M33 on Dec 30th, 2023. 51×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.
It was the last two nights of the year and I had clear weather. What luck!
So, on Friday night, Dec 30th, I had to take care of unfinished business with the Horse Head from the last session. I had something to block the parking lot lights from next door this time. While waiting for the Horse Head to get into position, I took images of M33 (above,) which I hadn’t tried with the AT60ED, yet. It came out decent, I guess.
While taking the Horse Head, I noticed on the charts that a comet was in the field. It was C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS), at magnitude 11.9 according to Cartes du Ciel.
Horse Head Nebula Region on Dec 30th, 2023. 44×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.Horse Head and Flame Nebulae. 44×180 sec, QHY294C, AT60ED, Antlia Triband filter. Rotated, cropped, color enhanced.C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)
I imaged until almost midnight on Friday. I left the mount setup and brought in the rest with plans to try again on Saturday, New Year’s Eve.
On New Year’s Eve, my plans were to go for M78. While it was getting high enough, I got some more data on the Heart Nebula – an hour and six minutes. I mixed it with the salvaged Heart job from a couple of months back at about 22 percent to help fill in some noise.
When I got going on M78, it gave me problems with tracking. I finally realized it was my guide calibration and after redoing it, I was back in business, but wasted almost an hour figuring that out. Consequently, by the time the clouds came at about 10:20 PM, I still had less than 2 hours of data. Oh, well… I’ll try again next year! lol
The Heart Nebula on Dec 31th, 2023. 22×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.M78 on Dec 31th, 2023. 36×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.M78 on Dec 31th, 2023. 36×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8. Detail crop.
M45. 9×180 sec. Baader UHC-S filter, QHY294C, AT60ED at F/4.8.
On Wednesday afternoon, Dec 20th, 2023, it was clearer than predicted. So, I broke out the scope and setup to catch the first quarter moon and test a filter I purchased last year that I only used twice.
My main problem with using this filter was getting my flats to work when using the QHY294C camera. I was never really successful last year and I had to manually do flat calibration in FitsWorks, which was a pain. So, my first step was to get a good flat and hope that it worked with the 3 minute exposures I planned to use.
Conditions that evening were predicted to be clear, but only average transparency. In actuality, it was average to below average with a few high clouds that came in periodically. Oh, well… I was not expecting to get any keepers this night, but I still wanted to test that filter.
The Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter, a lower cost triband filter that I had mixed results with at a dark location last year, was what I wanted to use and test from my heavily light polluted metro area location. It would be the first time to try it in this kind of heavy LP.
So, the first image at the beginning of the post is how the UHC-S filter performed with 9×3 minute subs. The conditions were better when this image was taken, so keep that in mind.
Next, here’s how the Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter did with roughly the same exposure on a below average night:
M45. 10×180 sec. Antlia Triband RGB filter, QHY294C, AT60ED at F/4.8.
Almost a match for how much nebulosity it picked up, but the key differences are the star halos that the UHC-S filter tends to produce on bright stars and the lack of halos for the Antlia filter, plus the much stronger blue channel with the Triband.
Next, I put it to a real-world test with 50 sub-images of the California Nebula:
California Nebula. 50×180 sec, QHY294C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.
I noticed during the acquisition of these that the filter was performing really well, and my flat was working reasonably well. It was not perfect, but good enough for what I intended to accomplish.
I have a second version of the processing using a PS Starless action. Not as clean as a removal as StarNet++, but it’s very fast!
California Nebula. 50×180 sec, QHY294C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8. Starless version.
After this, I wanted to try it on the Horse Head and Orion Nebula. I started on the Horse Head, but didn’t get too far because my scope was starting to point directly at the parking lot lighting next door. Once the light was directly hitting the lens, that was it. So, only 4 sub-images were good out of the dozen or so I took.
I opened the stack in FitsWorks while still imaging it and cropped out the bad part that had caught the direct view of the streetlight. I spent only about 5 to 10 minutes fussing with it in FitsWorks, which has very limited image editing tools. It came out much better than I anticipated:
FitsWorks-Only processing.
Here’s the same image, but it is the uncropped, full-field. I worked on it in PSCS3 to repair the damage from the streetlight’s strong gradient in the top left corner and do a better processing job than what FitsWorks does:
The Horse Head Nebula, Flame Nebula in Orion. 4×180 sec, QHY294C, Gain1600, Offset 50, Antlia Triband RGB Ultra, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.
So, my conclusions are this filter, with a good flat, tends to work better in heavy LP than the UHC-S filter. Mainly because it doesn’t produce bad halos around bright stars. But, it is also because it has a great blue channel, unlike the UHC-S. That sure makes color balancing easier and I can go after broadband targets in addition to just nebulae.
