Yoddha

Hello, The calendar APT 2024 contains a total of 16 beautiful images and short info about the objects. What makes it astro calendar are the marked 148 celestial events. To make it handier on every page there is a dedicated QR code showing the monthly events list to help your observations planning. Get it from here - https://www.astrophotography.app/Calendar.php Print it as many times as you want and gift a copy to your friends and relatives passioned by the beauty of the universe. An idea for interesting present for the coming holidays

This is the last day when you can vote! Give thumbs for all the images you want to see in the calendar

We are very happy that the idea is so well accepted 🙂 There is few more time to submit your image... Also, it is time to start evaluating the images in order to make the final images selection. Please give your votes (forum registration is needed). You can give 3 to 1 thumbs for several images you like. Ideally for the 12 images you would like to see in the calendar 🙂 Thank you very much for being part of this project!

Digging in my database of source images created by APT, I have found that there are several objects which I didn’t process at all. This one is a quite old – imaged in September-October 2021… Abell 79 ("The 6 Nebula") is a planetary nebula with an unusual shape. It is located in the Lacerta constellation at a distance between 3600 and 5800 ly from Earth and is expanding at 12.5 km/s. The central white dwarf is very weak 18m and according to the known information is too cool to ionize the surrounding gas in the observed levels. So, it is supposed that there is, a not found yet, hot companion that can do that. Maybe the interaction between these two is the reason for the strange arcs which by the way are mainly from hydrogen. Interestingly the object is described to have strong emission in NII (stronger than Ha and OIII together), however I don’t have such filter to explore it Also didn’t manage to find any image of it in that part of the spectrum… In fact, Abell 79 is very rarely imaged and maybe it will not sound very modest, but this is one of the deepest images made recently (up to 2023). The object is well placed in Autumn and you still can give it a try this season 😉 Total 22h 10min in 4 nights - Ha (66x600s), OIII (67x600s), RC250 @ f/5.5, ASI2600MM, CEM60, Astrodon 3nm filters Acquisition : APT - Astro Photography Tool, PHD2 Processing: PixInsight, PS

Hi Alan, Many thanks! Interesting feature, this season will add more data to see how long are these "tentacles" are

Hello, I continue to process piled data… Let warmup for the new M1 season with a processing an image taken in the end of the previous two Included are sub taken in Feb 2022/2023. These from 2022 were just a test, but are thrown into the mix My tradition is to pack all non-testing images with some information, no matter how famous the object is. Someone can find something new or just like reading it M1, NGC 1952 or the Crab nebula is located in the constellation Taurus. It is first identified in 1731 by John Bevis, but because the internet was very slow by these years it was independently re-discovered in 1758 by Charles Messier (and most likely by others during these almost 30 years). Charles Messier has been trying to find Haley’s comet - predicted to return in late 1758. Because M1 is near the ecliptic where the comet hunt happens, he mistaken that fussy blotch with the Haley’s comet. Messier decided that it would be handy to have a list of the “static” objects with their coordinates, in order to easily identify if something is a comet or not. Till the end of his life, that catalog grew to 103 objects. Yes, we all know that Messier’s Catalog contains 110 objects, but this is after the last update made in 20th century. The traces of M1 are traced back to the year 1054. In the archives of at least five Chinese astronomers there are records for a “guest star”, so bright that was possible to be seen during the day and to read on its light during the night. The earliest reported date is July 4th… We don’t know how many clouded days/nights there were between explosion and the discovery, but by that time there were no much telescope purchases, so maybe they had more clear skies These are the first identified records for observing supernova explosion. M1 is around 6500 ly away from Earth and has a diameter of around 10ly. The measured expansion speed is ~1500 km/s or 0.5% of the light speed. The explosion left one of the first discovered pulsars. This neutron star is 28-30 km in diameter and spins 30.2 times per second. Knowing the exact date (a few difference days is not counted) is priceless for the scientists and helps them to explore the pulsars' nature. It is not known how bright the star was before the explosion. However, it should be less than the naked eye limit. Maybe it would be in the range of the current amateur binoculars and telescope as M1 is located in the near-by Perseus Arm of Milky Way… The nebula from this image had been just a smaller or bigger dot 970 years ago! Total 9h 25min in 5 nights - OIII (63x180s), Ha (188x120s), RC250 @ f/5.5, ASI2600MM, CEM60, Astrodon 3nm filters Acquisition : APT - Astro Photography Tool, PHD2 Processing: PixInsight, PS

Many thanks, Jon! After all many complicated things reaches to simple things like apples, candles and focusing 🤣 In fact the biggest gravitational scope problem is the collimation 🤣

Many thanks, Paul! The Cosmic Horseshoe looks very interesting. Did you finish the image?

Many thanks, Dave!

Many thanks, Adrian!

