gorann

Thank you for the kind words Rodd! SQM that night was around 20.1, with the moon just below the treeline. On the best of nights I get 21.6. But this is NB so not that critical. And it is a dual band filter (IDAS NBZ) so no hassle with changing filters - just keep shooting as long as the sky permits.

Very nice Rodd! Second one for me too. Maybe try to tweak the yellow towards red if you want to get the more naturally looking image suggested by Olly. If Ha is in the green channel, move it to the red channel, and Siii in the green (so HSO instead of SHO).

There is quite a lot going on in this area of Cygnus that I recently imaged with my dual-RASA8 rig and NBZ (Ha+Oiii) filter. First, to the left, there is WR 134, a variable Wolf-Rayet star at a distance of about 6000 ly. Its intense wind of radiation pushes out a bubble like structure emitting faint but distinctive Oiii light. Then there is the strongly Ha emitting Tulip nebula at the bottom right. However, maybe most interesting is the bluish egg-shaped structure just to the right of the Tulip nebula. I had no idea it was there until I started processing the image. I asked Wim van Berlo @wimvb, who is good with atlases and catalogues, if he could find out what it was. It turned out to be a shock structure created by the the stellar black hole Cygnus X-1 interacting in a binary structure with the blue supergigant variable star designated HD226868 (the bottom one of the two brighter stars just below the blue egg). It is one of the most intense x-ray sources detected. Interestingly Cygnus-X1 was the first object confirmed to be a black hole, having 10 solar masses and spinning around 800 times per second. More here: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03879 Finally, as a bonus there is also the small blue planetary nebula NeVe 2 (http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=NeVe%202%20). You can find it by zooming in near the right top edge, at 8 o'clock from the bright blue star 25 Cyg. Acquired with two RASA8 with ASI2600MC and IDAS NBZ filter on a Mesu 200 mount. 120 x 5 min = 10 hours. Processed in PI and PS (starless processing of course - I used a 50-50 mix of StarNet2 and StarXTerminator). Cheers, Göran

Maybe it could be the next best if you do not have a Tomatobro😉

Interesting solution and it got me thinking, maybe one could just use a digital kitchen scale to press up on the scope on each side, one like this (so no need for a computer). Or if it is too heavy for it, then one of those used by sports fishermen with some sling attached. Cheers, Göran

Thanks Steve! Often I find them scanning Aladin Sky Atlas, but in this case there were a few images on Astrobin, most of them just showing a little piece of it drowned in stars, so I got inspired to show more of it.

Thanks a lot Bryan! Yes more is in the pipeline😁

This is a two-panel mosaik from my dual RASA8 rig acquired over two nights 30 August to 1 September. This Supernova remnant (G65.3+5.7) in the southern part of Cygnus is about as big as the Veil nebulae complex but much weaker. It is also further away, about 2500 Ly as compared to 1500 Ly for the Veil nebulae, and it is four times older (about 30000 years), so in reality it is probably bigger. Indeed, it do extend a bit outside my field of view although I caught most of the brighter parts. This is a HaOiii image was acquired with the IDAS NBZ filter on my dual-RASA8 rig. Processed in PI and PS. Starless processing was essential to bring out the faint nebulosity. StarXTerminantor did for once a terrible job but fortunately StarNet2 nailed it. Totally 244 x 5 min, so 20.5 hours. Cheers, Göran

Thanks Phil, much appreciated - I hope it looks good also at 32"!

Thanks a lot, you are too kind!

Olly and Maurice @ollypenrice@mftoet, I realize now that the red in the nebulae is likely to be more orange dust than red Ha. I assume there is dust out there reflecting brown/orange. Maurice Ha image convince me that it could hardly be Ha. So I tuned down the red to be more close to reality: Thanks for the feed back and Cheers, Göran

You really caught a lot of the outer dust but I have to agree with Olly, the sky is a bit too dark the stars are a bit too big. There are also star artifacts. I wonder if StarTools is really doing its job on the stars properly, but I know little about that software. With just the RASA8 data I think you should be able to get better and smaller stars.

Thanks a lot Simmo!

