I don't recall when I first saw images of the Dolphin Head Nebula, but I remember being mesmerized by them, and wishing that I could capture it. In my early days of Astro due to gear limitations, this is one I couldn't capture. But now with my full astro astro setup, I am finally able to capture it!
Going in to capturing this a few days ago, I still had reservations about just how well I might be able to capture it. As this one is pretty faint, and it's also down lower to the horizon right now, which makes the seeing not as clear as if it was higher up. Getting the right exposure was a question mark for this. With our DSLR photography, we simply expose to the right (of the histogram) trying to get on the edge of just not blowing out highlights. With Astro, you basically do the opposite, exposing to the left. With the DSLR, it's typically easy to know the right exposure as it's simply if the highlights are blown it was not a correct exposure, if they aren't you are good. With astro, we are operating in the left side of the histogram, in the blacks. And there is not anyone correct exposure. But coming from the world of the DSLR, I still have in my mind that there is still a "best" exposure, even though in Astro there is an incredible amount of latitude as shadows have some many more levels of recovering then highlights. So understanding exposures is where I am at in my Astro journey.
I did my first test image at 5 mins, and was very excited when I could see the outline of the Dolphin Head, but it was faint. I decided to go to a 10 minute exposure, the image still looked pretty faint. It wasn't twice as bright as one might expect by doubling the exposure. Since my guiding was good, and the image was sharp, I decided to go with the 10 minute exposures as hopefully that would help bring out the fainter details.
Mike Lewis can attest as I was texting him at the time, that I was pretty excited after I did my first preliminary stretching after my images were stacked. I didn't recall there being so much detail in the Dolphin Head itself. So I was pretty jazzed, but I had to stop as it was time to go see the new Antman movie that was just released last night.
Back to processing this, there was so many faint details in this, it was cool to see. Now my processing has rendered the background pretty dark so 90% of the background details are not visible. I do plan on going back and editing this one a few more times, as I could see several possibilities for how the final look should be. For now though, I wanted this to focus on the Dolphin Head itself and not on the background details.
35 - Lights at 600 secs with the Optolong L-Enhance Filter
30 - Flats
30 - Dark/Flats
5 - Darks
iOptron Gem28
ZWO ASI2600mc Pro
ZWO 120mm Mini - Guide Camera
Askar Fra500
Stacked in Pixinsight
Processed in Pixinsight
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
Final Touches in Photoshop
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS. This is my new Best Astro Image I think.
Going in to capturing this a few days ago, I still had reservations about just how well I might be able to capture it. As this one is pretty faint, and it's also down lower to the horizon right now, which makes the seeing not as clear as if it was higher up. Getting the right exposure was a question mark for this. With our DSLR photography, we simply expose to the right (of the histogram) trying to get on the edge of just not blowing out highlights. With Astro, you basically do the opposite, exposing to the left. With the DSLR, it's typically easy to know the right exposure as it's simply if the highlights are blown it was not a correct exposure, if they aren't you are good. With astro, we are operating in the left side of the histogram, in the blacks. And there is not anyone correct exposure. But coming from the world of the DSLR, I still have in my mind that there is still a "best" exposure, even though in Astro there is an incredible amount of latitude as shadows have some many more levels of recovering then highlights. So understanding exposures is where I am at in my Astro journey.
I did my first test image at 5 mins, and was very excited when I could see the outline of the Dolphin Head, but it was faint. I decided to go to a 10 minute exposure, the image still looked pretty faint. It wasn't twice as bright as one might expect by doubling the exposure. Since my guiding was good, and the image was sharp, I decided to go with the 10 minute exposures as hopefully that would help bring out the fainter details.
Mike Lewis can attest as I was texting him at the time, that I was pretty excited after I did my first preliminary stretching after my images were stacked. I didn't recall there being so much detail in the Dolphin Head itself. So I was pretty jazzed, but I had to stop as it was time to go see the new Antman movie that was just released last night.
Back to processing this, there was so many faint details in this, it was cool to see. Now my processing has rendered the background pretty dark so 90% of the background details are not visible. I do plan on going back and editing this one a few more times, as I could see several possibilities for how the final look should be. For now though, I wanted this to focus on the Dolphin Head itself and not on the background details.
35 - Lights at 600 secs with the Optolong L-Enhance Filter
30 - Flats
30 - Dark/Flats
5 - Darks
iOptron Gem28
ZWO ASI2600mc Pro
ZWO 120mm Mini - Guide Camera
Askar Fra500
Stacked in Pixinsight
Processed in Pixinsight
BlurXterminator
NoiseXterminator
StarXterminator
Final Touches in Photoshop
All comments are welcome,
Jim
PS. This is my new Best Astro Image I think.
