When
I came to ASP, I thought we would just be looking through the
telescopes to see stuff, but actually the process is a lot more
complicated. First, you have to align and focus the telescope,
which takes time and patience. Then, you find the object you wish
to see, but usually you can't see it unless you take a pretty
long exposure with the camera attached to the telescope. Once
you are sure the camera is centered on the object, you take a
series of 2 or 3 minute exposures, which takes about an hour.
Then you put on the lense cap of the telescope and take a series
of 5 or 6 pictures called "darks." These show the noise
that the chips pick up by accident. When you have done all of
this, you load the pictures on to the computer. You average the
darks, and subtract them from all of the exposures. Then you align
the exposures and layer them on top of eachother. Finally, you
take the final product and de-fuzz it, and then put it in photoshop
and mess with the color scales and brightness until you have your
final product. |
