All posts by admin

Galaxies

Leo Trio with Baader UHC-S

Image Leave a comment
Leo Trio on Dec 31, 2019. 450×30 sec with UHC-S filter and 123×30 with L-eNhance filter blend. QHY183c at -20C, Gain 42, Offset 42, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.

Finally, the weather cleared after several weeks of clouds.  This is typical for December down here in Cajun Country.   With the clear conditions, I got a chance to try out a new UHC-S filter I purchased from Baader Planetarium.   It replaces the cheap generic UHC filter I got from Amazon.  Still shooting from the big city these days in Bortle 8 Red zone is a good test of these filters to see how much LP gets in and how well galaxies and nebulae show up.

I found out the L-eNhance filter doesn’t do much for galaxies unless they have lots of H-alpha regions.  An hour worth of subs I took at the beginning of the month of the Leo Trio barely had anything worth keeping, so I only blended about 25% of it in to this image.   The 450×30 sec Live Stack with dithering turned on I acquired in SharpCap 3.2 and the UHC-S filter was good enough to stand on its own.

Minimal post processing was done for this one, which is always nice after staying up all night imaging.   lol  🙂

Before I shot the Leo Trio, I did a “blue test” on the Pleiades.   I have 16 minutes worth of data and it shows how well this filter does with broad band and non-h-alpha objects.   Check it out:

M45. 32×30 sec, Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, UHC-S filter, QHY183c, TV-85 at F/5.6.
Galaxies, Moon, Nebulae, Star Clusters

Saturday-Sunday Night, Dec 7th-8th, 2019

Image Leave a comment
The Moon. 5 frames stacked in SharpCap 3.2 LiveStacking. QHY183c, L-eNhance, TV-85 at F/5.6.
The Ghost Nebula and Gamma Cass. QHY183c, 125 x 30 sec, Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.
NGC7822 and Ced 214. QHY183c, 122 x 30 sec, Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.
The Cone Nebula. QHY183c, 193 x 30 sec, Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.
M46 and NGC 2438. QHY183c, 18 x 30 sec, Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.
Leo Trio. QHY183c, 120 x 30 sec, Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.

Six images bagged in one night, although a few need at least another nights worth of additional time. Big city light pollution was circumvented with an Optolong L-eNhance filter.

30 second sub-images for the DSO’s. The moon was 5 frames stacked in SharpCap 3.2. The Cone Nebula has 130 subs from last night and 63 from a previous session. I also shot M51, but it was only a few frames before twilight and was not really enough for a display image.

Galaxies, Nebulae

Horse Head, Owl and Cone Nebulae

Image Leave a comment
Horse Head Nebula – 123×30 sec @ Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, QHY183c plus L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.
Owl Nebula and M108 – – 127×30 sec @ Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, QHY183c plus L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.
Owl Nebula Detail – 127×30 sec @ Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, QHY183c plus L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.
A Work in Progress., the Cone Nebula – 63×30 sec @ Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, QHY183c plus L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.

An early morning imaging session.  I setup after 1:00 am and imaged until sunrise on Tuesday, Dec 3, 2019.  I managed to get decent amounts of data on the Horse Head and Owl nebulae, but I only got a little bit of the Cone before it went behind trees.

I will definitely want to shoot the Cone again with 2 more sets of data – one with the Optolong L-eNhance filter and one with a UHC filter.   It is a beautiful area with broadband filters, but too much LP from my current site to do it justice with one of those.   I think the two filters together shooting separate sets might do it justice from this place, though.

Moon, Nebulae

The Cave & Monkey Head Nebulae Plus The Moon

Image Leave a comment
The Cave Nebula – – 242 x 30 sec @ Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, 26×240 sec @ Gain 20, Offset 31,-15C, QHY183c, L-eNhance filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6
Moon Composite – Dec 2, 2019
Monkey Head Nebula – 100 x 30 sec @ Gain 42, Offset 42, -20C, QHY183c, L-eNhance filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6

Sunday evening was beautiful here in Cajun Country and I did not let the night go to waste.   I shot a number of things, but I went back to the Cave Nebula early on to add more data to my existing image of it.

