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This is my second attempt at the Flaming Star Nebula. The first one was with my 10" Newtonian, and this, with my 61mm Triplet. It represents 450 minutes of data over many winter nights when the clouds were on break. Seeing was not wonderful, due to the moon, humidity, along with other excuses you may be aware of that I have neglected to remember while typing this post. My area is considered Bortel 4. The camera was a QHY173MC without filters. The mounts were a combinaton of a iOptron GEM28 or SkyWatcher EQ6R Pro. The SkyWatcher yields better guide logs, but the iOptron is light-weight, so the choice of mount was dependent upon how tired I was when it was time to setup and how likely it was that I would have to bring it all in with dispatch for impending weather. I am not completely pleased with this image and believe I may be able to improve it some. But for now, I declare a truce until next season.

The wandering blue star AE Auriga is the power house of the Flaming Star Nebula (IC405). Ultraviolet radiation emitted by the star causes nearby hydrogen gas to emit red visible light, closer to the star, dust reflects starlight creating a blue reflection nebula. 2m years ago the star was within the Orion Nebula but gravitational interactions with nearby stars resulted in the star being ejected and so it now wanders the skies. For the image capture, I decided on a LRGB approach with a Ha blend into the red channel to improve the visibility of the surrounding hydrogen gas. The image below was taken with my Esprit 150 and represents 11 hours integration time. Alan LIGHTS: L:5, R:11, G:10, B:7 x 600s; Ha:11 x 1800s.

I have long ago exhausted my own pool of data and am waiting for astrodarkness to return in a month or so. Fortunately, the group of Norwegians (including @Ola Skarpen@Xplode) that has set up the SkyEye remote obsy in Spain has kindly let me work on their excellent Ha and RGB data of IC405 collected in February. Thanks a lot guys!! I put extra emphasis on the blue central structure making sure it did not get overwhelmed by the strong signal in the red and Ha channels. I did not use the Lum data provided as the stars in the Ha and RGB data looked better. Instead I used a bit of Ha as Lum (Ha also mixed 50:50 into the red channel). Aligning and Deconvolution in PI. All the rest in PS CS5. I also made an experiment of only processing the green and blue data to see what it would look like without the Ha/Red signal (although I added RGB data to the stars). Info: TS Optics Photoline 130 f/6.62 with a Moravian G3-16200 on a 10 Micron GM2000 HPS II. Focal reducer:APM Riccardi 0.75x. Astrodon Blue Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 25x300", Astrodon Green Tru-Balance E-Series Gen 2: 25x300", Astrodon Red Tru-Balance E-series Gen 2: 25x300", Astrodon Ha 3nm 50mm: 190x300". So totally 22.1 hours. So here is first the HaRGB image and then the blue/green data on its own. Comments and suggestions most welcome of course. It was for example quite difficult to decide how dusty I would make the image - the Ha data contained a lot of it.

Saturday nigh was the first clear night for what feels like eons and I fired up my triple rig (a Samyang 135 f/2, a Canon 300 f/4 and an ES127ED refractor, all connected to Canon 60D DSLRs) to collect as much entertainment as possible. I just "finished" processing the 300 mm data, which became an accidental mosaic since the framing on this lens shifted about 50% after the meridian flip at midnight (I only bothered to frame the refractor). The central 50% of the image contains data from both before and after the flip. No idea why it shifted but my rig is far prom perfected yet. The subs were stacked with Pixinsight and further processing was done in PS. SQM was only 20.5 (I usually get above 21) mainly due to a complete snow coverage lighting up the sky. Noise was low though due to natural cooling: the temperature fell from -7 to -14°C during the night and all my stuff were covered with frost. 134 x 3 min subs so 6.7 hours (Canon 300mm f/4 connected to a Canon 60D at ISO 1600) Comments most welcome! (Pixel peepers may be upset. I think I have some tilt in the Canon 300 / camera set up but I have no idea how to fix it so I have been fighting a bit with star shapes in this image - I will try stopping the lens down next time)