Thanks a lot an Yes Olly, I was fighting with the red that appeared to be leaking through all over by its own. The data did this more or less by its own and I decided to leave it like this. I noticed that in LBN 531 what is usually seen as dark patches are now quite red (except in its head for some reason). Obviously there is a red signal there but maybe it needs to be suppressed and I am too weak to tell it off😅. Cheers, Göran

Thanks a lot Peter, much appreciated as allways!

Third image(s) of the season While aiming at this area in Vulpecula I had my dual-RASA8 rig acquiring RGB (no filter) on one scope and HaOiii (NBZ filter) on the other and then processing it with and without stars (using Star XTerminator). The differences were striking. Image A shows what it looks like in RGB, with an overwhelming golden star field and with the HA emitting nebulae quite obscured. Image B shows the starless version of the HaOiii image taken with the IDAS NBZ filter, revealing that behind the stars is a thick mesh of dark nebulosity apparently covering what could be a wide reaching area of Ha emitting nebulae. In Image C, I combined 75% of the HaOiii data with 25% of the RGB data and added the RGB stars at a suppressed level to still show what was lurking behind. The patch of blue nebulosity at the very left edge with a striking blue star in the centre (if you zoom in) is the planetary nebula LAN 21 I find it quite striking how different celestial objects look when aquired and processed in different ways. So, two RASA8 with ASI2600MC without or with an IDAS NBZ filter, on a Mesu 200 mount. 61 x 5 min with the NBZ filter and 95 x 3 min without filter, so totally about 10 hours. Processed in PI and PS. Very happy for comments of course Cheers, Göran Here pure RGB - overwhelmed by stars.... Here a starless HaOiii image - a lot of dark nebulosity and dust covering the Ha emitting nebulosity And my final version of it. HaOiiiRGB. Not an easy task to process and many choices to make. And an annotated image so you know what you are looking at

Thanks a lot Bryan, Onikkinen and Carole for you kind words! In this image I decided to hold down the dust a bit to allowe the main features stand out. There is certainly a lot of dust in this area and a lot of dust in the data.

Thanks a lot Steve! To me the head of the top one looks a bit like a seagull but not sure what to make about the rest of its body😅. The bottom one looks like it has been decapitated and is on its way down.... I had missed that there is a new SGL challenge that may be relevant to me, and maybe I can come up with something else from Ceph or Cass.

Resizing is simple in PS. I do it kind of manually by measuring the distance between the same two points (could be stars or anything that you see in both images) in the two images (using the ruler tool in PS). Dividing one length with the other gives you the factor you can use to resize one of the images so they will be on the same pixel scale and can be aligned.

Thanks a lot Dave! Much appreciated 🙂

Second light of the season with the dual-RASA rig I aimed at these odd creatures in Cepheus that were among those recently parading in the magnificent RASA mosaic presented by @ollypenrice. I got 94 x 3 min, and to LBN 531 to the left I could add another 5 hours of data from two years ago. LBN 531 is quite often imaged and spectacular enough to be given at least three annotations: LBN 531, VdB 152 and Cederblad 201. The image also contains the planetary nebula PK111+11.1 and a streak of Ha nebulosity belonging to a super-nova remnant. The RASA8-ASI2600MC combo is amazingly good at picking up Ha even without a filter. So, RASA8 with ASI2600MC without filter on a Mesu 200. 203 x 3 minutes, so totally a bit over 10 hours. Processed in PI and PS using starless processing (Star XTerminator) on the nebulosity. Cheers, Göran

Yes, skip the L-extreme, and you will find that is is actually a very bright nebula and will look good in RGB even after only 4 hours. Will be a perfect catch for your Esprit 150. CS, Göran

That is a great image and a excellent choise of sky for a mosaic Olly! So far I have only been picking pieces of it with my RASAs. Indeed I aimed at the two creatures at the bottom two nights ago. So it is great to see it all together, although it makes me wonder what is it outside the frame to right of them that make them all rush away😱. Yes, this scope - camera combo is surprisingly good at picking up Ha without any filter.

To me it looks like a military version of a Mesu 200, and the image with them all lined up looks quite threatening😆

The one with mask looks rather good so I suggest you just make the best out of the RASA you have until you get an replacement. Here are the raw fit files. Cheers, Göran 2022-08-29-2022_1-CapObj_0001.FIT 2022-08-29-2023_9-CapObj_0001.FIT 2022-08-29-2024_9-CapObj_0001.FIT