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Barnard’s Loop and the Horsehead


GavStar

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Just had a lovely session on the winter targets that are now coming into view in the early hours. These were the targets that I first tried out my NV monoculars when I got them in November last year so it’s nice to give them another go with the greater experience and better equipment I have now.

This was also the first proper go with my Harder Digital Night Vision momoculars and chroma 5nm Ha filter combination. The views were fantastic - I compared side by side with my photonis 4g Night Vision and 6nm Astronomik filter and the gap between the two setups is large.

The angelfish was clear and showed good detail with the Harder whereas the photonis was only just showing a trace of the nebula. On Barnard’s loop the full loop was clear and obvious in the Harder whereas the photonis only showed the brighter top half. This was on 21.0 SQM skies.

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There was just so much nebulosity showing everywhere with the Harder which I haven’t seen like this before. Lots of new things to have a look at in greater detail in the future.

With my AP130GTX and 40mm plossl (with 5nm chroma) the views of the horsehead, rosette, monkeyhead, flaming star, heart, California, Pac-Man, the Cone and Lowers were also pretty fabulous.

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9797EED8-71D6-4D42-AB39-16A098EE081B.thumb.jpeg.be1eedd08048a5c614cf6e6b3bb138c3.jpegAll photos were with my Huawei P20 Pro, unprocessed.

I’m really chuffed with my new kit! One of my best sessions ever.

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Awesome stuff Gavin! Those pics are amazing, such an improvement on previous ones. You have really fine tuned the kit you are using so all the incremental changes you’ve made, including the phone have added up. They are really beginning to look more like mono long exposure images!

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Wow! As said, exactly what kit are you using there and how close are these pics to the view you have in the eyepiece? I love the Barnard’s Loop image. Excellent. The idea of seeing things like that so clearly through an eyepiece is very appealing!

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24 minutes ago, Littleguy80 said:

Stunning pics! Incredible that you can see all that through London’s light pollution! I hope NV becomes more affordable in the near future!

Neil, this session was on the Isle of Wight (hence the sqm of 21.0). In my London back garden I won’t get the same visual experience, in particular the background will be lighter due to the LP. But I will try to post equivalent London photos for a comparison. The narrower 5nm Ha filter should help in London though.

The harder tube is unfortunately even more expensive than the photonis. ?

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6 minutes ago, GavStar said:

Neil, this session was on the Isle of Wight (hence the sqm of 21.0). In my London back garden I won’t get the same visual experience, in particular the background will be lighter due to the LP. But I will try to post equivalent London photos for a comparison. The narrower 5nm Ha filter should help in London though.

The harder tube is unfortunately even more expensive than the photonis. ?

Aaah ok, I missed the sky reading. Still very impressive results though. When you consider that if you spent the equivalent on purely visual equipment, you still wouldn’t be able to match the views of the NV then it doesn’t look so expensive. I look forward to the London pics :) 

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2 hours ago, PhotoGav said:

Wow! As said, exactly what kit are you using there and how close are these pics to the view you have in the eyepiece? I love the Barnard’s Loop image. Excellent. The idea of seeing things like that so clearly through an eyepiece is very appealing!

The kit is as follows:

pvs-14 with harder digital gen 3 white phosphor tube (from www.actinblack.com)

tnvc televue Night Vision adapter

5nm Ha chroma filter

40mm televue plossl (although 55mm is most used since it gives a faster f ratio which is good for night vision)

The Barnard’s Loop was actually  a bit better through the eyepiece in that the background was a bit darker through the eyepiece. The fast f ratio of the monoculars of 1.4 really helps the real time visual views. The f ratio of the 130mm refractor was slower at f4 to get more image scale. This gave a grainer view but the detail of the horsehead, rosette etc was still clear.

I also used the 3x afocal lens for the night vision monocular which enabled me to keep the fast 1.4 f ratio but get materially more image scale than the 1x monocular only view - the notch of the horsehead was very clear with this setup.

