Astronomy Live
Amateur astronomer and neuroscientist, opinions are my own, please don't harass my employer
- I applied Veralux Hypermetric stretch to a full disk image of Earth I received from GOES 19 today. Although it wasn't really intended for this use case, I like the result. #GOES #Earth #radio
- First light on my home made radio telescope. Its first task was to receive images and data from the GOES 19 geostationary weather satellite. Still need to tweak the setup, but it works! Having never done this before, getting satellite image data on the first attempt was quite a thrill. #radio
- My latest telescope is my largest, but it's a radio telescope rather than an optical telescope. I'm hoping to be able to download GOES images, conduct 21cm observations, and more.
- 17x300s on M17, the Omega Nebula. Processed with VeraLux hypermetric stretch in Siril. 8" Meade LX200 Classic with an SBIG ST-2000XCM CCD camera. #astrophotography
- Here is the result of reprocessing 6 hours of light on M101 with the VeraLux scripts in Siril. The SN 2023ixf is visible here in one of the spiral arms in this image data from May and June 2023, captured using an 8" LX200 Classic and SBIG ST-2000XCM with an AO-7. #astrophotography
- Trying out the new VeraLux scripts for processing my astrophotography in Siril! Really liking these results, like this 6.5 hour stack on the Whirlpool galaxy. #astrophotography #M51
- M31 Andromeda galaxy, 1 hour exposure on CineStill T800 film with an 8" Meade LX200 and .65 focal reducer. Processed automatically using Riccardo Paterniti's VeraLux HyperMetric script in Siril, automatic background extraction in GraXpert. #astrophotography #filmisnotdead
- Trying out Riccardo Paterniti's VeraLux HyperMetric Python script in Siril. Although it isn't necessarily designed for it, it even works on #film #astrophotography scans, like this 30 minute manually guided exposure of the Bubble Nebula! #filmisnotdead
- #3I/ATLAS on Saturday morning. I stacked a total of 20 frames 2 minutes long binned 2x2 from my ST-2000XCM SBIG, which was attached to an AO-7 and 8" LX200 classic. A prominent sun facing jet can be seen along with a hint of the tail facing away from the sun and a jet 90 degrees to the side. #comet
- I recorded a 4 hour time lapse of the moon to show how the shadows change along the lunar terminator. The lunar libration was enough to create a 3D stereo image to see the shape of the moon and the terrain. Be sure to check it out if you have 3D glasses or a VR headset! #VR youtu.be/vtygobDfPZ0
- C/2025 A6 Lemmon tonight
- Flight 11 Starship from the ground and from the vehicle itself. Note that you can see the same "pleated" effect on the exhaust in both pictures. Ground picture is a single frame from the Blackmagic camera on an 11" Celestron NexStar GPS telescope. #spacex #starship
- #SpaceX Starship engine shutdown as seen with an 11" Celestron NexStar GPS in Florida tonight. Full 4K video coming soon.
- Here's a 34 frame stack. Stacking loses the turbulence in the exhaust but improves the grain. You can even just start to make out the front flaps in the silhouette.
- Here is my 4K telescopic tracking footage of #SpaceX Starship from Florida during flight 11 last night! youtu.be/Kspmn3YUqpI The vehicle and exhaust were illuminated by the sun while twilight was fading here in Florida, the perfect timing for a gorgeous "jellyfish" effect!
- Thank you to @flightclub.io for your trajectory data that enabled me to track Starship during a beautiful sunlit launch as twilight faded here in Florida! 4K footage coming soon!
- Fantastic work here putting together the data from Perseverance of 3I/ATLAS.
- Just got my negatives back from my latest roll of manually guided film astrophotography. For some reason trying to post these pics on the bird app got my account locked and labeled for "inauthentic behavior." Hard to get more authentic #astrophotography than manually guided #film.
- By combining old tech (film, manual guiding) with new techniques and tech (bracketing exposures for HDR, AI denoising, generalized hyperbolic stretching), I was able to produce this film HDR of Orion and the Running Man by combining 60 minute and 10 minute exposures. #astrophotography #filmisnotdead
- Here are the scans of my latest film photos! This was my first roll testing an off-axis guider for guiding through the same scope as the camera. Andromeda was a 30 min exposure and Orion was a 1 hr exposure, all manually guided so I'm really happy with these results! #astrophotography #filmisnotdead
- The film used was CineStill T800, which I'm told is the same emulsion as the Amber 800T I used previously and that does seem to be the case. It has great response to hydrogen alpha light, but it is grainy. Here's a 30 min shot of the Bubble nebula from the same roll. #astrophotography #filmisnotdead
- I have rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 to try this winter. Much less sensitive so it will require longer exposures, but it also has much finer grain. Although I could theoretically autoguide, I do enjoy the challenge of manually guiding. No electronics except the illuminated reticle!
- The comet I discovered in 2016 has been listed by viral sensationalist videos claiming an "unprecedented" swarm of comets is sweeping through the inner solar system and might even be dangerous. In this video I set the record straight: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpFs... #astronomy #comets #swarm #414P
- Here is a 25 frame stack of the comet I discovered using NASA's STEREO spacecraft. I discovered this comet on the opposite side of the sun in 2016 before it could be seen from Earth, and now I've captured it with my 11" SCT and Canon 90D, aligning these frames with my own Python code. #astronomy
- On Sunday, I captured SpaceX's launch of NG-23 all the way to first stage landing in one continuous shot with what may be the cheapest, worst telescope ever to pull off a launch to landing shot, using predictive tracking with my RocketTraker software. youtu.be/urBONk04usQ #spacex #astronomy #space
