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I really hope that I need a single more night to complete my belt to sword 4 panels mosaic in O3 so I can finally put the ASI1600 on my new Esprit 80. Meanwhile, I carried where I traveled last 2 weeks the EQ5, the Esprit and a Canon 550D. I also had a chance yesterday to shoot some images with the same setup from home, where the sky is light polluted. First image is a total of about 30 mins of 30s unguided exposures with some moon too, but under dark skies + about 30 mins of 90s exposures from home, guided. Some 10s exposures too for the core. Perhaps the focus was not always spot on, the scope is more sensitive than I expected and it shifts quite a lot due to temperature drop. Second image contains Ha and O3 data I'm collecting for the mosaic above mentioned, added in a rather small amount. Even if I need much more data and the result is far of what I want, I'm pretty pleased with my improvements in time. The third image was taken at Christmas, 2 years ago, at my first or second astrophoto sessions. 102/500 achromat on an Alt-Az mount. Clear skies! Alex

Hello all! I acquired yesterday the third hydrogen panel of this area. I might add 2 more below, in landscape. We shall see how the weather plays. 2.5h each panel in 300s subs at unity gain. And some 30s exposures for the core. Camera is ASI1600MMC on the Canon 300 F4 L lens, cooled to -15C. And first successful try with the Astro Pixel Processor, though, the stacks were made with DSS. I just purchased APP and I didn't restack them. I'm not sure if I should add more hydrogen data or move to oxygen and then LRGB. I still have time to decide until Feb-March. More details: http://www.astrobin.com/317154/ Comments welcomed. Clear skies, Alex

Hello all, I started a while ago a topic to show my progress on this target over a couple of years. Now I think I have a final image for this season. I will have to move soon and the clouds don't seem to let me see it again until then. Maybe if I get to travel to a dark site, but then I will go full resolution. Equipment used is a 130PDS with SW coma corrector, ASI1600MMC camera cooled to ~-15C, put on an AZ-EQ5, guided with OAG. Guiding accuracy was reported between 1.3" and 2" depending on the seeing. The window frames only allowed me to see the target for ~2.5h/night. Some nights had clouds, some not. Luminance was taken during 6 or 7 nights for a total of 156x180s frames at unity gain, through a visual CLS filter. That means 7h 48min. The visual CLS seemed to provide better results than the L (IR/UV cut) filter and the coma corrector didn't seem to add chromatic aberrations. Each RGB channel is made by ~60x60s at unity gain too. Ha, if I remember well, is just above an hour worth of 60s frames at 300 gain. I resized the images to 50% since they didn't provide more detail at full resolution due to poor seeing. Processing was done with StarTools and GIMP. Some star reduction. Red/white light pollution. If I missed other significant details that you're interested in, please tell. 16bit .png here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjWHU1RWM0OVFmNG8 Or astrobin: http://www.astrobin.com/313011/ Thanks for looking and clear skies! Alex

I think I'm done with the Hydrogen layer for these nebulae. I started 3 weeks ago a 4 panel mosaic with the 130PDS. I shot around 2h on each panel in 180s subs at 300 gain. And recently I thought to lower the noise in the darker areas and I shot another 7h with the Canon 300 F4 L and I combined the dark areas. I see now that I should have taken more frames with the scope as the quality of the image taken through the lens is way lower. Anyway, I still combined them a bit. The plan is to add LRGB too in the future and perhaps some O3 as well. Full resolution 16 bit .png here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjNjdyMUpqSkJFYUU And, in order: the image taken with the lens, the one with the scope and the blend. Thoughts are welcomed. Clear skies, Alex

While waiting for the main target to rise, sometimes I aimed the lens and camera to the Pleiades. The setup is Canon 300 F4 L and ASI1600MMC. Camera cooled to -15C, 350x60s subs at unity gain. Lens wide open and IDAS-P2 filter. And last year's shot with the DSLRs and the Tair lenses used as colour. Perhaps they could have been better processed, this is the first try while waiting for one more panel on Orion. It's very difficult to remove the light pollution due to the IFN, perhaps this could have been done better too. Full res lum: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjYUVybHNuOURYQ28 Full res with colour: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjb3hBZ0VldllDbkE Clear skies! Alex

