Yawning Angel

20 minutes ago, John_D said:

Fantastic. That should be printed and hung on the wall 😁

Thanks! I could almost wallpaper the house with it 🙂

On a whim, I mounted the C11 last night intending to do a bit of a shakedown of the setup after adding a new focus motor and powerbox.

I got carried away.

47 panels, 500 frames each. C11, ProPlanet 642 filter with the asi178mm

Stacked in AS!4.0.11, Mosaic in MS ICE, processed PixInsight and PS

Click (34mb just under 12000 x 12000)

On 15/04/2024 at 11:57, Adreneline said:

Interesting to see what you've achieved - I am currently imaging the exact same thing and have amassed 150m of R, G and B and 90m of Lum - it's a challenge.

I think I prefer your Medium Iris but your Bold dust/background.

Adrian

Thank you! I'll be redoing it from scratch when I add some more integration time, and I agree that there is a balance somewhere between those two.

It's been a few years since I tried the Iris Nebula from my B6 back garden. This is 5 hours of luminance and just over 2 hours of RGB, captured over 2 nights last week. 

APM 107 / asi1600m / Baader LRGB filters. Processed in PixInsight, including RC tools

3 processed versions. To my eyes and on my screen I'm torn between the Medium and Bold

Light

Medium

Bold

Thanks for looking!

1 hour ago, Mr Spock said:

Excellent 👍 I think the white / red loses a bit of highlight detail though.

Thanks! I see what you mean, yes. A second pair of eyes is invaluable! It's been a tricky one for me, and I'm sure to reprocess it several more times 🙂

Complete for now, 4 panels California nebula in Ha and Sii. Oiii is for another season now, sadly

Choose your colour scheme 🙂

Tonight's moon, mono RGB capture at 700mm with an asi178mm. AS!4, Registax, MS ICE and Photoshop

You can see in the image where some of the issue comes from - AS! tracks the movement of features inside the alignment points you set, if the feature moves too much, it looses it's lock on the feature. I'd review the tiffs for outliers where the moon moved significantly and remove them, then restack the remainder with much a much larger AP size and see how it improves

But as above, stack before any processing 🙂 
  

7 minutes ago, PatrickO said:

Thanks. Why is using a Barlow or reducer a worse option?

The Nikon will produce compressed video...which you can use, but wont be the quality of the ASI, so the Barlow isn't needed.

The beermat maths for sampling is an F ratio around 5x the pixel size. The 4SE is f/13, so you need to aim for 2.6nm ish. If you reduce it, the pixel size naturally shrinks too taking you further from ideal (your 224 has 3.75nm pixels). Of course, seeing plays a huge part, so these differences are less noticeable

You could go for a asi178, which is 2.4nm too, but your 'best' option for FOV without glass (I'd avoid adding glass if it's not needed) would be an asi585 (or equiv from other manufacturers). The trade-off comes in framerate. The bigger the sensor, the slower they can readout. The 224 is blazing fast, and very easy to get along with

Personally, with those options I'd go for the asi224 without a reducer or barlow, and assemble a 2 x 2 mosaic of any given feature. Its pretty simple using Microsoft ICE (free) to assemble the mosaic, or you can have Photoshop do it...or you can even do it manually

If you want to spend money, look at a camera with smaller pixels, to bring you closer to ideal sampling. 2.9nm maybe, from an asi290 / 662 / 664 or 585, depending on budget.

This has had the background cleaned up, stretched and SNCR green removal. BlurX to clean up the elongated stars a bit and then resized because it was insanely big 🙂

Autosave006a.tif

Some colour in there, looking at the stars. With some more delicate work, I think the nebulosity might show more distinct colour too

1 hour ago, PatrickO said:

Stunning image.

Thank you Patrick!

3 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Exactly what struck me.

This is top quality, seamless, precise, clean.

Olly

High praise indeed, thanks Olly!

7 hours ago, tomato said:

Great mosaic! The starless mono image could almost be a terrestrial cloudscape.

Thanks! It's almost comedic how we wait for a gap in the clouds, then photograph clouds 🙂

48 minutes ago, geeklee said:

Looks fantastic Alex, good detail in the strong signal areas and the faint stuff in the periphery looks awesome

Thanks Lee! 

8 minutes ago, WolfieGlos said:

Wow, looks like it's going to be a great project when you have the other bandwidths, but even now it's looking great

Cheers Chris! I have my fingers and toes crossed for change to capture more. 🙂

I managed to at least complete a first run on the Ha for my 4 panel California nebula, continued from here

As @ollypenrice kindly pointed out, it's way bigger than my 4 panels cover, however I think the essence is captured?

Having only the Ha for now, I've played with a few versions, including colourising (colourizing?) it, as an experiment. Click to enlarge as the images are 11800 x 4300

I'm quite fond of the coloured starless version

ais1600mm / APM 107mm / iOptron CEM60. 24 x 300 seconds, Ha per panel for around 8 hours total, processed in PixInsight

Thanks for looking!

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

It gets bigger and bigger the deeper you go

Thanks! I'd love to expand it however, the skies of Lancashire might make that a multi year project 🤣

I'm slowly imaging the California nebula as a mosaic. I'm 3 panels in (2 hrs per panel), just in Ha so far (4 planned panels) - this is my WiP

asi1600mm / APM 107mm 
Just for a sense of scale, I added my recent moon photo, which was imaged with the same gear

With added moon!:

A quick merge of 500 frame RG and B stacks before getting on with some deep sky

37 minutes ago, Astr0Kaz said:

stayed still for each 3 minute exposure, but then moved location as my mount dithered

That would suggest lens flare to me, the way it moves only if the scope moves

Shot as a warm up before some deep sky, on a shockingly cold and clear night

asi1600mm / APM 700mm / RGB

500 frames captures per channel at 2000x2000 ROI.25% stacked in AS!4, Registax, ImPPG to align then PhotoShop to combine (PixInsight is my got to, but it was busy live stacking at that point)

1 hour ago, Kinch said:

Good choice - and well done. 

Thank you and good luck with it! I'd never heard of it before last week 🙂 There doesn't seem to be an overabundance of pictures when I searched for it either

Still a work in progress, but I've had so little sky time recently, I had to create something from an unprecedented couple of 'clear' nights

The Raspberry nebula - LBM 867 / SH2 263, which I stumbled on while panning around in Stellarium, and thought it fit my FOV

9 hours with an APM 107 and asi1600mm

4hrs L, 2hrs Ha and 3hrs RGB

Processed in Pi / PS - may have over done the pink now I think about it

On 26/12/2023 at 00:47, WestCoastCannuck said:

Very nice.   For myself,  I far prefer this one to your version posted later

I think I agree with that. It's certainly sharper. Thanks!

On 26/12/2023 at 11:25, Paul M said:

That's insane

Thank you!

On 26/12/2023 at 12:57, Mr Spock said:

Nice colour to this one

Thanks! It easy to go too far with these 🙂

On 28/12/2023 at 12:52, Space Hopper said:

An excellent and inspiring result

Kind of you to say, thanks!

23 hours ago, Ags said:

Great work! Whenever I try a color moon I find highlights turn green.

Thank you! Yes, if the colour balance is green heavy it show up when you push the saturation. Photoshop 'Camera Raw Filter' can fix it with the Defringe tool

1 hour ago, Space Cowboy said:

Nice clean image with subtle colours!

Thanks!