I shot the moon next, even though the seeing was not that great.   I shot 10 stills starting out slightly underexposed and progressing to over-exposed to show the dark part that was lit by Earthshine.    My experiment to blend them all together was not what I had in mind in terms of look and feel.  Plus, I had shot them in 8-bit mode instead of 16-bit mode in SharpCap 3.2.  It was a learning experience, I guess.   I’ll figure it out one day, hopefully.

I did the Monkey Head Nebula last and it hardly needed any post-processing.   50 minutes worth of data was enough to show most of it.   Guiding and composition were good and the image was easy to post process.   I packed it in after this, since it was nearly 2:00 am and I needed at least a few hours of sleep before work Monday morning.   lol

Like before, these images were all taken from a metro area with Bortle 8 red zone light pollution levels.   An Optolong L-eNhance filter was used to shoot through the muck.

Nebulae

A Quick Tadpoles Shot

Image Leave a comment
IC410, aka, Tadpoles Nebula, QHY183c (-20C,) 100×30 sec @ 30 gain, 31 offset, Optolong L-eNhance Filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.

This is data from the same dates as images in the three previous posts before this one.  There were so many things I wanted to shoot in these sessions that were Ha, but needed 3 or 4 times more exposure to do them justice.   I scouted for what would be brighter Ha targets and did some test stacks trying to get the feel of how much certain things would need.

This one was one of the bigger and brighter targets I tested, but I could tell the less than an hour’s worth of data would need lots of work to make it into a presentable image.  Another one of those works in progress, I guess.   I gave it nearly an hour but it really needed at least double that as a start and 4x that for something exceptional.

Galaxies

M81 and M82 from the Big City

Image Leave a comment
M81 and M82 Galaxies. Two sessions of 354×15 sec and 240×30 sec, both with a QHY183c.

Two sessions combined to produce this shot.  One was taken with the UHC filter and the other was taken with the Optolong L-eNhance filter.   Total combined time is nearly 3.5 hrs.    Not too bad considering the location where they were taken – a Bortle 8 Red Zone.

Galaxies

M33 Triangulum Galaxy with the L-eNhance Filter

Image Leave a comment
M33. 30×240 sec, QHY183c, Gain 11, Offset 31, -14.1C, L-eNhance filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.

Well, my luck with the weather allowed me to keep my promise and try out the new L-eNhance filter on a galaxy, in this case, M33.   It came out surprisingly well considering this filter is not really made for galaxies.  M33 has enough H2 and OIII regions to make things interesting, however.

I used Unity gain (11) with 4 minute subs, captured and LiveStacked in Sharp Cap 3.2.   I also kept all the individual frames and tried stacking them in IRIS, but the LiveStack was better in overall quality, so I did not go beyond stacking them and viewing the results and just discarding it.

Below is the combined data from the above with 10×120 sec sub-images taken with a UHC filter:

M33. 10×120 sec, Gain 30, Offset 31 @ -25C, QHY183c, 30×240 sec @ Gain 11, Offset 31 @ -14C, QHY183c, UHC and L-eNhance Filters, TV-84 at F/5.6.

So far, the L-eNhance does well for any H alpha objects and has a much more uniform background than my cheapo UHC.   The UHC filter has a red to green diagonal color gradient always present and is exaggerated by the degree of LP in the shot, with long exposure stacks suffering the strongest.  Not fun to deal with, but I’ve managed.  Probably a quality control issue with coating uniformity for the cheap filter, I guess.

Since there is no uniformity-caused gradients with the L-eNhance, it lets me see the scope’s vignetting with this camera setup.  Looks like I’ll need to start using flats in SharpCap to compensate, since vignetting is now noticeable.

Nebulae, Star Clusters

The Bubble Nebula

Image Leave a comment
The Bubble Nebula. 120×30 and another 1800 sec mixed exposures. QHY183c, L-eNhance Filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.

A mixture of 120×30 sec exposures taken with a L-eNhance filter and a mixture of 15, 30 and 1 minute exposures taken with a UHC filter.   About an hour and 30 minutes total.  The 120×30 set was at 30 gain and -20C.

