Avdhoeven

This image is a combination from a dataset that I obtained from Insight Observatory taken with an AG10 CDK f/6.7 telescope in combination with my own dataset that I obtained with my TMB92ss in the past few years. The first dataset mainly contributed to the resolution while the second dataset helped with reducing noise and making the colors as I like (I used my own color layers in combination with true color stars from the CDK dataset). For this image I made a bicolor using the Ha and OIII data and generating a green channel from the blue and red channels. After that I also made an RGB image using the color layers and using masks I introduced back the star colors. Altogether this resulted in an image with a resolution of 0.48"/pix giving a beautiful detail of this nebula. I'm quite happy with this result to be honest In total 116 hours of data is incorporated in this image. Exposure details are below the image. Telescope: AG10 CDK f/6.7 and TMB92ss Camera: ASI6200mm pro and QSI583ws Link to astrobin page of this image

M31, the Andromeda galaxy. This recording is already 9 years old, but I have completely reprocessed it using, among other things, drizzling in APP and deconvolution with blurxterminator. This clearly shows how it really makes sense to keep old data and revisit it every now and then. The comparison clearly shows the difference between the old and the new processing. Telescope: TMB-92 Camera: QSI-583ws Mounting: NEQ-6 with OAG Exposure: 19x300s L 3x300s B 9x300s R,G 9x900s Ha ; 12x1200s Ha

Thanks. This was taken in the Eifel in Germany under quite dark skies. Sqm 20.4 or so.

Processing from my data storage of NGC7023, aka the Iris nebula. New processing techniques like deconvolution, better noise and star reduction really improve the possibilities a lot. I'm quite happy with the balance that I could obtain between dust, stars and background. TMB92ss / QSI583ws Lum: 60x600s RGB: 3x12x600s

Very nice overview of this region! Love it. If I may give a (very small) criticism. The h alpha looks a bit artificial somehow for me, but that's very personal. But overall a superb image!!!!! Edit: in full size it looks much better probably the compression played it's part on my screen.

After the holidays I was able to shoot one more night of H-alpha data using my new L-ultimate filter. I added this data to the image and could get even more detail in the h-alpha regions. I also cropped it to get a nice field of view for this part of the sky. I'm really happy with this unique image, which because of the comet, I can never take again in the same way

Pictures are evolving sometimes when you look at them longer and see them at different screens. I made a much more 'neutral' version which I think more corresponds to reality.

After posting my 1st version of this image I looked further into it and noticed that the stars got somehow completely destroyed in the original size file. So I decided to do a complete reprocess while guarding the stars and nebulae more during processing. Furthermore I was able to use an OIII dataset from Wei-Hao Wan_ that he made in 2016 from the Outers-4 nebula inside SH2-129. I got his permission to use his data (all his data can be found via astrobin and they are really a great resource!). RGB: Nikon D810a - WO Spacecat 51 Exposures; 15x300s / 51x600s (9.75h) OIII (Wei-Hao [removed word]): Nikon D800 (modified) - Borg 90FL 22x480s / 35x360s (6.5h) Total: 16.25h

This image shows the region around Barnard 150, aka the cosmic seahorse and SH2-129, the bat nebula. This region has a lot to offer to astrophotographers and is quite challenging to capture well. This image was made during our holidays in the Eifel in Germany. Weather forecast was not good for this week but somehow I still got 3 (partly) clear nights in total. I had planned to image this region already quite some time before but when imaging the first night I noticed there was a comet in the field of view. This was comet C/2023 E1 Atlas. The evening after it was already gone from the field of view, so I guess I was lucky to have caught it. Nikon D810a - WO Spacecat 51 Exposures; 15x300s / 51x600s Total: 9.75h

No, no flats used and thanks!

All images made with my Lunt 60Tha - ASI174mm combination.

This image shows SH2-155 aka the Cave nebula which consists of 180 images! With APP I was able to integrate my Luminance, H-alpha and color data to get really the most out of the data. I used blurxterminator to get even more detail out of the image in combination with a touch of noisexterminator. I'm very happy with the result that came out with the new programs. The colours of the stars were as I liked them to be and somehow it resulted (in my opinion) in a very colourful representation of this beautiful region in the sky. More info about the region: This colorful skyscape features the dusty, reddish glow of Sharpless catalog emission region Sh2-155, the Cave Nebula. About 2,400 light-years away, the scene lies along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus. Astronomical explorations of the region reveal that it has formed at the boundary of the massive Cepheus B molecular cloud and the hot, young, blue stars of the Cepheus OB 3 association. The bright rim of ionized hydrogen gas is energized by the radiation from the hot stars, dominated by a bright blue O-type star. Radiation driven ionization fronts are likely triggering collapsing cores and new star formation within. Appropriately sized for a stellar nursery, the cosmic cave is over 10 light-years across. [Source: APOD] Exposure info: Telescope: TMB92 Camera: QSI583ws Lum: 90x300s + 21x600s Ha: 42x1200s R,G,B: 9,9,9x600s Total: 29,5 hours

Took some shots of the Wizard Nebula (NGC 7380) last night. I had last photographed this object 11 (!) years ago when I had only been working on the hobby for 1 year. I thought it was time to see if this could be done better. These are 20 shots from 900s taken with my TMB92ss and QSI583ws with an Astrodon 5nm H-alpha filter. To be honest, I was amazed at the amount of detail already showing up in the surrounding gas clouds in this area. Certainly this is an object that I will make OIII/SII shots from to be able to turn this into a full-fledged hubble palette when it is clear again soon.

