Introducing Deep Sky Workflows
Hello!
It’s great to have a place to share my deep sky explorations and astrophotography journey with you. In the beginning of 2021, I purchased an observation station named Stellina. It is a fully automated system for capturing deep sky images. What intrigued me about the unit was the claim that it could handle light polluted areas and the ease of setup. I took a chance, purchased the scope and have not been disappointed.
My first observation was the popular M42 Orion Nebula. It is a bright nebula, so it photographs quite easily. Despite shooting from a deck next to a street lamp over the glow of downtown Monroe, WA, Stellina still pulled off an amazing image.
I quickly learned that the images are produced by stacking. Multiple 10-second exposures are combined to create the result. The average of the images helps reduce noise and increase signal. Some images like this picture of the bright star Arcturus only need a few subframes (referred to as “subs”).
Other images, like the dark Iris Nebula, require far more subframes to draw out the detail. I learned I can pull the subframes from the telescope using a thumb drive and process them on my computer. That allows me to combine data from multiple observations (even different nights of the year) to produce a final result. This image was combined from 1,490 subframes for a total exposure time of over four hours!
There are many tips and techniques involved with processing images and I’ll share them in this blog.
Here are some helpful links:
That’s it for the introduction. I’ll keep it short and sweet for now, and I look forward to sharing more in the coming weeks!
Regards,
Jeremy Likness