alan4908

Thanks and good luck with the guiding ! Thanks

Thanks Yes, it does look very odd and very unreal - it looks to me like a giant alien eye ! Thanks ! Yes, it 's weird Thanks - FYI this is an unguided image - I gave up guiding several years ago after frustrations of loosing the guide star due to passing clouds - I haven't regretted it. Alan

Located in Gemini about 5000 light years distant, NGC 2392 is a planetary nebula and represents the remains of a dying star. Formed about 10000 years ago after it exhausted its core hydrogen, the star started to cool and massively expand, forming a red giant. During this process, the cooler outer layers of the star were ejected leaving behind a hot core. The interaction between the radiation of the hot core and the ejection processes creates filament structures. Eventually, the star will become a white dwarf. The object has a very small apparent size, so to maximise detail, I decided to discard any sub-frames with poor seeing. Although some detail is revealed, I was a bit disappointed with the result. On reflection, since the core is relatively bright, I think that a lucky imaging approach with the core, combined with a traditional approach for the outer layers, would have yielded a more optimum result. The LRGB image below was taken with my Esprit 150 and represents about 10 hours integration time. Alan L:16, R:14, G: 12, B:16 x 600s all at -20C.

Located 50 million light years in the Virgo cluster, M99 is relatively large and bright galaxy and was one of the first in which a spiral pattern was observed. One of the spiral arms is distorted and the other normal, giving an overall asymmetric appearance. The distortions of the spiral arms together with a very high (3x normal) star formation rate are evidence of a past encounter, probably with another galaxy. I was quite pleased to capture some detail and colours of the spiral arms and the HII regions. For the bright core, I decided to use high dynamic range compression to enhance visibility and colour. If you look closely at the background you can also see quite a few galaxies, I particularly like the one to the right of the bright orange star which shows some structure. The LRGB image represents 16 hours integration time and was taken with my Esprit 150. A Pixinsight annotated version of the image is shown below. Alan LIGHTS L:39, R:17, G:20, B:20 x 600s all at -20C.

Thanks for the comment Adrian - I think this is one of my longest integration times ! - it did take rather a long time to acquire. Good luck with the continuum subtraction, I will certainly be using this as part of my Ha blend process from now on. Thanks Thanks - I decided to crop it since the background objects where not that interesting. Thanks but I don't think it is quite that good ! although I do quite the colours in my image.... Thanks - I'm new to continuum subtraction so I'll investigate this guide. The method I used was from one of Adam Blocks Horizon's subscription videos which are available at https://www.adamblockstudios.com/ Alan

I decided to create a deeper image than my previous attempts and focus on maximising the details of the starburst HII regions, so I decided to concentrate on gathering more Ha data. I also experimented with a processing technique described by an Adam Block studios video called continuum subtraction which more accurately blends the H alpha into the red channel. Here, you subtract the Red from the Ha data in an attempt to eliminate the Ha emission component from stars, so you are left with only the Ha from the HII regions. I was so impressed by the results, I also tried this on the lum channel. The LRGB image has a Ha blend into the red and lum channels and represents 49 hours integration time. It was taken by my Esprit 150. Alan M82 is located in Ursa Major about 12 million light years distant. Due to a close past interaction with a neighbouring galaxy (M81), it is currently in a period of massive star forming activity called a starburst. Here, young stars are born at a rate 10 times faster than in our own Milky Way. This consumes vast amounts of the surrounding gas and eventually becomes self limiting and is expected to cease in a few tens of millions of years. LIGHTS: L:41,R:24;G:40,B:35 x 600s; H:51 x1800s

