VilleM

I made a small but quite important upgrade to my 100mm Esprit's focuser - a new gear reduction for the focus motor!
Here is a short blog post about it, really happy of how it turned out.

In the coming weekend Im going to install the new mount, cant wait for the first light with it!

https://www.evenfall.space/post/diy-gear-reduction

Glad to hear that this thread has been helpful! About the mount - I think so too, previous owner had achieved average PE of just 4 arcseconds in total. I think thats very small error and should be easy to guide out.

On 25/01/2021 at 17:33, Martin VC said:

Great Project, thank you for sharing,

I have some questions, 

Do you use a smart UPS? or How do yo realize whent the external energy supply is off?

In case the external supply is off, do you still have internet communication  to shut everything down?  or is there an automated proces for shutting down?

Sorry for late response. We dont have smart UPS, we simply rely on it to keep everything running if there is a small power outtage. If there was a larger one everything would shut down but as soon as the power is back on we would have remote access to the PC's running the telescopes and roof. They are set up to wake as soon as they receive power from the power socket. So far this has worked flawlessly.

I also have some good news about the EQ6, after all it was a very simple fix - It was solved instantly with this small upgrade called Losmandy G11! (all joking aside its still a mystery why the EQ6 behaves so weird)
Really looking forward to install the G11 to the observatory, as I expect a flawless performance from this one. It feels really high quality.

https://www.evenfall.space/post/preparing-for-the-coming-season

This image was selected as todays AAPOD! 😎

https://www.aapod2.com/blog/hartl-dengl-weinberger-2

4 hours ago, Mr Thingy said:

Lovely pictures. 

I really must learn how to get that golden colour from the Ha. It looks fantastic against the blue of the OIII.

I personally use selective colour in Photoshop for that, once you have starless SHO done with starnet you have more control over the overall look because you can edit the nebula and stars separately.

Hello, here is collage of 2020 - 2021 seasons images from my observatory, The Castle of Clouds. Combined exposure time is only ~250 hours because of technical difficulties with a faulty EQ6 mount. Better luck next season I guess.

 

Hello, I reprocessed some old data of HDW2. I wasnt really happy with the outcome before because some details were lost due to noise reduction. Now that I've had more experience in starless narrowband + RGB combination I decided to give it another try. I managed to tone down noise without losing details and improved overall contrast of the inner structure by combining the channels as HOO-RGB (previous version was HO-RGB). This also revealed the faint outter halo in OIII channel that was invisible in the previous attempt due to very faint SNR.

Data is acquired with SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5, ZWO ASI1600MM-C, EQ6 guided with ASI224MC as finder-guider, Baader narrowband filters and TS Optics RGB filters.
Ha: 36x300s, OIII 120x300s, R/G/B 10x120s each. Total integration time is 14 hours.

C&C welcome as always, larger image can be seen on my blog.
www.evenfall.space/post/ancient-planetary-nebula-hdw2

Hi! I shot this during six diffrent nights in March and April. I had to throw lots of subs out the window due to high clouds but I managed to pull off 13 hours of good quality data from those nights.

Technical details:
SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5, ZWO ASI1600MM-C, SkyWatcher EQ6 guided with ASI224MC, TS Optics LRGB and Baader narrowband filters.
Ha 60x300s, OIII 32x300s, SII 53x300s, R/G/B 10x120s. Total integration time is ~13 hours.

Larger image can be seen on my blog. www.evenfall.space/post/the-elephant-s-trunk-nebula

Hi! Here is my latest SHO image, it was a pain to acquire the data because this target sets below treeline from my observatory very early but I managed to pull off ~two hours per night.
Its almost spring so imaging season is coming to an end soon. I hope I can finish other SHO projects too in the coming weeks before astronomical darkness ends here in Finland.

27x300s SII, 30x300s Ha, 29x300s OIII. 10x120s R/G/B, total exposure time is approx. 8 hours.
Larger version: https://www.evenfall.space/post/cosmic-bloom

Thank you MartinB. Yes the skies are very good, the obsy is located in Bortle 3 -class skies. Here you can see a timelapse from there: https://www.evenfall.space/post/skywatch-10th-of-march

Thank you for your kind comments! @gorann I left it bit more neutral on purpose. It just looked better to me that way, I guess its a matter of taste.

Thank you peter. Hah yes I think I live in the cloudiest place on the planet. But I guess we all think so sometimes - especially when you buy new gear!

