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Widefield of the Virgo Cluster featuring Markarians Chain and lots of faint Fuzzies ... Data aquired on night of 9th April 2024 which was moonless Equipment Imaging Telescopes William Optics Redcat 61 Imaging Cameras ZWO ASI2600MC Pro Mount ZWO AM5 Filter Optolong L-Quad Enhance 2" Software Adobe Photoshop · Aries Productions Astro Pixel Processor (APP) · Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight · Russell Croman Astrophotography BlurXTerminator · Russell Croman Astrophotography NoiseXTerminator · Russell Croman Astrophotography StarXTerminator · ZWO ASIAIR Acquisition details Dates: 9 Apr 2024 Frames: 115×120″(3h 50′) Integration: 3h 50′ Avg. Moon age: 0.85 days Avg. Moon phase: 0.81% Pixel scale: 2.585 arcsec/pixel

Second entry from me : IC443 Jellyfish Nebula in Gemini - A 2 panel mosaic : this is a merge/mix of two processed colour palettes , a dynamic SHO mix (Foraxx) and a classic SHO modified using Narrowband normalisation in PI, plus slective colour tweaks in Photoshop. Aquisition: Dates: 18 / 19 / 30 Jan 2024 22 / 24 / 26 Feb 2024 3 Mar 2024 Frames: Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2": 73×300″(6h 5′) Antlia 3nm Narrowband Oxygen III 2": 47×300″(3h 55′) Antlia 3nm Narrowband Sulfur II 2": 41×300″(3h 25′) Integration: 13h 25′ Resolution: 7966x5991 Equipment Imaging Telescopes Astro-Tech AT106EDT Imaging Cameras ZWO ASI2600MM Pro Mounts Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 GT Accessories APM-Riccardi Apo Reducer 0.75x M63 (APM-RIRED-M63-small) Software Adobe Photoshop · Aries Productions Astro Pixel Processor (APP) · Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight · Russell Croman Astrophotography BlurXTerminator / NoiseXTerminator / StarXTerminator · Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA)

This image is using new data aquired this year 2024 from my back garden in central England, mainly in January and then a couple of rare opportunities in February when rain clouds dispersed. The colour mix is an SHO baseline and inspired by a SHO image posted up several years ago by Sara Wagner, that image is still on her website to see. The stars are a HOO pixelmath combination with some curves that results in a close approximation to RGB stars Bryan Image details : Dates: 17 / 18 / 24 / 26 / 30 Jan 2024 22 / 24 Feb 2024 Frames: Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2": 154×300″ (12h 50′) Antlia 3nm Narrowband Oxygen III 2": 19×300″ (1h 35′) Antlia 3nm Narrowband Sulfur II 2": 55×300″ (4h 35′) Integration: 19h Equipment Imaging Telescope : Astro-Tech AT106EDT Imaging Cameras : ZWO ASI2600MM Pro Mounts : Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 GT Accessories : APM-Riccardi Apo Reducer 0.75x M63 (APM-RIRED-M63-small) Software : Stefan Berg Nighttime Imaging 'N' Astronomy (N.I.N.A. / NINA) Aries Productions Astro Pixel Processor (APP) Pleiades Astrophoto PixInsight Adobe Photoshop CC BlurXTerminator / NoiseXTerminator / StarXTerminator

Sh2-224 is a very faint supernova remnant located approximately 14,700 light years distant in the constellation Auriga. I planned this image this with great intentions back in October 2023 to go long and deep , original plan was 20hrs+ for each channel of Ha and Oiii, then the reality of UK winter weather set in and there was no imaging from around mid-November until mid-January 2024, nothing for 6-8weeks. I've decided to process what I have aquired as the moon is now becoming too bright for Oiii on this target - I've got close to my original plan and not convinced a few more hours would make a huge improvement - it needs 30-40hrs on Oiii and thats a big comitment here in UK to get quality Oiii data from our high humidity skies.... and watching subs roll in with no hint of any structure for hours and hours is not a huge amount of fun 🙄 I processed the Ha channel in December and the Oiii this evening and for nearly 16hrs of Oiii subs there was very little signal to work with, however perseverance and GHS has resulted in this image below, using foraxx HOO pallette, There is an issue with rotation between Ha integration and Oiii integration as I had to dismantle my rig and dehumidify the lens cell and the reducer after all the rain in December -I had marked the orientation when I took everything to pieces, but clearly not quite accurately enough..... I could crop it out, top left, - but its a quirk of the aquisition process over 4 months and countless rain storms and cloud cover... Dates: 13 Oct 2023 3 Nov 2023 6 Nov 2023 10 Nov 2023 9 - 10 Jan 2024 14 Jan 2024 Frames: Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2": 226×300″(18h 50′) Antlia 3nm Narrowband Oxygen III 2": 189×300″(15h 45′) Integration: 34h 35′ Imaging Telescopes Astro-Tech AT106EDT Imaging Cameras ZWO ASI2600MM Pro Mounts Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 GT Filters Antlia 3nm Narrowband H-alpha 2" Antlia 3nm Narrowband Oxygen III 2" Accessories APM-Riccardi Apo Reducer 0.75x M63 Integrated using AstroPixel Processor Processed with Pixinsight and Russ Croman XT_Suite and stretched with GHS

Brilliant - next step(s) - a mosaic to NGC1333

Ah, yes GHS is an incredibly powerful tool, it does a lot, at this stage of processing you highlight I use GHS to adjust colour saturation and also some localised contrast adjustments and final black point adjustments. Adam Block did a great free video on his YouTube channel about using GHS , : Pixinsight : GHS Explained. Adam also provided another free video called Pixinsight in Focus : Stretch Academy I would recommend both as they give a lot of in depth teaching as to what stretching does to an image and the tools used and when they can be applied. Bryan