Friends, here are the preliminary results from my third go at using my triple rig, when it finally cleared on Saturday night (sadly my second go was a month ago since the clouds and moon has been conspiring as usual). I have already posted the image from the Canon 300mm f/4 but include it here again. I am thinking of adding the long FL data to the short ones, but that will be a processing exercise for future cloudy nights. Temperature was down to -14° so I was freezing my a.. off but the DSLRs loved it so no noise reduction used. Acquisition details (all at ISO 1600 and on an EQ8): Samyang 135mm f/2 (@f/2) with a Canon 60D, 181 x 1 min = 3 hours (I have another 3 hours from after the flip that I have not looked at yet - took PI a whole morning to stack the first 181 subs) Canon 300mm f/4 (@f/4) with a Canon 60D, 134 x 3 min subs = 6.7 hours (this is a two panel mosaic) ES 127ED apo with a TS 0.79x reducer, so FL 752 mm (f/5.9) with a Canon 60Da, 40 x 10 min = 6.7 hours Stacking in PI and processing in PS. So, about 20 hours of data in one night to play with.... Comments and suggestions most welcome! Cheers Göran

This is the third of three images I will posts of this target for the challenge. They were all taken the same night (16-17 Dec 2917) with my new triple rig (a Samyang 135 f/2, a Canon 300 f/4 and an ES 127ED 5" refractor sitting side by side with Canon 60D cameras on them) in my garden obsy on the Swedish countryside in Värmland. Temperature fell from -7 to -14°C during the night. The ground was snow covered so SQM was around 20.5 (a bit lighter than usual) Camera: Canon EOS 60Da at ISO1600. Lens: ES 127ED (triplet apo) Mount: SW EQ8 Guiding: SW ST80 + QHY5LIIM + PHD2 Exposures: 40 x 10 min = 6.7 hours Filters: None Stacked: PI. Processed: PS CS5. Cheers, Göran

This is the second of three images I will posts of this target for the challenge. They were all taken the same night (16-17 Dec 2917) with my new triple rig (a Samyang 135 f/2, a Canon 300 f/4 and an ES 127ED 5" refractor sitting side by side with Canon 60D cameras on them) in my garden obsy on the Swedish countryside in Värmland. Temperature fell from -7 to -14°C during the night. The ground was snow covered so SQM was around 20.5 (a bit lighter than usual) Camera: Canon EOS 60D (unmodded) at ISO1600. Lens: Canon EF 300mm f/4 L USM (@ f/4) Mount: SW EQ8 Guiding: SW ST80 + QHY5LIIM + PHD2 Exposures: 134 x 3 min = 6.7 hours Filters: None Stacked: PI. The image is a mosaic of two frames that have a 50% overlap in the centre of the image Processed: PS CS5. I have added a small amount of data to the tadpoles taken taken with the 5" refractor in Feb 2017 (which may disqualify the image but I leave that to the judges) Cheers, Göran

This is the first of three images I will posts of this target for the challenge. They were all taken the same night (16-17 Dec 2917) with my new triple rig (a Samyang 135 f/2, a Canon 300 f/4 and an ES 127ED 5" refractor sitting side by side with Canon 60D cameras on them) in my garden obsy on the Swedish countryside in Värmland. Temperature fell from -7 to -14°C during the night. The ground was snow covered so SQM was around 20.5 (a bit lighter than usual) Camera: Canon EOS 60D (unmodded) at ISO1600. Lens: Samyang 135mm f/2 (@f/2) Mount: SW EQ8 Guiding: SW ST80 + QHY5LIIM + PHD2 Exposures: 360 x 1min = 6 hours Filters: None Stacked: PI. The image is a mosaic of two frames that have a 50% overlap in the centre of the image Processed: PS CS5 Cheers, Göran

Hi Everyone, With the weather as it is I guess anything is better than nothing. This is 100 mins of Ha and OIII; Ha was taken pre-flip, OIII taken post flip. Subs are pre-processed in PI (Flats but using MasterBias as Dark), stretched in FITS Liberator (a first for me so not sure I've used it to best effect) and then combined using Ha-OIII Bi-Colour Process in Annie's Astro Actions in PS; there is no noise reduction at all. I clearly need several hundred more minutes of Ha and OIII and a bit of SII might be helpful as well! Thanks for looking and any comments or suggestions would be gratefully received. Adrian

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

I present you an image of the Flaming star nebula and the Tadpoles. I have 2 versions. Ha only and HOO. I started with 4 panels mosaic shot with the 130PDS, each panel is ~2h exposures. Then I shot another 7.5h with the Canon 300 F4 L lens, but the result was awful, compared to the mosaic. So I added this only in a small amount and only on the darker areas of the image. For the O3 image I only used the Canon lens. The IS element inside gives me a lot of headaches, and I have coma in some corners, other corners are out of focus, etc. And it behaves differently each session. Not only the IS was not playing nice, but I also had focus shift due to temperature drop and I did not refocus. The camera used was the ZWO ASI1600MMC, cooled to -15C. 180s subs at 300gain with the 130PDS and 300s subs at 139 gain with the Canon lens. Mount: AZ-EQ5. The lens was wide opened and the newton was corrected with a SW coma corrector, hence the halos around the brighter stars. Guiding: OAG with 130PDS and side-guiding with a 200mm lens for the Canon lens shots. Software: APT and PHD for acquisition; DSS, APP, StarTools, Registar, GIMP for processing. When blending the O3 I had to abuse star reduction, star removal, heavy blurring, masks, layers, etc. for a decent result. Link to a better resolution and other details: http://www.astrobin.com/315278/D/ Thanks for watching, Alex

I debated posting this in the deep sky section but figured I'd go for widefield as it is indeed rather widefield... Only a limited number of subs captured during a clear spell at the recent Kielder Star Party - here's a chunk of Auriga with the Flame Nebula at the top and M38 at the bottom left with a variety of other objects in between. It's a work in progress in that as soon as I can get a lot more subs I'll do so to really try and pull out the nebulosity in it...it'll take a while for me to identify all the objects (there's something at the top left that I'm curious about). Captured using a modified Canon 650D through a Borg 55 f/3.6 scope (focal length 200mm). I used one of their new QRO filters, the HEUIBII version, an upgrade to the 'standard' IDAS which has a filter cell designed to minimise reflections which I'd had on some of my earlier images - I think it's worked well!! I'm desperate to capture more subs for this one as I think there's promise in there, there's a considerable amount of nebulosity across a big part of the field of view but there's only seven subs in there, 5 from Kielder and 2 from home, 200 seconds each. I've used Pixinsight to process and have very slightly clipped the black end during processing to try and control the noise that more subs will deal with... James

I am traveling all of Dec and Jan (without a scope), presently in Vietnam, so no new data but I got some time to work on my IC405 data from late October, trying to bring out what looks like a blue dragon in the Flaming Star Nebula (maybe that is the flaming?). In any case, this is what it looks like in its 21st saved version. ES 5" Apo with TS 0.79x reducer (so f/5.9, FL 752 mm) on EQ8 and a Canon 60Da collecting the photons. 38 x 10 min = 6.3 h. Photoshop CS5. Any comments and suggestions most welcome

I did a quick (7 subs) image of the region around the Flaming Star Nebula and posted it... ... but I knew a few more subs would really help. I managed to get some over the last couple of nights. Both nights were a little murky but they were largely clear so I shouldn't complain.. This is a great region of the sky with loads of Ha objects, clusters, odd bits of nebulosity and so on and doing a slightly more widefield image allows me to capture more than one type of image at a time (value for money and all that!). Using a modified Canon 650D through a Borg 55FL f/3.6 scope and an IDAS HEUIBB filter, 30x 200 secs (guided) here's a reworked version as there's so many objects in there I thought I'd put an annotated copy in there two (manually - can't figure out the Pixinsight way to do it...). It's not perfect... there's artefacts in there caused by me stacking (and keeping) some subs that were taken at an angle to the rest..a practiced eye should be able to see that Actually, an unpractised eye probably can too I really must learn how to put pictures up here that don't get brutally jpeggerised... Oops - nearly forgot - does anyone know what the object at the top left is..? (The little red smudge...)

This is an RGB image made from POSS2 red and blue filter data with a synthetic green channel (a 50:50 mix of red and blue). I added a bit extra luminosity to the "blue dragon" by mixing in some blue data as a luminosity layer. All in PS CS5. POSS2 is a 1990ies sky survey based on monochrome glass plate images (red or blue filtered) taken with a 1.2-m Schmidt camera at the Mt. Palomar Observatory. Data is available free and working with it is both fun and a good therapy while waiting for clear skies: http://archive.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/dss_form Comments and suggestions always welcome of course

Imaged with the usual gear (Tak E130D, G3-16200 and chroma Ha 3nm, PI for processing) over four nights but still only 9x30 min due to Yorkshire cloud. A mixture of average and very ropey seeing and a bit of moon thrown in on a few of the subs so not quite so crisp as some of my previous attempts with this kit. Not sure I've rung all I can out of this with the processing but was getting to the point where I found it hard not to blow out the brighter regions of nebula (including the tadpoles). Have avoided the (dreaded?) HDR wavelets so far but might be tempted to blend some into this version (especially if I can get the noise down with some more subs). As ever C and C's welcome! Paul