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.

New Camera ZWO ASI 2600mm

 Purchased from my friends at the widescreen-centre.co.uk in Cambridge. I cannot wait to put her though her paces and deliver some amazing images.

ZWO ASI2600 PRO Cooled Colour or Monochrome CMOS Camera - Widescreen Centre (widescreen-centre.co.uk)

Amazing! After the recent appearance of the "zero amp glow" ASI533MC-PRO, here is another "zero amp glow" camera with a larger sensor, 16 bit ADC, huge dynamic range and a pixel size that would suit many small to medium sized amateur APO telescopes (or small SCTs etc.)

The ASI2600MC Pro uses Sony’s latest back-illuminated IMX571 APS-C format native 16-bit ADC sensor. It has an ultra-high 14 stops dynamic range, ultra-low 1.0e readout noise and an innovative breakthrough resulting in zero amp-glow. It is a camera born from the appeal of astrophotography lovers. I cannot wait to put this through it's paces and deliver some great images.

Goodbye Old Friend

OK a dodgy title when you are not even a year old, but I have been bitten, and bitten bad by a bug. I have been more than happy too as I have worked this way for 30 plus years of imaging with various formats of equipment from film cameras, DSLR's, CCD & CMOS cameras.

What the hell is he on about I hear you say?? Ok so I have been looking to upgrade and venture into the world of the Mono chip sensor for a long while. I have been looking at thousands of amazing images and watched 100's of You tube videos on the benefits and the improvements in sensitivity and quality etc . I have long known these facts but like many imagers out there have chosen the colour route for many reasons and I too fit into probably all of those categories and reasons why and even made that decision last year again when I purchased the ZWO ASI 294MC pro cooled CMOS colour camera. I was and I am still bowled over at the quality of the sensor and the images it produces. Most of which are showcased in my posts here. But yesterday I couriered it to it's new home in London. It may have even passed by the new one along the A14 near Cambridge as it headed south.

Along this journey of discovery I had pretty much decided that I would go for the ZWO ASI 1600mm. An older model but a trusted favourite by many astronomers. The perfect entry for me I thought. I am big fan of ZWO since my first high frame rate camera for lunar imaging quite a few years ago now and a perfect match to my ASI AIR pro mini computer.

This morning though a new toy arrived at my door. A complete u-turn from what I thought I was going to order. 

So today I say hello to the ZWO ASI 2600 MM Pro. Unfortunately I will wait for a filter wheel and filters so for a while, I think I will enjoy the incredible specification of 16 bit ADC, 14 stops of dynamic range,  zero amp glow and a whopping 26MP sensor. It is impossible to ignore specs like these and purchase what effectively be an out of date camera like the 1600, 

Time is currently 20.32 and so far clear outside so maybe first light will be tonight fingers crossed.

First light will be the first target I shot with the 294mc pro last year so IC1396 the Elephants trunk nebula it will be,

Below is that first light image from the 294 and desaturated to mono. Watch this space 

I will desaturate the image too not that it will be a fair comparison against the mono camera.

Double Rainbow

 A wonderful double rainbow graced our Norfolk skies today. Alexanders dark band captured too.

Nova Her 2021

Thank you Chris Bailey a fellow member of Breckland Astronomical Society for sharing the link yesterday of a new Nova found in the constellation of Hercules. Just 9 hours 9 minutes later I was imaging this myself. Spot the odd one out?, ok a little help then. Not the cataclysmic event of the type 1a Supernova exploding, this one appears to be a white dwarf star swallowing some extra material and brightening considerable in a very short time.

30 x 2 minutes frames captured from 22.03 last night from my home observatory using my Skywatcher Ed100 triplet, ZWO ASI294mc pro, ASI Air pro.

M101 The Whirlpool Galaxy

I dread galaxy season fearing I can never do it justice using a 100mm F5.5 refractor. However come summer I am never too disappointed and the collection of targets from the spring skies, This particular night a couple of months ago now I remember the east / southern  sky was very patchy and galaxies there were going to be a challenge, so I aimed near vertical and collected 295 minutes of light on M101. Definitely under processed as there is a lot more faint structure to tease out. 