This 90 megapixel image is the result of a cooperation with 3 fellow astrophotographers, Sara Wager, Dominique Dierick and Kees Scherer and myself. It all started in 2017 when we worked together on a larger mosaic of part of the Cygnus constellation. A zoomable version can be found here: https://zoomhub.net/al3me I would recommend to strawl through the image to find all the details. For example the Soap Bubble Nebula, the Cygnus X1 shockwave, Crescent and Tulip Nebula are nicely visible. Last year (2021) I wanted to make a nice image of the Tulip Nebula (SH2-101) and the nearby hydrogen clouds so I made an image stack consisting of 1 panel of this region. This summer (2022) they predicted a longer period of clear skies and I decided to extend the field of view to get more coverage of this very interesting region. After finishing this image I noticed that I was very nearby the Crescent nebula region and knew I had a lot of data of that region also, so I decided to look onto my image archive to see which data there was more region and that was how I stumbled onto the mosaic data again that we all captured in 2017. It showed that with this data a very nice field of view could be generated with full coverage from the Tulip up to far above the Crescent nebula. Because of the high quality of the data processing was very easy and that is what resulted in an 90 megapixel image of 4,5x6,2 degrees of sky area. On my webpage you can find a lot more info and details about the image including detail cut-outs of interesting parts. Exposures: Dominique Dierick: 36x300s Crescent (3h) Sara Wager: 50x1800s Crescent (25h) Kees Scherer: 38x900s Overall field (9,5h) André van der Hoeven: 211x900s Detailed regions (52,75h) Totaal: 90,25h Equipment: Dominique: Takahashi FSQ106/QHY163M Sara: Orion Optics ODK10/TMB152/QSI683wsg Kees: Skywatcher Esprit 100D/QHY16200 André: TMB92/QSI583ws

The past week it was such beautiful clear weather that I wanted to tackle a larger narrowband project. In 2013, I once started with a TEC140 with images of the Tulip Nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. Last year I had taken pictures of the tulip nebula with its immediate surroundings with my TMB92 and there was so much to see there that I wanted to continue this. Six clear nights were predicted and so I decided to make a larger mosaic of this area. To achieve this I had to do some puzzling about how best to divide the area into sub-images to get the best possible picture. This resulted in a center of 3 vertical shots, with last year's shot in the middle, and above and below shots rotated 90 degrees to add 2 more bands at the top and bottom. It took some puzzling to set the precise coordinates in this way, but in the end it went very well. Below you can see the distribution of the different panels. I ended up shooting a panel every night with the TMB92, QSI583ws and an astrodon 5nm H-alpha filter with 900s exposures. Total 40 hours (137x900s and 8x1800s from 2013). Of course there were some problems during the several nights (guiding that went wrong, tracking camera that twisted, mount that disconnected and so on), but in the end it worked out and I am very happy with the result. To see the highest resolution (47mp) I recommend to look at my flickr site. What a nice detail is that the shock wave of the Cygnus X1 black hole can also be seen nicely:

Some images of the last 2 days of the sun. There was a huge filament coming over the solar limb that made a lift-off in the late afternoon of August 4th. It was cloudy here, but just before the sun was setting behind the house the clouds cleared and I was able to capture the prom just when it was lifting off. Feeling lucky to have caught this. Just look at the scale of this thing! One of of the biggest I have seen until now. Also some images of the day before are shown when it came into view.

After experimenting last week with my Lunt 60 I decided to go for a more high-res disk image of the sun in H-alpha. This is a mosaic made of 6 images with my Lunt 60Tha with a Powermate 2,5x barlow and an ASI174mm. My laptop could hardly handle the data flow of the camera (12bit 1936x1216@66fps, 16Gb/min). This resulted in 6x60s movies that I stacked in Autostakkert and postprocessed using Astra-image 3 and Photoshop. Nice thing is that imaging in 12-bit makes it obsolete to take separate limb imagery. Everything is already present in one shot. This cost me some time to process, but I'm so happy with the full-res image (https://www.flickr.com/photos/avdhoeven/52215721592/sizes/o/).

Finally the sun is getting more and more active again. Time to get my Lunt-60 back into action This image was taken with the Lunt and an ASI174. Nice thing of this combination is that you can take the sun in a single frame. I use it with my macbook with a highspeed ssd attached and in this way I'm able to get 120fps full disk in 12-bit. Which is very nice in post-processing because you don't need to take separate limb imagery then for the solar flares. So this is the result of one single run of 60s Happy with this...