I would recommend that you review other images of this region as I would not really describe the areas around the bright stars as Halos. https://astrob.in/1yj0zd/B/ I think there are two things here, first, the diffuse areas around the bright stars are real as this is an area of space with large amounts of gasses and dust, which the stars irradiate , the very definition of an emission nebula and therefore result in this diffuse effect over the stars that are obscured by gasses and dust in space and or the stars are behind , as in light years behind, but their light is diffused/scattered as it passes through this region of space as viewed from earth. Second , yes you may also have some effect due to atmospheric seeing, high humidity, as you mentioned that mist rolled in and you had to delete 6hrs of images subs due to mist, so that could also be something that has contributed to this - but looking at other broadband images, these stars do have nebulosity around them. To your point on StarXT - it is 'trained' to remove bright point objects, stars, and leave behind nebulosity, which it has done in this image and it is not able to tell if the diffuse areas around bright objects are space based nebulosity or earth based atmospheric seeing issue due to high cloud /high humidity. In my view StarXT is performing its job 100% on this image.

So I have enjoyed working with your data, yes its 3hrs and yes its got noise, but in UK getting 3 hrs broadband is a result.... I initially used GradXpert in its new AI mode to remove gradients from the original linear image you posted , then brought that file into PI and then used Pixinsight with the Rus Croman XTsuite and GHS for all the processing and list the History explorer beside the images. As per above suggestions I used Rangemask operation to generate a mask that I used to apply NoiseXT and LHE operations, the final mask is a colour mask fof blue as there was a blue cast accross the bottom of the image, however I did apply NoiseXT to the linear image after StarXT as it was clear that the image does have a lot of noise and seems that for this particular image applying NoiseXT before a stretch helps , I applied at 0.4 strength The final image is a pixelmath op_screen() of starless and stars Thisis by no means definitive as above, there are many different ways to process the same data, thsi is my contribution on a wet and windy afternoon Bryan

The wide field is simply stunning, the dark nebula against the rich Ha is absolutely captivating

The PHD logs can be downloaded from ASIair and analysed with PHD2 log file viewer as well - so you can do some comparisons with raw guide data from an ASIair controller and PHD2 running on windows or Linux

I drive the AM5 from an ASIair Plus. All my recent images with my Stellamira 90EDT plus FF/FR with resolution of 1.7"/pix were on AM5 guided via ASiair and it didnt drop a sub due to erratic guiding - so for me its a soild performer Not entirely sure why you suspect that the ASIair reports better guiding figures as it is PHD2 that ZWO have included in the software platform to perform the guiding on the ASIair (albeit a version that does not give you the same level of configuration as the stand alone version) The ZWO forum thread that I got all my information from is still live, Its a long read , but there is a lot of really solid information from Chen, @w7ay - https://bbs.astronomy-imaging-camera.com/d/15989-getting-the-best-performance-from-my-am5 Regards the OAG aspect of guiding an AM5 - Chen indicates that a large (ish) objective guidescope that gives good stars to enable multi star guiding is preferable for guding AM5 due to the requirement to refresh the guide commands to AM5 0.5s - 1.5s You also need to limit the max move pulses - this thread explains it all in quite a lot of detail. Hope this useful

I have both mounts that you mention, AZ EQ6 GT and recently bought a AM5. The AM5 is amazing, I also bought the carbon fibre tripod, you can lift mount and tripod with one hand, so will put very little strain on back and knees moving it around. One point that I found out is that harmonic drives in general require to be driven (pulse guided) a lot more than the traditional GEM mounts, there is a really informative thread on the ZWO forum, the expert is Chen @w7ay that explains the way harmonic mounts need to be driven to get best guiding, but in summary you need to use PHD2 (or equiv) multi star guiding and use 0.5 - 1.5s exposures and use small guide pulses <100ms with very little aggression <40%. I have used this and achieved <0.5" RMS regularly and sometimes down to 0.3" RMS. A colleague in our astronomy club put a C11 on his AM5 and got guiding of 0.5" RMS. Been thinking about your connectivity - so you will have power at the bottom of your garden, as in mains power ? If you do the perhaps a Wireless Ethernet bridge system would be very effective that would connect via the ASIair ethernet port and link into your home network so you can connect to the ASIair anywhere in you house where you have your home network.. This is an Amazon link - may give you some ideas as to how this may work. https://amzn.eu/d/hOsyCdC Bryan

Sunday 22nd October was forcast clear - and it was... Seen many images of the Wolf Rayet 134 object and also Sh2-101 Tulip nebula, but only recently realised that they could be captured in same FOV. Set the framing up in Telescopius and got the centre RA/DEC which I put into ASIair and set an autorun going for 4 hrs. I blended in an older image of the Tulip in SHO using PS and modified the colour of the HOO Foraxx L-Extreme image so it all had a balance. Dates: 22 Oct 2023 Telescope : Stellamira 90EDT with 0.8 FF/FR Mount: ZWO AM5 Filter: Optolong L-eXtreme 2" Camera: ASI2600MC Frames : 48×300″(4h) Integration: 4h (plus 7hrs on Tulip from SHO image)

Such a lot of detail to see in your image - love the colour palette - your young necromancer very much wrapped in Saltire colours

A dark nebula from my back garden - took advantage of no moon, so an OSC/RGB image - no filters, used Stellamira 90mm EDT, AM5 mount and ASI2600MC controlled by ASIair. 120 subs of 120s each - so only 4hrs - was pleasantly surprised Integrated with APP, I used the new GaXpert AI release to remove gradients - one click - then processed in PI Bryan