As the name implies, this reflection nebula associated with the star Rigel looks suspiciously like a fairytale crone. Formally known as IC 2118 in the constellation Orion, the Witch Head Nebula glows primarily by light reflected from the star. The color of this very blue nebula is caused not only by blue color of its star, but also because the dust grains reflect blue light more efficiently than red. A similar physical process causes Earth’s daytime sky to appear blue. (ref: NASA)

Tech Specs: William Optics REDCAT 51 Telescope, ZWO ASI071MC camera running at -10F, just over 7 hours of collected data using 60 second exposures, Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro mount, ZWO EAF and ASIAir Pro, processed in PixInsight. Image Date: February 5 and 6, 2024. Location: The Dark Side Observatory (W59), Weatherly, PA, USA (Bortle Class 4).

Tags:   Tom Wildoner William Optics WO Redcat Redcat 51 refractor Telescope ASI071MC ZWO ZWOAAP AEF Sky-Watcher EQ6R-Pro astronomy science astrophotography PixInsight Orion Witch Head Nebula nebula IC2118

© All Rights Reserved

It is 15 raws at 45mm, 120 sec, F: 3.5 and Iso 640. 15 darcks and 15 bias, Stacked with Pixinsight and processed with Pixinsight and Photoschop for final adjustments.
The equipment used is a Sony a7cII with a Samyang 45mm 1.8 with an Omegon Minitrack LX3.

Tags:   Milky Way Via Lactea nocturna night Landscape long exposure llarga exposició estrelles stars

© All Rights Reserved

This is a telescopic close-up of the eclipsed Sun at the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse, with the Sun's intricate atmosphere, the corona, surrounding the dark silhouetted disk of the Moon.

The corona is marked by swirls, loops and streamers shaped by magnetic fields (note the loops around the pink prominences) and exhibits the classic round, symmetrical, and flower-like shape of a solar maximum corona. Peeking out from behind the right limb of the Moon are several bright prominences, pink from bright hydrogen emission. They were most obvious at this eclipse toward the end of totality as the Moon uncovered them on the western limb of the Sun.

The corona appears silvery-blue in tone, with the faintly coloured round halo likely coming from atmospheric diffraction effects from the high cirrus cloud the Sun was embedded in for this eclipse at my site in Quebec on the east shore of Lac Brome.

Even so, despite the clouds, a few stars shine through: the 5th magnitude double star Zeta Piscium at the 9 o'clock posiiton left of the Sun, and 6th magnitude 88 Piscium at the 8 o'clock position below. I do not see any sign of the SOHO sun-grazing comet in the field.

Celestial north is approximately at top in this orientation.

This version was created by stacking the aligned frames into a smart object, then applying a mean stack mode averaging blend. I have other versions blended with other methods for a different look.

In blending the exposures in this version I accentuated the coronal structures with sharpening, to a level that is more than the eye would have seen looking through a telescope. Even so the result still presents a somewhat "natural" and softer looking image, and making the inner corona look brighter than the fainter outer parts of the corona, just as the eye saw it.

Technical Details:
This is a stack of 20 exposures, from 1/800 second to 1/2 second, with the Canon R5 at ISO 100 on the Astro-Physics Traveler 105mm refractor at f/6 with no reducer or flattener. It was tracking the Sun on the Astro-Physics AP400 mount, recently returned from a long stay in Australia. All exposures taken with auto-bracketing as rapidly as possible in the last part of totality, to minimize alignment issues from the disk of the Moon moving relative to the Sun. An additional single short exposure layered in with a Blend-If adjustment (like a mask) added the pink prominences. Another short exposure masked in added the dark lunar disk, to again produce an image as your (my!) eye saw it, even through a telescope.

I blended the exposures in Photoshop with a Mean stack mode applied to the stack of 20 exposures packed into a smart object. Sharpening and structure enhancement was provided by applications of Adobe Camera Raw as a filter, the Nik Collection Detail Extractor, and blending in layers created by applying Image Calculations from a Radial Blur version (essentially a form of unsharp masking), plus Topaz Photo AI applied to the prominence and lunar disk layers. ON1 NoNoise AI 2024 applied to the full base-level stack to reduce the noise that so often still appears in stacked eclipse images.

The two diamond ring images are each single 1/1000-second exposures from a similar time before and after totality, and selected from sets of hundreds of frames taken at C2 and C3 in continuous burst mode. ON1 NoNoise/Tack Sharp AI applied to them as well.

Tags:   2024 April 8 Astro-Physics Traveler C2 C3 Canada Canon R5 Eastern Townships Lac Brome Moon Nik Collection ON1 NoNoise AI Photo AI Quebec TSE black Sun close-up composite corona dark Sun diamond rings eclipse of the Sun exposure blend flower loops lunar disk natural prominences refractor second contact smart object solar maximum stack mode streamers swirls telescope third contact total solar eclipse

© All Rights Reserved

Japan 2023

www.sandrobisaro.com - Store - Instagram -

Tags:   japan beppu giappone japanese japon Night night photography sandro bisaro neon neon lights street photography street alley alleys ASIA fujifilm FUJIFILM X-T3 Nihon 別府 べっぷ 日本 夜 dark urban outdoor low light

© All Rights Reserved

© All Rights Reserved