gorann

PS. Up to the left (MBM13) I see most of the Adam's Family.....

Thanks! I do all my stretching in PS so 16 bit. I apply Star Xterminator after I start to se the first signs of nebulosity.

Thanks a lot! I am not a big fan of starless images but when I process these faint nebula images I initially make a starless version to stretch the nebulosity before bringing the stars back. However, you made me wonder what it would look like if I remove them at this final stage. So I run Star Xterminator on the final image and it looks like this. I brought the big stars back as removing them creates too much artifacts:

Thanks a lot Carole! The creepier the better!

Thanks a lot Alan! Yes, I would not aim a f/7 scope at this unless I was on a Chilean mountaintop with continuously clear skies😉

I use Seagate hard drives. The last couple I bought are 5 Tb and I think they were about 200 Euro each so not astronomically expensive. They will take me 2-3 years to fill up (if I am lucky). So far none of these hard drives have crashed and the oldest two I have are from 2014. If one crashes, which I expect will happen one day, I will just back the other one up on a new one.

This spoky mix of faint bright and dark nebulae lies west of M45 in Aries. The bright blue star to the upper right is Epsilon Arietis, which at a distance of 330 ly is visible to the naked-eye. LBN762, LBN753, and LBN743 (from Lynds' Catalogues) form the major horizontal structures across the image and are about 1000 ly away. The rather bright nebulosity annotated as LBN762 in the upper left is part of the larger collection of structures seen there catalogued by Magnani, Blitz and Mundy as MBM13. I have found very few images of most of the nebulosity seen in the image, and even fewer good ones, but a prominent exception is the APOD by Rogelio Bernal Andreo: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171209.html This is a two-panel mosiac captured over two nights (6-7 Jan 2022) with my dual-RASA rig. So RASA 8 with ASI2600MC on Mesu200, no filter, 285 x 4 min, so 19 hours. Processed in PI and PS. Cheers & CS, Göran

Nice Wim! I also see some structure in the background to the right that may be IFN.

I do not even store the calibrated images, just the raw images, the stacked image, and then all my versions during processing. I can always recreate / reprocess from scratch using the raw files (although I have never done it so far). I save everything of two hard drives (4 Tb each) and I have now filled 2 x 2 of those and I am about to start with the third couple.

Actually, if I could handle it I would like to run more - but like Dr. Frankenstein I need an Igor to help out...

Thanks Sunshine! Yes, except I have no staff sitting in front of each computer. But so far tonight it is all running smoothly....

Had quite a few clear nights here at 60°N in Sweden over X-mas and New Year but tonight seems to be the last one for a while. Right now I have my dual-RASA8 rig aiming at a very dim nebula known as MBM13 near Auriga. I got a Samyang 135 piggybacking, so three ASI2600MC collecting data. And I play it safe so each one got its own laptop - never had any luck with having one laptop connected to two cameras. PS. The towel on the counter weights is to stop any dew dropping into the laptops - I had a close call. Cheers & CS Göran

In terms of angular size Sh2-216 is the largest planetary nebula in the sky, being about 3x wider than the moon as seen from earth (although it is too faint to be seen). It is about 500 000 years old, explaining why it is so very large and very dim. Sh2-216 is also the second closest planetary nebula at a distance of 400 light years. LBN 755 (down to the left) was apparently missed by Sharpless in his catalogue, which is a bit surprising because there are three more Sharpless objects just to the left of this frame, as seen in my recent image: I have been blessed with a few recent clear nights and this one was caught after midnight on 4th Jan with my dual-RASA8 rig and ASI2600MC cameras using IDAS NBZ filters. 120 x 5 min, so 10 hours (gain 100). Processed in PI and PS. Cheers & CS Göran

Bortle 2-3, but this is a very very bright object so in NB it should not be that critical. PS. I have no experience with the Chinese Optolong filters but I hear they are giving bad halos around stars, so I do suspect the proven Japanese company Hutech that produces the IDAS filters are still a bit ahead in quality - no halos at least with the NBZ.

