Window and the resulting image was the size reduced.

Info: Rho-Ophiuchi/Antares Region showing M4, NGC 6144, IC4603, IC4604, IC4605, and much more. The darkness and transparency was the best I have ever seen, however, it was very windy. This was a good test of the Sigma lens which showed excellent performance.

An Iridium Flare on Fuji Film

Composite of a 5 minute and a 15 minute exposure. The film was Fuji 100 Supria. The images were scanned using my HP S20 film scanner. Like many of my images heavy light pollution has wiped out much of the detail. This is evident by the nearly non-existant flame nebula. (I reprocessed this image to bring out much of the missing detail)