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Kevin Earp

@astrokev.bsky.social

4.1K followers 210 following 2.2K posts

Astrophotography, wildlife photography, art and occasional random stuff. Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms

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Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · Nov 9

The Great Orion nebula and the Running Man nebula. Another image from the recent Kelling Star Party.

Can't remember why, but I only took 36 mins of data, which is way too short, but turned out better than I expected

Can you see the running man?

#astronomy 🔭

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Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 5h

Reprocessed my recent Saturn pic, using a larger number of video frames to stack.
It's reduced noise a fair bit compared to my first go, which has helped me sharpen it a bit more.
A bit happier with this one.
Dark line across the disk is the ring shadow. Bright line under this is the ring itself
🔭

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Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8h

Go for it 👌

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8h

It can be a problem!

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 11h

More luck than judgement I think!

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Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 13h

Cheers Dave. Yup, there's too much to go for for sure!
I need to try the comet!

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 15h

My first try for Saturn since last year. It took a while to set up my scope for this. I'm feeling very rusty!
The rings are narrowing with their South face tilted towards us; they'll be nearly edge on around the end of November.
It feels good to be doing planetary imaging again 🙂
🔭

Saturn, showing its wonderful ring system which are nearly edge-on as seen from here on Earth. The shadow of the rings can be seen as a dark line across the centre of the planet

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Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 1d

Other associated programs used - Autostakkert and Winjupos. Lots of apps are available for processing the final stacked image

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Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 1d

Ok.
The "approach" I use is very common in planetary imaging. Basically - taking video of several thousand frames (using in my case Firecapture. Other capture programs are available eg Sharpcap).
The "best" frames are then identified and stacked together and sharpened.
Google "lucky imaging".

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Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 1d

To be honest, I've no idea what you are trying to understand. "The approaches used in this".
What is "this"?

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 1d

Firecapture is, in essence, just a video recording program. Has some good tools to help with this but the main functionality is fairly simple. Probably not as fancy as you suspect

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 2d

Imaging Saturn for the first time in nearly a year.
I'm so rusty operating Firecapture! Will take a while to get used to it again.
This pic shows a defocused Saturn on the big monitor, and the view through my guidescope on the tablet to help find the planet
🔭

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Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 2d

Beautiful image

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 4d

Thanks.
Soul is on the to-do list!

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 6d

A lovely target at this time of year, the Heart nebula. IC 1805.

Taken over 6 sessions during the last month. Processed in the false colour SHO "Hubble" palette to show the distribution of different gases that make up the nebula.

Total integration was just over 15 hours.
🔭