Iceland Aurora

The aurora (the northern and southern lights) is the most wonderous and beautiful natural phenomenon that exist, this incredible light show caused by charged particles accelerated into our upper atmosphere from the Sun, this varies in strength depending on the Sun’s activity at the time. A “solar wind” ejected from the Sun interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field, injecting it with energy and setting up a cycle that catapults electrons into the Earth’s atmosphere at the poles, where they collide with oxygen (green) and nitrogen (red) and cause them to release light—the aurora. For most if not all us astronomers it is on top their bucket list to see a proper light show. Having seen the Aurora a few times before twice from our village in Norfolk and on a flight over the Faroe Islands I was hoping to be treated to something more than I had ever seen before. My images below were captured last week 21th & 22th October on a trip to Iceland with the school. We arrived at our location Hvolsvöllur on the south of the island about 2 hours from Reykjavík, late on the Friday to a dark clear sky. We ensured all those we in charge of were settled and I took a look outside. Almost immediately I was treated to, well for me the, greatest show on earth. I had set the camera up in the top car park away from the building’s lights and set it to record several hundred frames, I learned later that I had accidentally set it to record just 5. I had kicked myself a few times for this since but what I saw in the course of an hour and a half was just spectacular and made up for lack of first night photos. The sky danced for what seemed forever with bright green light. Arcs appearing and fading every few seconds stretching for us from the North East to almost due South. curtains of Colour shimmered and changed shape before my eyes in a cosmic ballet across the sky. Rays of green reached to the heavens and for about 10 minutes we saw a complete auroral oval. I know a full aurora oval can only be seen from space, but what we saw like a huge green onion ring (very strange). Everything I had wished and hoped for was on display that night. The second night cleared later in the night and upon returning at 2.30 in the morning I could again see colours in the darkest sky I have ever seen. There was some residual cloud to the West that was receding slowly but even this was backlit by a beautiful green light. Not anything like as vivid or strong as the previous night but still more impressive than the faint glows I have seen before. Unfortunately, nights 3 & 4 were cloud filled so I left this beautiful island with what was a definite tick on that bucket list.

Dark Shark Nebula

This is my first attempt at capturing a dark nebula, and the Dark Shark or Howling Wolf as it is sometimes called became my target of choice because of it's beautiful variation of colored stars and it's uncanny resemblance to a hungry shark. Known to be an incredibly difficult object to image I was needing moonless skies. This was imaged over 2 nights with a total intergration time of 7.5 hours through Red, Green & Blue filters This image shows the Dark Shark, a complex of several objects in Cepheus, located around 650 light years from us, and about 15 light years from snout to tail. The brownish portion is part of a large molecular cloud thought to be glowing dust powered by high-energy starlight. LDN 1235 is the dark spot in the shark’s head. vdB (Van den Bergh catalogue) 149 and 150 are the two blue reflection nebulae at the top and bottom of the shark’s neck. Both these beautiful reflection nebula shine with the color of very hot B8IV stars within these parts of the nebula.

Imaging details * Oct 2nd / 15th 2022 * Norfolk, UK (Bortle 6) * Telescope: Skywatcher Esprit ED100 * Camera: ZWO ASI 2600MM-PRO * Filter: ZWO RGB * Mount: Skywatcher EQ6R Pro * Guide: Altair 60mm; ZWO ASI 120MM Mini * Control: ASIAIPRo, ZWO EAF * Software: PixInsight, Photoshop * 50 x 180 seconds RGB Total integration time:7.5 hours

A lobster and a bubble

Oh the weather is a fickle thing, yes the nights are drawing in seriously now but so has the cloud too. In a rare few evenings of clear skies I have started a new project. A previous effort a couple of years ago for this target was a bit of a disappointment. I cannot quite remember but I think the project was unfinished so time to have another go. I have managed to create a lovely framing of the Lobster Claw with the Bubble nebula for this image. Night 1 was a 3h55m aquasition of Ha data. A quick process has revealed some lovely clean data.

Night 2 at the time of writing has been a little hit and miss with some high fast moving cloud, quickly clearing and returning some great guiding numbers again. This too is without any PEC training on the mount and I would love to get these numbers more consistent and will have a look at training over the weekend. I am hoping for 6 plus hours of Oiii so looks like a 4.00am finish if the clouds hold off, forecast now looking a good deal better. 1hr 15 so far.

Managed an exact 6 hours or 72 x 5 minute sub frames. Night 3 was again a wonderful night and managed 4 hours with 48 z 5 minute sub frames.