BTW, I never did get a shot of the moon that night. The filter test results were too good and I didn’t want to waste any time that I could otherwise use to test it on more nebulae.
It was a very clear night after a cold front had passed and enough time had gone by for the winds to calm down again. I setup before sunset and got ready.
The Moon, early evening, Sunday, Dec 17, 2023.The Moon Composite image. 2 images taken Sunday, Dec 17, 2023 blended to show the stars and the moon’s features on the sunlit and dark sides.
The Moon was out and in conjunction with Saturn, which was right above it. Unfortunately, the field of view was too narrow to include both in one frame without rotating the camera to another angle. So, I just shot the moon
I composited together an overexposed shot and the first image and blended it to show the moon among a few stars. Not quite what I was hoping for, but you get the idea.
The Pleiades. 3 hrs of 3 minute sub-images. A “killing time” image.The Seagull Nebula. Includes data from Dec 14th and Dec 18th sessions totaling nearly 6 hours of exposure (118×180 sec.)
The Pleiades is one of those images I end up with when I want to kill time while waiting for what I really want to image. In this case, it was the Seagull Nebula, which was my main target for this session.
I maxed out for one night with 4.5 hours on this object, which when added with the session from last week, gave me nearly 6 hours on the Seagull. Finally, an amount of time that gives very smooth results – once you add them all together properly.
The only serious image out the bunch was the Soul Nebula. It was the only one I planned for and was my main target. I managed to get 3.8 hours on it, with .8 hr on one side of the peer and the other 3 hrs on the other. BTW, all images were taken with a QHY294c, a UHC-S filter and a AT60ED on a SkyWatcher GTi goto mount in Bortle 7-8 skies.
Soul Nebula – 76x180sec,Gain1600
The rest of the images were mostly done with 30 sec exposures at high gain (i.e., 3000. I normally keep it at 1600.) Like I said, I was sightseeing and doing an EAA experiment.
The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula area was the longest of the 30-sec shots, 240 x 30 seconds. I still had to combine it with about 30% blend of a 90 minute exposure taken with another camera, but the same scope. It was still too noisy even after 240 subs.
So, the 30 sec high gain experiment for EAA type imaging is not up to par with what I could do with the QHY183c camera. It did well on open clusters, at least. Oh, well. Live and learn, as they say.
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on Nov 19, 2023. 50×30 sec, QHY294C at -10C, UHC-S filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on Nov 19, 2023. 50×30 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 3551, Offset 50, UHC-S filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.
It was the first clear night since the last session on Nov 3rd. I wanted to see this comet and try to get images of the Heart Nebula. The comet was first in line since it was already getting low in the west after sundown. I forgot to adjust the gain down and shot it at the highest gain setting I usually use when focusing and star aligning. Surprisingly, I was able to salvage the sub-images and get a usable image from them. BTW, the comet seems to have a tail, but it could be an artifact of the gain setting or something.
The Orion Nebula Region. 7 x 180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, UHC-S filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.M46 and M47 on Nov 19, 2023. 5×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, UHC-S filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.
Next up, I did a quick look see at M42 and the M46/M47 Open clusters area. I wasn’t planning on keeping these, but the data on my main target of the night, the Heart Nebula, was horrible. So, I thought better of just ditching these sub-images.
Cone Nebula Area. 10×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S filter, AT60ED at F/4.8M78 in Orion. 7×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S filter, AT60ED at F/4.8M44 in Cancer. 4×180 sec, QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S filter, AT60ED at F/4.8
I also did a short run on the Cone Nebula/Christmas Tree Cluster area of 10 x 3 minutes, plus I got a few frames of M78 and M44. The Cone area is not too bad considering it is only 30 minutes of time. M44 was a very quick look and I just wanted to see how it would fit with this rig I was using. But, M78 needs a couple of hours to even begin to look nice and I only got 21 minutes worth. Oh, well… next time.
The Heart Nebula. 56×180 sec (nebula,) 18×180 sec (stars,) QHY294C at -10C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, Baader UHC-S filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8.
And, finally, here is the salvage job on the Heart Nebula, of which I had two sets of data. One was slightly out of focus, the other had a terrible gradient from an IR source that was pointed right at the lens and I think some of it got through the UHC-S filter, or it was a reflection off the front glass.
What I ended up doing is taking the slightly out of focus stars and removing them totally, then taking the good stars from the data that had the bad gradient and combining them. Still noisy and not that great, but reducing it to 33% smoothed it out enough to pass as a display image.
