67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

5 years ago now I witnessed one the most incredible feats of engineering skill man has created thus far, not happy with just dropping into orbit around Comet 67P but sending a lander onto the surface too. With gravity at 1/10000 that of earth Philae didn't quite manage to stay put when the cold gas thrusters and harpoon failed to operate. So it bounced twice and settled, wedged into the side of a hill. 

Beautiful imagery was captured and returned by the Rosetta spacecraft detailing the shape and structure. Resembling a peanut shell (image above courtesy of Rosetta) this 2 lobed comet has tumbled through the solar system for billions of years. 

I have been keeping an eye of it's location each night in the hope of a capture worthy of posting. But in typical UK weather the clouds rolled in after less than ten minutes of imaging time against the lovely backdrop of Messier 35.  My intent was an RGB image through filters and using the comet stack in DSS to keep both stars are comet a pinpoint. However plans were scuppered after 7 minutes through the red filter.

Just had a look back at my comet images and this one will be my 16th Comet imaged to date.

In no particular order we have:

All of my previous comet images can be found in the previous pages of my blog.

    

M31

Almost a year ago was my M31 Globular clusters project. A fantastic project capturing a staggering 244 globular clusters associated with M31.

A year has passed and another M31 image is forthcoming. This time captured in HaRGB with my newish Mono camera, filter wheel and filters.

All of course captured with the ZWO ASI Air pro, a wonderful little device that has seen countless updated that include plan mode now. This allows an imaging run of multiple targets during a night. It allowed me on this occasion to run an imaging session on M31 swapping over filters and running the autofocus routine after each swap. It ran flawlessly.

So we have a basic stretch on each of the filters and a final combination giving a total of 4 hours, 1 hour on each filter.

Red

Green

Blue

Ha

4 hour Combination HaRGB

Crop

Overall I am very pleased with the image despite no calibration frames used at all here.

Waca Waca Waca Waca Waca Waca

Waca waca waca waca waca waca waca. Do you remember the sound of a Pacman? I bet you are doing it right now aren’t you… Well I have found the original, the progenitor of the classic 1980’s video game chomping power pills and chasing ghosts amongst the stars of the constellation Cassiopeia.




NGC281 or the aptly named Pacman Nebula is a bright emission nebula located 9200 light years away in the Perseus arm of our own Milky Way galaxy.
Discovered in 1883 it visually looks the same today as its discovery 138 years ago. However with modern technology and a dedicated Astro camera that can capture the faintest wavelengths of light invisible to the naked eye show you clouds of gas ten thousand degrees in temperature and walls of dust ( at Pacman's mouth) not being eaten but forming new stars.
My Blue & Gold Hued image is what we call a false colour image, using filters of the Hydrogen Alpha, Sulpur ii and Oxygen iii emission lines and mapped to RGB to create a colour image you see here.

Captured over several nights I have just shy of six hours worth of data. Tell you can see him right…..

LIke a bat outta hell

 Well Autumn is definitely upon us, the evening air currently is very high with moisture and this affects the seeing and affects the quality of our astro images. I am unsure if I am happy with my red filter. After an hour of RGB subs my reds showed a large red halo around the larger stars. Run the same series of images with the Ha filter and really tight stars. So the below image is a short run of 10 x 5 minute subs for Ha G&B captured with the ASI air pro and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and finally processed in Photoshop. I also used an HA layer as a luminance filter. I am very happy with the image quality and depth the new camera produces.

Ngc7000 Starless & re-edit

 Over the last few days I have had the opportunity to use starnet++ and re process the data. More happy with the image now with a star reduction. 

Ngc 7000 Narrowband.

 The Curse of the new gear strikes again.

Yes the weather has not played ball for the last couple of weeks lending credence to the curse of the new gear for us astronomers. I am desperate and stupidly excited to create my first "Hubble Palette" style image using the Optolong Narrowband 36mm filters in the ZWO filter wheel. I did manage to get the filters installed with no issues and had to wait a week to test. All filters are parfocal and using the ZWO EAF "auto focusser" all gave pinpoints stars within 10 focus steps. Sometimes seeing can set the focus point with a difference of up to 30 steps so very happy with that. I first tested the Ha filter on NGC7000 and here is a stack of 12 x 5 minute exposures.