It turns out I can not acquire more data until this challenge ends. I present you therefore what I have until now. It's a 5 panels mosaic in Hydrogen alpha. 3 panels in portrait mode, at the top. And 2 in landscape mode, at the bottom. Each panel is made by 30-31 subs of 300s and for the Orion nebula core I have a few 15s subs. All subs are taken with the ZWO ASI 1600 MMC, cooled to -15C, and 139gain. The lens is a Canon 300 F4 L with a lot of distortions caused by the IS element. Compared to the images I was taking on other targets until Orion rose enough, the focus was good since the beginning and remained ok during the nights. Mount: AZ-EQ5. Guiding with a 200mm lens. Software used: APT and PHD for acquisition; DSS, APP, Registar, StarTools and GIMP for processing. I plan to acquire 4 more Ha panels in landscape mode to cover the same area to increase the SNR and then to move to O3 and LRGB. A lot of work this winter. Link with wip: http://www.astrobin.com/317154/C/ Thanks and clear skies, Alex

It seems that none of my glass optics doesn't want to play nice anymore. I started this 2 panel mosaic while shooting for the bubble area, on Ha, with the Canon 300 F4 L lens. In the beginning it went better, but at some point the IS elements decolimated and I just couldn't luckily align it ok again (by attaching back to the camera and focusing with the IS on and then detaching it). I tried one round with the O3, but then I switched to the Tair 3s. The total on this target is like this: 6 h of Ha on each panel, 1:x h of Canon O3 + 1:15 of Tair O3 on each panel. That means ~17h in total. I might want to try to add more O3, but it's only a hope. The moon comes again and the forecast doesn't seem nice the next days. I need a proper scope. I think now that the Soul is stretched more than the Heart, it didn't seem last night. Full res here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjZlQ2Rkw3NUR2S0U Thoughts welcomed. Clear skies, Alex

Hello all, Last night it was clear so I spent some time on M13. There's something that I don't like at my 130 PDS, I have to figure it out, so I put the camera on the evostar 90/900. 3-4 minutes luminance 5s, ~40 minutes luminance 30s, 3-4 minutes each RGB 15s. I couldn't get more before the scope would see the window frame. Gain 300, cooled at -15C. Guided. Won't say more as I stayed all night up and since I woke up I'm processing data (other data too). I'm happy that tonight it's cloudy so I can sleep. Below is the final result. Clear skies, Alex

Hello all, I just got the O3 and the S2 filters this weekend after 2 months of waiting. I bought initially an Optolong Ha and I thought to buy the O3 and S2 also from Optolong. They O3 and S2 are advertised as being 6.5nm which also contributed to go for them instead of the Baader's. Anyway, I acquired some 3 hours if I remember well with the Ha in 1min subs and now just above 2 hours with the O3 in 3min subs. Unfortunately, I can image to the south only up to ~130 degrees in AZ. So the good skies around 180 degrees where objects reach the max altitude are not reachable from home. I have to give it a try later in spring from outside. All taken with the ASI 1600 MMC, cooled to -15C, put on the Tair3s wide opened at F/4.5. 300mm focal length. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByhJ_xuQxcnjWUZUZTRyRXFYYzA Will post in the evening the Ha and the O3 components which were mixed HaOO. Clear skies, Alex

