Elephant Trunk Nebula SHO

 As an amateur astronomer, the scale and beauty of IC 1396 are truly awe-inspiring. This vast emission nebula, located in the constellation Cepheus, it spans hundreds of light-years, making it a colossal feature in the night sky. Its intricate structures and rich star-forming regions, like the famous Elephant's Trunk Nebula pictured below, has captivated observers and photographers like myself with it's detail and complexity. Through a telescope, IC 1396 reveals swirling clouds of gas and dust illuminated by young, hot stars. The contrast between dark nebulae and glowing hydrogen regions creates a stunning visual tapestry, offering a glimpse into the dynamic processes shaping our galaxy. 15 hours of data was captured over several weeks finally allowing me to finish this image.

M13 The Great Cluster

Without doubt the finest of globular clusters visible in the northern hemisphere. Located outside the plane of our galaxy and some 25,000 light years away.

An easy target to find.

M13 is located in the constellation Hercules, between summertime’s two brightest stars, Vega and Arcturus. About 1/3 of the way from Vega to Arcturus, locate the four modestly bright stars forming the Keystone of Hercules. On the Arcturus side of the Keystone, M13 lies between the stars Eta Herculis and Zeta Herculis.

A typical binocular field is about 5 to 7 degrees in diameter, and the Hercules cluster is found about 2.5 degrees south of Eta Herculis. The Hercules cluster’s position is Right Ascension: 16h 41.7m; Declination: 36 degrees 28′ north.

M13 was one of my first targets I captured many years ago. The cluster will not have changed since it's discovery over 300 years ago,  but my imaging and processing have. This Image is just 1.5 hours of data using the ZWO RGB filters, 30 minutes per filter.

Cropped image

Processed in Pixinsight.

Elephants Trunk Nebula

So it is a school night but while the skies remain clear I will start with a couple of hours of new target data on the Elephants trunk Nebula. 3 minute subs using the Optolong narrowband filters starting with Ha. A great night of data capture using the ASI air pro I managed to capture 71 x 180 second exposures resulting in just over three and a half hours. As normal a 3 minute stretched sub is noisy but with a promising amount of data.

No processing here other than a histogram stretch.

WBPP is an incredible script that combines all the sub frames with calibration frames and does an amazing job. This is the combined efforts of those 71 frames. I have also included the starless image.

I am posting these about a month after processing, it would appear there is a brightness difference between the two. 

Update Aug 2nd. The weather has been awful for the whole of the UK and I have not completed any further progress on this project. If this keeps weather keeps up I will crack on and finish it next spring..... Further updates to follow.

M92

 M92 is considered to be one of the oldest globular clusters in the Milky Way with it's 300,000 stars forming over between 12 & 13 billion years ago. The entire cluster is 100 light years wide and any planet orbiting one of those stars would live in perpetual daylight, never knowing the larger universe that exists beyond.

Cygnus Wall

The light June nights can be a very difficult time to image deep sky objects, if the moon doesn't interfere then the lack of darkness here at 52 degrees is just as bad. A few years ago I imaged the NGC7000 region in a mosaic capturing both the North America Nebula and the Pelican as well. This time would be a little different with more focal length I knew the Cygnus wall would frame up quite nicely. Over a period of 4 nights I have managed to capture around nine hours of data using the ha and Oiii filters in the hope to produce a HOO image.

I will be capturing data using my Optolong narrowband filters inside the Zwo 36mm filter wheel.

The Cygnus wall is a small part of the overall North America Nebula, The nebula is an emission type intermixed with a wall of dust, the final region covers a huge 70 light years.

My rig like most are under sampled using 3.76 micron pixels on the 130mm refractor so when processing I use a 2 drizzle integration. The downside to this was leaving it overnight to process the data in WBPP

Single 180 second Ha frame

113 x 180 seconds combined master. ABE, Blur X, & Noise X applied

Single 180 second Oiii

83 x 180 seconds combined master. ABE, Blur X, & Noise X applied

I used a pixel Maths expression to combine the 2 frames

Lets go Starless

 Red & Blue masks created to tease out some additional colour, plenty of contrast added added some Convolution to blur the colour data. I duplicated the Ha master giving some high contrast and some serious deconvolution adding sharpness and added to the near completed image. Finally I added the star back in.

I am very pleased with the final result. What do you guys think?

Moon May 24, 26th & 28th

Taken over 6 nights 24th, 26th & 28th May. What a difference a few days make.

All taken with the 130 EDT and using the 2600mm. Not a planetary cam especially at 6 frames per second. A 2 panel mosaic for each image and an AVI run of 5minutes, Best 65% using Auto stakkert and Registax 6.