Thanks Steve! Yes, it is also almost the same size as the Spaghetti nebula, which I once imaged with my first RASA8. However, I would need a mosaic, as you say, to also capture that bright PN. Actually, my current Spaghetti is missing a bit in the direction of the PN so I really should put it on my to-do list👍

Thanks a lot Martin for the kind words and for moving this post to the right Forum! CS, Göran

Tack och Gott Nytt År själv Adrian! Göran

After midnight on New Year's eve, with plenty of Champagne🥂 in my CPU🤪, the sky cleared, so at 2 AM I could not stop myself from doing some semi-drunk astrophotography. As you see I just about managed to fit three Sharpless objects into the RASA 8 FOV. I was imaging with my dual-RASA rig but checking the subs in the morning (or rather afternoon) I realized that one of the scopes was a bit too much out of focus, but at least nothing got broken👍 and I had usable data from one scope. Sh2-217 and Sh2-219 are bright planetary nebulae (I presume), while Sh2-221 is a huge but very faint supernova remnant also known as SNR G160.4+02.8. So, imaged 1st Jan 2022 with a RASA8 and ASI2600MC with a IDAS NBZ filter (Dual-band Ha and Oiii) on a Mesu200 mount. 40 x 5 min at gain 100 = a bit over 3 hours. Cheers, Göran

CTA 1 is a rarely imaged supernova remnant (aka SNR G119.5+10.2) in Cepheus, consisting of a 1.5 degree filamentary shell, so quite large. However, it is extremely faint and my first attempt to image it during a moonlit night using NBZ dual-band filter was not very successful., although the result was interesting enough to merit a second attempt when the moon was gone. So this is the second attempt. The bright object near the center is NGC 40, a small planetary nebula. However, they are not interacting but only happen to be on the same line of sight. The distance to CTA 1 is estimated about 4600 light years and its age is about 10’000 years. NGC 40 is about 3500 light years away from us and 4,500 years old. CTA 1 occur in the first list of radio sources published by the CalTech Observatory in 1960, hence the annotation CTA. Imaged on the night 26-27 Dec with a RASA8 and ASI2600MC with IDAS NBZ (Ha+Oiii) filter on a Mesu 200 mount. 62 x 5 min, so about 5 hours. Processed in PS and PI. Processing was a challenge and I had to work on a starless version (Star Xterminator) to bring out as much of the faint nebulosity as possible. Cheers & CS, Göran Here is a link to my first attempt a week earlier:

Thanks a lot Andy! Yes, when you have passed sixty it is nice to find that there is at least one thing you seem to do better now than 7 years ago😁

Thanks Paul, much appreciated! CS Göran

He he, thanks a lot Dave! Cheers Göran

Yes, I would have been quite depressed if I had not noticed an improvement. Come to think of it, this is probably one of very few thing I do better now than 7 years ago🥴.

IMG_690-697NewPS2(small stars).tifThis was not planned and I have not imaged the Rosette since I stared with astrophoto seven years ago, but when I after midnight realized that the object I was about to image had fallen below my southern obsy wall, I had to find something else quickly and thought why not see what the RASA8 - ASI2600MC combo could do with this iconic nebula. Nowadays I usually aim at faint and less well known objects, and compared to these, processing the Rosette was just so much easier with an enormous amount of signal. So about 3 hours of data at f/2 seemed enough. Although I had the NBZ dual-band NB filter on I could actually see the nebula live in its full glory on my laptop in my one-second exposures during the focusing and framing. So RASA 8 with ASI2600MC and IDAS NBZ filter on Mesu 200. 58 x 3 min (gain 100). I attach the image I took December 12th 2015 with an Explore Scientific 5" ED triplet and a Canon 60Da. Fortunately I see that I made some progress during my seven years of astrophotography🙂 Cheers, CS & Happy New Year Göran

Here is a crop of the first part of the mosaik, with Abell 85 and the Little Rosette Nebula and with the red and blue channel turned up a bit.