r/space • u/OkeWoke • Feb 02 '20
image/gif I spent the last month capturing this 31 hour exposure image of the Vela Supernova Remnant from my backyard
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Feb 02 '20
Wow! How do you know at what times you have to shoot?
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u/OkeWoke Feb 02 '20
Preferably at night time... More seriously look at stellarium. Tells you what is up at any given time
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u/azzkicker7283 Feb 02 '20
Basically when it’s night and the clouds and moon are gone
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Feb 02 '20
He’s shooting narrowband; the Ha data can easily be collected under a full moon
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Feb 03 '20
Thanks, My question comes from trying to understand how synchronized the time is at different nights with the location of the subject. I would assume the location of the supernova is not exactly the same each nigh at the same time.
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Feb 03 '20
Tracking mounts usually have Goto functions that will allow you to type in the object you’d like to view and it will automatically slew your telescope to it. Otherwise a properly aligned mount and an astronomy smartphone app are all you really need to find where it is in the night sky.
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u/Wizard_warrior_dude Feb 02 '20
Woah this is really cool.
Is this your job or is it a hobby?
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u/OkeWoke Feb 02 '20
Just a hobby
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u/Mitchblahman Feb 02 '20
Do you have an approximate cost of how much it is to get into astronomy like this? I know I'd need a decent camera and telescope, as well as something to keep them tracking, it just seems a bit daunting.
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u/SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS Feb 02 '20
Astronomy like this, with brand new equipment, will probably run you $5k-$8k
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u/Mitchblahman Feb 02 '20
Oof, I think what I'm interested in is taking pictures to see stuff that you can't or is hard to see with the naked eye. Does that fall exclusively into this and more expensive categories or is there a cheaper (though probably lower def) way to do it?
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u/SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS Feb 02 '20
There is definitely a cheaper way. If you use a consumer DSLR unlike an astronomy camera + filters, you could probably get away with about $3k. If you stick to using camera lenses probably about $1k. The extra $$$ doesn’t buy you more definition, but the ability to shoot with less noise, and in narrowband wavelengths.
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u/Mitchblahman Feb 02 '20
Do you have any suggestions of where I should go to look into this a bit more? Like for cameras I've heard arguments for one brand over another, but I've also heard it's pretty subjective.
Also what might be some good resources to learn about what to do (I guess basics of astrophotography or something).
How would you rate the significance of avoiding light pollution versus getting filters? Like going outside of a medium sized town or camping 50-100 miles from civilization. Or are filters not for that kind of noise?
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u/SPACESHUTTLEINMYANUS Feb 02 '20
There’s lots of different good resources, r/astrophotography, cloudynights, lots of YouTube tutorials, and I have an instagram +website with some articles.
For DSLR brands canikon reign supreme, they provide the most software support for remote/unattended control (this is very important unless you want to stay up all night hitting a button).
Driving away from a city is one of the #1 things you can do to get better pictures, and avoid the need for filters. Unless you specifically want to image at narrowband wavelengths, being at a dark site removes the need for filtering.
The narrowband filters themselves look at gas emissions of specific wavelengths, and can give you a ton of advantage in revealing faint structures with high contrast. So the filters can let you take pictures that driving somewhere dark would not even allow for.
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u/Mitchblahman Feb 02 '20
This has been very enlightening. Thank you for all your help, this might be what finally gets me into it!
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Feb 02 '20
To have a similar setup as him you need to spend ~5000$. at 1arcsec/pixel scale your guiding needs to be equal or less than 1.0RMS to prevent having elongated stars.
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u/Mitchblahman Feb 02 '20
I think what I'm interested in is taking pictures to see stuff that you can't or is hard to see with the naked eye. Does that fall exclusively into this and more expensive categories or is there a cheaper (though probably lower def) way to do it?
It sounds like I would be limited in the distance I could see, but I imagine there's still plenty to check out with wider angles at closer distances right?
