Simies 147

 New project time. I have never attempted this object before even with widefield DSLR.  Simeis 147, also known as the Spaghetti Nebula, or Sharpless 2-240, is a supernova remnant (SNR) in the Milky Way, so huge it straddles the border between the constellations Auriga and Taurus. Discovered in 1952 at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory by Grigory Shajn and his team using a Schmidt camera and a narrowband filter that was close to the Hydrogen Alpha transmission line. It is difficult to observe due to its extremely low brightness. I honestly was not sure if I would be able to capture anything using 300 second exposures. My first attempt was a 4 pane mosaic using Telescopius to copy the CSV file and pasting it into the ASI air pro. As you can see things did not quite align with a 15% overlap.

My second go will be a 6 pane with a 30% overlap 

Hey Hey it's a Monkey

The Monkey Head Nebula is a star-forming region located 6,400 lightyears away in the Orion constellation.

NGC 2174, to give it is formal name, is a place where new stars are being born at a fierce and rapid rate, and these newly born stars emit powerful streams of charged particles known as stellar winds that blow the gas and dust away, removing the ingredients necessary for future stars to be born.

Dark dust streams among the glowing cosmic cloud to give the nebula its ape-like appearance.

The Monkey Head Nebula is an emission nebula, which means it is a cloud of gas that emits its own light. This is as opposed to a reflection nebula in which hot stars cause surrounding gas to glow.

It is associated with open star cluster NGC 2175 and can be found in the can be found in the Orion constellation.

We have below the Ha, S2 & Oiii  frames of 1Hr 30 Mins each.

 

Rosette Nebula

 An 85% waxing gibbous moon phase is certainly a distraction for astrophotographers looking for faint fuzzies. But what can we do (launch a virgin rocket at it).. Thank goodness for the Ha filter, Because of the brightness of the sky background I reduced the exposure time to two minute subs and captured 4 hours worth of data. Imaging with the incredible ZWO ASI 2600MM and the 36mm filter wheel. I invested  also in a set of Optolong narrowband filters. I was incredibly impressed with the L- Enhance and it's ability to keep halo's and star sizes to a minimum. So for me it was a no brainer to add these to the arsenal. Saying that their LRGB filter set were new and untested at the time of purchase so I opted for the ZWO filter set. I am happy with them so far. But as I said the Ha filter was deployed last night and with a image stretch and dark dust enhancement I have a really clean image. Desperate for for some Oiii & Sii now.

Right so update alert last night was a clear night so had the opportunity to shoot 2 hours each on Oiii & Sii.

Processed on my new laptop and wow it is fast. 

Registered aligned & stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.

Starnet++

Processed in photoshop with

HSO colour mapped & selective colour

Levels & Curves

Photokemi astro tools Space dust & Dark details medium

Topaz denoise.

Ha

Oiii

Sii

Photo Details

• Total Exposure: 9 Hours, 0 Minutes 120 x 2 Mins Ha , 30 x 3Mins Oiii, 30 x 3Mins Sii 
• Image Acquisition: ZWO ASIair Pro
• Camera Settings:  ZWO ASI2600mm pro Gain 100, 0°C
• Accessories: ZWO 7 position Filter wheel
•                Optolong narrowand filters 
•                ZWO broadband filters
•                ZWO EAF
• Calibration Frames: No Calibration
• Stacking and Processing: DeepSkyStacker, Adobe Photoshop 2020, 
• Size: 2.26 x 1.38 deg 
• Pixel Scale: 1.41 arcsec/pixel

My Bucket list.

Ok so lets talk about distance particularly the speed light. 

In a vacuum,  we know that light travels at 670,616,629 mph. So If a little context is needed light from the moon takes 1.3 seconds to arrive at our eyes, Saturn is 1.3 light hours away a measly 0.0001505453985955772 light years distant. So what is a light year?

quite simply the distance light travels in a year 5,878,625,370,000 that's nearly 5.9 Trillion miles. Ok so back to the point I wanted to make IC434 or the Horsehead nebula is an immense cloud of thick dust obscuring star birth inside it and in galactic terms the Horsehead is an insignificant 3.5 light years in diameter but when you compare that against our solar system and our distance to Saturn it would be a huge two hundred and twenty one thousand three hundred and forty four (221,344) times the distance. 

If you ever needed reminding SPACE IS BIG.

My image was captured 2 nights ago at my home observatory with about 4 hours of data. Over the years I have taken many images of this target and I was lucky enough back in April of 2015 to appear in an episode of the Sky at night celebrating Hubble's 25 year Anniversary. One ticked off my bucket list anyway.

Stack of 40x 3 minute Ha frames.

My new laptop has amazing processing power, attempted several times previously to process a starnet++ starless image, it failed several times, introduce Mr Dell and it processes a colour starless image in less than 2 minutes, a chunk of star reduction and hey presto a lovely update to mt=y first process.

M45 The Pleiades

 

Unchanged for eons. The Pleiades or the 7 sisters look the same today as they did for the first humans that walked the earth 1.9 million years ago. Without doubt the most beautiful and most recognisable of all the objects we can see in the night sky, this cluster of stars shine and reflects a hypnotic blue light onto dust that the stars are passing through. There is even a bronze age 1600bc artifact called the Nebra sky disk that is believed to depict the cluster. Located at a distance of around 400 light years. This means the light we see today left at the time Galileo Galilei made his first observations with the first telescope.

Nebra Sky Disk image first published Dec 2006 Copyright Dbachmann

Galileo's drawings of the Pleiades star cluster from Sidereus Nuncius. Image courtesy of the History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries.

IC405

Rippling dust and gas give name to this wonderful nebula. Located very close to my previous image of IC410. The Flaming star Nebula or IC405 is a mix of emission and reflection nebula. A future colour image when the project is complete will show just what I am talking about but for now with a close to full moon this Mono image is captured using just my Optolong Ha filter. Just 2 hours 10 minutes so far of data in 5 minute sub frames shows incredible detail already.  

At the time of this update 3rd Jan there has still been no clear nights. So posting now rather than a complete image. I am sure more updates to follow.