Snoani

It has been so cloudy at night on the Isle of Wight recently and with just a single clear night forecast during this new moon period, I decided to ditch the mono camera and give Barnard's Loop a try using my modified DSLR and lens. I was hoping to capture about 3 hours of data but light cloud rolled through for a while and so I ended up with just 1h 44 minutes in the end. I have therefore pushed it as far as I am willing to and I am reasonably happy but would have loved the extra data to be able to bring out a little more of the bottom half of Barnard's Loop. 104 x 60 second subs using a Canon 1300D, Canon 50mm 1.8 lens, mounted on an HEQ5.

This is my first attempt at the Witches Head Nebula, taken on 27 January 2022 using a Canon 1300D, Sigma 70-300mm lens (at 135mm) and mounted on an HEQ5. I had a limited window and was only able to capture 1 hour of data, so this was as much of the witch that I could tease out before ruining the image.

I happened to have taken the nebula last month and so why not enter. All subs have been taken between 07 December and 05 January 2022. It consists of 50 minutes of each RGB filters, 90 minutes of luminance and 2.5 hours of Ha blended in. Taken using a WO GT81 APO, ASI 1600MM Pro, Baader filters, HEQ5 (rowan upgrade) and ASI Air Pro.

This is just a quick post to share my latest image of M42. Like a lot astronomers and imagers, it is target that I am naturally drawn to and probably will continue to be for years to come. This image is made up to 50 minutes of each RGB filters, 90 minutes of luminance and 2.5 hours of Ha blended in. I had some trouble with it because my blue subs have been producing significantly bloated stars recently, which I think must be due to the filter, and so I have had to manually remove large halos behind a number of the stars. Otherwise it has produced nicer colours that my previous attempts with OSC cameras. The core is a little more blown than I would have liked but I think and I think can be improved on but that will be a revisit for a later date. Thanks for looking. All subs taken using a WO GT81 APO, ASI 1600MM Pro, Baader filters, HEQ5 (rowan upgrade) and ASI Air Pro.

Good evening Despite the perpetual cloudy forecast recently, I was fortunate enough to see two nights of clear skies last week and took advantage of these to capture M33. I first captured M33 in September last year and with an almost total upgrade of equipment over the last year, and significantly more experience under my belt, I decided to try again to see how they compare. I am very happy with the outcome, seeing huge improvements in image capture and processing. I had some trouble teasing out the arms, and lacks a blue tint that others I see has, but all in all I am satisfied. Jem 3h 20m of luminance and 2h 30m of each RGB. All subs taken using a WO GT81 APO, ASI 1600MM Pro, Baader filters, HEQ5 (rowan upgrade) and ASI Air Pro. 4h 40m of subs taken using Meade 6000 80mm APO, Canon 1300D, HEQ5 (stock).

Hi Tutting To be honest, to me it does look like dust or artefacts within your image train. Did you take any flat frames for this image as this would confirm whether it is or not? Jem

Good evening I took advantage of an extended period of clear nights at the beginning of the month to capture NGC6914, which is a reflection nebula situated in Cygnus. I have experienced a couple of issues during the acquisition and processing of this image and subsequently I am not overly happy with the final result but after some hesitation I have decided to share it for critique. This image was captured using a mono camera but for some reason my blue filter bloated the stars on this occasion, which I have not noticed before, and so I really had to reduce the stars hard in this channel to mask blue halos as much as possible. However, I haven't had my scope out since to try to identify the cause of this but I think the auto focuser may have been slightly off. The image is made up of just shy of 6.5h of each RGB, 3.5h luminance and 5h of Ha blended in. All subs taken using a WO GT81 APO, ASI 1600MM Pro, Baader filters, HEQ5 (rowan upgrade) and ASI Air Pro. It might be that I return to reprocess this at some time in the distant future but as of right now I have exhausted my enthusiasm with this one. Feel free to comment and thanks for looking. Jem

If it does the job, not many people are going to see it in the dark.

