Avdhoeven

It depends what you call cheating of course. If we combine images from several nights it's fully accepted, isn't it in deep sky astrophotography? I did take the images of the M45 with Venus (very short 1s exposures!) and just overlaid it onto the earlier image aligning the stars. So yes, it's not fully made tonight, but I can say that almost not a single image is taken during one night (I do understand your point btw )

On April 3rd 2020 Venus passed through the Pleiades Star cluster. At 20:20 UTC I made images of Venus in the Pleiades and combined this image with an earlier image that I took of the Pleiades with the same setup. This is the result showing Venus during its transit through the Pleiades. Telescope: TMB92ss Camera: QSI583ws M45 Venus transit by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

NGC 7822 is a beatiful region in the constellation of Cepheus. This image shows this very nice region taken in narrowband. Processing was done using Astropixelprocessor, Pixinsight and photoshop. Telescope: TBM92SS Camera: QSI583ws Ha: 25x900s OIII: 8x900s SII: 25x900s

I just noticed this post in another topic from Merlin66: It's a long and painful story.... but just let's say JTW are no longer licensed to manufacture the Spectra-L200, and I haven't as yet found a replacement manufacturer. Sounds worrying...

I stepped out in the beginning of this year for personal reasons. It took me a while, but in the end I got all my money back. But I do understand people getting worried. It takes forever it seems. I know Mark personally, and I do know he is very good in what he does, but communication is not one of his best treats I'm afraid. I have no idea how things are going currently. Haven't been in touch for quite a while, but I really hope he can make this work. Because I'm sure if it does, it will be good... I'll keep my fingers crossed for everybody.

This image shows the result of my imaging sessions in the Eifel, Germany during my holidays last year. When I was there we had 2 very clear nights and 2 nights with some high clouds. I decided to go for a dark nebula as these are impossible to image from where I live. This image shows the Shark Nebula (LDN1235) in the constellation of Cepheus. This is a nice cloud of gas and dust which is highlighted by the light of nearby stars. Telescope: TMB92 @ f/5.5 Camera: QSI583ws Mount: Skywatcher EQ6 Exposures: L: 53 x 600s R: 9 x 600s G: 9 x 600s B: 9 x 600s Total 13,3 hours

Thanks! I'm happy to hear it touched you. That's always what I hope to achieve with these images...

This image shows the extended nebulosity around IC59/IC63. This nebulosity is very rarely found on imagery, and as far as I know only a handful of images showing this nebulosity can be found, where most of them only show a very weak impression of the nebulosity. With this image I hope to challenge people to image this beautiful region and maybe even bring out more details. It's really worth it! The image was processed with astropixelprocessor and after that the starnet++ script in pixinsight was used to separate the stars from the nebulosity. Using Niktools the nebulosity was sharpened and stretched to show more detail in the final image. Telescope: tmb92ss Camera: qsi583ws Exposure: 183x900s (46 h) with an astrodon 5 nm H-a filter

Here is the continuation of my large summer-2018 project. I had imaged this region for about 13 nights altogether between July and October 2018. You can call me crazy, using so many nights for just one object, in a region where clear nights are rare But I really wanted to see if I could catch this beautiful Supernova remnant, and I'm glad it succeeded The overview image shows the constellation of Cygnus and shows where the remnant is found. It's often also called the 'Little Veil Nebula' although it's quite a bit larger in the sky than it's name-share the Veil nebula (seen on the lower left). Recently Pixinsight was supplied with the new Starnet++ module, which you can use to completely separate the stars from the background. I used this software to enhance the very weak nebulosity and was astonished to see how much more could be drawn from the background compared to the processing I did last year. All other processing was performed using Astropixelprocessor and photoshop. Supernova remnants (SNR) are formed when a large star ends its life in a supernova explosion. About 300 of these remnants are currently known in our galaxy. One of the most famous remnants, the Veil Nebula, is located in the constellation of Cygnus. Although this is the most famous one in this constellation, it’s not the only SNR. Cygnus contains several obscure SNR’s, among which SNR 65.3+5.7 (also known as SNR 65.2+5.7). SNR G65.3+5.7 was discovered by Gull et al. (1977) during an OIII survey of the Milky Way. Some parts of this SNR were already catalogued by Stewart Sharpless in his SH2 catalog as SH2-91, SH2-94 and SH2-96, but they were not recognized as being part of a bigger structure at that time. The idea that they could be part of a larger SNR was postulated by Sidney van den Bergh in 1960, but it took until 1977 for this to be confirmed. This is one of the larger SNR in the sky spanning a region of roughly 4.0x3.3 degrees. Mavromatakis et al. (2002) determined the age of the SNR to be 20.000-25.000 years and the distance about 2.600 – 3.200 lightyears. The shell has a diameter of roughly 230 lightyears! This SNR is a predominantly OIII shell with also some H-alpha signal. This supernova shell is quite weak and there are hardly any high-resolution images of this region. In the internet maybe 5-10 deep images of this shell can be found and, in most cases, they don’t cover the entire shell or the resolution is quite low because it was done by using photo lenses at short focal lengths. That’s why I decided to see if I could try to image the entire shell using my equipment, a TMB92 refractor in combination with a QSI583ws ccd camera. Because of its large size I needed to make a 3x3 mosaic to cover the whole region. As so many nights were already necessary to cover the region in OIII I didn’t succeed in grabbing the H-alpha data, but on the internet I found the MDWsurvey (mdwskysurvey.org) initiated by David Mittelman (†), Dennis di Cicco, and Sean Walker (MDW). This is a marvelous project with the goal to image the entire northern sky in H-alpha at a resolution of 3.17”/pixel. I contacted them and told them of my effort to grab imagery of this SNR and they were very kind to provide me with the H-alpha imagery of this region, so that the entire SNR could be brought into view in reasonable high resolution. This bicolor image shows a combination of about 53h of OIII data (made by myself) and 20 hours of Ha-data (made by the MDW survey) in a single image. In this way the full span of the shell can be seen in all its glory. Image info: H-alpha (astrodon 3nm, mdwskysurvey.org😞 Telescope: Astro-physics AP130mm starfire Camera: Fli Proline 16803 5 frames of 12x1200s each OIII (astrodon 3nm): Telescope: TMB92SS Camera: QSI583ws 9 frames, 158 x 1200s total

