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?

Pelican Nebula/ North American Nebula

A favourite summer target has always been the Pelican Nebula IC5070. A wonderful target for us astrophotographers. As technology improves it forces us back for longer exposure, improved guiding building mosaics. But the one thing we always seek is a better image smoother, sharper better contrast. Looking at back at my early images through the DSLR's it's hard to believe we were happy with them. Always seeking those small improvements to create the perfect image.

New and old

Old and new

A mosaic of just 3 images has created this image. My first real attempt at bringing multiple long exposures into one. A total of approx 12 hours in total captured over a couple of weeks.

NGC 7000 With UHC Filter

Hi everyone,

I am enjoying my 3 weeks off 1 down 2 to go Daddy day care is fun!!(most of the time) although last night was the first night outside since last Saturday. First off I have solved the little mystery of the failure of guide camera and dew heaters. The power supply / charger for the power tank had broken. So each time I thought I was charging nothing happened and of course the voltage dropped below usable and caused equipment failure. All working fine now.

Went out at about 9.00 pm to test the bahtinov mask kindly supplied by fellow member and manufacturer of these fine items. Made to a professional standard with precise laser cutting of the material providing extremely sharp focus spikes to allow quick and easy focus. Less than 10 seconds I think. Please see Keiths page on my list of fellow bloggers and get ordering they are worth every reasonably priced penny.

This time I thought I would complete my little task of taking NGC7000 again this time with the UHC filter in place. I was very pleased with the result showing the true colour of the Hydrogen Alpha line emissions.

This stack is of 38 X 1 minute unguided subs with no dark calibration / flats or bias frames used.
Stacked in deep sky stacker and a DDP stretch in Images Plus. No additional colour enhacement but I will have a play and if its worthy of posting I will let you see in due course. Let me know what you think comments are always welcome.