I think the last time I shot this was in 2014. This would be the first time imaging it with my new QHY183c camera. Not too bad for only 1.8 hours of exposure. Plus, it was very short 15 second sub-images, which kept the stars nice and tight.
The Sunflower Galaxy was the second time this year for imaging it, so I combined the two data sets and got this detail view below. It is 3.77 hrs total time:
First object of this night’s session was an ambitious attempt at the Jellyfish Nebula. Over 2 hrs and it still was not enough. I was hoping it would pick up more. The L-eNhance filter might do a better job. For nebulae, it is definitely more sensitive, just not as versatile as the UHC-S filter is.
Just over an hour’s worth of exposure for this one. This was the 2nd object of the night, the first being Betelgeuse, which was only a few frames.
I had better conditions for this shot at the beginning of the session than later in the night for other objects. Too bad it didn’t stay like that.
While shooting this, two older ladies came by to see what I was doing. Interesting conversation, but I think I went right over their heads trying to explain a supernova remnant. LoL! 🙂
This one was difficult to bring out the nebula since the UHC-S filter blocks some of the blue that this object predominantly shines in. But, it captures enough of the OIII, Hydrogen Alpha and Beta light to produce an image even from the heavily light-polluted location that I’ve been imaging from.
I was surprised how well this came out with only about an hour of data. I was after galaxies this night and I only took this to kill time. Even the 33 minutes worth I posted initially looked half-decent. I will have to devote a session to this one and possibly use the L-eNhance filter instead of the UHC-S.
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.
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.