It is a while since I took my last astro-image, but partially because of the price that my son won in the astronomy photographer of the year competition, I was stimulated again to pick up some imaging. This weekend I took three nights of the Eastern Veil (2 nights Ha and 1 night OIII). I was nicely surprised. Time to pick up imaging again, when time permits. NGC6995 Eastern Veil Nebula by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

Thanks for the nice replies. It was so nice. Davy even got in a national news site with this We also had TV in our garden (sorry, it's in Dutch):

Well, we returned yesterday from London, and I'm so proud. Davy has won the 'young astronomy photographer of the year' award. He's so happy and never dared to dream of this. He's already thinking about his next project All winners: https://www.rmg.co.uk/whats-on/astronomy-photographer-year/galleries/2019/overall-winners He was even on Dutch television in the national youth journal https://jeugdjournaal.nl/uitzending/44233-avondjournaal.html from 09:18

The "Soap Bubble Nebula" is the common name for the planetary nebula PN G75.5+1.7. This nebula was only discovered by amateur astronomer Dave Jurasevich on July 6th, 2008. It was independently confirmed and reported by Keith Quattrocchi and Mel Helm on July 17th, 2008.PN G75.5+1.7 is situated in the constellation of Cygnus, very near the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888). It is embedded in a large diffuse nebula which, in combination with its low surface magnitude, is the reason it was not discovered until recently.NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a cosmic bubble about 25 light-years across, blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. This image uses narrow band image data that isolates light from hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the wind-blown nebula. The oxygen atoms produce the blue-green hue that seems to enshroud the detailed folds and filaments. Visible within the nebula, NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away. (source: APOD)I decided in 2015 that I wanted to see if I could catch this very faint nebula with my 9.2 cm refractor. I started working on imaging this in 2015, but then I only got 4 images before weather interrupted the imaging sequence. In 2016 I was able to catch more data of this region to see what would come out. In August 2016 I took for 5 days in a row images of this nebula in H-alpha and OIII. In 2018/2019 I decided to expand the Ha dataset further and succeeded in the course of these two years to gather much more Ha-data.Equipment:Telescope: TMB92SSCamera: QSI583wsMount: Skywatcher NEQ6Exposures:H-alpha: 115x900s (29h)OIII: 32x1200s (11h)Total: 40 hours NGC6888 Crescent and Soap Bubble Nebula by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

So cool. Diplom ceremony last week at the highschool where I teach physics. Imagine yourself walking in a space suit on a stage of a 1500 seat theater with an image of m106 on the screen in the background that you processed yourself using data from several sources. Well that was one of my coolest moments (yes, that's me in the suit...)M106 image credits: Processing and assembly: André van der Hoeven (overall processing) /Roberto Colombari (color layer used)/Robert Gendler (color layer used)/Jay Gabany (H-alpha)/Fabian Neyer (nebulosity data) Data: Hubble Legacy Archive, Canadian Astronomy Data Center, Japanese National Observatory, Tzec Maun Foundation, Jay Gabany, Giovanni Paglioli, Fabian NeyerFor all info on the image you can look here: http://www.astro-photo.nl/deepsky/galaxies/m106-high-resolution-image-amateurpro-combination?fbclid=IwAR2EIfAENyW76rRFHguymazb-XZkamaSV20d3tXn-jgo9TslMR-IPGNOXvw

Thanks for the nice replies!

We did that and he's shortlisted

Davy, my son of 11, joined the astrophotographer of the year competition last year and wanted to join again this year. However, he wanted to make a deepsky recording now, so in November we went together to see if we could find a nice project that he could go on with. He went to search on the internet to see which object he wanted to photograph and came with the rosettenevel. He studied several photos and then I gave him the astroplanner software and let him determine how to put the nebula in image.Then we started in November and then together we took 3 nights of recordings of this nebula in ha, oiii and sii. The advantage of SGP is that even a child can do the work if all is well introduced SGP just runs off its program and you have a nice folder with recordings in the morning.This data I had edited myself before to see if the quality was ok, but now I wanted him to do it himself. That's why I first showed him with another recording how to process an image in APP and then combine to an RGB recording. Then how to do with PS some more color corrections to get to a final result. After that, I gave him the dataset (lights, flats, bpm and bias) and then let him go ahead. This is what came out...Sometimes as a father you can be so proud

I made a huge image of a nice SNR in Cygnus which is rarely imaged, but only the last frame of the mosaic was made in October, the rest was this summer, so unfortunately I can't submit it

Very, very nice! Astonishing piece of work!