Thank you very much for your comprehensive advice. I am sure that it will be invaluable in my next attempt and it is very much appreciated. Jem

Good evening While my passion is very much deep sky work, I picked is a Skymax 127 SCT from eBay a few months ago and with the addition of a ASI 224MC and Celestron 2x barlow I decided to give Jupiter and Saturn a try last night. I was not really expecting to get much on the first run but I am pleasantly surprised at what I have been able to achieve. Both of these images are made up of a stack of 1000 frames processed using PIPP, AutoStakkert and Registax6. The whole process has been quite an eye opener and much different that I am used to. Due to the atmospheric turbulence I did struggle to find the best focus that I could and think they were probably a little off, so I did also sharpen them in Photoshop. Any tips on focusing would be appreciated. I do have a bahtinov mask for the scope and I wonder if focusing on a star before slewing to the planets would be sufficient or if there are any other tricks. Thanks for looking. Jem

This is my first attempt at capturing a meteor shower. It is a stack of 20 x 19 second images taken on 13th July using a Canon 1300D and kit lens at 18mm. I even managed to get a small Andromeda in the shot. The tower in the foreground doesn't lean in reality, but I was stood on a hill and didn't pay as much attention as I should have. That being said, I quite like the look as it is. I think it unlikely to compete within this category, but I am satisfied for my first attempt and thought that I would enter. Jem

Good evening I am proud to present my latest image of Andromeda. I started this last month and intended to get a lot of RGB data this month however the weather has been rubbish for August and opportunities have been very limited. It was also my intention to grab some Ha but I am very happy with how it has turned out and so have decided to settle and move on. The image is made up of 5h of luminance and 1h 42m of each RGB. All subs taken using a WO GT81 APO, ASI 1600MM Pro, Baader filters, HEQ5 (rowan upgrade) and ASI Air Pro. Thank you for taking the time to look. Jem

Hi I regret that I am not an expert but I have imaged with a DSLR previously. On stretching your single frame I can see the banding is there (see below) and so the banding on your stacked image appears to be an accumulation of banding on all of your light frames. As you say it is not on your calibration frames though, so the camera looks ok. I would therefore think that it is something to do with your mount/guiding, exactly what I couldn't say though. I would personally recommend that you dither as I hope that this would remove the banding when stacking. Jem

I haven't entered one of these challenges before and I may have gone a little overboard in the capturing of this target but I was intrigued about what is possible with 30 second exposures. Turns out it is quite a lot. All lights captured are 30 seconds in length and captured between 10th and 15th July 2021. It is made up of 90 red, 88 green and 83 blue (each binned 2x2), 260 luminance and 100 H-Alpha. It does make me smile that the time I used to dither was double that of the lights captured. Jem

Good morning After struggling for some time with tilt on my APO, I decided to replace it with a William Optics GT81 IV and 6A adjustable reducer/flattener. It arrived on Tuesday and so despite the almost full moon, I had to take advantage of the clear sky last night to give it a test, and very happy I am with the results. I turned the scope towards the Pelican Nebula, while taking advantage of the wide field of view to also include a large proportion of the North American Nebula. Following image is made up 23 x 6 minute Ha subs using an ASI1600 Pro, calibrated with dark but not flats or dark flats. It is a bit grainy due to the saturation from the moon but given this unfavourable condition it was a successful test. I no longer have tilt as far as I can tell, although I do have some slightly odd shaped stars on one corner but I think this is because I didn't polar align the mount as carefully as I normally would. I look forward to the first proper night of imaging, possibly returning to this target. Thanks for looking. Jem

I very much appreciate your comment. Despite more than a year of imaging and processing I am still very much working out how to process the images themselves. I think capturing them is the easier process, although from what I see on these forums I am sure not everyone agrees. My first attempt at this target was using an achromatic scope and DSLR and the difference is stark but I am still learning how to process the final image. I still have some way to go but I always appreciate feedback. Jem

Hi all I have taken advantage of clear skies to again revisit a target that I first visited last year and after three attempts to process have settled on the image below. Because of the rising moon and incoming poor weather I decided to bin the colour filters rather than revisit them several weeks later. This image is taken using a Meade 80mm APO, ASI 1600MM Pro, Baader filters, HEQ5 (rowan upgrade)l, ASI Air Pro and made up of 2h 45m of luminance, 1h 30m of RGB (Bin x 2), with 3h 15m of hydrogen alpha blended in. Jem

