pietervdv

Looks great! Like the subtle processing. 👍

Hello all,

I finally processed some data from my last imaging trip to South of France (december 2022). I revisted this colourfull deepsky object after 10 years since my last picture of it.  This is a 2 panel mosaic taken over 2 different nights, total exposure is 5 hours. The moon interfered a bit during the acquisition of the colour data, but I think I managed to make it work.

Some more tech details:

Scope: Homeade 10" f/3.8 Newtonian with 3" Wynne corrector
Mount: Mesu 200 Sitech
Guiding: Lodestar + custom oag
CMOS: ASI2600MM Pro @ -15°C Baader LRGB filters

This is the 33% sized version btw.

Thanks for taking a look!

CS,

Pieter

Hi All,

Taken over 3 nights, combining 2,5 hrs LRGB with 12 hrs h-alpha to bring out the ultra faint h-alpha background. RC starXterminator proved to be vitual to stretch the data.

Hope you like it!

Some tech info:

Scope: Homemade 10" f/3.8 Newtonian with 3" Wynne corrector
Mount: Mesu 200 Sitech
Guiding: Lodestar + custom oag
CMOS: ASI2600MM Pro @ -15°C

hi-res version here:

Thanks for taking a look and regards,

Pieter

Hello all,

Almost a year without a post...

I spent a week imaging in Southern France recently. While the weather was not super with lots of cloudy and hazy nights, I still managed to pull in some decent data to produce some images...

This one shows IC342, the Hidden Galaxy in Camelopardalis. To my surprise I managed to pull out quite some IFN, therefor also the starless version to accentuate the dust clouds...😁

Some tech info:

Scope: Homeade 10" f/3.8 Newtonian with 3" Wynne corrector
Mount: Mesu 200 Sitech
Guiding: Lodestar + custom oag
CMOS: ASI2600MM Pro @ -15°C / exposure: 6,5 hrs (5 min subs)

Thanks for taking a look and regards,

Pieter

Very cool! So much to see in this image! 

Pieter 

Hmmja, not bad... 😋 Just kidding, love this. Never seen this object looking like this, very natural processing. Actually looks like a photograph rather than something "processed". (if that makes sense). Btw: can I use that little cart anytime soon?☺️

That's very impressive! Never seen such a deep O3 layer on this object, didn't realize it was a full sphere! 

Very nice Olly! That's seriously deep. Maurice also did this a couple of years back from your place. 

Regards, 

Pieter 

Thanks all for commenting! 👍

Pieter

Hello all,

Long time without a post, so time to change that! I spent 6 days imaging in Southern France late december 2021. Here is a first result.

I turned to the most massive black hole known in the observable universe, TON618. While the quasar itself is quite bright I made a long exposure of the area to reveal countless faint galaxies in the background.

This goliath clocks in at 66 billion (!) solar masses and has the energy output of 140 trillion suns.  It's located 10.8 billion light years from earth. Mind boggling trying to grasp numbers like these...

Made with my trusted homemade  10" f/3.8 Astrograph and an ASI-1600 MM Cool. Total exposure was 9 hours under pitch black skies in Provence South of France.

Hope you like it,

Regards,

Pieter

Your persistance is admirable! Very nicely done... 

Pieter

Excellent! Some very nice details captured. 

Pieter 

Looks awesome Maurice! Great to see you are beating all that light pollution... 👍

Pieter 

Looks great Maurice! Very nice composition, and the new observatory looks very nice!

Pieter

Great capture! Too bad about the lost 2 hours, but 7 hours is still very decent. 

Looks great in this wide field view. 

Pieter 

Thanks all for the nice comments!

2 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

Brilliant!

Any details or pics of your homemade scope?

Thank you! The scope is based on a 250 mm f/4 premium grade mirror, all other components are custom designed/made parts. I have been very happy with it! There are some pictures of the design and build here:

https://pietervandevelde.smugmug.com/Pics/Deepsky-Equipment/

Hi all,

Last week I've put together some of my data made the last couple of months to compose this bi-colour image of M27. Quite tricky to proces due to the high dynamic range of the object, quite a pain to tease out the faint outer details without making the image look to forced. I started the processing job from scratch a couple of times, but settled with this version for now. The h-alpha data was acquired from my heavily light polluted backyard, the o3 data I acquired during an astro holiday in Southern France (Provence) under pitch black skies late August.

Thanks for checking them out.

Regards,

Pieter

Some details of my gear:

Scope: 10" f/3.8 homebuilt Astrograph with 3" Wynne corrector

CMOS: ASI-1600 MM Cool (-10°C)

Filter: Astrodon 5nm h-alpha / Baader 4,5nm o3

Exposure: 24 hours in 5min subframes (15 hrs h-alpha / 9 hours o3)

Mount: Mesu200

Very nice! The joys of working remote, spending hours and hours on these faint fuzzies. 👍

Great stuff Maurice, those are indeed a lot of stars... 😁. Impressive also the speed of this setup, to go so deep after 6 hours... And you even took 2 panels in that time. 

Pieter 

👍 Very nice Olly. Always interesting to go after these unusual faint fuzzies... 

Pieter 

On 10/06/2020 at 09:44, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Taking another look at this one, I haven't seen an image I've liked more for some time. I wonder if there is any OIII signal in the area? It might shed some light on the nature of the ring.

Indeed, you read my mind. The region next to this was imaged by Lorenzo Comolli and there are extremely faint traces O3 present in the whole area.

http://www.astrosurf.com/comolli/d207.htm

He focused on the G82.2+5.3 supernova remnant in DWB145  just besides my frame.

I suspect there is something very interesting to see in O3 in the bottom left part of my picture. Something to try my 4.5nm O3 baader filter on.😉

Pieter

Great! Very nice and subtle. 

Pieter

11 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Fabulous image, Pieter. Astrophotography at its best.

Sorry about the accident!

Olly

Thanks. You are forgiven. 😉 That does not go for the senior citizen who ran me off the road. 

30 minutes ago, Knight of Clear Skies said:

Very nice, that inclined ring structure is striking, as are those streaks at upper right. Thanks for showing us something new, these filaments in Cygnus are often overlooked in favour of the more famous objects. I can only assume they are the result of multiple supernovae and stellar winds from massive stars.

If anyone is wondering where this is, I found DWB145 on Aladin (you may need to zoom out quite a bit). I'm not quite sure where LeDu2 is in relation to it though. @pietervdv, can you help us please?

The discoverer of the Squid Nebula in Sh2-129 if I'm remembering correctly.

Thank you!

LeDu2 is right here; it is not very obvious in Aladin, this is the outline of my image.

Regards,

Pieter

Hello all,

Finally found some time to make another astrophoto (was 5 months ago...). I sustained a pretty bad cycling accident in February and was only able to carry my equipment outside again about 3 weeks ago. Great to be able to make an image again.

This one was on my bucket list for several years and I have spent 20 hours on it the last couple of days. It's a 2 panel mosaic of a very faint and rarely imaged patch of nebulosity next to DWB145 in Cygnus. Thanks to Nicolas Outters for the inspiration!

Scope: 10" f/3.8 homebuilt Astrograph with 3" Wynne corrector

CMOS: ASI-1600 MM Cool (-15°C)

Filter: Astrodon 5nm h-alpha

Exposure: 20 hours in 5min subframes (2 panel mosaic)

Mount: Mesu200

Thanks for checking it out,

Pieter