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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 🔭

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 1d

Youre welcome

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 1d

Excellent 👌

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 2d

Haha. Thanks 🙏

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 2d

Love your images Jill 😍

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 2d

Beautiful image 👌

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8d

Final Moon image from a few nights ago.
This is the north-east region. The prominent crater near the terminator is called Endymion, which is approaching late afternoon and will soon be plunged into darkness.
Lots of great crater formations around this area
🔭

North-west region, showing crater Endymion near to the terminator

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8d

Another Moon image from the 8th.
This is the ancient impact basin Mare Crisium. I love searching out tiny craterlets on the apparently smooth floor.
🔭

Mare Crisium, the Sea of Crises. An ancient basin formed by the impact of a massive asteroid early in the Moon's history

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8d

Mooney time.

A few images taken on the 8th just before packing up and retiring.
This one is the terminator around Petavius, a crater with a superb fault running across its floor.
🔭

Crater Petavius on the Eastern terminator, the line separating lunar night and day

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8d

Youre welcome. Pleased you like them

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8d

Haha. No worries 😉👍

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8d

Thanks Danny. Pleased you like them. Dont recall taking any with my phone though, except for shots/videos of a computer monitor 🤔

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 8d

Saturn, taken on the 8th Oct.
The seeing wasn't the best but quite pleased how it turned out.

For those who use Firecapture, I've been tweaking the RGB colour capture settings, which I'm still not happy with. Would be interested to hear what others do to get accurate colour rendition
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Saturn with its famous rings, currently presented nearly edge on to us

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 9d

A while since I've tried for Neptune.
This is the most distant planet a few nights ago, sporting a tiny 2.5" disc.
Seeing wasn't great, so it's a bit fuzzy!
I'd like to try for its moon Triton next time, which may be a challenge!
🔭

Distant planet Neptune, showing a featureless blue-green disk

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 10d

I find lining the images up with the wire frame can be really tricky, especially for Mars, which can be more luck than judgement!
The sim generator tool is useful

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 10d

Cheers Martin. It's certainly been a while 😄

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 10d

👍

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 10d

Saturn is a little wobbly tonight.
Phone video of my monitor taken during a 180 sec video sequence
🔭

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 11d

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
🔭

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 11d

Go for it 👌

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 11d

It can be a problem!

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 11d

More luck than judgement I think!

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 11d

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

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 11d

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

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 12d

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

Kevin Earp @astrokev.bsky.social · 12d

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".