Located in the Virgo cluster, M90 is a bright spiral galaxy about 55 million light years distant. Radio studies indicate that M90 has lost 90% of its neutral hydrogen making star forming impossible in the spiral arms. The loss occurs through a process known as ram pressure stripping where the pressure resulting from the movement of the galaxy through the intracluster medium in its cluster exceeds the gravitational force binding the hydrogen to the galaxy. As a consequence, the spiral arms appear relatively smooth and featureless. By contrast, the centre displays significant nebula and star formation activity. Unlike many galaxies, M90 is blue shifted indicating it is heading towards us, having broken away from the rest of the galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. M90 is now 1.5million light years distant from the centre of the Virgo cluster. The dwarf galaxy IC 3583 can also be seen towards the top, centre of the image. The galaxy is irregular, having no discernible structure, although it does have a bar of stars running through its centre. It is thought to be gravitational interacting with M90. Throughout the image smaller galaxies can also be seen in the background. The LRGB image represents a total integration time of 16 hours and was taken by my Esprit 150. Alan M90 M90 (annotated) LIGHTS: L:41, R: 19, G:19, B:19 x 600s all at -20C.

Here's five on my favorite images from 2023 - all taken with my Esprit 150 and a SX814. Alan IC5156 M74 NGC660 NGC2282 NGC5364

LBN673 is the centre of the Soul Nebula (SH2-199), a star forming region located in Cassiopeia. The image below represents 10 hours integration time and was taken with my Esprit 150. I used a Pixinsight Script from Mike Cranfield called NBColourMapper (see https://www.cosmicphotons.com/pi-scripts/nbcolourmapper/) with the intent of creating a natural looking image from my narrow band data. The script works by colourising grey scale images with a particular Hue and Saturation and then blends them, all with a real time preview. The technique is similar to my previous Photoshop based approach but this has the advantage of also working with linear (eg unstretched) images. Alan LIGHTS: Ha:10; OIII:10 x 1800s all at -20C.

Thanks I'll attempt to gather some Ha at some future time to improve visibility of the star forming regions Alan

Thanks for the comment Olly Alan

NGC7479, aka the propeller galaxy, is a barred spiral galaxy about 105 million light years distant. The galaxy has several unusual features, perhaps most notable is that fact that the rotation of the galaxy in the visible and near IR is opposite to that when observed in the radio spectrum. The spiral structure is also highly asymmetric and star formation is evident in the spiral arms and central core. It is believed that these features can be explained by a merger event with a smaller companion galaxy c300 million years ago. The galaxy has a very small apparent size and I found the image difficult to process with my limited data set. Whilst I like the end result, I think some Ha data would help to highlight the star forming regions. The image represents a total integration time of 4.3 hours and was taken with my Esprit 150. Alan LIGHTS: L:9, R:4, G:9, B:4 x 600s all at -20C

Thanks for the comment Thanks I didn't know that. I'm pleased to see that a few photons have made there way across several billion light years into my image. Thanks I shall explore..... Thanks. I'll also investigate this. Alan

Thanks for the comment - I agree the field of view is good although I had to reduce the dominance of the bright blue star near the center of the image somewhat to make it less distracting. Thanks - yes, very happy with those two ! Thanks - I'll investigate - I already have some of Hartum Bornemann's scripts. I did try to see what it looked like if I annotated the image and included Pixinsight quaser locations but I thought it was a bit overwhelming (see below). It would be good to have a PI script that allowed you to only display objects above a particular apparent magnitude, so you don't up with an annotation of dark space !

An LRGB image of distant galaxies centered on NGC194. It represents an integration time about 16 hours and was taken by my Esprit 150. Pixinsight has identified some in the annotated version below. Perhaps you can see more ? Alan IMAGE DETAILS: L:37, R:19, G:20, B:17 x 600s all at -20C.

Vdb123 is a reflection nebula about 800 light years distant in the constellation Serpens. It‘s embedded in a large molecular cloud know as the Serpens Cloud. At the centre of the image, the bright blue star HD 170634 illuminates the surrounding dust which scatters the shorter wavelengths more than the longer wavelengths, creating the blue glow of vdb123. To the left of the blue nebula, a orange/red cloud known as the bi-polar Serpens reflection nebula can also be seen. Its shape is thought to be determined by the magnetic fields of the central star Serpens SVS 2 which create gas flows moving in opposite directions. The more distant background stars are reddened due to intervening dust of the molecular cloud between the Earth and the stars. This LRGB image represents 12.5 hours integration time and was taken with my Esprit 150. Alan LIGHTS: L:33, R:10, G:15, B:17 x 600s all at -20C.