gorann

Thanks Davey! Yes, darker skies really help. I never regretted moving out of a city;-)

Thanks Stephen! Me too:-)

No Dave, I did not know that so maybe that will be an equally good way to do it. Have you used it? In any case that meter seems like a tool every handy man and hobby electrician should have😁

I am a Mesu Mk1 owner and was just pointed to this video (thanks @wimvb ) about using an Ampere meter (needs to be able to measure DC current / Ampere, not only AC!) to balance a mount. As you know the Mesu 200Mk1 has no clutches so balancing becomes rather subjective.... I just ordered one from Amazon for about 40 pounds (the cheaper ones only measure AC current so they will not work).

Thanks a lot Ian! Yes, the more I look at it the more I like the colours and also see structures I had not initially noticed. Just now, when looking at the posted image, I notice a broad vertical band of faint dark nebulosity in the top right quadrant.

Back in October I found this faint object by surfing in Taurus on Aladin Sky Atlas and did not recognize it until I started processing and suddenly realized I was looking at the Baby Eagle. Seeing was not the best and processing was quite challenging. I have now had the EZ star reduction script in PI to have a go at it. It really helped to suppress the star field to a level that lets the faint nebulosity shine. Data gathered with a RASA 8 and ASI2600MC, 73 x 4 min at gain 100. I like they way this combo can bring out colour and light in objects that often look rather dull.

Thanks Emil for enlighten me on the existence of EZ Star Reduction. As you say it works very well. I find it better than any other method I have tried and have now used it on several of my "old" images to suppress the star field and allow the nebulosity to shine.

Thanks Richard! Yes. But it is a bit frustrating not being able to guide, but I am sure it can be done better, maybe if I see to it that I have a perfect polar alignment (have not checked it for a year or so).

This is really messy data. In my efforts to image Integrated Flux Nebulosity (IFN) I have here aimed the scope towards the North Celestial Pole. Guiding does not work there (at least not for me) and PHD2 refused to calibrate. So I ended up with 120 s unguided subs and it kind of worked for about two hours before the image started to rotate. All subs had poor elongated stars. Still, I had a go at processing it since there seem to be very few images of this area. I had to shape the stars with sliding layers and blend mode darken in PS. I also used EZ Star Reduction in PI. Finally I have down sampled the image drastically to hide the worst noise from pixel peepers ;-). The image shows parts of Mandel-Wilson 1, the "Polaris Nebula". The shine from Polaris can be seen in the top right corner. The image also contains the North Celetial Pole, as seen from the small annotated version. Imaged 21 March with a RASA 8 and ASI2600MC on a Mesu 200 mount. 71 x 2 min, so 2.4 hours.

Thanks Martin for the kind words, very much appreciated!

Thanks a lot Mark!

Thanks! Yes it is an attractive mix of reflection and dark nebulosity.

TS. This script was quite easy to use. I used the default settings. It does take a few minutes to run so it is apparently a quite advanced process involving Starnet++ so you need that to be loaded into your PI (it is included in the latest PI version).

VDB-9, LDN-1355, LDN-1357, and LDN-1358, is a group of dark nebulae in Cassiopeia, which in reality is not very dark, at least not when imaged with the RASA 8 and ASI2600MC. I imaged this in December and have now reprocessed the data (64 x 5 min) using EZ Star Reduction in PI to allow me to give the nebulosity an extra stretch without inflating the stars.

If you get your camera going long enough at the Hamburger galaxy you have a good chance of catching quasars that are more than 10 Giga ly away: http://www.waid-observatory.com/ngc3628-2016-03-31-quasars.html I just about managed to do it with a 5" refractor and a DSLR in 3 hours: https://www.astrobin.com/288366/

Thanks Steve! Yes, this script is something you really have to test.

Thanks a lot Francis!

Thanks Clark, much appreciated! Have a go - the good thing is that the IFN is up there even if it is galaxy season and the Milky Way and most nebulae are gone.

After having tried a new star reduction script new to me in PI, called EZ Star Reduction, I have applied it to my little collection of Integrated Flux Nebulae (IFN) in Ursa Major that I have imaged now in March. They are all part of the Angel and Volcano Nebulae complex near M81 and M82. Also known as Mandel-Wilson 2 and 3. Since IFN is a very faint type of nebulosity (presumed to be illuminated by the collective radiation of our galaxy) the images have to be radically stretched which means that the stars become quite large and abundant. Star reduction really made a major difference and allows the IFN to dominate rather than being overwhelmed by the star fields. I am amazed how effectively the EZ Star Reduction script took care of this without any major artefacts. which is a common problem with star shrinking processes. It is free (except that you need PI) and you can find out how to download and install it here: https://remoteastrophotography.com/2020/12/use-ez-star-reduction-to-reduce-stars I did do some additional processing afterwards in PS, primarily to make sure that galaxies were not affected, so I used layers and the brush tool to save all the NGC and PGC galaxies annotated by PI. The data was caught with a RASA 8 and ASI2600MC on an iOptron CEM70 mount from 5th to 21st March. Integration time varied between 4 and 13 hours. The fifth image show what it looked like before the EZ star reduction.

I just added a star reduced version - first try with EZ star reduction in PI. I like it!!!

Yes, I am also curious about the star processing. Starnet? With a wide field lens like the Samyang 135 you usually get nearly drowned by the star field.

That is just outstanding Emil, especially for being DSLR. Congratulations! PS. My only minor comment would be not to have such a big and central signature on the image - it distracts at least me from the image. I like there to be a signature in the corner so I can identify the photgrapher but let the image speak for itself, especially a nice one like yours.

Thanks! Yes, part planning and part luck since the IFN is hardly visible on Aladin sky atlas (POSS2) it is not always clear what I will find.

Thanks Steve! Great that you also see the cosmic wind! And as you say it must be on a large scle since IFN is supposed to be at the outer edge of our galaxy, so quite far away, and I would get in several moons in my FOV (3.4 x 2.6 °). Yes, the second annotation is made using PI on my computer (the first is from my Astrobin post). In PI you can chose what catalogues to annotate to - you can even get many of the stars, but that would have become a mess.

Thanks a lot Michael!