Antares Region (re-process)

[carastro]

Peter Shah's wonderful image of this area inspire me to go back and re-process this area (for the 3rd time).

This target skims the horizon in Southern UK, so I imaged it in Spain on 2 separate holidays, with travel kit and cheap lenses (before I bought the Samyang 135mm).

Unfortunately the cheap lenses gave not very good star stars to the masses of tiny stars, and so I have been struggling to get a decent result out of this.  This has been a bit like making a silk purse out of a Sow's ear. 

I was using the ioptron Skytracker which tracks but does not guide so images had to be shorter than I would have done with a proper mount. 

In 2017 I took a DSLR camera and got a coloured image. 

In 2019 I took the same Ioptron skytracker but mounted an Atik460EX and luminace filter onto it via a geoptik adapter. 

I combined the DSLR and luminance data together. 
DSLR /Nifty 50 lens & stock lens Approx 4 hours at 2 - 3 mins unguided 2017

Atik460EX and luminance filter - combination of 30 x 3mins and 16 x 2 mins Nifty 50 and stock lens on a different night

Unguided 

Total time 6 hours approx 

I think this is the best I can come up with given the travel kit etc.  I'd love to give it one more try with the Samyang lens if I get the chance again. 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by carastro

[assouptro]

Hi Carol

given the difference in kit to Peter’s rendition I think you have a lovely image there of something I have yet to capture, and may not get a chance for a long time due to pandemics and Brexit! 
thanks for sharing 

Bryan 

[mikemarotta]

Beautiful pictue. It is an area that I view often and read about even more.

But I am not sure about what I am looking at. What is the field of view ? 

It looks like maybe 10 degrees of arc, if those are Antares and M4 at 1.2 degrees separation.

Thanks!

Mike M.

[carastro]

Hi MIke, I am not very good with stuff like measurements so I looked it up on Astrobin on this image and it says:

 3.703 degrees and 18.183 arcsec/pixel.   Large area, need a camera lens to get it all in.

Here is an annotated version, Antares is the lower right bright star.  Some people call this area Rho Ophiuchus.   This is a triple star and whilst I managed to split it in imaging the processing sort of merged it.  

 

Edited August 13, 2021 by carastro

[AstroAndy]

Like it was said up there, given the difference in kit, there is nothing to complain about. It's a good rendition, has color and detail, NGC 6121 came out crisp and well.

 

[Ags]

On 12/08/2021 at 00:20, carastro said:

This has been a bit like making a silk purse out of a Sow's ear. 

Wow! Looks like a silk purse to me 😃

[carastro]

Thanks every one. 
 

carole

[JeremyS]

Beaut @carastro 👍🏻