Graham Darke

The field around the open star clusters M46 and M47 is rich although it never gets very high from my location in Northern England. This view was from my Bortle 8 garden last night as measured with my new Sky Quality Meter. I got an SQM of 18.65. The field of view encompasses no fewer than 5 open star clusters being: M46 (left of centre) M47 (right of centre) NGC2423 ( the large loose group above M47) NGC2425 (the tight grouping just below the very centre of the image) and NGC2414 (the small cluster near the bottom right corner) as well as the planetary nebula NGC2438 which which sits on the to

That is lovely that Alan. This object is on my list to capture. I've seen it visually a number of times but don't have an image of it yet.

Here's my effort in Startools 7.

It gets a thumbs up from me. Really nice image of an area I’ve not seen before.

Lovely that Peter.

Cant really show you my biggest blooper but I did once set my scope up under partial cloud as it was just starting to get dark. In my haste to get going once the clouds completely cleared I spotted what I thought was Polaris and set about polar aligning. I was very pleased with myself to get aligned very quickly. Once I did the did the first go to I realised something was very wrong. I’d polar aligned on Kochab! I wouldn’t recommend it.

Terrific image.

Very nice first image with the new camera.

Very nice! First object in Patrick Moore’s Caldwell catalogue- C1.

I’m sure I read somewhere once that the greenish colour we sometimes see in nebulae is from hydrogen beta as our eyes are more sensitive to this part of the spectrum. Not sure if that’s right.

Second image for me too. Got to have stars in the shot. Lovely!

The vignetting looks more pronounced on the left hand side. I’m not sure what that is indicating.

A good UHC filter with a 10 inch scope will be good for plenty of nebulae from your light polluted site. The dumbbell nebula is improved, as is the Ring Nebula. For fainter stuff like the Veil, it will mean being able to see them at all. Take the scope and filter to a dark site and you will easily be able to see the Rosette, North America Nebula, good view of things like the Swan (M17).

Here’s a few. The Helix was very low down and I only got 4 subs but it looks to have plenty of OIII signal. The colourful image of the North America Nebula is a composite of two images shot separately through the L-eXtreme and an IR/UV cut filter. Used the narrowband data as luminance file and the IR/UV for the rgb. That’s another way to use these filters..

Heart Nebula, Soul Nebula, Witches Broom, North America, California, Thor’s Helmet, Helix, Wizard, Elephants Trunk, Rosette are all targets I’ve imaged/ on my list to image with the L-eXtreme.