Observation by Nick James: IMX291 camera stacked image of Lyra/Cygn...

Uploaded by

Nick James

Observer

Nick James

Observed

2022 Sep 25 - 02:20

Uploaded

2022 Sep 25 - 15:16

Objects

R-Lyr

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Constellation

Draco

Field centre

RA: 18^h51^m
Dec: +48°44'
Position angle: +35°25'

Field size

49° × 29°

Equipment

IMX291 + 6mm f/0.95

Exposure

256*6*1/25s = 61.44s

Location

Chelmsford, UK

Target name

R Lyr

Title

IMX291 camera stacked image of Lyra/Cygnus

About this image

Following up on Alex's post here I have been experimenting with using my meteor cameras to detect bright novae. The GMN software generates a four frame temporal pixel (FTP) FITS file every 256 video frames. This contains the peak and average images over approximately 10s. I take these frames, extract the 10s averages and then do a further stack of 6 frames to give just over 1 minute of total exposure. The background is then subtracted and the frame is plate solved and sources are extracted. These cameras are very red/IR sensitive so R Lyr here is as bright as Vega. The limiting magnitude in these frames is around 7.5. Bright novae are pretty rare but these images come for free since I am already doing meteor detection. I just need to get the detection aspect automated!

Files associated with this observation

rlyr_20220925_0220_ndj.jpg (342.5 kB)

Like this image

Dominic Ford, Robin Leadbeater, Alex Pratt, Mike Harlow, Callum Potter, Dr Paul Leyland, Manolo_Rodriguez, Peter Carson

Comments

Robin Leadbeater, 2022 Sep 25 - 21:18 UTC

Reminds me of the kind of stuff we used to do at the turn of the millenium on the QCUIAG yahoo group, stacking tens of thousands of video frames to beat down the noise and tease out a few Messier objects. (Pre modern CMOS days. There was a guy on there who worked in the industry developing CMOS technology. He said CMOS would beat the performance of CCD eventually but that looked unlikely back then !)

Alex Pratt, 2022 Sep 25 - 22:29 UTC

Hi Nick,

I look forward to seeing your results from this project, particularly if a good degree of automation can be implemented.

Alex.

Nick James, 2022 Sep 26 - 06:42 UTC

Generating the stacked frames is easy. Automating the detection process is hard!

Robin Leadbeater, 2022 Sep 26 - 20:02 UTC

Can plate solving software be used to list everything in the image that is not in its catalogue ?

Nick James, 2022 Sep 27 - 06:38 UTC

Yes, I'm using Source Extractor to extract sources and plan to compare files from night to night to detect differences.

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