Hi, weather has been excellent for about a week now. Here is two finished projects from my remote observatory in Finland.
Both can be viewed larger on my blog: www.evenfall.space/post/eye-of-cepheus and www.evenfall.space/post/whale-galaxy

Iris nebula:
Skywatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5, EQ6, ZWO ASI1600MM-C, TS Optics LRGB.
L: 274x120s, R/G/B 100x120s each. Total exposure time 19 hours.

Whale galaxy:
Skywatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5, EQ6, ZWO ASI1600MM-C, TS Optics LRGB.
L: 90x120s, R/G/B: 30x120s each. Total exposure time 6 hours.

Hello, I shot this during four moonless nights in February and March. I tried to image it only during very good conditions to get most of the background galaxies. The dimmest I found is magnitude 20.
Annotated image can be seen on my blog:
https://www.evenfall.space/post/markarians-chain

Technical details:
Skywatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5, EQ6, ZWO ASI1600MM-C, TS Optics LRGB.
L: 280x120s, R/G/B 90x120s each. Total exposure time is approx. 18 hours.

Hello, here is my latest image from my remote observatory in Finland. You can see larger version in my blog:
https://www.evenfall.space/post/stellar-nursery

Taken with SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5, ZWO ASI1600MM-C, EQ6 guided with ASI224MC as finder-guider, TS Optics LRGB filters.
L: 128x120s, R: 50x120s, G: 45x120s, B: 45x120s. Total integration time is approx. 9 hours.

C&C welcome as always.

Thank you! I also made an experimental starless version with Starnet and Photoshop. I think it brings out some substle details in the background when the stars are removed.

Hello, here is my latest image from my remote observatory in Finland. Its been really cloudy lately so Im glad that I managed to get enough data during brief gaps in the clouds during few nights in January and February. More info on this object can be seen in my blog: https://www.evenfall.space/post/flames-of-auriga

SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5, ASI1600MM-C, EQ6, Baader SHO and TS Optics LRGB.
Ha 34x300s, SII 50x300s, OIII 70x300s, R/G/B 10x120s each for the stars. Total exposure time is about 14 hours.

Thank you Paul. I used Starnet to remove the stars from narrowband channels and then I combined stretched starless bicolor image with stretched RGB image using Pixinsights pixelmath. This seems to give more control over faint details and color balance.

Thank you for your kind comments! 😊

This target is not seen often in amateur photographs, perhaps because it is very faint. I shot this planetary nebula on two nights in January from my remote-controlled observatory in Finland.
In my blog you can see larger version: https://www.evenfall.space/post/ancient-planetary-nebula-hdw2

Gear:
SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5
ASI1600MM-C
EQ6 guided with ASI224MC
Ha: 36x300s, OIII 120x300s, RGB 10x120s each. Total integration time is 14 hours.

I shot luminance for this trio of galaxies in December and after two clear nights in January I managed to get RGB as well.
Larger image can be found in my blog: https://www.evenfall.space/post/galactic-waltz

Gear:
SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5
ASI1600MM-C
EQ6 guided with ASI224MC
TS Optics LRGB filters. L: 196x120s, R: 60x120s, G: 72x120s, B: 60x120s. Total integration time approx. 13 hours.

Here is my latest project that I started in December. More info on the object itself can be seen in my blog: https://www.evenfall.space/post/hinds-variable-nebula

Technical details:
SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5 with flattener, ASI1600MM-C, StarLight Xpress filter wheel with TS Optics LRGB filters. EQ6 guided with ASI224MC (finder guider).
Luminance: 136x300s and R/G/B 50x300s each channel. Total exposure time approx. 24 hours.

C&C welcome. 🙂

6 hours ago, RobertI said:

Looks great Ville. Look forward to some more content. Do you have some more pics of your observatory and equipment that you can include? 

Im glad that you like it. I do have more photos, but I havent found the time to update the observatory page yet. Meanwhile you can see my thread here on SGL to see more photos:

Hello, I started a new blog about astrophotography. It is written in english so I thought I would share it with this community aswell. This is also a good way for me to learn english and get better at writing.
There is not alot of content at the moment but hopefully I get more data to finish some ongoing imaging projects soon.

You can view my site here: www.evenfall.space

Ive started a blog about this project and everything else astronomy related that I do. Latest update to the blog is my new all sky camera build.
Have a look at: www.evenfall.space