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Due to very unfavorable weather in Poland during this winter and early spring, gathering enough light for a satisfying image of this relatively dim object took a long time indeed. I'd chosen this Sharpless object not on its own merits, but because my primary targets for 2023 are still too low. Sh2-174 was one of the very few PNs suitable for HOO image available, so I took it without much enthusiasm. It turns out I should've been enthusiastic because it's a fascinating and beautiful nebula. That is, if one's willing to put in enough hours imaging it. Main image: Starless: Ha: OIII: Time & Place: Holy Cross mountains, Poland, Bortle 4, 08.02.2023 - 23.04.2023. Exposures: 1. Ha- 233 x 300 s = 19,46 h. 2. OIII- 207 x 300 s = 17,25 h. 3. RGB – 30 x 60 s per channel. Sum: 38,21 g. Gubbins: Telescope: SkyWatcher Maksutov-Newtonian MN190, 190/1000 mm Camera: ASI1600MMP, Filters: Antlia Ha 3nm, Antlia OIII 3nm, Mount: SkyWatcher EQ6PRO Guider: SvBony 240mm, ASI120MM mini, Accessories: ZWO EFW, ZWO EAF, ASIAir V1 Workflow A. Pixinsight, 1. DynamicCrop, 2. BlurXterminator (next to useless here, no high-frequency details), 3. StarXterminator, 4. DynamicBackgroundExtraction, 5. NoiseXterminator, 6. GeneralizedHyperbolicStretch in many incremental iterations, with noise reduction along the way. B. Photoshop 1. Gradient Map on Ha i OIII, 2. Levels on both channels, 3. Export to Pix, slight HDRMultiscaleTransform 4. A bit of Gaussian Blur, 5. Local Contrast Enhancement from Astronomy Tools, 6. Major resamples 7. Delicate noise reduction with TopazDenoise, with masks, no sharpening, 8. Hue/Saturation tweaks, 9. RGB stars via Screen. Clear skies!

Been great to have a few nights of clear sky - I captured this last Wednesday/Thursday last week. I have only Just getting to grips with narrow band imaging/processing and I am sticking with tried and tested SHO Hubble palette for now, but very interested in the percentage combinations like the wide field recently posted by @Adreneline - Cave, Bubble and M52 - to name but a few. I'm assuming the colour palette combinations are implemented using PixelMath functions in PI - I will do some reading and jump into the processing threads to find out more I think. But for now here's my latest SHO narrowband - I left in a hint of green on the inner lighter Ha nebulosity as I like the transition into the Blue of OIII signal Capture Details 90mins each for Ha, OIII, SII , Optilong filters in 120s subs - 4.5hrs total Captured using RPi4 /INDI/EKOS Processed, APP,PI,PS CC Pixel scale: 6.067 arcsec/pixel

Hi guys, was away from astro imaging for a while. Once back, - decided to combat my Coma illness... Need advise as simply do not know if I can try something else. Images attached, are with 1mm spacer. Imaging train: 130PDS, SW coma corrector (0.9 reducer), T2 extender 11mm , 16.5mm M42-M48 extender, 1mm Baader Delrin spacer, 20mm ZWO FilterWheel, ZWO ASI 1600MM-pro CCD distance 6.5 = total 57mm and 56mm without 1mm Spacer. SW Coma Corrector states it needs 55mm, filters in the EFW add up around 1mm into the focal path, - ideal spot should be around 56mm. 56mm and 57mm clearly do not work... (will try 58 tonight...) how to get to the lower end ? I mean to 55mm, so I could test 55.5-56mm with Delrin spacers. Are there any 9mm T2 extenders? Further more... I am not sure if I have collimated it close enough... I flocked the scope, so had to remove focuser and both mirrors... Maybe focuser is tilted... Secondary may be slightly off.... kinda.... lots of done... raw, 120sec H sub frame_and_focus_85.fit

