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Hi Astronomers, Sharing with you another of my images... another image of one of the most popular objects imaged by astroimagers... The Horsehead Nebula/Barnard 33 with Alnitak and the Flame Nebula, but exposed mainly through narrowband filters, but emulating natural colors of the object. I was planning to combine H-Alpha as red, OIII as green and H-Beta as blue channels to create a natural colour image through CCD narrowband filters, eliminating any light pollution or moon sky-glow in the process. Unfortunately, the last night when I was able to do any imaging, to expose subs of this object was on the 20th February before it was cloudy every day and night with constant rain. Having the H-Alpha and RGB data in the can, I set my exposure plan to alternate between OIII and H-Beta subs because during that night, which is luck because I only had a short window of a few hours and it turned out to be my final night of imaging for the forseeable future. I managed to get only 3 x 30 minute H-Beta and 4 x 20 minute OIII narrowband signal. After waiting for a couple of weeks, I figured that I'm not going to get much decent time on Barnard 33 before it become obscured by landmarks so I decided to combine my currently exposed subs, H-Alpha into red, OIII into green and H-Beta into blue, as planned, and added 25% intensity from my RGB subs. This image total exposure time was 9 hours and 32 minutes, consisting of 16 x 600 second 7nm narrowband H-Alpha, 4 x 1200 second 7nm narrowband OIII and 3 x 1800 second 7nm H-Beta with only 25% intensity added from the 14 subs each through red (180s), green (300s) and blue (600s) filters. Taken through a 80mm Refractor @ f6.25, on a hypertuned CGEM mount with QHY268M camera. I think that my narrowband imaging imitating natural color experiment is (once again) successful... the first time I tried this filter to channel alignment was on the Trifid nebula last August. The advantages of exposing images through this narrowband filter to channel alignment is that most of (if not all) light pollution is rejected, imaging is possible during moon light (within reason), colors look natural, I find that more detail is captured through narrowband compared to broadband filters and narrowband filtered subs are much less susceptible to lens flares/internal reflections when there are bright stars near by or near the objects. The only disadvantage I can think of is that the subs exposure times are a lot longer, resulting in much longer total exposure times needed to be spend on each image... although I'm starting to doubt this fact now after seeing how clean my H-Beta and OIII stack ended up being when they consisted only of 3 and 4 subs and perhaps shorter exposure time per channel will suffice? Clear Skies, Mariusz

Hi All, Sharing my image of one of the most popular object for astroimagers... The Horsehead Nebula/Barnard 33 with Alnitak and the Flame Nebula. As I continue to have terrible sky conditions for astroimaging, I'm struggling to complete any images before the imaged object season is finished. Seems like my nights are perpetually cloud covered. I'm keeping an eye on the sky, and when I spot some clarity, I immediately open the observatory and start to gather photons. I captured this image by noticing that there was a clear window of opportunity and managed to have a couple of hours of clarity before clouds returned. I'd like to capture at-least another hours worth of exposure time through this filter to smooth out some of the noise but also would like to capture other color channels and create a color photo... but with the weather being against me, I'm running out of time. This images total exposure time was 1 hour and 40 minutes, consisting of 10 x 600 second 7nm narrowband H-Alpha subs. Taken through a 80mm Refractor @ f6.25, on a hypertuned CGEM mount with QHY268M camera. Clear Skies.

Managed to get out last night, first of 2022, conditions were not ideal because of all the moisture around. I can't be picky though, considering we only get about 10 windless clear nights in the valleys in winter. This picture is the highlight of the night consisting of NGC 2024 - Flame Nebula and Barnard 33 - Horse Head Nebula in the constellation Orion. 10min exposures stacked for a total of 3hrs 20mins integration time. No flats or darks, only bias frames used. I was trying out 10min exposures.

Hi all, my second attempt at imaging over multiple nights, captured 60 mins Ha and a couple of 5 mins on Oiii and Sii on Christmas evening, then added more Oii and Sii on the 30th Total of 60 mins Ha 25 mins Sii and 30 mins Oiii Hubble mapped - SII,Ha,OIII = R,G,B. The Oiii data was very noisy but I'm fairly happy overall, also the ZWO Oiii filter caused a massive ring around Alnitak when stretched ! Comments welcome, I know it needs more data and I will need to learn to be more patient but the year is running out Thanks for looking and have a good 2020.

Hello Astronomers, I managed to get some time to process another of my images exposed in January/February. This was the last image when my USB port on my Astro40D failed. This happened while imaging this scene but it happened toward the end of the imaging plan so I got almost the subs that I wanted. The total exposure time was 16 hours and 16 minutes in ISO1600 for all of the subs, RGB, (OSC through the UV/IR Cut filter), HAlpha and OIII. Imaged through my 8" SCT at f6.3, 1280mm FL on the CGEM mount. Clear Skies, MG

Hi all, This image is the complete version of the Barnard 33 system HAlpha image I posted about 3 weeks ago. The Horsehead nebula intrigued me as a kid and this image and framing was something I wanted to photograph (or fantasized about photographing) in 1991 when I was a kid using a Tasco 60mmx900 refractor on a alt-az mount. So I guess I can say that this image is nearly 25 years in the making. I did image the horsehead in the past but not framed like this with the flame nebula. Just thinking back about pestering my parent to buy be a t-adapter/ring kit and a SLR "because I was going to photograph the sky like the pros..." Ha, lucky it was too expensive for them to splash out on, knowing what I know now, no pictures would have been taken, potentially a small fortune would have been wasted on film and developing, and even fast forwarding to the time when I restarted the hobby, digital was well in the main arena, so even the SLR, unless used for normal photography, would have been gathering dust... But of course as kids we knew everything, we knew it best.... where in reality we KNEW NOTHING AT ALL. How history keeps repeating... :-/ This image consists of RGB, HAlpha and Hbeta, as well as OIII subs taken across November and December last year. The Hbeta and OIII only had a bit of data of the flame nebula and only Hbeta showed a bit of the horsehead nebula. Looking at the subs I do say that imaging Barnard 33 through Hbeta or OIII filters is not necessary and I think the image would look no different without spending the nights capturing those subs. Hope you all like it, I'm happy how it turned out by using a modded, uncooled DSLR. Clear skies, MG

Greetings Astronomers, The work on imaging my next object has begun, and as always and common to us all, I have to juggle imaging between clouds and moon phases. This is 3 hours of halpha data of 900s and 500s subs captured the night before full moon and on the full moon night through a 7nm Baader Halpha filter using a modded Canon 40D DSLR. I'm hoping to spend a night imaging 30 minute subs (when the moon shrinks to last quarter or smaller) to try to capture some of the dimmest nebulosity as well as spend perhaps another night imaging 15 minute subs through a Baader 7nm OIII filter to see what difference adding OIII signal to the final color image will make. Before the moon was first quarter I've acquired 3 hours of usable RGB data across 2 mornings of 300 second subs. After stacking I realized that I need more RGB subs for enough SNR to stretch the data, so my plan is to perhaps spend another night of exposing 300 second subs but through a unmodded DSLR, once complete, I'll stack and process the RGB frames and add the narrowband data to it for a full color image. Sorry for the drawn out ramble... clear skies, MG