Another Black Eye galaxy shot to add to my collection. Not quite the guiding I was getting earlier in the evening, but it is not too bad, either. Minimal processing done to this one.
Black Eye Galaxy M64
All posts by admin
M35 Open Cluster on Jan 14, 2021
I was having a good night of steady seeing and really good guiding (<1.13 arc sec error) for this object and the Pleiades on this night. I went until it was time to flip and the guiding was starting to degrade. 78 minutes worth of subs was good enough to show this object well.
M45, The Pleiades on Jan 14, 2021
Not too bad for a session from the metro LP zone! Only 96 minutes, but it was enough with these settings to show quite a bit of nebulousity. I used the unity gain setting (11) and that made a big difference in hot pixels and noise. My other shots at a gain of 20 were plagued by hot pixels that SharpCap 3.2 doesn’t seem to be able to deal with very well. I like this much better and there is just as much data buried in there as in the higher gain shots.
Progress on Heart Nebula Mosaic
I am still working on the Heart Nebula mosiac I started shooting the first few days of the new year. Plenty of work left, but I at least have a more complete image at this point.
Thor’s Helmet – Now at 4.6 Hrs of Integration
Over 4.6 hours of integration with a variety of exposures including 3 min, 2 min and 30 sec sub-images. All were taken with a QHY183c camera at -20C or -15C cooling, an Optolong L-eNhance filter and a Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.
thors-helmet-25×180-g20-o100-lnh-qhy183c_-20C-85f5_6-crop plus thors-helmet-30×120-g20-284×30-g37-o200-lnh-qhy183c_-15C-85f5_6-v2a
The Moon on Jan 3rd, 2021
2020 Image Sampler & Review
The 12 best images of 2020 roughly in a monthly order, Jan to Dec.
Last Imaging Session of 2020
The December 26/27 weekend of 2020 was the last imaging session of the year. I managed to bag good data for all the objects on this page. The Heart and Soul Nebulae are still works in progress, though.
The Great Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction of Dec 21, 2020
Horse Head Nebula – Winter of 2020 Version
I had a little trouble with streetlights and two satellite trails for this shot, but I salvaged what I could. I like the way the 3 minute sub-images are working out, though, now that I’ve tuned the guiding to get usable subs at that exposure setting. That exposure seems to be the sweet-spot for this camera and filter combo at my location.
Below is the image above, but with data add in from my last imaging session of it from a full moon night on Halloween, 2020. I like the way the portrait and landscape versions had diffraction spikes at 90 degrees to each other:
