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Hello again, Similarly to my past post, after a long stretch of rain, I had a break with two clear nights., which resulted in two more images to share. Not wanting to waste this, ever increasingly rare, night sky clarity, I opened the observatory and exposed luma subs during the first night and the second night was spent capturing RGB subs... first half of the night was spent on the Hamburger Galaxy, NGC 3628, and the second half after midnight was spent on M83. The Hamburger is relatively low in the northern sky from my location, which was possibly effected by thermal currents radiating from the house roofs directly below the galaxy position. Alternately the Southern Pinwheel exposure started when it was directly overhead and was high in the sky for the duration of the exposure. These images were exposed across two nights, 3-4 & 4-5 April 2022, using a QHY268M through a Celestron C8" SCT at the native 2032mm focal length, tracked on a Hypertuned CGEM mount. Total exposure time of the Hamburger was 6 hours and 23 minutes, and M83 was 5 hours and 47 minutes through all LRGB filters. The thing I hate most about this cloud dodging imaging is that it seems rushed, with the uncertainty if there will be enough clear sky to finish images. CS, Mariusz

I shot luminance for this trio of galaxies in December and after two clear nights in January I managed to get RGB as well. Larger image can be found in my blog: https://www.evenfall.space/post/galactic-waltz Gear: SkyWatcher Esprit 100mm f/5.5 ASI1600MM-C EQ6 guided with ASI224MC TS Optics LRGB filters. L: 196x120s, R: 60x120s, G: 72x120s, B: 60x120s. Total integration time approx. 13 hours.

I wasn't going to share this, but what the heck. The winter of discontent continues, so i guess even this little data has to constitute an image these days. After what seemed like an age of night after night of clouds, we had a rare few hrs of clear skies one night last week. So i managed to grab a whopping 9 x 7 mins of the Horsehead Nebula before it disappeared behind the neighbor's house. I then needed something else to aim for, so i brought up the Leo Triplet Sequence in SGP and managed to nab about 2.75 hrs in total, before the clouds returned. It really, really needs double, if not triple this amount, so i wasn't really intending on processing this tbh. I was really just messing about in APP and PS testing several things out, so there was no proper workflow being adhered to. I took an Auto DDP stretch out of APP and quickly processed it in PS, without much care. I noticed it was lacking in colour, so i thought this would actually be a good candidate to try out some ArcSinh Colour-Preserving stretches, so i took another linear stack and used Mark Shelley's excellent PS method for doing the colour-preserving stretches. Lo and behold, i ended up with a stack that was very rich in colour, so much so in fact that the sky background had also mottled up pretty bad. So i used a mask to only apply the rich colours to the stars and galaxies of the original image, and it made a HUGE difference. It was only at this stage that i suddenly thought i might as well actually go ahead and make an image out of it. I really want to stretch it more, but it just can't take it. There's just not enough data, end of story. In fact i may have already stretched it too far as it is. The background is a tad lower than i would have liked as well, but it was needed to help suppress the noise. I've ran quite a bit of NR too, more than i'm usually comfortable with, and it's still noisy. I know what the answer to that is of course, more data! ? (not likely). I do quite like the colours though ? Feedback welcome. 24 x 420s (2.75 hrs) 80ED (x0.85), D5300, HEQ5-Pro, IDAS-D1. Resized to 66% to help hide some of the warts!

I hope you all have been able to take advantage of the last few clear, if a bit murky nights :-) I did, and after reminding myself how to use my equipment (by aligning on a random star I thought was Regulus and spending an hour switching on/off again LOLOL) ........I managed to get some "ok" images of the the Leo Triplet - an object I've always liked for its eerie looking galaxies, their foggy arms hiding some sinister alien civilization, plotting their course for the Milky Way...lol This is the first time I've imaged this object with my mono camera (ASI1600MM) I always thought mono imaging was going to be such a pain having to wait numerous nights before I got enough data - but it really piles up fast once you get going doesn't it!? Fantastic - 3.4hrs in two nights - smooth. Here's my contribution - no need to critique - I know they're pretty much poop compared to most I've seen on here - the skies weren't great, and its the best I could do LOL Details Object name Leo Triplet Object ID M65, M66 and NGC 3628 Date(s) 21 and 24 March, 2017 Telescope Altair 115mm Camera ASI1600MM Luminance 8x5 min / 30x2 min / 1.6 hrs Red 7x5 min / 35 min Green 6x5 min / 30 min Blue 8x5 min / 40 min Ha 0 Oiii 0 Sii 0 Total time 3.4 hours Frames 0 Processing PixInsight / fully calibrated lights / Levels / Curves / SCNR only Notes The skies were not outstanding on either night of imaging this object. I am surprised at how good it turned out considering this. There is an awful lot of vignetting on the luminance subs which was improved by reducing the exposure time from 300 to 120 seconds. Alignment of the mount was problematic each night – because I kept aligning on the wrong star! Really must remember that when looking for a 1.4 magnitude star you WILL know it when it appears in on the screen – brighter than anything else besides another <1.4 magnitude star! :-)

Hi! I've been imaging from my new spot at UC Berkeley. The astronomy department gave me keys to the roof for astro imaging purposes, and even though it's a heavily light-polluted spot, I'm very happy with the results! Over the past week, I've been able to get some decent (by my newbie standards) shots of the Horsehead & flame nebula, as well as the Leo Triplet. The Horsehead nebula is made with 4 minute subframes at ISO 800, for about 3 hours and 8 minutes of total exposure time. The Leo Triplet is also made of 4 minute subframes at ISO 800, for a total of 2 hours and 46 minutes. I've included some closeups of the individual galaxies from the triplet as well. I did some serious layer masks on these guys, but I'm not sure if that counts as cheating!! :'D Please let me know what ways you think of for me to improve, and what you think I should keep doing! I took these with a Nikon D3200, an 8" Orion Newtonian Astrograph on Orion Atlas mount. I use an Orion SSAG on a 50mm guide scope. I'm using a 2" Astronomik CLS filter as well. Thanks, and enjoy!!! Horsehead and Flame Nebula: Leo Triplet: M 66: NGC 3628: M 65: My imaging setup atop my favorite Astronomy department

Hi, Took this photo of the Leo Triplet during march 2015. The main problem for me to photo in LRGB is the bad light poluttion that I have in my backyard. Photo information: Luminance 18 pics X 15 min. Total Luminance exposure: 270 min RGB: 7 pics for each color channel x 5 min per picture. Total color exposure: 105 min Telescore: Skywatcher P250 F/4.8. Camera: QSI583 Mount: ASA DDM60 (No Guiding) Filters: Astrodon Gen2 LRGB http://www.flickr.com/photos/101543943@N04/17222658636/ Thanks for watching Haim

HI, all, I was collecting subs of NGC3628 (one of the Leo triplet) a few nights ago and I am pretty certain I have captured a couple of asteroid trails. Please see attached photo. This is just the Luminence subs, 6 off 5 minute subs, then some RGB's and back to luminence again. Middle left shows some dashes and another set bottom right, just underneath the big, shiny star. I woulld be interested in trying to identify them, so does anyone know where we can get details of known asteroids? Like a stellarium, or something, for asteroids? Thanks, in advance. Gordon.