 

 

Pillars of creation

Holy smokes, sometimes you just need to stop in your tracks and just behold the beauty, majesty and enormity of space. M16, The Eagle Nebula or more commonly known as "The Pillars of Creation" is probably the most iconic and well known images of deep space and the legacy of the Hubble space telescope. First captured by Hubble back in 1995. The "Pillars of Creation" is a star forming cloud of Hydrogen gas 90 trillion kilometers wide. The tiny section in the centre of my image resemble fingers, stalagmites of condensing clouds of Hydrogen gas and dust forever reaching into the darkness, lying deep within and not visible to conventional cameras are eggs or incubators of newly formed stars ready for birth in a few hundred million years.

The Black & White images here are my own from my 130mm telescope and cooled camera capturing light at the frequency of 656.21nm or the wavelength Hydrogen Alpha.

An ever increasing zoom into my image reveals the Pillars in all their glory. 

Seven hours of data capture this incredible region.

Finally I get to compare my image to the most celebrated of Hubble's images. With Hubble's final cost of around $10 billion and my modest set up around a million times less I don't think I have done a bad job.

NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) - http://hubblesite.org/image/3471/news_release/2015-01

M10

Well a first for me I think in the last couple of years. 3 yes, three nights clear in a row and no work, so that means 3.00am finishes each night. Tonight would be night 4 but the forecast is for clouds. Oh well it was good while it lasted.

The plan to continue with the E nebula when it rises high enough so for now just 45 minutes 15x 60 sec RGB on M10. It will soon disappear into the tree so very limited time on target. I have a high fence around the house and a tree at due south so anything this low that rises is only visible for an hour or so.

Not a great result but happy I managed to capture it.

M12

Not a great deal has changed in the 259 years since its discovery by French astronomer Charles Messier, M12 is a densely packed cluster of hundreds of thousands of the galaxies very oldest stars estimated to be over 13 billion years old, bound by gravity this cluster is 75 light years in diameter or about 435 trillion miles in length in comparison that would be approx. 74,000 yes seventy four thousand times the size of our own solar system of planets.

It took the new horizons probe 9.5 years to get to Pluto so that would mean it would take another seven hundred thousand years before it arrives at the majestic M12.

This image is an RGB combination of 20 x 120 second exposures using all 3 filters so a total of 2 hours combined data, processed in PI.

Considering this for me is very low down and just above the fence line I am very pleased with the result.

M88 & M91 Drizzle data

 A reprocess of the data now using the drizzled data. I love it.

M88 & M91

It has been a very windy day today, bright and clear but very windy, I wasn't hopeful looking at the weather app today for anything useful tonight. However image capture started at around 21.15 tonight with just a little wind and possibly the odd swirl inside the dome as guiding tonight is around and just under 1.00 arc second, happy with that of course but higher than the usual numbers. Looking at the subs appear every 5 minutes on the tablet, each one battered with satellites. At least I don't have to bin the subs anymore I wouldn't have anything after the first hour.

3 Hour RGB integration

Annotated

Inverted

M88 Crop 24 by 17 arc minutes

M88 Inverted

M91 Crop 19 by 18 arc minutes

M91 Inverted

NGC 4571 Crop 15 by 13 arc minutes

Inverted

  

• Total Exposure:  3 Hours, 12 x 5 Minutes RGB Filters per filter
• Telescope: Altair Astro EDT130 Triplet.
• Image Acquisition: ZWO ASIair Pro
• Camera Settings:  ZWO ASI2600mm pro Gain 100, 0°C
• Accessories: ZWO 7 position Filter wheel
•                Optolong Broadband filters 
•                ZWO EAF
• Calibration Frames: Darks, Flats calibrated.
• Stacking and Processing: Pixinsight & touch ups in Photoshop. 
• Size:   1d 47' 22.2" x 1d 11' 18.0"
• Pixel Scale: 1.046 arcsec/pixel

M5

A reprocess of the M5 data using drizzle, still unsure if I am happy with the difference.

Discovered in 1702, M5 by German astronomer Gottfried Kirch whilst observing a comet, M5 is very nearly a naked eye object, I cannot confess to observing it naked eye myself but visually through a telescope a stunning object. Though the camera even more spectacular resolving stars all the way to the core. Combined as a RGB image displays a wealth bright colourful stars. M5 contains a large number of Cepheid variable stars that have allowed astronomers to accurately to 24,500 light years.

• Total Exposure:  1 Hour, 30 Minutes ( 30 x 60 sec in the R,G & B filters)
• Telescope: Altair Astro EDT130 Triplet.
• Image Acquisition: ZWO ASIair Pro
• Camera Settings:  ZWO ASI2600mm pro Gain 100, 0°C
• Accessories: ZWO 7 position Filter wheel
•                ZWO Broadband filters 
•                ZWO EAF
• Calibration Frames: Darks, Flats calibrated.
• Stacking and Processing: Pixinsight & touch ups in Photoshop. 
• Size: 44 x 33 arc minutes
• Pixel Scale: 1.05 arcsec/pixel

M3

 First discovered in Dec 1764 by French astronomer Charles Messier, M3 is again a globular cluster with over 500,000 stars and an age of a mind blowing 11.4 Billion years old. Easily visible in binoculars or a telescope.

