The horsehead and friends from light polluted London with night vision

[GavStar]

More clear skies in London tonight 😀

I’ve been enjoying using my 85mm refractor with my night vision kit recently. However the image scale is a bit small (only 10x or so) so tonight, for a change, I got out my 11 inch sct in my back garden in south west London.

With Orion shining in the south, it was lovely to have more magnification on some very well know objects such as the horsehead, flame, monkeyhead and Crab Nebula as shown in the phone pics attached here. Some great views despite the light pollution!!

[Highburymark]

Great pics Gavin.
Even I got the Horsehead tonight! Along with the Flame, Rosette and a very nice California with its extra elevation. Epsilon 130d, TV67mm plossl, Chroma 3nm Ha was the hardwear.
Swapped over to the Baader 685nm and enjoyed M31, M33 (just) and clusters in Auriga, Cassiopeia etc.

[GavStar]

5 hours ago, Highburymark said:

Great pics Gavin.
Even I got the Horsehead tonight! Along with the Flame, Rosette and a very nice California with its extra elevation. Epsilon 130d, TV67mm plossl, Chroma 3nm Ha was the hardwear.
Swapped over to the Baader 685nm and enjoyed M31, M33 (just) and clusters in Auriga, Cassiopeia etc.

Good stuff Mark. I think transparency wasn’t quite as good for me as last week, but it was really fun. Best views I’ve had of the horsehead in London, the “snout” was straightforward to discern which normally requires dark skies…

[RobertI]

Super results Gavin. Lovely structure in the Crab, although surprisingly dim compared with the others. 

[GavStar]

1 minute ago, RobertI said:

Super results Gavin. Lovely structure in the Crab, although surprisingly dim compared with the others. 

Thanks Robert. Yes the crab was noticeably dimmer than the others. It’s a bit like the Veil which with nv isn’t as bright as you would expect either. I assume the ha signal in these supernova remnants isn’t as strong as it is for standard emission nebulae.

[AKB]

Very nice! I, too, imaged the Horsehead and Flame last night.

Very impressed with how your system handles Alnitak, showing the double so well.

Tony

[GavStar]

7 minutes ago, AKB said:

Very nice! I, too, imaged the Horsehead and Flame last night.

Very impressed with how your system handles Alnitak, showing the double so well.

Tony

Yes, I was surprised about the Alnitak double showing so well in night vision - that’s a first for me on this object.

[Deadlake]

9 hours ago, GavStar said:

Yes, I was surprised about the Alnitak double showing so well in night vision - that’s a first for me on this object.

What usually happens on Alnitak, blows out?

[GavStar]

7 minutes ago, Deadlake said:

What usually happens on Alnitak, blows out?

Yes like this…

 

[GavStar]

Well I had to wait nearly a month for another chance to go observing (been rather cloudy!!). For a change I decided to use my Astro Physics 130gtx refractor. I normally go either grab and go portable (85mm) or big (11 inch plus), but the 130mm does give a nice mid range of magnification with night vision at around 20x, framing, for example, the beautiful Rosette nebula really well. I’m itching to get to a dark sky, it’s been too long…

[Deadlake]

Great shots!
The extra aperture of the 130GTX makes a difference or was transparency better? 
Presume just afocal, no reducer used with the 130 GTX photos?

Edited January 5, 2022 by Deadlake

[GavStar]

22 minutes ago, Deadlake said:

Great shots!
The extra aperture of the 130GTX makes a difference or was transparency better? 
Presume just afocal, no reducer used with the 130 GTX photos?

Extra aperture I think. I was very impressed with the 130gtx last night - I must use it more!

Just afocal last night. I do have a nice reducer for the AP130GTX but I enjoyed having the extra image scale yesterday.