Hello, Gravitational lensing is predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity almost a century ago. It took 40 years till it was observed for the first time in 1979. It can be explained with older methods like apple and candle If you put an apple between you and the candle flame you will not see the flame. Moving your point of view up a bit, you can see behind the apple. However, if that apple is very massive it will bend the light and you will see that very same light without moving. So, in other words put something heavy enough in front and you will be able to see some things behind it. Even better, there is some magnification! How heavy should this apple be to act as a good lens? Blackhole scale at least, but it is much easier with heavy galaxies clusters. They are like telescopes in space and we are looking through them Well, in fact there are more requirements in order the scope to be in focus - the lens mass, the distance between us and between the lens and the object are connected. So, not every galaxy cluster could provide a good view for us, most of the time there is nothing in the lens sweet spot or we are looking in the lens from too close or too far This is not the case with Cheshire Cat - we have well focused imagen produced by the gravitational lens of a galaxy cluster! The "eyes" and the "nose" are huge elliptical galaxies dominating the small cluster SDSS J103842.59+484917.7 which is around 4.6 billion light years from us. Their light recorded in this image was emitted around the time our Sun was forming! The "smile" and the left contour of the face are the lens magnified images of four distant galaxies behind the eyes! Measuring the red-shift (0.966 according to https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/761/1/1/pdf) of these "images" is considered that background galaxies are around 10.1 billion light years away !!! So, by double stacking my 250mm telescope with the SDSS J103842.59+484917.7 "space telescope" is possible to see something 10 giga light years away! What a travel in space and time!!! (The reference image in bottom right is taken with a real space telescope - Hubble...) Total 31h 45min in 8 nights in 2 years - L(107x900s bin 1x1), RGB(20x300s bin 2x2 each), RC250 @ f/5.5, ASI2600MM, CEM60 Acquisition : APT - Astro Photography Tool, PHD2 Processing: PixInsight, PS

Here you can find more info, post and https://aptforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=6471

Thank you very much!

Delphinus is one of the small constellations in the northern sky. It is frequently overlooked because there are so many famous objects in the nearby constellations... Somehow it became the most favorite summer constellation of my wife Maria and decided that I have to put something fancy under the belt from there... Also, it is our kind of first-level measurement of how good the sky is. No Delphinus, find something else to do By the way, if someone has missed it, Gamma Delphinus - the nose of the dolphin, is very beautiful color contrast binary Abell 72 (PK 059+18.1) is very interesting planetary which is a well-kept secret by the Dolphin. It is faint and requires a serious amount of imaging time. The OIII signal is strongest (while it still has low surface brightness) and frequently is the only narrowband filter used to image this beauty. The Ha channel is four times weaker... So, I have decided to use an unusual strategy and to image the Ha channel in 2x2 binning. It had paid off giving more 3D effects and more details than the other images (few of them available) without spending too much time. The available information about the the nebula is not too much It is around 3700 l.y. away, approximately 2 l.y. wide. The low surface brightness is a sign that it is an old planetary nebula. Total 12h 10min in 5 nights - Ha (116x300s), OIII (30x300s), RC250 @ f/5.5, ASI2600MM, CEM60, Astrodon 3nm filters Acquisition : APT - Astro Photography Tool, PHD2 Processing: PixInsight, PS Hope you will enjoy the sight

BTW in the clip Polaris is used for reference, but I suppose that you can use terrestrial objects too...

Hi Brendan, I think that reason for the behavior is the one you suggested - cone error... It is causing pointing with big difference from both sides of meridian, so big that GoTo++ measures thousands of pixels which the EQMOD takes as position back from the other side of the meridian. APT is not bug free (as any software more complex than a basic calculator) but the flip is working for many users, which should mean that there is no obvious and general problem... Maybe this clip could be in help to fix the cone error - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WatdQlPp22Y

Hello, The object is just getting handy for imaging, but this image is from the previous season. The data are well matured, so decided to give them a try 🤣 In autumn 2022 I imaged The Heath nebula with the ZS110 refractor, however The Fish Head didn't fit in the FOV, so in the winter made a project just for it. Here you can see the The Heart nebula project and short info about the object: https://www.astrobin.com/hjuwfz/ Total 13h 20min in 3 nights - Ha (80x300s), OIII (80x300s), RC250 @ f/5.5, ASI2600MM, CEM60, Astrodon filters Acquisition : APT - Astro Photography Tool, PHD2 Processing: PixInsight, PS

Many thanks, Mariusz! The AI is getting speed so will not wonder if it reaches the imaging process too...

Many thanks, Steve!

Many thanks, Peter!

Thank you very much, Dave! This time boldly used APT 🤣🤣🤣

Hello, This is my second attempt at this target. The first one was 6 years ago, when it was a much more exotic project than now Six years later the cameras and the software are much better and give more opportunities to explore the faint edges of the universe! Of course, the filters are of great help... I'm curious where we will be after another 6 years! Here you can see the previous attempt - https://www.astrobin.com/316580/ The star Wolf-Rayet 134 (the brightest star in the center of the Ring Nebula) is a very hot star with temperature over 63,000 K and luminosity around 400,000 times than the Sun. Its radiation and very powerful winds are the reason to form the ring-shaped nebula in the mix of stellar matter and surrounding gas. Despite it looking like a planetary nebula, it is formed the same way as the Bubble nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars lose a huge part of their mass in stellar winds, which helps in creating the spectacular view. The distance from Earth is ~6000 ly and mass of WR 134 is considered as 18 solar masses, which combined with its super high temperature is putting it in the path of becoming a super-nova when it reaches the end of life... WR 134 is one of the first three stars with unusual emission lines in the spectrum which lead to forming a new star's class - Wolf-Rayet stars. Total 15h 10 min, in 130x420s, William Optics ZS110, ASI2600MM, Ha and OIII filters, APT, PHD2, PI, PS

You can increase Delay Flip Move to 7 or 10 mins. If there is no danger to hit something you can lower Flip Moment to 2-3 min As a result, will have almost same waiting time, but will give more time the object to get away from the meridian.

Clearing the cone error will help to the GoTos and to the flip

No wrong thing, just wondering how do you align the scope