I've been less active lately in this hobby, but I've a few images done, others waiting in the pipeline to be processed. This is a "crowded" area of our Milky Way galaxy, visible all summer from the northern hemisphere. The Cygnus constellation is home of many named and nameless nebulae. Starting from the left (North), below the brightest star, Deneb, the Pelican and the North America Nebulae are very popular; going to right, just below the brightest star close to the center of the image, Sadr, lies the Gamma Cygni Nebula. A bit towards the top-right there's the Crescent Nebula and going forward top-right, there's the Tulip Nebula. Finally, at the bottom-right corner, the Veil Nebula, a super nova remnant. All these are surrounded by shiny gaseous filaments or dusty patches blocking the light. I started this during the pandemic lockdown. All of the data was captured from my hometown from a balcony brightly lit by a sodium street lamp, but the narrowband filters did their job well, blocking successfully the sodium emission. A total of 23 hours is made of 2x3 panels composed in a larger mosaic, each panel consisting in about 1h of exposure for the red Hydrogen and 3h of exposure for the cyan Oxigen, all through a Sigma 105 macro stopped at F/4, ASI1600MMC with 6nm Astronomik filters. I'm planning to shoot RGB data too and make an RGB/HOO composition. Cheers and clear skies! astrobin link: https://www.astrobin.com/r22yre/ flickr link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/170274755@N05/49939128338/

I have been doing this for many years using a star adventurer with a canon 6d and different lenses upto 200mm from dark sky locations. I wanted to get proper scope and EQ mount for a while but I didn’t think it was worth it shooting from the cloudy UK and I didn’t realise bortle 5 skies were good enough for it. After realising I was wrong I bought a HEQ5 and WO zs61. (I wanted a relatively small scope to begin with). next thing I want to get is a dedicated astro camera. And of course going mono makes the most sense. Coming from a landscape photography world, bigger sensor is always better. However this is where I get lost a bit. According to the ccd calculator on astronomy tools website asi183mm pro is the best match for my scope (1.38 arc sec / pixel). Next option would be asi1600mm pro with a resolution of 2.18arc sec / pixel. However I’m slightly worried about this microlensing/reflection issue. Using a relatively wide scope, I may not be able to avoid bright stars all the time. And I know it would bug me if it happened. i know zwo released new cameras recently but asi6200 is way out of my budget. I can probably justify the cost of asi2600 (also 2.15 arc sec/pixel) . I know it’s an OSC and not mono, but the specs seem promising and I know few people mentioned the possibility of using this with narrowband filters. It’s still a relatively new camera so not a whole lot of information on it unfortunately but everyone who had one seems to like it. It would be interesting to compare this setup with a asi1600 for example. - So is the asi183 really the best choice? Or slight under sampling is not an issue? - asi1600 vs asi2600? - I assume it’s still a big jump to go from a full frame dslr to a set point cooled OSC with a smaller sensor?

Hi everyone, This has been on my hard drive for some months, so nice to have finally got round to processing it! Shot over several nights in January in my back garden. NGC 281, also known casually as the Pacman Nebula, is a bright emission nebula and part of an H II region in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia and is part of the Milky Way's Perseus Spiral Arm. It lies about 9,500 light years from us and is 48 light years across. As the final version, I've gone for a crop, which I think holds up well, though I'll include the wider fov version in the next post. I used a more natural colour blend for this image: R = 76%*Ha + 24%*SII G = 100%*OIII B = 85%*OIII + 15%*Ha For some reason, I was not expecting much from this image, but the result looks like it will be one of my favourites...the narrowband data was really good! Captured using APT, stacked using APP and processed in Pixinsight. 5.4 hours integration time. Link to full details and higher res version. Thanks for looking!

The Wizard Nebula An emission nebula 7,200 light years away and my first proper project of the new imaging year. Really happy with it as I’ve had a steep learning curve with new kit so really pleased to see this image come together. It’s also the first time I’ve imaged it. 72x180s subs collected over 2 nights 24/25th August in my Bortle 7 back garden, Whitley Bay, England Calibrated with darks, flats and dark flats in DSS and processed in SiriL and Photoshop. Lacerta 72mm f/6 APO ZWO ASI1600MC Pro at -15C gain 200 iOptron CEM25p ZWO 60mm guide scope ZWO ASI120MM-S guide camera Altair Astro 2” Tri Band OSC Filter Data collected in APT and guided with PHD2

