MarsG76

On 30/03/2022 at 18:43, alan potts said:

Me and my big mouth, it was cloudy until too late to start. With getting up at 5.30 most mornings the hour going forward really ruins my nights. It was only a couple on months back where I could easily get 4-5 hours in before bed, now we are down to 2 tops.

Alan 

Alan

I hear you... unfortunately if it's not weather that gets in the way of the hobby, it's life commitments.

9 hours ago, alan potts said:

I have just had a look which I have to confess seeing where you were I completely thought it was out of range. I could get onto this, albeit a bit lower than I would like. I have shot M41 a few times in the past. Seeing the last week has been very still, even Sirius was as still as I have ever seen it for many nights. I am clear tonight so I may have a go at getting a few shots of it. Not the best time of year as one of my walnut trees comes into play. It is always best before the meridian for this low down.

Alan

Looking forward to see your work.

On 28/03/2022 at 00:04, alan potts said:

Stunning, never seen that before which being where you are sort of explains why.

Alan

Thanks Alan... I would think that the Dolphin Head would be visible from NH at least?

Hello,

We're having a horrible few months with weather down in Australia... weeks of rain, rain, rain with floods, followed by a semi clear with an occasional glimmer of hope than back to weeks of rain!!!!

Having an observatory in my backyard allows me to take advantage of every clear moment, even if it's only for an hour or two... and thats exactly what I had to do to image my last few images... a game of cloud dodging was no exception to expose these two images.

These images are also exposed through Ha, O3 and Hb filters for the red, green and blue channels, a method I tried out about 6 months ago and am liking this kind of narrowband near natural looking color look.

To maximise my object gathering, I alternated exposures between the Pencil (NGC2736) and the Dolphin Head (Sh2-308) nebulae. I figured that at worst case scenario, I'll end up with a mono image or each object.

These images could do with a few more hours of exposure time, but as the weather was not playing nice and the full moon was approaching, I decided to give it a rest and find new targets once the rain and clouds clear off.

The total exposure time for the Dolphin Head was 8 hours and 40 minutes and for the Pencil was 9 hours and 50 minutes for all channels. These subs were exposed across multiple nights with throwing out around 25% due to cloud damaged subs.

Clear Skies,
Mariusz

NIce image... near full moon makes it that much more of a amazing achievement.

Awesome whisps.

Might not be a "spectacular" image in the sense of the most popular colourful nebulous kind of images but you got a freekin' jet!!!! thats spectacular to me.

Thats very good for any go, let alone a first go.

Excellent image... one of the galaxies I wish I could try and image from Australia.

I like this image, a lot.. awesome detail, and glow....

Nice detail in the dust lane.

Thats very close up... electronic focusing will help you nail that pin point focus, and I'm sure you realise, the slightest breeze will show star bounces.

Nice closeup

Very nice.. sometimes plain and simple is the most rewarding.

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
 

On 21/02/2022 at 01:31, maro21 said:

Hello , My name is Mark , I`m 45 ,I live in Poland . I `m interested in astrophotography and i made my first picture 8 years ago.

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.

7 hours ago, Roy Foreman said:

Very nice image well done. I share your pain regarding cloud cover. Think I've had just two really clear nights in four months. No imaging session ever gets finished. We can only hope that one day the weather will improve.

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