I used my goto astro survey software Cartes du Ceil and fund several dozen 21st Mag galaxies. NGc5474 does not look to shabby either.

Juno

 The dark is a lonely place.

Since the formation of the solar system some 4 billion years ago, millions upon millions of rocks or asteroids are caught in an endless dance in orbit between Mars & Jupiter. 99.9% are no bigger than a London bus but some just some are a little larger.

Travelling at 18km per second I managed to capture movement of approx 32,000km during 30 minutes worth of exposure last night of the 320km asteroid 3 Juno. You can see from the cropped image the elongated shape due to the movement over that time. I have created a little repeating animation of the 15 frames to show the movement.

Juno was the 3rd asteroid discovered in 1804 and believed to be about the 10th largest in size.

https://theskylive.com/3dsolarsystem

Rosette Nebula.

The long winter nights have gone but some of those iconic targets are not forgotten, had a reprocess on this winters attempt of the Rosette Nebula. I think over the years my processing style has changed and improved, I like a more natural colour palette. Saying that I am looking at a full mono set up with LRGB HSO filters. Just 45 minutes worth of data here captured using the Optolong L-enhance filter in my ZWO filter draw.

 

The Horsehead Nebula

The winter months were not great from my location, that and the bloody tree facing due south, I only managed just over an hour on this iconic target, it beats too the image I took when featured on the Sky At Night Programme when Pete Lawrence visited our Society Breckland Astronmoical Society to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of Hubble. New image at top.  I know heavily cropped but an amazing difference in camera technology and processing technique.

M97 & M108 The Whale & The Surfboard.

The owl and the surfboard. I have previously mentioned the astronomical names of objects often resemble what they look like. Two prime examples are M97 the Owl Nebula & M108 the Surfboard Galaxy. The Owl is a planetary nebula, (not a planet) but the violent death of an exploding star, ejecting shells of gas & material into space, Still expanding some 8000 years later at 35km per second, can you see the owls eyes? M108 the Surfboard Galaxy lies some 2000 times more distant at 26 Million light years. Another example of a Galaxy viewed edge on from our perspective and uncannily resembling a surfboard.

M106

There are a handful of Galaxies that present themselves at such an angle you get to see the the immense spiral structure, dust lanes and nebulae in all their splendour at once. M106 is one such beauty right above us this evening. 5 minute sub exposures controlled via the ASI air pro2 reveal some amazing structure in the spiral arms and dust. Numerous other fuzzies are clearly visible within the frame and one immediately caught my eye as the first frame came in is Ngc4217. Believed to me associated to M106, Ngc4217 is viewed edge on and has a very prominent dust lane splitting it in two from our perspective.  At 60 Million light years plus away, appears to me in sub frames very much like M104 The Sombrero Galaxy, my meagre 554mm focal length does not do it justice. Ohhhhhhhh for an 11" SCT. 

The screenshot is the a 5 minute sub frame for the ASI Air Pro. A revolutionary micro computer that has dedicated software for communication, Imaging, Guiding, Auto focus, Scope control and filter wheel (not used). The latest beta release now includes planning to allow multiple targets unattended. A typical imaging session starts with rolling back the dome shutter and power up. I have connected a TP Link travel router to provide greater wifi signal for control inside the house. It takes a minute or so to run it's start up and connect to my tablet. This connects automatically to the ASI Air pro and we are away. My permanent set up means polar alignment is not required every session so I can go straight to target and plate solve. I start a plan in tonight's case M106 from there I leave the obsy and return inside the house. It starts will cooling the main imaging camera to -10 then runs the auto focus routine, guiding initiates and starts guiding using multiple stars, when the guiding has settled the autorun of imaging begins. I have auto focus set to run every hour as in the dome I don't think I need the temperature probe.

 Currently into hour 2 and I have rejected a couple of frames as there are a few gusts of wind that cause the guiding jitters. So averaging at just over .50 arc sec guiding very happy with that. Just opened Carte du Ceil to identify a very faint dot around mag 15 to the north west of the galaxy. It identifies it as PGC 39615 a mag 16.05 irregular galaxy. I really enjoy seeking out  and identifying the obscure and faint within an image.