Season greetings! Got my 80 Esprit around one week ago and yesterday was the first clear-ish night since. I came to my parents' for Christmas and here the skies are much better. I went to a hill nearby where our galaxy was visible. I had an EQ5 which I didn't polar align very well. I tried to start my RPi3, but it didn't connect to my mobile router so I had to forget about it. I was limited to 15s or 20s subs. The scope is quite heavy, heavier than I expected, it doesn't balance well with a Canon 550D attached. I had to tighten its dovetail towards its end as much as I could and the setup was still camera heavy a bit. Anyways. I left it to cool for maybe half an hour and it didn't reach thermal equilibrium perfectly. Focuser is very good, no slip with the DSLR and tightening it doesn't shift focus. No tilt either. I bought my scope from FLO and checked by Es. Here are some pictures taken through it, I only had the camera, no visual stuff. M45 is 151x15s: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CbAuNQCGkQPSsPB11UOBkye3Y8EnzNDL M42 is 14x20s: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dVgAxK8LQ4jXqPDlv2G0CVjV88UnsU9u M37 is 10x20s: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1iITFwXffhGvAi4dUbE_qR9_9VQVJszPT All ISO1600. Darks and bias, no flats. Today are exactly 2 years since I took my first astrophoto. Quite some progress since then. Clear skies and happy new year! Alex

Hey fellas I have a 1600mm cooled version. I was spending Last couple of nights in field trying to do some AP, but the camera didn't work. Everything seems to be ok. I have temperature's info, the 120mm data comes in flawlessly, EFW works just fine. But when camera finishes the exposure it hangs on downloading. I reduced usb traffic, no luck. I switched programs, sharpcap, SGP, nebulosity and even maxim-dl. I switched cables, and again no luck. I took my rig home, set up evertything and camera works just fine. Everything is ok. I took 40, 4 min frames, not a single problem. Then I took it out last night, tried to capture, and again it fails to download and hangs on downloading. It is getting really frustrating. Could you please help me out? Regards, Rez

All, last night was cold and clear but the seeing was not as good as last Sunday, a lot more moisture in the air, I headed out at 10:30pm, when the local sports field turns off its floodlights and spent about 2hrs capturing more data. I got Orion Constellation back in view and I used APT Framing tool to help replicate the framing from Sunday's session and shot a set of RGB subs and further L subs, 30s, 15s,10s, 1s and 0.5s to try and get some dynamic range into Orion Nebula. All the subs were taken with ASI1600 set at unity gain and at -20degC and still using my Samyang 135mm set at F2 mounted on AZ-EQ6. No guiding used. All capture controlled by APT. Been quite a process this evening to stack and process all the different exposure sets, but enjoyable none the less I used DSS to stack, RegiStar to align and combine RGB, PS CC for all processing with plugins for AstroFlat and HLVG. I posted the Ha version at beginning of the week, I've uploaded a full resolution JPEG, it doesn't stand up to pixel peeping, I think I slightly mis-aligned one of the L frames when combining to get some dynamic range into Orion Nebula - I combined about 40% Ha onto a copy of the Red channel using Luminosity option to merge then replaced the Red channel of the colour image with the HaR mix. Although this is a completely different set up and FOV this is its not in the same league as @ollypenrice and his M42 au chocolat earlier this evening, which was absolutely stunning by the way, I think I have managed to capture a dusting of cocoa powder with my efforts with around 5 hrs of data capture. Anyway thanks for looking and hope you like it, plus any comments absolutely welcome Bryan

Here is an image I took last month, around 8 hours of data. Taken with an FSQ and ASI 1600M Cool camera

Funny thing - I have an ASI1600 + EFW and am connecting to SW coma corrector which requires 55mm spacing. The camera is 6.5mm the EFW is 20mm, total 26.5, so 28.5mm spacer required - sound correct hopefully? But the suppllied spacers are 21mm and 16.5mm which doesnt help (and doesnt seem correct even for a colour ASI1600 with no EFW) There is also a 11mm female/female adapter and a very short 1.5mm male/male adapter, so I guess I could use the 11mm F/F followed by the 1.5mm M/M + the 16.5 giving 29mm but this seems a bit complicated! Just wondering what other folk do - I cant be the only one with this problem. Any thoughts please?