Pixinsight process Background extraction Deconvolution Noise reduction Stretch to non linear Pixel Maths combine channels Curves ACDNR Local Histogram equalisation Dark structure enhance Final curves Star reduction I love the starless image created just before final star reduction.

Final Image

I have also in recent weeks completed a complete new set of calibration frames. As per the image above it looks like a great set and a relief. As I had a few issues with flats a few months ago so a new set needed doing. Pixinsight too has also seen some updates and has updated it's WBPP (weighted batch pre processing script) and it worked flawlessly with the new calibration set. I am really starting to enjoy using it now, still a complete novice and relying on tutorials but the results speak volumes. I am sure there are plenty of die hard fans who want to run all the calibration manually, but there are plenty of trusted you tubers and of course imagers like Adam Block who are increasinly confident that it is doing everything in the background a a full manual run. Like I said I am far from competent with the programme so will enjoy and take all the help I can get.

I along with my family are suffering from Covid. For us all it has been a struggle, having escaped it over the last 2 years it has caught up with us all. On the mend now but has been a real struggle to breath and a cough so bad it made my throat bleed. As I said thank god we are all on the mend now.

Heart Nebula

Having recently returned from an amazing week on Lake Windemere and some lovely clear skies, that is apart from the full moon obliterating any decent view of the Perseid meteors. I had a few great eveinings doing some light painting on the lake. This means the scope has had a week off from action. So the new project is going to be an HOO image of the Heart Nebula IC1805. 5 minute sub exposures starting with the Optolong Ha filter. A total so far of 40 subs with a total of 200 minutes. A lucky capture on my first sub was a meteor breaking the Heart in two.

Over 3 nights I have been able to shoot Oiii data with 73 x 5 minute sub frames totalling 6Hr & 5 minutes. An induvidual sub offers the faintest hint of detail.

The full stack of 73 frames shows a vast amount of detail and a really clean noise free master frame. For some reason my blog will not let me upload the TIFF file so these Oiii frames are JPEGS (aghhhhhh)

I followed the same Pixinsight processing as before for the Crescent nebula. I am still new to this amazing programme and need YouTube tutorials to follow. I feel I have overdone the contrast here of on the final Star reduced image, so I will be looking at a few more Ha hours to boost the outer ring of Hydrogen gas. Watch this space. But for now please enjoy my Heart Nebula. A fitting tribute to Mum too, she sadly passed away some twelve years ago on this day.

One last thing to mention is the guiding, after some welcome rain the skies have been very transparent and the guide numbers have been incredible with RMS totals under 0.25 arc seconds. Images of the guide screen are on the tablet so I will try and upload a screenshot.

NGC6888

It has been a tough couple of weeks wondering what the hell is wrong with my set up, and subsequently been a while since I posted any astro images, A power supply problem caused a few strange issues with the imaging camera, but all resolved now and running on full power again. Eager to capture some photons the dome was rolled back over the weekend and captured 6 hours worth of data on an amazing emission nebula. Ngc6888 is also known as the Crescent Nebula, but for me it resembles a jellyfish adrift on an ocean of stars. The colours you see here are 2 specific wavelength's of light Hydrogen (red) & Oxygen (blue), both are shells of gas produced from violent stellar winds from a star at the heart of this cloud.

Once again I have found a you tuber who has a great and easy to follow workflow. This time it was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6lo2AJcHkU&t=1s

Transit of Venus remembered

I thought I would get this in a day early. Memories of 8th June 2004. I had a wonderful opportunity to witness a transit of the planet Venus across the face of the sun. A sight not observed by any human currently alive before that day. A transit of Venus occurs twice in eight years then nothing for another 105 years. So the first was visible 8/6/04 and the second was only visible in the UK for the final hour of transit around 5.00am on the 6/6/12. Unfortunately it was cloudy for me here for the second. I was completely disappointed because what I saw 8 years earlier blew my mind. The day started with a beautiful sunrise as I transported my scope to Dad's back garden for a better unobstructed view. During the set up the sky was a little unpredictable with some high cloud that I thought would spoil the view, but eventually cleared to reveal a blue sky. From start to finish over nearly six hours I was truly blessed with clear skies and some wonderful images, videos and I even appeared on a live broadcast on radio Norfolk mid transit. An astro bucket list item well and truly ticked.

