My first target in Astrophotography was the North America Nebula framed with the Pelican Nebula. The name is obvious as this dust cloud really looks like the continent. There has been a lot of stuff to learn in photographing objects in our dark sky. The initial image is as you might expect – black with a few white dots! This version of the nebula is comprised of 48 images or 2 1/2 hours of exposure obtained over two nights of imaging. My first night was not very productive (learning curve is steep).
Once the images have been obtained they have to be debayered, aligned, registered and stacked. While PixInsight (PI) can do this, I prefer DeepSkyStacker (DSS) and feel it does a better job than my manual workings in PI. After stacking I do switch to PI for most of the processing and then Photoshop(PS) for the final tweaks.
All of this is run from my Acer Netbook, which I remotely manage from my home office (about 40 yards away). Image acquisition is totally performed with Astro Photography Tool (APT). Everything is intergrated via ASCOM drivers. It took over a month to understand all of the technology involved. I learned that capturing the photograph is only half the job! Truly looking forward to mastering this over the years.
As always my images can be seen in the Semper Iuvenis Galleries.