This image is a continuation of an image I made in 2014 of the M81/82 galaxy group. I made the images and found signals of integrated flux nebula surrounding the galaxies. Soon after that I got in touch with Neil Fleming who had a splendid image of the IFN in this region on his website and a fellow astrophotographer, Michael van Doorn, who had imaged the galaxies using his hyperstar setup. We decided then to combine the data and create a deep field of this region. The lower magnitude visible is around mag. +24 in this image! I decided to look at this image again with 2022 software possibilities, new sharpening and noise reduction tools, and see if I could squeak out even more details. I think this resulted in one of the deepest images I have ever seen of this region.

IC 5146 (also Caldwell 19, Sh 2-125, and the Cocoon Nebula) is a reflection/emission nebula and Caldwell object in the constellation Cygnus. The NGC description refers to IC 5146 as a cluster of 9.5 mag stars involved in a bright and dark nebula. The cluster is also known as Collinder 470. It is located near the naked-eye star Pi Cygni, the open cluster NGC 7209 in Lacerta, and the bright open cluster M39. The cluster is about 4,000 ly away, and the central star that lights it formed about 100,000 years ago; the nebula is about 12 arcmins across, which is equivalent to a span of 15 light years. When viewing IC 5146, dark nebula Barnard 168 (B168) is an inseparable part of the experience, forming a dark lane that surrounds the cluster and projects westward forming the appearance of a trail behind the Cocoon.

After 6 times being shortlisted I finally made it this year into the winners of the astronomy photographer of the year competition. I got a 2nd place in the 'people and space' category. I'm so honoured and really happy. Really didn't expect it to happen... https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-photographer-year/galleries/people-space-2021 My son (who won the young category in 2019 and was 3rd in 2018) also succeeded again in getting a 3rd place. Our evening is a very special one now https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-photographer-year/galleries/young-competition-2021

Wow, what a nice object and image! Didn't know this one, but certainly one to put on my wishlist. Thanks for the inspiration.

Barnard 344 is a dark nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. It’s located close to the star Sadr in the Gamma Cygni Nebula (RA: 20h18m57.4s DEC: +40º 40′ 01″). Barnard 344 is located on the bottom of the image. This is one of my favorite regions for astrophotography. This region is very rich of dark and emission nebulae. On the image also VanDenBergh 130, a reflection nebula in this region, can be seen. It’s the circular cloudshape on the left center of the image. LBN234 is an emission nebula glowing with hydrogen and sulphur in the center of the image. Barnard 344 was described by Barnard himself as: “Dusky spot, 7′ long; like an arrowhead, pointed SW; small star at NE end”. This image is a combination of narrowband imagery with RGB images taken during a number of nights almost a decade ago already in 2013. I did a complete reprocessing of the luminosity image using newer software and with more computer power to get higher resolution. Also the colors were 'polished' to get a better balance. In 2015 this image was an Apod, but I think with this processing it became quite a bit more detailed and nicer to see the details. Telescope: TEC-140 Camera: QSI-583 Mount: Skywatcher NEQ-6 H-alpha: 6 x 1800 s (3nm astrodon) SII: 3 x 1800 s (3nm astrodon) OIII: 4 x 1800 s (3nm astrodon) RGB: (4,4,4) x 600 s (astrodon TrueRGB) Total exposure time: 8.5 hours

Last night I put my new pillar with the special designed quick coupler (made by Herman ten Haaf) to the test. I did a pole alignment last week using Sharpcap and took everything off and repositioned the mount 2 times this week. Both times I had a polar alignment within 1' (1 arcminute) without doing an alignment (checked with sharpcap). I'm very happy with this. Last night this resulted in a guiding rms of less then 0,6" on both axes and so I could get very nice and small round stars. This image is a first result of only 6x900s Ha (5nm astrodon) because of incoming clouds using my TMB92ss and QSI583ws. But it is already promising and a nice target for the coming time to get more data.

NGC 7822 is an emission nebula located in Cepheus, about 3,000 lightyears away. It’s a violent, chaotic deep-sky region where young stars are being born, their powerful radiation ionising the surrounding gas and causing it to glow. These energetic stellar winds are also carving out the dusty streams and pillars seen throughout the nebula. Within these dark, dusty regions, new stars are likely being born, but the powerful radiation that’s fuelling NGC 7822’s light emission is also destroying the cosmic gas and dust necessary for stellar birth, effectively cutting them off at the source. (source: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/astrophotography/nebulae/ngc-7822/) This image was made from a combination of data taken in 2014 and 2017 using a Takahashi FSQ106 with a SXV-H9 in 2014 and my TMB92ss with a QSI583ws in 2017. Using recent improvements in astropixelprocessor I was able to finally combine this data into one result improving details in the central part of the nebula. Processing was fully done using astropixelprocessor and adobe photoshop. This region is quite interesting and I think my next project will be to expand the range around the nebula because there is much more nice nebulosity in this region.