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Thanks, Göran. You know, the "true colour" of Hydrogen is a pinkish white. At least according to the gas discharge lamp I use when teaching atomic physics. But maybe in space the Hydrogen Beta line is so much weaker. If I also had a Oiii filter in my filter wheel, and the moon were less prominent, I would probably have chosen a HOO colour palette. "But since I don't, I didn't." 😉

Westerhout 5, if you didn't already know it, is the Soul Nebula. So, this image is all about the dark and bright sides of the Soul. I captured the data for this image during a gap in the clouds yesterday evening. With a near full moon high in the sky, and snow on the ground, conditions were far from perfect. Still, 4 hours of H-alpha was enough to produce this image. In order to enhance the drama in the image, I removed the stars and used tone mapping to get rid of the cold black and white. All processing was done in PixInsight (this image is best viewed on a computer screen. Click on the image to open the full size version)

A few hours without clouds, but with a nearly full moon and snow on the ground. This is not a good combination for astrophotography, but I guess we grab what we can get. I pointed my scope near ic 1848, the star cluster in the Soul Nebula, and captured details in the hydrogen clouds. This is 4 hours of H-alpha, without any fancy processing. That will have to wait until later. I think that I will crop this image to get a better framing.

A lifetime ago, before I had kids, I used to do photography the real way. The last step in the creative process used to be Selenium toning, to produce a warmer toned black and white print. The longer you had the print in the toning bath, the stronger its effect would be. I have tried to mimic the effect with a few monochrome H-alpha images. "Mimic", because I no longer have a dark room, and all my image processing is done on a computer, in PixInsight. This is a starless H-alpha image of the Tadpoles Nebula, ic 410. The integration time was 4 hours and 48 minutes. Processing was done in PixInsight. To get the warm colour, I just combined two different stretches with ChannelCombination. The stronger stretch went into the red channel, and the weaker stretch went equally in both the green and blue channel. Once I had the RGB image, I applied further stretches and a bit of "dodging and burning" to enhance the contrast.

Thank you. Mood is what I was going for.

The data is from earlier this year, 80 minutes H-alpha. The processing is new. A starless version of this popular object. I made two stretches that I combined with PixelMath to get a warmer tone.

The roof isn't automated. The observatory is built on a South facing slope and has a slanted roof. The winch that closes the roof is visible to the right in the video clip. I've considered replacing it with a gate motor, but those may not be strong enough. Besides, the closing roof would knock the dew shield off the scope, unless I park it horizontally. The spectral lines are the glare from HD65626, yes.

The party was early, and the nights are long this time of the year. And the observatory is automated. The security camera in my observatory captured the scope parking early in the morning, while I was sound asleep. 1703043602000.mp4

That pretty much sums up the situation last night. A very unexpected clear night coincided with a dinner party with colleagues. When I got home I opened the observatory, but couldn't find an interesting enough target. So I settled for a group of "small" galaxies in Lynx, close to Camelopardalis. Nest 100044 consists of about 18 galaxies and is situated about 380 million light years away. There are many other galaxies in this field of view. PixInsight found about 90 identified galaxies, but there are also a decent number of unidentified ones. One of the most distant galaxies in this field is about 2 billion light years distant. The image may not loook impressive and colourful, but shows things in a grand scale. This is 6 hours of RGB data, collected with my MN190 and ASI294MM Processed and annotated in PixInsight, with help of the TypeCat script. There is a glare of the nearby star HD 65626 in the image, but I didn't bother to remove it. Click on the image to open a larger version.

Hence the title of my recent post 😉

Nice! It’s a bit low in the sky for me due to trees, but your image gives me inspiration to try to catch it too.

Great image already. Do you have a sky darkness that allows you to catch the tail?

Thanks, Chris. I have several versions of the image by now. The image that I have in my first post is just RGB, without synthetic luminance, I believe. The one that I posted yesterday has a synthetic luminance and stretched somewhat differently.

Reworked the image with the new version of BlurXTerminator. This version does wonders on dodgy stars, and I didn't need to crop the image. I used the combined RGB data as a synthetic luminance.

I stand corrected. The vendor id for ZWO is 03c3. 0403 i s FTDI, the EQDIR cable You can see my usb list here. The first device is my ASI294 camera. The next ZWO is my ASI290 guide cam (fourth in the list), and the last one from ZWO is my filter wheel

Should I go over to my image processing computer and examine my version of M33? 😁 https://www.astrobin.com/tr3ihi/B/

Minor planets are asteroids and such, I think. I'm not sure about the exact differences, but I beleive that the distinction between planets / dwarf planets / minor planets is about size. The definition of a planet that I saw a long time ago was that a true planet has cleared its orbit of any other matter. Only larger bodies can do that. Asteroids / minor planets obviously haven't done so, or there wouldn't be an asteroid belt..

Wasn't RASA developed for sky surveys of minor planets and other "fast moving" bodies that might come close to Earth? If so, you finally use the scope as intended. 😁 Great and surprising image, Göran.

Any usb device has information about its manufacturer and model. ZWO has manufacturer code 0403 I believe. All my ZWO devices have that code when I check the usb ports. In linux (ASIAIR is based on linux), I use the command lsusb (list usb) to see this.

THE hidden galaxy (not IC 342) ... with a bonus https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/416757-the-hidden-galaxy-not-ic-342-with-a-bonus/

Thanks, Paul. Yes, I know of David Björkén. He used to live in the very North of the country and used the 190MN for his "portable" setup. I guess he found out that the scope is just too big if you have to set up every night, and if you have to clear a foot of snow to do so. Daniel has since moved on to a small refractor and moved to the very South of the country. The 190MN works best in an observatory or semi-permanent setup. The title of this thread is tongue in cheek. IC 342 is called the Hidden Galaxy, but with all the images of it on social media (not least AstroBin), it can hardly be called "hidden" anymore. UGCA 86 on the other hand, has so far been overlooked, even though it's very close to IC 342.

Thanks, Göran. Not imaged by amateurs at least. There are just a handful of images ftom scientific publications and sky surveys.

A few months ago, Göran @gorann informed me about a rather unusual galaxy that happened to be included in an image that he was working on. pgc 14241 (a nice palindrome) or UGCA 86 as it is called in the scientific literature is situated near the frequently found and imaged "hidden" galaxy IC 342. But unlike its big neighbour, this gem is truly hidden. The galaxy is situated in the constellation Camelopardalis, some 10 Mly behind the Milky Way and has a red colour as most of its blues are filtered out by dust in our own galaxy. It has an angular size of about 5 arc minutes. On closer inspection of the image, it seems that I managed to capture a few of its globular clusters as well (indicated in the annotated image). Technical details: Telescope SW 190MN with ASI294MM camera Integration time 66 x 5 minutes for R, G and B, 16 hours in total Processed in Pixinsight

It doesn’t happen often here either. At least not this early in the season. February is the coldest month of the year. Yesterday the trees where completely covered with frost.

The simple solution to that is a Raspberry Pi and a Pegasus Astro power box. A friend has his remote controlled setup 1.5 m from mine in the same observatory. Last summer he upgraded his computer and chose a pc next to the pier in stead of a fanless Mele on top of his scope. (Yesterday his cables were like rods). To quote Julia Roberts: ”Big mistake. Big.”