C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto) on Nov 17, 2018, 11:30 UT. 28×60 sec @ ISO 3200, IDAS-LPS, Canon T3, TV-85 at F/5.6. Star-Streaks Lightest version.C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto) on Nov 17, 2018, 11:30 UT. 28×60 sec @ ISO 3200, IDAS-LPS, Canon T3, TV-85 at F/5.6. Star-Streaks version.C/2018 V1 (Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto) on Nov 17, 2018, 11:30 UT. 28×60 sec @ ISO 3200, IDAS-LPS, Canon T3, TV-85 at F/5.6. Star-Freeze version.
New comet Machholz-Fujikawa-Iwamoto (C/2018 V1) showing two tails. I took this right at the end of the best time for observations before the moon interfered. Unfortunately, I did not have much time to shoot it, since it didn’t rise out of the low-elevation muck until after astronomical twilight started. Oh, well… I did my best. 28 subs is not too bad.
I was at my “dark” site shooting this. Could have gone better. I had equipment problems and other issues and wasted lots of time trying to get the mount calibrated. To top it off, my dead-end road spot was invaded by duck hunters arriving before dawn to hunt. I lost about 10 subs from their vehicle headlights.
Comet 38P (Stephan-Oterma) and Kappa Geminorum on Nov 17, 2018, 09:00 UT. 40×120 sec @ ISO 3200, IDAS-LPS, Canon T3, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.
Wide-field view of Comet 38P near Kappa Geminorum. Small comet, but it has a tail and a nice extended coma. You can see this better in this cropped star-streaks version below:
Comet 38P (Stephan-Oterma) on Nov 17, 2018, 09:00 UT. 40×120 sec @ ISO 3200, IDAS-LPS, Canon T3, TV-85 at F/5.6.
Here is a more tightly cropped star freeze version:
Comet 38P (Stephan-Oterma) on Nov 17, 2018, 09:00 UT. 40×120 sec @ ISO 3200, IDAS-LPS, Canon T3, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.
And, one more with Kappa Gem:
Comet 38P (Stephan-Oterma) and Kappa Geminorum on Nov 17, 2018, 09:00 UT. 40×120 sec @ ISO 3200, IDAS-LPS, Canon T3, Televue TV-85 at F/5.6.
Comet 38P on Nov 3, 2018, 10:45 UT. 6×30 sec, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6. ToupSky Live Capture.
Comet 38P along with comet 46P are both peaking this fall/winter. 38P will stay relatively dim, but at least it has a tail. This image of it was just a test of the Sony IMX224 on a half-decent comet.
I really wanted to shoot it with my DSLR and I was going to, but the weather changed abruptly Saturday night late and Sunday morning was clouded out. Heck, it even rained before sunrise. I had to tear down the rig before the comet was out with the fast change in weather. Darn the bad luck!
2 panel mosaic of the Moon, taken at dawn on Nov 3, 2018. RD Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6.
A beautiful moon at dawn and I just couldn’t resist grabbing some images of it. I had to piece this mosaic together, since the Rising Tech Sony IMX224 cam does not have a wide enough field of view to get the whole thing in one shot.
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:
M71 Open Cluster. 75×8 sec Gain 1642, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6, Sharpcap 2.9.
Right under the Dumbbell Nebula is is M71, a tight open cluster that looks like an arrowhead. It has the tightly packed appearance of a globular, but it is not. This is 10 minutes worth of exposure in 8 sec sub-images.
The image below is a shot with about 16 minutes of exposure (119 x 8 sec.) I caught a few more background stars, I think.
M71 Open Cluster. 119×8 sec. Gain 1642, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6, Sharpcap 2.9.
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.
M15 Globular – 181×1 sec, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6.M2 Globular Cluster. 75×4 sec, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6.NGC 7789 Open Cluster. 157×4 sec, Sony IMX224, TV-85 at F/5.6.
First appreciable cold front with clear skies came through, finally. I managed to get some scope time to do a shake-down imaging session to test equipment. This was on the night of Oct 11, 2018 and I was shooting from a Bortle Red zone in the city. I shot a few things playing around and these were the best three pictures of the bunch. Not the prettiest astro images , but at least I got to see what stuff still works and what did not after not imaging since March 2018.
My USB hub and some cables probably need replacing. The hub has seen better days. There is lots of corrosion inside the connectors. These connection problems precipitated other problems with the laptop and my EQMOD settings got trashed. I had to delete the AppData/Roaming/EQMOD folder to fix it. That required me to redo all the location settings, guide speeds, etc. Could have been worse, I guess.
I managed to update drivers and the astro-related software on the laptop, which was a good thing. My Toupcam IM224 had a batch of new drivers released the very same day as the imaging session. I could not have timed it better. lol
Oh, and my dew strap for the TV-85 was not working, either. The wire broke inside the strip, so I just tossed it. Oh, well. Luckily, it was so dry this night I did not have to worry about any dew.
Omega Centauri. 3×300 sec @ ISO 1600, 42-180 sec @ ISO 400, TV-85 at F/5.6, Canon T3, Atlas EQ-G w/EQMOD.
My last two sessions of Omega Centauri were combined and reworked into one image and here are the results. Both sets were taken with my TV-85. One set was taken from a dark sky site and the other was taken from an LP polluted site during moonlight.
Images of Comets, Nebulae, Galaxies and Star Clusters