Good afternoon I've been revisiting targets this year following an upgrade of equipment and development of my knowledge on my astrophotography journey, and the latest on my list is NGC6888, The crescent Nebula. My acquisition is fine but my processing skills still leave something to be desired. Just when I tihnk I am starting to get somewhere, I then stumble to the point that I take many attempts from scratch to get a reasonable image from the data. I'm using an old copy of PS (CR2) and Affinity Photo to process currently so have decided to download a trial of Pixinsight to see if that will offer anything revolutionary. Suffice to say that I have a number of videos to watch to work out how to use it. I did eventually get somewhere with this data, having spent many hours trying to control the stars, tease out the nebulosity while also managing some of the light pollution that I have in my northern sky. I am reasonably happy but know it can be processed better. The image is made up of 3h of each RGB, 3.5h of luminance and 4h of Ha. All subs taken using a Meade 80mm APO, ASI 1600MM Pro, Baader filters, HEQ5 (rowan upgrade) and ASI Air Pro. Enjoy and thank you for taking the time to look. Jem

The is a nice mage. You have some good detail and have managed to control the stars well. I do suspect that you may be able tease some more detail of the nebula out of this one. Below is a single sub of the Eagle Nebula taken in July 2020 using a modified Canon 1300D. Jem

If you are looking for portability and low price then I would suggest something like the Skywatcher Star Adventurer or iOptron Skyguider Pro. There are other options but these two are popular and there is a lot of information out there about them. You may benefit by looking at Peter Zelinka's Youtube channel because he has made a lot of videos that review, use and compare these two mounts in particular. Jem

Good morning I've managed to dodge the clouds long enough over the last week to take a wider view of the Bubble Nebula region. It is taken is an 80mm Meade APO (480mm) using an ASI 1600MM Pro and guided on an HEQ5 (belt mod). This image is made up of 2.5h of each LRGB and 2.5h of Ha mixed in. Thank you for looking.

It can depend on many factors but what the skies around your location are like is going to be a factor. Markarian's Chain is very much due south in the early night sky at the moment I would hazard a guess that you have some light pollution in your southern skies. I may be way off but the fact that you have gradients all around the image may be that your mount flipped as it passed the meridian, meaning that you were initially collecting light pollution on one side of the camera and then the other after the flip. From my location I have a similar problem to my north. There are plugins that you can buy of PS to remove gradients and there is a lot of information out there about people's preferences. I believe that you can request trial periods for Gradient Xterminator and AstroFlat Pro. You can remove gradients in PS manually, which I have done with varying degrees of success. There is a guide here https://astrobackyard.com/remove-gradients-photoshop/.

To be honest it doesn't look too bad. Using your TIF I have given it a very quick stretch and removed the green caused by the colour camera. There are some gradients which I have quickly removed using AstroFlat Pro but these don't look terrible. Probably light pollution in your area. Otherwise the data looks ok to me.

Good evening I have been blessed with a lot of clear skies recently and so I have taken advantage over the last few days by re-visiting the Iris Nebula, to improve on my first attempt last year, and attempting my first globular cluster with M13. Both were taken using a Meade 6000 80mm APO, ASI 1600MM Pro, HEQ5 (belt mod) and edited in Photoshop. NGC 7023: Lum 65 x 180s, Red 54 x 180s, Green 56 x 180s and Blue 47 x 180s. M13: 50 x 60s of each LRGB. With the Moon approaching he first quarter I am hoping the squeeze in one last target this month in the form of the Needle Galaxy (a bit small for my scope really) but I fear it may still drown out the sky on Wednesday night when I hope to capture the second half of the data. That being said, I have managed to capture four targets so far this month so I couldn't complain at all if I have reached my limit for the month.

I appreciate your feedback. I attempted this once last year using a DSLR and L-Extreme filter and really struggled to bring out the detail. It was far easier this time using mono and filters, particularly Ha. I primarily used photoshop to process this. I have read previously, and have advised others myself that using Ha as luminance will wash out the red, and found this myself when processing the horsehead few months ago. However, in this instance I experimented with several different blends involving luminance and ha and this was the best result. I quite like the fact that the colour isn't a full on red and that you can still see star colour. That said, it may be that I process the data again at some point in the future though.