Witch’s Broom Nebula – 90×30 sec, QHY183c, -25C cooling, Gain 30, Offset 5, UHC filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.
After a few all-nighters during the recent good weather we’ve been having down here in Cajun Country, I must say I’m worn out. LoL. But, I had lots of fun shooting very dim objects through Bortle Red Zone skies that I would have never thought would let me capture what I did. Modern progress with astro-filters and more sensitive cameras save the day! Plus, none of the stuff I bought broke the bank.
Since I shot the Eastern Veil with the new setup, I had to try the western part, aka the Witch’s Broom. It was easy with the QHY183c and a cheap UHC filter. I got 45 minutes worth of 30 second sub-images and they stacked automatically in SmartCap 3.2. Star colors could be better, but this is about normal for a UHC filter shot. The red channel was not quite in focus, however. I fixed it after acquiring the data for the above image.
I shot 3 other objects on this night, Gamma Cas, M33 (again) and the Horse Head Nebula, with 2 of them completed. I got clouded out during the last session with the Horse Head. Below are the results:
Gamma Cas – 75×30 sec, QHY183c, Gain 30, -25C, UHC filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.M33 – 10×120 sec, QHY183c, Gain 30, -25C, UHC filter, TV85 at F/5.6.
M27 – 90×30 sec, QHY183c at -25C, Gain 30, UHC filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.M27 – Close Crop Detail at 100% Res. 90×30 sec, QHY183c at -25C, Gain 30, UHC, TV-85 @ F/5.6.Eastern Veil Nebula – 103×30 sec, QHY183c at -25C, Gain 30, Offset 25, UHC filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.M31 – 90×30 sec, QHY183c at -25C, Gain 30, UHC filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.M33 – 30×30 sec, QHY183c at -25C, Gain 30, UHC filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.M45 – 100×30 sec, QHY183c at -25C, Gain 30, UHC filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.M42 – 40×30 sec, QHY183c at -25C, Gain 30, UHC filter, TV-85 at F/5.6.
What a night! My new QHY183c astro camera worked really well once I had it hooked to a computer that could handle the 20MP downloads and live stacking requirements of SharpCap 3.2. I used my older Panasonic ToughBook for controlling the scope and the guiding while another laptop, a Toshiba i7-based unit, was used for image acquisition and live-stacking. I was able to bag six objects with this setup before I had to turn in and get some sleep.
(BTW, EAA is Electronically Assisted Astronomy. It is a way to “observe” from a light-polluted metro area with real-time captures and strong LP filters on a computer using highly sensitive astro cameras.)
SharpCap 3.2 works really well on the faster machine but not on the ToughBook. The USB 3 port and it’s 2.5Ghz processor are just not powerful enough, I guess. I will have to tuneup the Toshiba to do all the stuff the ToughBook was doing and live-stack with SharpCap, all at the same time. Hopefully, I’ll take care of that soon.
The Moon on Oct 19, 2019. Stack of 30 frames with QHY183c, UHC filter and a TV-85 at F/5.6
I finally did it. I bought a new camera for imaging (and Electronically Assisted Astronomy or EAA for short) that has a cooler and is dedicated for astrophotography. It is a QHY183c from QHYCCD. It is a 20MP, Sony IMX183 BSI CMOS-based camera with electronic refrigeration to cool the CMOS chip and reduce noise.
I chose a color camera since I shoot comets and it is easier to do those with a one-shot-color (OSC) camera vs. a mono camera needing filters and a filter wheel. Plus, it was cheaper by far for the color version ($699 vs $999 or $1199 w/filter wheel) since Sony sells and produces lots more of them than the mono version of the chip. And, you don’t need a set of filters and the filter wheel, which adds to the cost considerably.
The moon image above was shot when it was still low in the sky and reddish in hue. I shot a short video of it with 61 frames. I used SharpCap 2.9, since the newer SharpCap 3.2 version did not want to work for some reason. I opened the .SER video file it produced in AutoStakkert and stacked half the frames with the default AutoStakkert settings. Some sharpening and other enhancement was done in PS.
I had a few problems with the laptop not handling the amount of data that the 20MP cam produces at it’s full resolution and highest bit-depth settings. I could get it to work in mono mode but not in color mode reliably. Later, I tried the camera with a much more robust and newer laptop and it seemed to work much better. Looks like I will need to upgrade my field laptop, which is an older Panasonic ToughBook with an i5 processor.
EAA was a blast with this camera. I was in the middle of the city and was picking up the Veil Nebula and the Horse Head Nebula with no problems. I was using a cheap UHC filter that had sharp cutoffs for H-beta/OIII and H-alpha wavelengths and that helped with all the LP. I did more EAA than trying to get data to produce finished images. I kept a few that I will tack on to the end of this post.
M42. A single 20 second mono image taken through a UHC filter and TV-85 at F/5.6 with the new QHY183c.Horse Head Nebula. 93×30 sec subs live-stacked with SharpCap 2.9, QHY183c, UHC filter and a TV-85 at F5.6.
