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.

First Light as promised IC1396 The Elephants Trunk Nebula.

To the left is a 3 hour calibrated frames desaturated from the colour of the 294mc pro, to the right is 20 x 3 minutes frames calibrated from the new Mono camera. One error I made was setting the camera at gain 100 so stars are a little bloated. I am not interested in anything other than it's sensitivity and noise levels. Test 1 pretty incredible.

A night of a blue moon.

Typically three clear nights lead up to a full moon. Less of a concern now for us deep sky enthusiasts especially with the Optolong L-Enhance dual band filter. 

Not a perfect solution by any standards but certainly allows us colour CMOS camera users greater object choice when in light polluted or moonlit skies. I am certainly happy with it anyway. Another chance also to test the Autofocus routine on the ASIAIR pro and the EAF. 

I started the evening with a few technical difficulties. I needed to reload the software from a corrupt disk back onto the AIR, possibly due to moisture build up in the observatory. A new thermostatically controlled heater will hopefully cure the problem. It certainly did for the last obsy. The aim of the evening was to test everything worked again rather than any serious imaging run. So I rotated the dome away from the moon and targeted IC1396  The Elephants trunk nebula one of my first targets with the ZWO ASI294MC pro and initiated the auto focus routine. I have to say it worked flawlessly so much better focus than just with a bhatinov mask. I set it to adjust every 30 minutes for the 2 hours of data . Processed also in a slightly different way but just look at the focus difference. I thought I was happy with the older image (2nd one)

Testing Testing Testing

 Testing the new Kit.

IC1396, The Elephants Trunk Nebula. So called because of the dark patch with a bright sinuous rim resembling the tip of the trunk. Yes you got to love where some of these names come from.. One star in this image (well actually three, two of which orbit each other every four days create violent out bursts of ultra violet radiation that strip electrons from the hydrogen gas and illuminate it in this wonderful colour. This in turn causes compression in the clouds of gas and starts star formation. The dark areas you see are the nurseries formed. 

This officially is the first target from the new set up. I spent the day setting up and balancing all seemed to go well and the guiding shown an RMS of just under .80. I am quite happy with this for a start. 3 minute sub frames were used and guided using the Altair Astro 60mm guide scope and ZWO ASI 1120MM for a total of four hours integration time.

The Optolong L-Enhance duoband filter was used using the ZWO filter drawer a fantastic and clever way to introduce and replace filters. 

Overall I am more than pleased with the new set up.