gorann

Why the Optolong and not the IDAS - are they about the same or did I not do enough research?

Thanks Steve! Unfortunately, we get clouds too, usually exported from the UK, so I may finallly get some full nights of sleep🥱. But hopefully not for too long. Next time it clears the moon will probably be up so it is NB time - an IDAS NBX dual band filter arrived from FLO today. Would love to try it on the RASA and ASI2600 combo.

Thanks a lot again Ian! Yes, with enough photons collected most of these "dark" nebulae turn out not to be dark at all but quite colourful. I think I am getting addicted to imaging them - so soon I may be into severe abstinence since clouds have settled here for a foreseeable future😣.

Thanks a lot Adrian! Sharing them is often the best part of the process😉

At the end of September I caught this dark nebulosity between Cepheus and Cygnus. It is Barnard 150 and next to it is the Fireworks galaxy NGC6946. The ASI2600MC was set at gain 100 (offset 30) and kept at -15°C. 19 x 10 min, so 3.2 hours. Four nights ago I aimed at Barnard 150 with my double rig with the Esprit 150 (with ASI6200MM for Lum) and Esprit 100 (ASI071MC for RGB). Collected 6 hours of Lum and 4.5 hours of RGB. The RGB data from the Esprit 100 was quite anemic and nowhere near as colourful as what I had caught with the RASA, obviously a result of f/5 vs f/2. So instead of making an all Esprit image, I decided to add the lum to my RASA imade. And here it is with added Esprtit 150 lum (about 50%) to the nebula. It did improve it significantly. Like Olly @ollypenrice I see nothing wrong with mixing focal lengths to improve the resolution of key parts of an image - I am mainly into this hobby to produce as pretty images as I can with the gear I have. Here is the post with the original RASA image:

Thanks Dave! Yes, this is a dark site object. I hear that England is pretty much locked down but dark places should still be open, so I assume it is getting there that is the problem.

After an unusual spell of clear nights, rain and clouds have settled here so this will be the last RASA image for a while. Thanks you all for the encouraging comments on my previous ones! This one is maybe not of the same quality since seeing was not the best, and it is a faint object. I found it by surfing in Taurus on Aladin Sky Atlas and did not recognize it until I started processing. Processing was quite challenging for once, and I whent astray with the stars, but after sleeping on it and starting over I finally had a presentable image.

Thanks a lot Mark! The first thought is of course that they are linked since they appear to be in the same spot, but after looking at it for a while I started getting the feeling that there was no obvious interaction and the stars are maybe far behind the filaments. On top of the image, for example, there are two similar lumps of filaments but only one have a major star beneath it.

That makes sense! As you say the filaments are interesting, some being highly directional and some rather chaotic. Thanks a lot by the way!

Really useful - I have to start pushing buttons! I actually downloaded frame-grabs and used curves in PS to see better......

Thanks a lot Sponge! I figure it out and now I know where to start. It was in Aladin I found them (but very faint)

Thanks! Mine too - I am getting addicted to the dark ones😎

Thank you so much Graham - really great to at least have numbers on the creatures!

So a possibility is that all these filaments have nothing to do with the stars except that they light them up, and that the stars are just moving through, maybe at quite a distance farther away? When I look at it the stars and the filamets are not well associated.

Thanks Andy! The short answer is that I have no preference, it all depends on the objects I aim for. I see it very much like having different lenses for your camera. So, I ended up over the last years to build (I love building) myself three obsies next to each other (I have no shortage of space here on the Swedeish country side). My first obsy now has a Mesu mount that currently holds two Esprit refractors for medium range AP (about 1000 mm FL), one collecting Lum or Ha and one RGB. Then I built a second obsy two years ago for a 14" Meade ACF on an EQ8 to go for smaller galaxies and planetary nebulae with 3.5 m FL, so that can only be used at nights with great seeing. And this summer I built one for a RASA at 400 mm FL. I love them all and they do different things for me, and what they can achieve have been a constant positive surprise. But if you should go for something relatively easy and not too expensive, it should defenitively be the RASA 8 on a NEQ6 class mount. PS. I have so far never managed to run more than two of the three obsies in one night, since imaging is often too much about solving problems at night.....

How interesting! Do you think this movement has something to do with the strange filaments moving through the M45? There is also an area there where the filaments are in a disarray, not sweeping through (on top of your image and to the right on mine). Have you found the wake? This all makes me think again why make only one picture. In this case I think my first version was relatively soft and nice to the eye, but then it did not reveal all the infomation in there. I have for a while been thinking that it would be of value to make several "final" versions that make different statements.

Inspired by Olly's @ollypenricereprocessing of his M45 data I decided to see how much details I could get out of my data, using HiPass filtering and LCE in PS. There is certainly a lot of filaments in this object. Does anyone know how they formed?

Yes, and also built myself three obsies. I have a tendency to go full in when I get interested in something, the story of my life🤪

Thanks so much Dave! Yes, it is a very suggestive shape. I see some kind of flying creature with a trunk and big claws. Not sure about the top one.

Neither did I! Thanks a lot Tony!

Thanks a lot Olly! Any idea if it (they) have a name or designation?

Thanks Steve! I think that OSC, especially the new CMOS ones, are very close to mono cameras when you have a dark sky. With the RASA you cannot use a filter wheel and have to resort to a filter slider, That is fine for NB imaging when the moon is out and I have nothing else to do, but I am happy not to have to get my RGB images that way - I am sure it would involve more time and more trouble.

Regarding the colour of the dust, it often come out as brown. There is an APOD image of M45 that is really brown, not that APODs necessarily have the "correct" colour: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130918.html By the way I just posted some really brownish structures nearby M45 in Taurus:

Not sure if these strange creatures have any names or designations - I found them by surfing on Aladin Sky Atlas around M45. What I know is that the blue binary star in the centre is Chi Tau. This is my first attempt of a two panel mosaic with the RASA8, so quite a wide field (two Andromeda galaxies would fit into the field of view). So these are very large but also very faint structures and I have here gone close to the limits of what this f/2 telescope (RASA 😎 combined with a very sensitive, low noise, 16 bit CMOS camera (ASI2600MC) can achieve at this integration time, which was totally 6.6 hours (2 - 4 min subs). Caught over two recent nights (16-18 Oct). I would welcome if anyone knew the names / numbers of these darkish nebulae! EDIT: just realized that emojis are taking over. When I wanted to write RASA 8 i parenthesis the SGL-system turned it into a head with sunglasses.

Could not have said it better myself Steve😉 I feel I have so much more control when using PS. It is simply a more creative hands-on program, but then PI-ists may not allow creativity.....