Moon using an OIII filter on an 80mm

This was taken on 14th November 2013. I took it using my Altair Astro triplet 80mm refractor with an Atik 314L+ camera through an Astronomik OIII filter.

I took 20 frames of 1/1000th of a second (the lowest exposure the Atik 314L+ will do). I then stacked it in Maxim DL. I did not remove any darks or take any flats. I then took it into Photoshop and sharpened it and then used a high pass filter on it to sharpen it a bit more.

Not my best lunar image, you can tell the difference between doing this image on a 80mm refractor compared to an image I took using a 120mm refractor. The 120mm just gives you more contrast, light and generally a better image. You can see the 120mm moon image here: https://www.astronomylog.co.uk/2011/09/15/harvest-full-moon/

But if you want really sharp lunar images then a webcam type camera is a better idea, where you can take up to hundreds of frames a second and just take the best frames and stack those all automatically in programs like Registax. Here is an image where I did just that and created a mosaic: https://www.astronomylog.co.uk/2013/03/20/moon-mosaic-with-altair-astro-8-gso-rc/

Harvest Full Moon

Decided to try and image the full harvest moon the other night. When the moon is so bright there is not much else you can image other than doing some Hydrogen Alpha imaging.

I decided to use my new Skywatcher 120ED DS Pro. It was taken with a William Optics 0.8 reducer, through an OIII filter and with my Atik 314L+ camera.

The moon was so bright I actually used a zero second exposure in Maxim DL. I took 20 frames and then stacked them in Maxim DL and then imported the image into FITS Liberator and performed a stretch. Then into Photoshop CS5 in order to manipulate the curves, levels and to add an Unsharp Mask.

Astronomik OIII CCD Filter Review

I have now moved over to collecting Astronomik filters, I did have a selection of both Baader and Astronomik filters. I have now settled on Astronomik filters for my narrowband filter set.  It’s important to always stick with the same brand of filters, as they should then all be parfocal.

But don’t get me wrong I still like Baader filters as I still have a fringe killer, uv/ir  and solar continuum filters from them.

The thing I like best about the Astronomik filters is how slim they are, and I never have any trouble screwing them into filter wheels, they also don’t catch on filter wheels like the height of the Baader filters.

Due to the cost of 2″ versions of filters I have gone with the 1.25″ range of filters, plus the filters wheels in the 1.25″ versions are also cheaper, this one was from StayFocused.eu

The OIII CCD filter comes in the standard Astronomik no-frills box with a black foam backing. I was getting confused by the labels Astronomik put on their boxes, but now I think the white and black labels are the newer versions of the filters.

As the name suggests the OIII CCD filter comes with  a built-in IR-blocker up to 1150nm, so you don’t need an additional IR-blocker with this filter.

The Astronomik OIII CCD filter is a narrow band emission-line-filter for CCD photography. The filter lets the light of double ionized Oxygen of emission nebulae pass and blocks nearly the whole remainder of the spectrum where the CCD is sensitive.

The Astronomik OIII CCD increases the contrast between objects, in this case between the OIII emission line and the skyglow background. Our Astronomik OIII CCD completely suppresses the emission lines of artificial lighting (mercury (Hg) and sodium (Na)) and skyglow.

The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of 12 nm is optimal suitable for common CCD cameras and allows the use of very fast optics The optimal aperture ratio for the use of the filter is 1:3 to 1:15 with apertures of more than 6″ (150mm).

When using the Astronomik OIII CCD filter together with the H-alpha, OIII CCD and the SII CCD filters you can obtain three-color images of emission line objects (gas nebulae) from locations with very strong light pollution. To do so, you would take an image in three different wavelengths, select each one as a color-channel in Photoshop and paste them together as one single color image.

• 95% transmission at 496nm (OIII)
• 95% transmission at 501nm (OIII)
• Full width at half maximum 12nm
• Transmission from 494nm to 506nm
• Parfocal with other Astronomik filters
• Glass thickness: 1mm
• Completely resistant against high humidity, scratches and aging effects
• Diffraction limited, the filter will not reduce the optical performance of your telescope!
• Astronomik filters are delivered in a high-quality, long lasting, filter box

Astronomik OIII filters and other Astronomik filters can be purchased from StayFocused.eu