3rd June Moon

Feeling a little frustrated with Pixinsight with calibration frames, so I spent an hour or so watching the setting moon on Friday night. Decided to roll back the dome and capture a few frames. A few frames is all the 2600mm pro is capable of per second so I captured an AVI for 3 minutes. Pre processed in PIPP and then rub through Registax. Not the sharpest but I like it.

A bit of a disaster

I like to post the good and the bad so here goes. M92 was the goal here but the data is very poor. I think that I have accumulated frost on the CCD sensor that has corrupted the entire data set. 45 x 60 subs through each RGB filter was just impossible to calibrate. I assumed firstly that it was a setting in Pixinsight that I was unfamiliar with, quite possible considering it is so new to me but after a new set of flats, dark flats and calibrated in both DSS & Pixinsight the results were just the same. I will take the data to Breckland Observatory this week and let a few of our resident Pixinsight experts have a play too. Here is the data anyway. Full size image and crop.#notimpressed. However I was happy with the focus. Win win.

M94

My second capture and full process with Pixinsight is a spectacular galaxy with a double shell. M94 is a bit of a cosmic mystery. Studies suggest very little to no dark matter. Possible suggestions of a galactic collision also seem to be dispelled so overall a bit of a mystery.

M94 has an inner ring with a diameter of 70". Given its distance, about 5,400 light-years (1,700 pc)) and an outer ring with a diameter of 600″ (about 45,000 light-years (14,000 pc)). These rings appear to form at resonance points in the disk of the galaxy. The inner ring is the site of strong star formation activity and is sometimes referred to as a starburst ring. This star formation is fueled by gas driven dynamically into the ring by the inner oval-shaped bar-like structure. Considering my image scale is jus under 2 arc seconds per pixel, the structure in the spiral arms is seriously impressive.

I must admit also I am seriously impressed by the quality of the last 2 posts that have been fully processed in Pixinsight.

M51 The Whirlpool Galaxy

The usual Malcolm luck happened last month, I closed down the observatory for some maintenance and what do we get a week full of clear skies. Still it gave me chance to get some  jobs complete such as wiring the dome to the wireless controller. Disappointing that the weather was clear but since rebuild, a PA and test of tracking and guiding was needed,  Every set up nicely and as expected and  from there I have managed over 4 nights captured five and a half hours of LRGB data on target.

Guiding has been excellent with excellent with numbers as low as .30 arc seconds accuracy. I will be happy if these numbers continue. As you can see target was M51, always a favourite and captured many times previously. 

     I am always astounded and I love the ZWO Asiair pro for its simplicity in doing almost everything now. Some  lovely new additions to the software update now include now sky atlas and the ability to name filters. There are of course many things that it cannot do including composing mosaics but I can live with it for now simply because there are other pieces of software such as Telescopius that communicates perfectly with the ability to download a CSV file with the mosaic parameters. There are several summer projects that will use this feature so look out for my updates on this feature. 

So the target was M51 using the LRGB filters with an aim for a couple of hours on each filter. In case of bad weather I set the imaging run to 30 minutes a filter. At least I would have something to process if the project fell flat. I have also the zwo electronic focusser so the whole process is totally automated when switching from filter to filter to imaging again takes under two minutes.

A Typical stretched 180 second sub frame (right) A small target for 550mm of focal length but I am hopeful for a decent crop out of the final data stack.

So after three good nights I have managed five and half hours of data with 30x 3 minutes sub frames on RGB and 1 hour of Luminance data.

During bad nights I also took the opportunity and captured a complete set of calibration frames too from darks, dark flats, & Flats.

To top it all I have finally taken the plunge into the technical world of Pixinsight. A scary thought but with the help of some serious video instruction from Adam Block I have created my first image.

Prior to starting the image processing I used Image calibration & Image combination to create all my master calibration frames.

Again this is all very new to me and I followed this process to create my first image.

Calibrated and stacked using the new WBPP (weighted batch pre processing) script new and updated script that works every bit as good as six or seven steps of manual image registration. 

Part of this hobby also includes trawling the expanse of YouTube and looking for videos that suit you knowledge set and by chance I found a chap called Richard Bloch. and found Basic image processing in Pixinsight 1.8, the cover image was of M51 and I was processing M51 so thought it worth a look, Turns out his explanations and information were spot on. I will send him a message to say hello and thank you

Dynamic Crop

Autoomatic background extractor

Colour Calibration

Histogram transformation

TGV Noise

Range select

Unsharp mask

curves.

Final result I am more than pleased with.