Lazy Amateur Astronomer Strikes Back!
This was the subject of a mail, which we received last week from Alberto Mayer.
Those of you, who read this blog regularly will know that Alberto is an Italian, based near Milan, who uses a DMK 31AU03.AS.
He submitted the following images, which in our opinion, are some of his best so far.
M16 – Eagle Nebula
M17 – Omega Nebula
M27 – Dumbbell Nebula
NGC 4565
M13 – Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
M20 – Trifid Nebula
M66 – NGC 3627
One word, Alberto: Awesome! Keep it up 
John Kirchhoff said,
September 14, 2008 @ 21:37
Hi Alberto,
My jaw still hurts from hitting the table after looking at your beautiful images!
Congrats and hope to see many more.
Clear skies,
John Kirchhoff
Jeff said,
September 17, 2008 @ 16:13
Wonderful images! What filters were used with the DMK? I suspect Ha, G, B, but would like to know.
Richard Bourque said,
September 18, 2008 @ 02:23
What kind of Telescope did you use? Nice Pictures!!!!
Collin Mason said,
September 18, 2008 @ 11:34
I think that they are great, could you give details of the exposures and the post processing
Regards
Col Mason
Tony Royal said,
September 19, 2008 @ 05:18
Alberto your pictures look great. I would like to know what type of telescope and any particulars about the camera and filters you used for these pictures?
Thanks
Tony Royal
Alberto Mayer said,
November 3, 2008 @ 17:34
Hi to all… unfortunately i notice that Imaging Source published the images without caption. I sent then 2 sets of images: captioned and uncaptioned.
Almost all of the images were done in a very similar way: LUMA channel: Celestron C8 reduced f 3.3 – Mount Vixen GPDX not guided – N. 60to 90 images each exposed 45 seconds (20 seconds for M27 and M13 – 20 seconds binned 2×2 for NGG6992) – No filters – CHROMA Channel : CANON EOS 300D at very lower resolution. I exploited some old noisy and blurry shots i did with my Canon (rotating and scaling them in order to fit the LUMA channel) .
Those color shots worked magic as color channels for these LRGB compositions.
Hope that help…
All the Luma channels has been taken from the terrace of my town house between Milano and the Airport of Malpensa: very light polluted sky.
The video pre-processing (dark, flat, align etc) was done using some custom macros that i set with Apple Shake (Macintosh) allowing me some control on the final result and eventually Photoshop.
regards to all
Alberto Mayer said,
November 3, 2008 @ 17:39
Ooops sorry … The Imaging Source didn’t publish NGC 6992 and NGC 6960 yet (Cygnus Vei Nebulas)… Those were the lattest challenge from my town.
Following the link to those images (captioned!):
http://www.makina.it/astro/080901-NGC6960-color-caption.jpg
http://www.makina.it/astro/080908-NGC6992-color-caption.jpg
Regards
Alberto Mayer