Yesterday evening was clear and I just bought a Canon 300 F4 L sh a week ago. Didn't want to take out all the heavy mount, power supplies, camera, etc. and it would even have been impossible perhaps to set it up in time. So I took the EQ5 with RA tracking (powered from an USB power bank), the lens and the Canon 550D. Went somewhere outside, the galaxy was just visible, but much, much better than city lights. Had a look before at Venus and at Orion's nebula with the 100 F5 achro then I put the camera. I also recently bought a polar scope for the EQ5 and it was the first time when I aligned a/the mount using the polar scope. The circles were much darker than I would have expected. I tested then the tracking with 30s exposures and it seemed to track without trailings, but I was a little afraid so I set the exposures to 20s. I don't have an intervalometer so I couldn't even try longer than 30s with just the camera. I made a manual trigger though so I could fire it up with the camera set on continuous shooting. During the night tracking seemed to stay on spot, I had to refocus once. It was pretty cold, about 5C maybe and I stayed inside the car. So I took more than 200 exposures of 20s at ISO1600 and aperture wide open at F/4. I used about 220 of them. I also took about 60 5s exposures to use for the stars. I'm pretty impressed by the lens' resolution, though I suspect that stopping it down it could help even more. For comparison, I'll attach another try from early October, but taken with 2 Tair 3s lenses stopped down at F/5.6, put on a Canon 550D and a Canon 450D. If I remember well, I exposed then almost half an hour before the batteries went flat. So the total light acquired yesterday was more than double. But the sky was not as good. I also added about 2 hours of noisy Ha to the image, taken from the city with the ASI 1600 MMC also with the Tair 3s and Optolong 7nm Ha filter. I don't think I can make it look much better. Enough writing so here are the images. The colour ones with many spikes are the old ones taken with the Tair lenses. Clear skies, Alex

Hello all, I've been capturing photons lately on the IC1396 with a Canon 300 F4 L lens on an ASI 1600 MMC. I did that for about last month during which I didn't take the camera and the filters off the lens. My balcony is pointed towards ~NEE so I can only see and image the sky between ~30 and ~140 degrees in azimuth and up to ~50 in altitude (with some tricks I can extend that). I shot the Ha sometimes also with the moon still up in the sky, sometimes without, when the trunk rose above ~25 degrees in altitude, the O3 above ~30 degrees and the S2 above ~25 too. In total I have 10h of Ha, 6h of O3 and 5h of S2 taken during 4, 3 and 2 nights respectively. Last night was a pain with the S2, the download from camera freezing twice and guiding going weird. Anyway, this was the last clear night, the forecast says that is going to be cloudy for a while and even if it clears, the moon will interfere so I won't get more data for a while. Perhaps I will switch to something else. All subs are 300s at gain 139 (unity) and cooled to -15C. All calibration frames. The O3 flats looked a bit weird so I took them twice and combined the 2 results. I can't really describe the final combination as it was more trial and error / like/dislike. The L is ~75-80% Ha and O3 and S2 equally filling the rest. The RGB was combined in StarTools and in GIMP, the layer combined in StarTools having a much higher percentage in the final blend. All processing done in StarTools and GIMP and the resizing/aligning was done manually in GIMP. I don't know if I missed something about the acquirement and the processing. The lens seems to have some element tilted, you can see some coma in the bottom-left corner and bloated stars in the top-right one. Better than no lens/scope though and at F/4 is quite fast. This would be my longest project and the most detailed one (highest resolution). I think I could get a better result from processing, but it takes ages at full resolution. Therefore I call this the final result (for a while at least). I'm also attaching the Ha, O3 and S2 channels. Comments and critics are welcomed. You can also follow the progress and the testing for this target at bin2x2 here: Thanks for looking and clear skies, Alex

Hi, Came back home late this evening and noticed that the sky was clear - kind of, some high clouds from time to time. Waited for a while and it seemed that it could stay clear. I had some issues last time I tried my 130PDS, tilt/misscolimated/idk so I thought to try the 90/900 binned 2x2 unguided, short subs as it needed no adjustments. Put the scope, put the camera, focused and set up a plan of 6s. I was aiming for 30 minutes. Drank some beers and some so I thought that 6 is easier to divide with, rather than 5. Nevertheless, I didn't finish the plan of 300 subs, some clouds rolled in. I got scared of them and I decided to park the scope and take flats and darks and I was too lazy to resume captures again for M13, even though it seemed clear again. But I'll have more time next months. And I also didn't have the RGB filters in the FW, I had only LSHO. Enough writing, here's the result (~160 subs of 6s, L filter, 300gain, -15C, bin 2x2 @900mm, F/10):