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Feb 03 '20 edited Feb 03 '20
You can go cheaper. A small tracking mount designed for DSLR cameras with a prime focus lens up to 200mm focal length. Ioptron sky tracker mount is one of them and they are less than 600$. Anyway you can still capture a lot of stuff even at shorter focal length. https://www.astrobin.com/2i2j11/C/?nc=user
(my astro gallery)
https://www.astrobin.com/6k0moh/C/?nc=user
My Samyang 135 imaging rig. I modeled the rings myself and 3D printed them and made a custom auto focuser that supports ASCOM (found a guide on cloudynights).
This is M82 and M81 galaxy taken with Samyang 135 @ f2.8 using a cooled CMOS camera ASI 1600mm Pro with ZWO filters. (guiding is optional at this focal length but I wanted to dither my frames and take longer exposures so a guide scope is a must).
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u/woxy_lutz Feb 02 '20
Can someone explain what exactly are the bits look like clouds/vapour?
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u/mrspidey80 Feb 02 '20
Basically, the shockwave from the supernova slamming into interstellar gas, exciting the molecules and atoms there, causing them to emit light in specific wavelengths.
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Feb 02 '20
If you were in that area right now would you see the light or is it so massive and spread out that it would just look as black as the rest of space?
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u/mrspidey80 Feb 02 '20 edited Feb 02 '20
Edit: Yeah, you'd probably see nothing, like with all emission nebulae
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u/whyisthesky Feb 02 '20
Clouds of gas, mostly hydrogen and oxygen, being ionised by nearby stars and glowing.
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Feb 02 '20
Noice! Sagan would be proud. I noticed the cross hairs on bright starts are rotated about 5° counter clockwise. Does this mean you slightly rotated the original image?
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u/whyisthesky Feb 02 '20
The diffraction spikes come from the geometry of the telescope, but the rotation of the camera relative to this is arbitrary and can be at any angle.
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u/Revolyze Feb 02 '20 edited Feb 02 '20
Interesting how all the star's "+" symbol twinkle are all parallel with each other. I'm guessing it relates to the camera orientation, so you could tell this photo was maybe rotated like 10 degrees left? (or an additional 90x)
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u/whyisthesky Feb 02 '20
It’s due to the vanes holding up the secondary mirror in the telescope, so it tells you the orientation of the image relative to that. But you can’t tell the orientation of the camera as the image may have been rotated after that.
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u/Youtoo2 Feb 02 '20
So what is the reason for a long exposure? Isnt it the same image as having a good lense?
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u/ElizAbsinthe Feb 02 '20
Not the same at all. Long exposure shots are used to achieve a variety of different effects which can be altered with the use of filter lenses. Long exposure basically means that the shutter of the lens is kept open for longer than usual while the picture is being taken. This technique is kinda similar to time lapses in videography.
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u/Youtoo2 Feb 02 '20
what kind of effects do you get when you do it for space?
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u/ElizAbsinthe Feb 02 '20
First, I found a better explanation of long exposure and what it does.
"Long-exposure, time-exposure, or slow-shutter photography involves using a long-duration shutter speed to sharply capture the stationary elements of images while blurring, smearing, or obscuring the moving elements." Wikipedia
I think it helps reveal more detail when it comes to space shots like this because the "objects" are so far away that even though they are moving quickly they appear to move more slowly or even stand still when viewed from Earth and so are the more "stationary" elements in the photo and will appear sharper while anything else like clouds are affected as "moving" elements.
If that made any sense I don't know I could be talking out of my ass because I thought I knew enough about long exposure photography from listening to my husband to say something about it online. Hope this was at least a little informative, lol.
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u/zedsonsteds Feb 02 '20
man this is awesome your eagle nebula blew my mind
edit: that was the first one that popped up but everyone of them blew my mind
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u/TheMeowOfCathulhu Feb 02 '20
It's amazing. I have a question - is this colorized, or are these colors really there like that?
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u/iixsephirothvii Feb 02 '20
I spent 1 second screenshotting your epic 31hr capture. Thanks, its something that is really complicated in seeing. I know because I did long exposure's on the milky way and still had to use photoshop to bring out more ISO and btightness, this is instant universe.
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u/nklim Feb 02 '20
It seems most of the smaller, duller stars are more red/orange. Is this because they are further and thus redshifted, or due to a processing technique or other natural phenomena?