I am starting to like  the 30 gain setting, since it gives the best results with shorter exposures.  Over 40 is too much noise and under 30 it is just too slow.

When the set began there was no matching dark to subtract, so I was using one at gain 20.   I stopped after about 10 shots and took some darks and then restarted shooting.   I’m glad I did since the amp glow was starting to show up bad on the right side of the frame.  The new darks overcame it and the glow averaged out after a while of LiveStacking with ShapCap 3.2.

Nebulae, Star Clusters

Veil and Cave Nebulae: L-eNhance Filter Test

Image Leave a comment
West Veil Nebula. 46×30 sec, QHY183c @ -15C, Gain 42, Offset 100, L-eNhance filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.
The Cave Nebula. 26×240 sec, QHY183c @ -15C,, Gain 20, Offset 31, L-eNhance Filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.

What luck!  First light for new filter is the day I received it!   Thanks to the clouds for staying away.   What I wanted to test was my new Optolong L-eNhance dual-band nebula filter, which is similar to the UHC filter I already own but with a narrower bandwidth and a more even color rendition across the frame than the cheap UHC one I’ve been using.  I got to try it out before the  run of good weather we’ve been having ended.

I was a able to test it on the Veil, which I recently imaged, and the Cave Nebula, which I had never shot before.  I am very pleased with the results.   Even color and illumination and better rejection of LP.

The Veil nebula was shot like I’ve been doing – 30 sec sub images at high gain. The Cave was long exposures of 4 minutes and I managed to get 26 subs.  The Veil is a finished image and the Cave Nebula is still a work in progress.   It seems the long exposure, 4 minute darks I used were not too good of a match and there are numerous hot pixel trails left to manually repair or clone out still left to do.

I also tried it on two reflection nebulae, one being the Running Man in the image below, and it was not as good as my UHC filter.    I also tried one star cluster, M35, and it is the last image below.  No galaxies yet, so I’m not sure how well it will work for those.   Maybe next time I will have to try for one and find out.

M42 – 114×30 sec, QHY183c @ -15C, Gain 42, Offset 42, L-eNhance filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.
M35 – 20×30 sec, QHY183c @ -15C, Gain 42, Offset 42, L-eNhance filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.

 

Galaxies, Moon

NGC 891 Edge-On Galaxy – Through Metro LP & Moonlight

Image Leave a comment
NGC 891. 42x 5 min (42 x (10x30sec LiveStacks) w/SharpCap 3.2.) Televeu TV-85 @ F/5.6, UHC filter, QHY183c at -15C, Gain 42, Offset 42.

Here is an interesting experiment I did in shooting short, 10-sub x 30 sec “subs-stacks” with  LiveStacking in SmartCap 3.2 and stacking the stub-stacks in IRIS.  I used Fitsworks first to orient the 5 min stacks taken after the meridian flip with the first batch.   Final post-processing was done in PS.

I squeezed in two other shots this night – one of the moon and a test for guiding I did on Mirach.   The test involved changing the PHD2 camera selection to the Ascom Toupcam driver instead of the regular version I used that gave trouble in the last session.  That solved a problem with the camera dropping and losing connection.

Similar to NGC 981 above, I did twelve 10-sub stacks of Mirach for 5 minutes each for a grand total of 60 minutes of exposure:

Mirach and Mirach’s Ghost. 12×300 sec using 10×30 sub-stacks. TV-85 at F/5.6, UHC Filter, QHY183c @ -15C, Gain 42, Offset 42.

The moon was out and after shooting NGC 891, I captured it in a .SER movie with 100 frames.  I used 20 to make a still with the AutoStakkert software.   Here’s the result:

The Moon on Nov 16, 2019, early AM. Televue TV-85 at F/5.6, QHY183c, UHC filter.

Very clear conditions this night, but seeing was mediocre, with strong LP and moonlight interference.  Cold for Cajun country, too… it got down to mid-to-upper 30’s.  Brrr…