Hydrogen Alpha 7nm Optolong Filter. 12 x 5 minutes

I have imaged this target many times in the past and I am stunned at the quality with a 1 hour stack.

I have had to wait a while longer to image the OIII and S2 filters. 

OIII 7nm Oxygen III Optolong Filter. 18 x 10 Minutes

Sulphur 2 7nm Optolong Filter 18 x 10 Minutes

All Combined in the Hubble Palette RGB image.

New arrivals

 Arriving tomorrow from my favourite astronomical retailer Widescreen Centre https://www.widescreen-centre.co.uk/

Should be my new ZWO 7 position filter wheel, this is the new mk2 version that is slightly larger than the mark 1 and better compatibility with the newer ZWO cameras. 

 No off axis guider used on my system so I will follow the set up here to create the correct 55mm back focus,

Along side it will be the 36mm unmounted LRGB from ZWO and 6nm narrow band filter sets from Optolong. I was incredibly impressed by Optolong's L-enhance tri band & L pro filter light pollution filter. Many images of their use can be seen in the previous posts. Unmounted filters will require fitting rather than them having a screw thread. 36mm are needed for the APS-C chip on the camera to avoid the vignette.

   These filters will allow the full range of wavelengths of light through to create images that will

 The Optolong 6.5nm SHO narrowband filters set is for astrophotographers who want to obtain the maximum contrast of nebulae while cutting out background emission and suppressing star lights. This filter set includes a 7nm hydrogen-alpha filter and 6.5nm sulphur-II & oxygen-III filters.These filters cover the major emission lines of emission type nebulae. These filters are also commonly used by astrophotographers to present their photos in Hubble Pallete. I cannot wait to capture some starlight. I will wait and see what arrives tomorrow.

Update:19/8/21  Well everything has arrived and I have now inserted the filters into their new home, installed and rebalanced scope.  Just need a few clear skies. 

22/8/21 Aghhhhh was promised a clear sky last night albeit with the full moon, but alas clouded out.

23/8/21 For about an hour and a half tonight despite a near full moon I managed to find focus for each filter and they all focus within 10 clicks of each other happy with that for par focal.

I couldn't resist running a very basic stretch on this before bed now at 1.20am.

So 12 x 5 minute exposures with the Ha filter.

Images used from ZWO and Optolong websites.

The Moon

 Our nearest neighbour at 383,000 km from earth as of 23.30 ish on the 23rd August. Most will be unaware that during a lunar month the moon does not have a perfect circular orbit around the earth, and its distance to earth varies over the month by just over 50,000 km. Currently the moon is getting closer by a 1 km per second.

Just 3 Persieds.

Sitting and facing in a direction opposite to where the camera is pointing is a guarantee for me anyway for a failure to capture anything of significance especially when meteors are involved. A beautiful evening spent on the sun lounger I saw some really bright meteors  and a few really bright ones streaking through the Andromeda region and going south. The camera however  was under our pergola and left overnight to see what it could find.(covered jusy in case it rained) ISO 1600 and 20 second captures are the best my Canon can hope for without an excess of noise anyway. So here is the result a composite of 3 images with 3 faint streaks across the sky looking east.

 

ISS & Nauka

During a recent stay from my brother, we sat one night in the hot tub and saw the ISS pass, we chatted for a while about it and found that another pass was due the following night. Camera ready and waiting 24 hours later I captured the pass as it was descending in the East, we also spotted what looked like something following it. What I didn't realise that just 8 hours earlier from pad 39 at KSC the Russian module Nauka launched atop of a Proton M rocket. Numerous delays of fuel leaks and dust contamination saw a 14 year wait in all for Nauka's launch. Eight days later it successfully docked with the ISS.

You can just see Nauka in the frame top right.

1 x 15 second image ISO400

M71 & M27

Last night was the second opportunity to capture some light with the new astro camera. Time for some tests after plenty of reading on the different and optimum settings for gain, exposure and time and balancing that with my scope size and focal length. So we have 2 images M71 & M27. M71 a wonderful globular cluster in Sagitta. Exposure time was 15 x 3 minute exposures with gain at 0 to take advantage of the full well depth 50ke and 16 bit. Readout noise is below detection when cooled to -15. I am happy to play for a few months in Mono before unleashing the filters. M27 was set to 5 minute exposures and here just six of them for 30 minutes of total exposure. A crop too of approx 400%