12 x 2 minute exposures in RGB channels combined in Pixinsight. Core Brightness reduction in Photoshop.

M53

 

M53 is one of about 250 globular clusters belonging to our Milky Way galaxy. At a distance of 60,000 light years, M53 is one of the more distant clusters. The globular contains many older red stars, but it also has a number of blue stars. Such young blue stars are fairly uncommon in globular clusters.

One atypical feature of this image is that I collected all of the sub exposures for this image when the Moon was89% full. Usually I don't photograph Broadband targets when the Moon is out, as the bright light from the Moon washes out the faint parts of most images. However, I was able to capture this image fairly well, because globular clusters consist entirely of stars. Almost all of the stars are individually brighter than the background light from the Moon.

Image capture was 12 x 3 minute exposures in the RGB filters and Pixinsight processed.

In the same field of view from the full frame NGC5053 is a much fainter cluster of stars a  little closer at 57,000 light years, very faint tidal streams suggest some interaction between the two in the past.

A bit more moon

 A couple of days later and a few more pics of La Luna. I found a new piece of processing software called Astrosurface. There are a few YouTube videos and was quite easy to pick up and produce some really nice details. 

Springtime Galaxies

The clear nights are so few and far between. I have been desperate to update some of the older images from my collection, Last imaged 10 years ago and really not that good.

A minute collection of data here as the clouds rolled in again. Had a few issues with the guiding and binned a large amount of subs. My error though. I had left the guiding set to Lunar DOH........

So in all I have just 10 x 5 minutes Red, 4 x 5 minutes Green & just 3 x 5 minutes in Blue.

Quite pleased that there are over a 100 faint fuzzies in the frame.

Messier 63

Over recent weeks I have been looking at NINA, a freeware program for the control of our telescopes and connected equipment. I have watched lots of YouTube videos and felt I would give it a try. A very complex programme capable of lots of fantastic features, too many to list off the top of my head, all backed up by a large community of users and a host of additional plugins to create a truly customisable experience. Perhaps it is my impatience speaking here as I am now the proud owner of the new Altair 130 EDT scope and the need for collecting some photons is perhaps leading my frustrations. 

I have been now the user of the ASIair pro for several years and have been more than pleased with it's simplicity and ease of use. A clean user interface and an uncomplicated processes leads to the quick set up and start of imaging. So I thought a new challenge was needed....

When building the observatory I ran a powered USB extension into the house as well as a wired internet to allow the flexibility of future connectivity for wired and wireless To set NINA up I rerouted all data cables via my new powered USB hub and through to the extension cable to inside. Connectivity to NINA was simple opening up EQ Mod and PHD2 all stable with no dropouts to the laptop. Using the sky atlas selecting a target was easy and sending it to the framing tool prepares you for the imaging process. From there is where I found some issues, I ran the Hocus focus plugin a number of times but struggled to achieve focus using a number of filters. Making numerous adjustments to the focus steps in the attempt to replicate the demonstrated parabolic curve. Mine looked more like a top hat with odd dips and jumps. I am sure it is just settings but the frustrations exist that following the videos made no difference I just could not replicate anything resembling a good focus. It has also been a long while since I used PHD 2 and encountered similar issues with guiding calibration and not enough star movements. Aghhhhhh. I don't think it helps that I also feel awful, a really bad cough and cold. So for now I have reconnected everything back to the ASIAir, programmed an autorun sequence on M63, Auto focus has achieved and guiding is currently running at .45 RMS Perfectly acceptable. So for tonight anyway I will enjoy the clear sky and continue with this short run of subs. As of this minute I am at 26 from 40 x 5 minutes frames in LRGB. 

The following night was not so great with 95% humidity. So I have ended up with 19 x 5 minute subs in RGB, the Luminance data was for me too blown out so not used.

The Sunflower Galaxy, also known as Messier 63 or M63 and designated as NGC 5055 in the New General Catalogue, is a spiral galaxy located in the northern constellation Canes Venatici. It lies roughly 37 million light years from Earth and has an apparent magnitude of 9.3.

The galaxy is enormous in size, with an apparent size of 12′.6 × 7′.2. This makes it roughly the same size as the Milky Way galaxy, and it has a mass 140 billion times that of the Sun. It is also believed to have a supermassive black hole with a mass of up to 30 million Suns.

There are a number of fainter PGC galaxies here most of which are a hundred times or more further away. A Pixinsight annotation shows their locations.