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12 hours ago, Stu said:

Awesome stuff Gavin! Those pics are amazing, such an improvement on previous ones. You have really fine tuned the kit you are using so all the incremental changes you’ve made, including the phone have added up. They are really beginning to look more like mono long exposure images!

Thanks Stu, it’s certainly been a journey.

When I first got NV I wasn’t intending to do any images but tnvc also did a photo adapter quite cheaply so I thought why not (and I’d seen your moon phone pics and liked them)

The phone part was the obvious first part to improve since initially the views through the eyepiece were much better than my dodgy iPhone pics. But with the Samsung s9 and then the (even better for astronomy photos) Huawei P20 Pro and quite a bit of practice, the phone images started to overtake the eyepiece views.

So I pleased that I’ve managed to really improve the ‘at the eyepiece’ views with the harder NV and chroma filter. I look forward to showing you soon.

I think (hope!) I’m nearing the end of my NV equipment experiments. The remaining part of the equation is the actual scopes I am using. After seeing how good the visual views are at f1.4 with the 3x afocal lens, I think PeterW is correct - you should chase to get speed as fast as possible. So I’m hoping I can get the adapters sorted for my Tak Epsilon which would then run at f2 with a 3.5 degree fov. 

And also there is a certain larger aperture scope arriving this month which will also run at around f2 with much bigger image scale for smaller nebulae and galaxies.

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Since the forecast looks pretty poor for the rest of this new moon period, I decided to pop out quickly this morning at 2.30am to see if I could catch Barnard’s Loop from my back garden in London.

Quite a stiff challenge in my sqm 18.0 skies for my NV monoculars.

But, I spotted it immediately I switched them on. Only the top half of the loop was visible and it was much fainter then the views I had in the Isle of Wight (where it was really bright exactly like the photo above). The angelfish nebula was also visible at the top of Orion. The flame nebula and the nebula around the horsehead were bright and clear, although the notch of the horsehead was so small at 1x I couldn’t be sure I could see it. 

I then added my 3x lens to my NV monoculars and this extra magnification did allow me to make out the horsehead notch.

Looking forward to checking out these objects at our astro club night meets over the winter at slightly darker skies in Esher.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I’ve just seen this cloudynights thread on visually observing Barnard’s Loop with an image intensifier and Ha filter back in 2007. So night vision astronomy is old tech ?.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/134830-barnards-loop-observations/

It seems a bit odd that it’s taken 10 years or so to really catch on in the USA...

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  • 2 weeks later...
48 minutes ago, PGM said:

Nice photos, Gavin. How do they compare to what you were seeing at the eyepiece?

Please see my comment below ? My recent acquisition of a Takahashi Epsilon 130d means that I can run at a very fast f1.6 ratio and have a good aperture of 130mm for nice image scale on larger nebulae. This setup gives amazing views even from my London back garden - speed of the overall system is so important for visual NV viewing - not so much for phone NV photos.

On 07/10/2018 at 12:43, GavStar said:

 

The Barnard’s Loop was actually  a bit better through the eyepiece in that the background was a bit darker through the eyepiece. The fast f ratio of the monoculars of 1.4 really helps the real time visual views. The f ratio of the 130mm refractor was slower at f4 to get more image scale. This gave a grainer view but the detail of the horsehead, rosette etc was still clear.

I also used the 3x afocal lens for the night vision monocular which enabled me to keep the fast 1.4 f ratio but get materially more image scale than the 1x monocular only view - the notch of the horsehead was very clear with this setup.

 

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On 07/10/2018 at 12:43, GavStar said:

The Barnard’s Loop was actually  a bit better through the eyepiece in that the background was a bit darker through the eyepiece. The fast f ratio of the monoculars of 1.4 really helps the real time visual views. The f ratio of the 130mm refractor was slower at f4 to get more image scale. This gave a grainer view but the detail of the horsehead, rosette etc was still clear.

Very nice. IMO unprocessed photos are underrated.

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