Images

Nebulae

Running Man Nebula and The Orion Nebula Mosaic

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2-Panel Mosaic of the Running Man Nebula and The Orion Nebula, taken Nov 18-19, 2020. About 140×30 sec for Running Man panel and 169×30 sec plus 134 minutes from Nov 22, 2020 for the Orion Nebula. QHY183c at -20C, Gain 37, Offset 200, L-eNhance Filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.

Gain was too high for this project.  The over-saturated areas caused column/row artifacts which created dark horizontal bands on either side of the brightest part of the core.  It was difficult to deal with in post-processing.  Next time, I want to try some low-gain, longer exposures instead to see if the banding problem goes away.

For fun, I combined this image with my M42 project image that included all my best data to date.   Here is the results of that mix:

M42 Project – Best image data as of Nov 2020.
Comets

Comet Close Approach – ATLAS (C/2020 M3 (ATLAS))

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C/2020 M3 (ATLAS) on Nov 13, 2020 or 1 day before closest approach. 27×60 sec subs stacked and blended into a background o 30 minutes with 30 sec sub-images.

A very dark sky would have made quite a difference for this comet, but to me it is almost too small to be worthy of a trip to the boonies just for this guy.    A runt comet.  lol

This was taken from a Bortle 7-8 zone in a Metro area  with the Optolong L-eNhance filter, my QHY183c camera and Televue TV-85 telescope.

It was moving very fast and exposures of two minutes showed slight trailing.   I made a star-streaks version with some 3×5 minute simulated exposures and 4×3 minute simulated exposures.   The actual sub-images were 30 seconds and SharpCap was used to LiveStack the simulated exposures.   Here it is below:

C/2020 M3 (ATLAS) on Nov 13, 2020. 3x5min and 4x3min simulated exposures.

This was taken before the 1st image, so you can see how far that sucker moved in the intervening time.

Nebulae

Thor’s Helmet

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284×30 sec or 142 minutes from a Bortle 7-8 metro zone, an L-eNhance filter, a QHY183c at -20C cooling and a TV-85 at F/5.6.

“Thor’s Helmet,” aka NGC 2359. First time I ever shot this with any camera. For years I’ve passed this guy up for bigger or better objects nearby, but not on this night. It was a main goal for this night’s imaging session. It did not get high enough to image until 2:00 am here and I took a nap as soon as I started it going. Luckily, I got enough data before sunrise to make a half-decent final image

UPDATE  Nov 13, 2020:
More time added with 30×120 sec sub-images at Gain 20, offset 200 to the above.  Total time 3 hrs, 22 min.

Thor’s Helmet – 30×120 sec and 284×30 sec from a Bortle 7-8 metro zone, an L-eNhance filter, a QHY183c at -20C cooling and a TV-85 at F/5.6.
Nebulae

Horse Head and Flame Nebula in Full Moon Conditions

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B33 and Flame Nebula – 262×30 sec sub-images LiveStacked in Sharpcap 3.2. Gain 37 (1-54 scale,) Offset 200, QHY183c at -20C, Optolong L-eNhance filter, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.

I was killing time while waiting for Thor’s Helmet to get into position, so I shot the Horsehead and Flame Nebula region.  I used Fitsworks to crop out the dithering artifacts and set a black point and do the initial color balance. Photoshop and some hue and saturation adjustments to finish it off. Then, one pass with color blotch action and one horizontal banding removal action later and this is how it came out.  A few other tweaks were done, too. Not too bad for the minimal effort and a full moon night.