Happy to see the stars again last night, though cirrus clouds were everywhere. With some luck I got some (short) time with lower cloud density and I pointed the scope towards the Orion. 32x30s usable longest subs, 15x10s for the core and I also used 14x20s taken on the 25th to remove the big halos caused by the brighter stars seen through clouds. I could not expose longer, I only had my DSLR and my EQ5 mount, no intervalometer. The second picture contains some narrowband data I had, which I added in a very small amount to the RGB image. Ha as red and O3 as G and B. This is taken through another lens and it is just an experiment. The scope seems to perform very well. I can't wait to see what I can get in proper conditions, but it seems that I have to wait a while for this. Clear skies! Alex

Been working on this again, still with old data. Loads of gradients that I can't seem to get rid of. I dumped a lot of [NII] subs that had rubbish stars, elongated and trailed. TS 80mm f/4.4 six-element astrograph, 3nm Astrodons, ASI1600. I think I ran 5 min subs at max DR. Captured in Maxim DL processed in AstroArt5. Sigma Add stack, multiple gradient removals, ans several Histogram Stretch iterations. Need more data. I have 2 hours of decent HII, but I want to add new [NII] and [OIII]. C&C welcome, and suggestions for further work. The JPEG looks nothing like the FITS I was working on, or how it looks on my monitor from Windows Photo Viewer. Pah!

Imaging with a 106mm telescope with pulse guiding I have been posting a few images since I started using the ASI1600MM Cool about a year ago, but they all used my 135mm Samyang lens. In the new year we had a few clear nights and although I wanted to carry on with the mosaic of Barnards loop in Ha7nm, the trees in the hedgerow behind my house became part of the frame – not a good thing. I looked at Star Gazers Lounge for inspiration and many images in January were being posted of the Rosette Nebula, so I slewed over to that, with the 135mm lens and started imaging. The result was ‘ok’ but I felt that the nebula got lost in the stars in such a wide field image. So I decided to put my Astro Tech 106mm EDT APO on the mount and set up for pulse guiding and get up close and personal with the Rosette Nebula. The 106mm scope/guiding wasn’t completely new to me as this was the setup I had used for my initial DSLR imaging. The full run down of the set up is below. Capture configuration Telescope AT106EDT Riccardi 0.75x reducer/flattener Camera ASI1600 MM cool Baader LRGB Ha(7nm) filters Guiding AT72ED Lodestar X2 Mount Skywatcher AZ EQ6-GT I run everything from a Microsoft Surface Pro3 with a single USB3 connection to a USB3 powered hub. The capture software I use is Astro Photography Tool alongside Carte Du Ceil and PHD2. Within APP I also have setup the plate solving and linked that to CdC, I can then use Goto++ to get on target very quickly. I also use the framing mask tool so I can fine tune the aim of the FoV to get repeatable results. This all works quite well, but I always sync the mount and software, so for this sequence of captures I used Zeta Orionis to sync everything up, then I can use Goto++ effectively. Guiding was ok, I need to understand it a lot more, but I have managed to set it up and get guiding accuracy RA 1.4” RMS and DA 0.72” RMS. What I have to try and improve is that the correction pulses are quite large and occasionally says I have to increase the maximum correction pulse duration. PHD2 reports that I have a polar alignment error of 1.5’ arcmin. Image Details The imaging was carried out over several nights between 9th – 17th February 2018, sky quality was at best variable so the subs were quite a mixed bag. However I captured quite a large number of subs and had to cope with the Rosette transiting the meridian and being obscured by a large bamboo hedge, so I had to meridian flip to keep target in FOV, but kept camera in same position (I don’t have a rotator, or wanted to create a completely different set of flats for flipped images) with the result that the captured subs were a mix of pre and post meridian flipped subs, but stacking software can take care of the inversion. Dataset Baader 1.25” filters L – 60subs @60s R – 88 subs @60s G – 122 subs @60s B – 84 subs @60s Ha7nm – 74 subs @90s Flats - 30 Darks - 30 Bias -100 The ASI1600 was set to -20degC and unity gain. over a period of 4 nights captured a total amount of data for the image of 7.75 hours, however the sharp eyed among you will spot the weakness in this data set – Luminance – I did not capture enough, why, because I was obsessed in getting colour captured , but due to the issues with meridian flip and guiding after meridian flip I ended up with incomplete data sets, FOV offsets and inversions, so I ran my RGB capture plan on two separate capture runs. However, once I got all the RGB, the clouds rolled in and by mid-Feb the moon was too bright for luminance capture and as each day goes by the Rosette headed westwards and into the light pollution bubble from the big logistics warehousing area on edge of town -sigh…. Stacking Up to now I have been using Deep Sky Stacker, DSS, however with this Rosette project I found that the DSS stacked images had a lot of noise. I had been reading about Astro Pixel Processor, which Sara Wagner has been using and posted several video tutorials. I decided to use this and have no regrets, yes it has a lot more processing steps and configuration options, but they all make sense and for my subs gave a significantly better final stacked image to take into the next processing stage. Registration I use RegiStar, I came across this application when reading posts by Olly Penrice, it’s a one trick pony, but it is a brilliant trick and getting all the base stacked images precisely aligned before you start more detailed processing. Misc I also ‘found’ another very useful piece of software, called Straton, it removes stars from an image and you can then process the nebula without over stretching the stars and losing colour. I played with this quite a bit as another great use is when blending Ha into red channel (and sneaking some into luminance as well) it helps avoid getting holes in stars as the Ha stars are so much smaller than RGB. Photoshop There are so many ways to process an astro image it is not my intent to detail workflows here. I use bits and pieces from many sources, including processes from Steve Richard’s Dark Art or Magic Bullet. I have Noels actions, Google NIK plugin, Hasta La Vista Green and Astroflat Pro. My biggest effort goes into reducing the crazy gradients I get on my images due to sports field floodlights, logistics warehouse lighting, and the usual street lighting issues. NGC2237 Rosette Nebula So after many, many evenings of processing, reprocessing, trying different blends and masking techniques I leave you with my ‘final’ NGC2237 Rosette Nebula thanks for reading and getting here, this is the JPEG version with a very light crop to remove stacking artifacts, the PNG was nearly 70Mb so I decided not to post that Bryan