Dumbbell Nebula – 60 minutes (450×8 sec) at 1241 Gain, RT Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6, SharpCap 2.9.
I let the camera take sub-images for an hour for this picture. I used 8 second subs with no darks at a low gain setting of 1241 (100-5000 Range.) Still lots of hot pixels without darks, but shot noise was low so I could stack lots more sub-images than this 450 stack and still be within limits.
This data was taken in the middle of a metro area with very strong light pollution. Mag 3 is the dimmest stars you can see naked eye on most nights. Not one of my best of this object because of all the LP, but it was fun to see it build up and get better and better as the subs were added in. I should have shot darks before letting it rip on this object, but I did not think I had more than 20 minutes before the Dumb Bell went behind the trees, so I skipped doing them. Oh, well… next time!
In the meantime, I added another 97 subs to this shot from a session I did last December. Here is how that turned out:
Dumbbell Nebula – 73.3 minutes (450×8 sec at 1241 Gain, 97×8 sec at 2048 Gain,) RT Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6, SharpCap 2.9.
For my wide monitor, I created this composite/combined image with the data above, a set of 50×8 sec subs and 14×180 sec ISO 1600 subs from a modified Canon DSLR:
Ring Nebula – 75×8 sec Gain 1642, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6, SharpCap 2.9.
I shot this once before with this camera, but I think this one came out better. Sharpcap 2.9 was used for acquisition. Clouds came and went throughout the night, but I had fun viewing lots of other objects in between them.
M27 Dumbbell Nebula – Various 5-15 sec exposures at various gain settings. Sony IMX224 and TV-85 at F/5.6.
On this night, after dusting off all the equipment and finding out what still worked and updating my laptop the night before, I decided to play around with a new version of ToupSky I just installed while updating all the hardware drivers and astro software I use.
The version date was Oct 11, 2018, the same day I downloaded and installed it. They’ve included lots more with this version than they did previously. ToupSky still lacks 16-bit support for most file formats, however, which is why I still use SharpCap 2.9.
Dark subtraction and flat field correction is now in the public release as well as a number of other bonuses. Before, you would get these features only with software included with a camera from various companies who resell the ToupTech cameras (like RisingSky.)
Anyway, this image was created with various Live Stack images I did while testing this new ToupSky version. It is good for beginners, but the lack of 16-bit support for TIFF and other formats that can do 16-bit really degrades from the usefulness of the package for serious imaging.
Horse Head Nebula. 242×20 sec @ 1834 Gain, RT Sony IMX224, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6, SharpCap 2.9.
More EAA fun with the Sony IMX224-based camera. This was taken during the nightime of Dec 12/13, 2017. The final version here has over 80 minutes of data. It was acquired in a high LP environment with no filters on the camera except for the UV/IR cutoff.
I need to get a UHC filter for it, but as you can see, I might do good to use none just to get the base colors and use the UHC just for extra nebulosity, only.
M27, The Dumbbell Nebula. 97×8 sec @ Gain 2098, RT IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6, Sharpcap 2.9.
I rushed to setup and shoot this one before it went behind a tree. It was only 97 frames at 8 seconds for a total of about 13 minutes. But, I love how it turned out with this Sony IMX224 camera. It looks as good as or better than most of my DSLR shots of the same object.
It looks even better if I combine the two cameras’ datasets into one image to get the best of both:
M27 IMX224 data combined with 48 minutes (24×120 sec @ ISO 1600) of DSLR data taken with the same telescope.
The Owl Nebula. 5×300 sec @ 100 Gain, RT Sony IMX224, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6, Sharpcap 2.9.
I tried long exposures with no gain and no darks using the Rising Tech Sony IMX224 eyepiece/guider cam to image the Owl Nebula, recently. I was using it like I would one of my Canon DSLR cameras with long exposures at low ISO when shooting in bad LP conditions.
Hot pixels were worse than I thought, so I had to do some aggressive noise reduction. Next time, I will definitely use darks based on this experience. The camera has low read noise, but not low hot pixels with exposures this long.
The Crab Nebula. 414×8 sec @ 3500 Gain, RT IMX 224, TV-85 at F/5.6, SharpCap 2.9.
The Crab with an 85mm objective. Scopes of this size are not normally known to produce good images of M1, the Crab. But, I tried anyway since I am still learning the ropes with the IMX224.
Taken from the middle of a metro area in a Bortle Red zone. 8 sec seems to give good results with the LP levels at this location. More exposure just gets more LP and very little more, if any, faint target material.
Above is the gussied-up and gaudy version. Below is the not-so-gaudy version with less saturation and curves boost.
The Crab Nebula. 414×8 sec @ 3500 Gain, RT IMX 224, TV-85 at F/5.6, SharpCap 2.9.
I also left more green behind, since the Crab has some green parts. It shows that better but also shows more of the LP that I had to cut through to get the shot.
Images of Comets, Nebulae, Galaxies and Star Clusters
