Nebula's and Galaxies 23/05/2018

[cuivenion]

After basically having to do major maintenance on my HEQ5 and struggling with it for quite a while, it was great to have it out last night tracking and slewing beautifully. All these images were taken with Sharpcap live stacking using a ZWO ASI224 and Skywatcher 200p. A stacked dark was used during live stacking, but no post processing.

Bow Tie Nebula in Cepheus, a planetary nebula about 3500 light years away. 26 x 8s:

The Bubble Nebula in Cassiopeia. 53x 8s:

The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus. I didn't have a large enough FOV for this, so I just captured what nebulosity I could. 31 x 8s:

The Deer Lick Group in Pegasus. I didn't frame this very well so I only captured four of the galaxies. 27 x 8s:

The Iris Nebula in Cepheus. 42 x 8s:

NGC 6503, dubbed the Lost In Space galaxy due to it being on the edge of the Local Void, a relatively empty expanse of space at least 150 million light years wide. 27 x 8s:

NGC 6951. Galaxy in Cepheus. 60 x 8s:

It was a lot of fun going from DSO to DSO. One thing I'm going to have to do and that is new darks before each target from now on. I need to be a bit more methodical in my approach. Comments and criticisms welcome as usual.

 

 

[elpajare]

Amazing results with only 8 seconds of exposure. Some post processing?

[Demonperformer]

Evenings of having "fun" going from object to object can be good. I once approached a sort of messier marathon that way - 4*15s subs on each object and move onto the next one. Doesn't produce results that would win any of our sgl challenges, but it can be an interesting guide as to what might be worth spending a little more time on on a subsequent occasion.

And isn't "fun" what we are all in this for anyway ?

[RobertI]

Great results, the colour really adds another dimension. The Iris is particularly nice. I assume this was at native F5 (1000mm FL)?

[cuivenion]

5 minutes ago, RobertI said:

Great results, the colour really adds another dimension. The Iris is particularly nice. I assume this was at native F5 (1000mm FL)?

Thanks, yes it was at 1000mm.

[alan potts]

Some there I have not seen before. nice shots.

[cuivenion]

1 hour ago, elpajare said:

Amazing results with only 8 seconds of exposure. Some post processing?

Thanks. No post processing, only colour balance and histogram stretch in Sharpcap live stacking.

[cuivenion]

37 minutes ago, alan potts said:

Some there I have not seen before. nice shots.

Cheers Alan!

[Dragon_Astro]

A great Dso haul there :)

I can never get Sharpcap to live stack properly, it says there's not enough stars to do the alignment, even though there's plenty. So you did very well there.

The 224 chip is very good though, I have it in my gpcamv2

[cuivenion]

Cheers Dragon!

[cuivenion]

11 hours ago, Dragon_Astro said:

A great Dso haul there

I can never get Sharpcap to live stack properly, it says there's not enough stars to do the alignment, even though there's plenty. So you did very well there.

The 224 chip is very good though, I have it in my gpcamv2

Hi Dragon, I've been thinking about your live stacking problem and there's a few possible causes, Bad focus and tracking among them. Also if you have one of the filters set to high or low it will prevent stacking. If you post a message on the Shapcap forum you'll get a good response, they're very helpful there.