Hi everyone, I've been beavering away on a couple of images, one of the Pacman nebula and this, my first Horsehead. Shot over several nights in my back garden. Terrible weather meant a big gap between imaging nights - it's amazing how you (or is it just me?!) forget the little details in just 8 or 9 days... Lum data is lacking a bit and I couldn't tame mighty Alnitak. But I like the result. Anyway, a number of firsts here - first completed image with the Lakeside focuser, first true tests of APT's recently added auto meridian flip (works great!) and first time using Astro Pixel Processor for calibration and stacking. APP is a contender - very easy to use - I threw all my multinight multifilter data at it and it chugged through it all with the minimum of fuss! 4.9 hours of HaLRGB data. L 108x15", R 41x60", G 84x30", B 81x30", Ha 35x250". Thanks for looking!

Good evening to you all, Last night I acquired 30x180s on each RGB so now I have a total of 37x180s each RGB, 60x60s lum from last year, 55x180s lum from this year and some shorter exposures for the core. That means ~5:33h of RGB and 3:45h of lum. All taken with the ASI1600MMC and the 130PDS newton, horrible gradients when using the light pollution filter. I mean really horrible and uneven gradients. I also have a horizontal line at about 1/4 from the top reflected from somewhere. The image below was stacked and merged with APP, I also made a synthetic lum from the RGB and included it in the final lum file. Processing can be improved, for sure, but I have also another thought. Would maybe another 6h of luminance data be worthy on this target? Or should I move to something else, maybe M3 or M92? Clear skies, Alex Astrobin: https://www.astrobin.com/341636/ Edit: almost 4 more hours of lum. Edit2: 7 more hours of lum.