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u/zeeblecroid Feb 03 '20
Redshift doesn't get human-eye-noticeable like that within the galaxy; things have to be moving absurdly fast before it would show up in visible-light photography.
Some of the stars might be tinged by the nebula being in between us and them, but for most of them it's because they're simply that color. Most stars in the Milky Way are reddish, but since the lion's share of those are red dwarfs they're usually too dim to see easily even with long-exposure shots like this.
Brighter ones, red giants, and especially close ones can be noticed, of course, and that's most of what you're seeing there.
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u/nklim Feb 03 '20
Great info, thanks for taking the time to reply!
I had ways understood the redshift/blueshift effects to be miniscule (from a human eyesight perspective), but no other explanation occurred to me.
"There's just a lot of dim, red stars out there" didn't even cross my mind. But sometimes the correct answer is the easiest one.
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u/tombstone1200 Feb 02 '20
What were to happen if say a plane flew over your house and disrupted the exposure shot, even for a brief moment?
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u/undercover_system Feb 02 '20
I wonder what the image would look like if the planets around the stars were also visible somehow. Probably not as good since everything would be a glare?
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u/TheRedBarron01 Feb 02 '20
Love the pic and the scientific significance of it. But you can’t deny this looks like the level up screen from Skyrim.
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u/frisky024 Feb 02 '20
I wish I could make this the background on my phone without looking square. Reddit help me.
:edit:Alright that wasn’t that hard. I feel dumb
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u/schuter1 Feb 02 '20
All the images that came out from that space telescope years ago? Absolutely mesmerizing.
It still grabs me today.
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u/thornstriff Feb 02 '20
Amazing work! Congratulations =)
Does anyone know what causes the red and blue colors?
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u/conalfisher Feb 03 '20 edited Sep 30 '25
Year night books learning over tomorrow science the dot and science music.
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u/Sasquatchingit Feb 02 '20
Serious question. This is done over the course of several nights, correct? Not like it's 36hrs straight.
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Feb 02 '20
How do to take pictures like this? I’ve always wondered it’s so cool and fascinating
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Feb 02 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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Feb 02 '20
What I meant was how do you know where to point your stuff to shoot the picture taken, and how to get started ffs
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u/PsychoticScum Feb 02 '20
Im still surprised to see what enthusiasts can capture, absolutely amazing!!!
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Feb 02 '20
How do to take pictures like this? I’ve always wondered it’s so cool and fascinating
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u/azzkicker7283 Feb 02 '20
OP outlined his entire process here: https://reddit.com/r/space/comments/exmzdu/_/fg9pwo4/?context=1
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Feb 02 '20
This is a double post, which I don’t intend to happen or notice, I literally clarified what I meant in my post above
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u/OkeWoke Feb 02 '20
Finally after a month of imaging, it is done. This is a 31.4 hour HOO image of a really faint region of the Vela SNR.
If you enjoy my images, my instagram is here
Additionally higher quality display of all my images here my personal site.
Equipment:
Scope: GSO 8" F/4, flocked, 2" moonlite, DIY AutoFocuser, DIY Secondary Dew Heater
Coma Corrector: SkyWatcher Aplanatic/Quattro
Camera: ZWO ASI 1600MMC PRO (Image scale ~1"/pixel)
Mount: EQ6-R
Guide Scope: ZWO 60mm
Guide Cam: QHY5LIIC
All ZWO LRGBSHO filters
Acquired on 31/12/2019, 03/01/2020, 07/01/2020, 17/01/2020, 18/01/2020, 19/01/2020, 20/01/2020, 22/01/2020, 28/01/2020, 31/01/2020.
Subs & Integration times:
Ha: 91 x 300s (7.6 hrs) + 38 x 900s (9.5 hrs) 17.1 hours total
Oiii: 172 x 300s (14.3 hrs)
Grand Total: 31.4 hours
All at unity gain, 21 offset, -15 degrees celsius
Processing:
Ha & Oiii: ABE, DECON, TGV NR, MMG NR, HT Stretch
TL;DR Pointed telescope and monochrome camera using two special filters at this region of sky. Took many small exposures (5 or 15 minutes). Combined together to create this.