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Feb 6th, 2008 at the Vekol (I-8 east and south of Gila Bend) Astronomy Site. This is BLM land, and part of the Sonoran Desert National Monument. We have been having a very wet season, and the weather has finally cleared up. We have a chance to try some new techniques with the telescope, and astronomy image processing. The targets tonight are Galaxies, and two Nebula. We will be imaging in both B&W (Grayscale), and Color. This will be our first attempt at using the FITS file format, and Photoshop image processing. The learning curve is still very steep, but we seem to be making some progress. I am trying to decide which type of images I prefer, the B&W images, or the Color images. The B&W images compare very close to what you really see through the telescope. There is a strong tie to reality there. Color is something different. The FITS format has been around for awhile, and is an astronomical imaging format Used by NASA, and the ESA with the Hubble Space Telescope, and with FITS Liberator (a software utility), NASA has given us control of the Histrograms of the image. Photoshop then comes along and allows us to modify that further, and then gives us the RGB color curves to play with. The targets for today were: M51 (The Whirlpool Galaxy) - M81 (A grand design spiral Galaxy) - M101 (The Pinwheel Galaxy) and another look at M42 (The Great Orion Nebula) with its close smaller companion M43 (DeMairan's Nebula). You can click on the thumbnail images below to open larger versions of each image. Enjoy.
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