Everyone, This is only my second real attempt using my ASI1600MC with 5 filters, LRGB and HA (7nm), prior to this Ive been using a un-modded Cannon 600D with my 106mm APO. But this image was taken with a Samyang 135mm lens, many people talk about how good it is at f2 and I am very pleased with how my image has turned out, it is by no means perfect in any sense, there are gradients all over due to light pollution from two distribution warehouse parks, to my north and south west and skyglow from Milton Keynes to my South East. However, this is where I live so I have to work within the limitations of the location. Image details Andromeda Galaxy M31 Tuesday 15th August Camera ASI1600MC, set to unity gain Capture software APT L 60 subs R 40 subs G 40 subs B 40 subs Ha 60 subs A total integration time 2.5 hrs of data The LRGB subs were 30s unguided on my azeq6, that I got tuned by David Woods at DarkFrame, @Woodsey65, I wasn't pushing for longer subs on the visual side as at unity gain more than 30s gives me a very washed out image due of course to the light pollution. I used 60s subs with the Ha(7nm) - they are all Baader filters. I then took 20 darks, 30 Bias and 20 Flats for each filter and used DSS to register and stack the images, I used the APT Flats assistant with a LED flat screen and two sheets of A4 paper to take flats next morning. I used Registar to register all the resultant images and used Registar to combine the RGB files than went into Photoshop CC2017. I had to buy Registar after struggling to align everything in PS and combine RGB. SGL search to the rescue and Registar was highlighted as a very useful tool - and yes it took away the alignment pain I had been fighting for half a day. I have Gradient Exterminator and used it at various points in my processing, but there are still issues with gradients due to light pollution and possibly my flats. This was also my first time including Ha data, I followed Steve's, @steppenwolf process by mixing R and Ha in a new file and replacing the R channel in final image with the resultant R+Ha mix, phew... it takes time to understand all this stuff. Below is the full image and a cropped image of M31 and a pic of the equipment used, the stars look reasonably round, bottom left a bit out of shape, I think I got good focus with help of a Bahtinov mask and the APT focussing tools. The micro adjuster from Teleskop-Express was also a good recommendation from SGL members. I would be interested in comments around reducing the gradients, and of course any other pointers to improve next time.

Good day all, During the first half of June I worked on this 4 panel mosaic of the LBN 239, 241, 243 complex in Cygnus. Besides the bright component ic1318a it was a test for my new asi1600 on some fainter nebulae. I think the small cmos camera is holding up pretty good. Very little noise, I did not use any noise reduction in the post processing. The calibrated frames have been stretched and stitched together in PS. Details: Scope: 10" f/3.8 Newtonian CMOS: ASI1600MM-Cool @ -20°C Filter: Astrodon 5nm h-alpha Exposure: 20 hrs total (5 min subexposures binned 1x1); Unity Gain setting / 5h for each panel Resolution: 0.82 arcsec/pixel A higher res version can be found here. https://pietervandevelde.smugmug.com/Pics/Deepsky-1/i-MpNmG6t/4K Thanks for taking a look, Regards, Pieter

A few 'firsts' for me here:- First ever RGB image First ever image processed in Pixinsight - all thanks to HarrysAstroShed tutorials First 'proper' use of ASI 1600MM-C with Mini EFW First image through the OpticStar 127mm Apo R,G and B - 30 subs each @8 seconds with ASI1600MM-C set to unit gain, offset 21 and @-20C I have a lot to learn (many more tutorials on Harry's site, the LightVortex site and also Warren Keller's book) - but its a start. Now - How do I get my luminance image (60 subs - other settings as above) incorporated Next time I'll get the framing correct to get the Horsehead too Neil

I took my first Ha image last night and tried to combine it with data of the same object taken previously. First, the Ha image (consisting of only 3x5min subs) just looks like a luminance ....but not as good Second, when i combined it with the old data in PI....I really did laugh out loud (or hahaha as noted in the title). Can anyone suggest a tutorial on LRGB/narrow band imaging either here or on the web - I can find them but if someone knows of a good one (and that's what this forum is for right?) then I'd really appreciate it. Thanks David