MarsG76

Excellent image Andy. The colors and details look awesome.

Hi Astronomers, Sharing with you another of my images... another image of one of the most popular objects imaged by astroimagers... The Horsehead Nebula/Barnard 33 with Alnitak and the Flame Nebula, but exposed mainly through narrowband filters, but emulating natural colors of the object. I was planning to combine H-Alpha as red, OIII as green and H-Beta as blue channels to create a natural colour image through CCD narrowband filters, eliminating any light pollution or moon sky-glow in the process. Unfortunately, the last night when I was able to do any imaging, to expose subs of this object was on the 20th February before it was cloudy every day and night with constant rain. Having the H-Alpha and RGB data in the can, I set my exposure plan to alternate between OIII and H-Beta subs because during that night, which is luck because I only had a short window of a few hours and it turned out to be my final night of imaging for the forseeable future. I managed to get only 3 x 30 minute H-Beta and 4 x 20 minute OIII narrowband signal. After waiting for a couple of weeks, I figured that I'm not going to get much decent time on Barnard 33 before it become obscured by landmarks so I decided to combine my currently exposed subs, H-Alpha into red, OIII into green and H-Beta into blue, as planned, and added 25% intensity from my RGB subs. This image total exposure time was 9 hours and 32 minutes, consisting of 16 x 600 second 7nm narrowband H-Alpha, 4 x 1200 second 7nm narrowband OIII and 3 x 1800 second 7nm H-Beta with only 25% intensity added from the 14 subs each through red (180s), green (300s) and blue (600s) filters. Taken through a 80mm Refractor @ f6.25, on a hypertuned CGEM mount with QHY268M camera. I think that my narrowband imaging imitating natural color experiment is (once again) successful... the first time I tried this filter to channel alignment was on the Trifid nebula last August. The advantages of exposing images through this narrowband filter to channel alignment is that most of (if not all) light pollution is rejected, imaging is possible during moon light (within reason), colors look natural, I find that more detail is captured through narrowband compared to broadband filters and narrowband filtered subs are much less susceptible to lens flares/internal reflections when there are bright stars near by or near the objects. The only disadvantage I can think of is that the subs exposure times are a lot longer, resulting in much longer total exposure times needed to be spend on each image... although I'm starting to doubt this fact now after seeing how clean my H-Beta and OIII stack ended up being when they consisted only of 3 and 4 subs and perhaps shorter exposure time per channel will suffice? Clear Skies, Mariusz

Czesc Mark.. witaj and welcome

Hi All, My latest Rosette Nebula image... This images total exposure time was 7 hours and 40 minutes, consisting of 15 x 600 second 7nm narrowband H-Alpha subs for the luminance channel and 15 x 180 second red, 15 x 300 second green and 19 x 600 second blue subs for the color data... color data was exposed during a full moon. It's amazing that I had those few night to image this object in what seems to be perpetual overcast weather. Taken through a 80mm Refractor @ f6.25, on a hypertuned CGEM mount with QHY268M camera. Clear Skies. Mariusz

Well done, that is a great image deserving of the recognition.

Awesome, looks like a sulphuric fire in the sky.

here's to less clouds, much less clouds.... *holding a drink*

I spent a few hours capturing RGB data of it last night... so hopefully It'll turn out OK when I use that data to colour it....

Hi All, Sharing my image of one of the most popular object for astroimagers... The Horsehead Nebula/Barnard 33 with Alnitak and the Flame Nebula. As I continue to have terrible sky conditions for astroimaging, I'm struggling to complete any images before the imaged object season is finished. Seems like my nights are perpetually cloud covered. I'm keeping an eye on the sky, and when I spot some clarity, I immediately open the observatory and start to gather photons. I captured this image by noticing that there was a clear window of opportunity and managed to have a couple of hours of clarity before clouds returned. I'd like to capture at-least another hours worth of exposure time through this filter to smooth out some of the noise but also would like to capture other color channels and create a color photo... but with the weather being against me, I'm running out of time. This images total exposure time was 1 hour and 40 minutes, consisting of 10 x 600 second 7nm narrowband H-Alpha subs. Taken through a 80mm Refractor @ f6.25, on a hypertuned CGEM mount with QHY268M camera. Clear Skies.

Hi All, My latest completed image, the Barred Spiral galaxy NGC 1512, 38 million light years away in the constellation Horologuim. This galaxy was quite difficult to image from my bortle 4-5 skies. The difficulty was in capturing the faint outer spiral arms, wheres as the galaxy's double ring galactic nucleus structure was quite easily visible, even in a single 600 second sub. This image also includes a near by lenticular galaxy, NGC1510, which is in the process of merging with NGC1512, causing the tidal distortion of the outside spiral arms. Imaged in Ha & LRGB with my QHY268M camera, through a C8 SCT at 2032mm focal length, tracked on a hyper-tuned CGEM mount for a total exposure time of 12 hours and 5 minutes. Clear Skies, MG

Hi All, As time goes on, with hectic life and a combination of (what seems like) strategically placed full moon and clouds in the sky, I find myself with less and less time to spend on the hobby... imaging is mostly automatic with my now remote accessible and controllable backyard observatory, but I still find that I'm rushing my latest images... in exposure time and processing... Either way, I had a little bit of imaging time so I decided to hit 3 objects in one clear full night... and repeat exposing the three objects through various (but the same filters) in one night... This is the famous "Flame" Nebula - NGC2024, seen in almost every Horsehead nebula image and is an emission nebula in the constellation "Orion", located about 1350 LY away. This image was a side project after the two galaxies I was imaging on the same dates (NGC1512 & NGC1232 still waiting to be processed) have drifted out of line of sight. This image would have been perfect for such a short exposure time at this focal ration if not for the corrector plate reflections caused by the bright star, "Alnitak". This image was exposed across multiple nights between 14 and 31 December 2021 for the Luminance, Red, Green and Blue channels for a total exposure time of only 3 hours and 45 minutes. Image taken through a Celestron 8" SCT at f10 (2032mm focal length) using a QHY268M astronomy camera on a CGEM mount. Clear Skies, MG

Hello and welcome from another Aussie...

That looks awesome, well done....

What an awesome image and object... well done.

Greetings Astronomers, Sharing with you my image of The "Southern Triangulum" Galaxy - NGC300 is located in the constellation "Sculptor". Known as the "Southern Triangulum" because it resembles your northern galaxy M33 within the constellation "Triangulum" which is not visible from the far southern hemisphere latitudes. Imaged across multiple nights (fighting many cloudy nights) between 29 October and 2 November 2021 for the Luminance and Hydrogen Alpha data for a total exposure time of 12 hours and 50 minutes, than added the color data I captured between 28 September and 24 October back in 2019 with my full spectrum modded and cooled DSLR. I captured a night worth of R, G & B data through filters with my QHY268M, but I think my RGB filters are of either very poor quality and/or leak too much NIR resulting in a flattening/canceling of the color signal where the combined data turned out looking sepia-mono with very little color vibrance... This I will need to investigate further. It's forecast to rain and cloud for the next week, so I had the option of either wait until (possibly) after the full moon to capture new color data, process as a monochromatic image or add my old DSLR OSC stack captured in the past as color data to color the QHY268M UV/IR Cut Luma stack. Image taken through a 8" SCT using a QHY268M astronomy camera at f6.3 and a full spectrum modded and cooled Canon 40D DSLR. Clear Skies, MG