Oh, well. Another reshoot for this one is in order and also for its close neighbor, the Soul Nebula.
Veil Nebula Complex – 18 x 180 sec, QHY294C, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8, Optolong L-eNhance filter.
Well, it was clear on Friday evening for a while when I started shooting the above. The forecast was for it to remain clear. I had setup and planned go the distance all night. But, before too long, high cirrus clouds came in and parked over my location. It was during the first exposure run on the Veil. I took 40 shots and between clouds and guiding issues, only 18 were any good.
I took this small amount of L-eNhance filtered data and tried to combine it with the previous UHC-s filter data and the image below is what I got. I was hoping for 3 hours worth, but it was not to be.
Veil Nebula Complex – Previous UHC filter data and L-eNhance data combined.
Not satisfied with the above image, I recombined the 18×180’s with the starless data I had from the previous session and came up with this rendition:
Veil Complex, 18×180 sec with L-eNhance filter and 58×180 sec with UHC-S filter.
With Halloween just passed, I was reminded that I haven’t checked out my old friend the Ghost Nebula since last year. So, I gave it a whirl when the clouds gave me a break for about an hour.
Ghost Nebula and Gamma Cas – 14 x 180 sec, QHY294C, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8, Optolong L-eNhance filter.
Unfortunately, the clouds came back and the only thing left to shoot was the moon rising in the east. It was boiling and unstable low in the muck, but I got a shot of it regardless.
I called it a night after that and packed it in and went to bed. But, wouldn’t you know it? I woke up before dawn the next morning and went outside and looked at the sky. It was crystal clear. D’oh!
The Full Hunters’ Moon of October 28, 2023. 10 frames, AT60ED at F/4.8, QHY294c, UHC-S filter. 1.5x Drizzle processing.
A full moon night, but it was clear and relatively transparent. I needed to test some scope adjustments anyway, so I figured I would just do a few of those things, get a shot of the moon and call it a night. I ended staying up all night and shooting a variety of objects, even with a full moon from the metro.
Not only was it a full moon, it joined Jupiter for a conjunction, and I got a shot of that plus a few others:
The Moon and Jupiter. QHY294c, UHC-S filter, AT60ED at F/4.8.North America Nebula. 20×180 sec, QHY294c, UHC-S filter, AT60ED at F/4.8.The Rosette Nebula. 30×180 sec, QHY294c, UHC-S filter, AT60ED at F/4.8.The Flaming Star Nebula and the Tadpoles area.. 60×180 sec, QHY294c, UHC-S filter, AT60ED at F/4.8.
Horse Head Nebula on Oct 21, 2023. 29×180 sec, QHY294c at -20C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S, AT60ED at F/4.8.Quickie Orion Nebula area. 8×180 sec, QHY294c at -20C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S, AT60ED at F/4.8.M31 on Oct 20, 2023. 45×180 sec, QHY294c at -20C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S, AT60ED at F/4.8.Frame 1. Veil Nebula Complex on Oct 20, 2023. 58×180 sec, QHY294c at -20C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S, AT60ED at F/4.8.Frame 2. Starless Version – Veil Nebula Complex on Oct 20, 2023. 58×180 sec, QHY294c at -20C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S, AT60ED at F/4.8. Starnet++Frame 3. Starless Plus Enhanced Version – Veil Nebula Complex on Oct 20, 2023. 60×180 sec, QHY294c at -20C, Gain 1600, Offset 50, UHC-S, AT60ED at F/4.8.
I had a new astro computer I built from scrap to test this night and also it was a test of the AT60ED and QHY294c with the ultra-mini guider and IMX224 camera on the new SkyWatcher GTi mount. The above equipment was 7.5 lbs, well within the 11 lb limit of the GTi mount and I had great guiding for the most part.
I bagged the four objects above on this night. A Baader UHC-S L-Booster filter was used to block the horrendous LP, which worked pretty well with the QHY294c.
The three versions of the Veil Complex were, for frame 1, essentially the 60 frames stacked and processed normally. Then, that result was put through Starnet++, which removes all the stars and leaves just the nebula, which is frame 2. I boosted that to bring out more nebula and then recombined it with the original to obtain an enhanced version in frame 3.
Dumb Bell Nebula on Oct 14, 2023. 12×300 sec, QHY183c at -20C, Gain 11, Offset 30, UV/IR, TV-85 at F/5.6.Crescent Nebula on Oct 14, 2023. 23×300 sec, QHY183c at -20C, Gain 11, Offset 30, UV/IR, TV-85 at F/5.6.
I left the scope setup after the eclipse and took these two images with just the UV/IR filter I used on the camera side for the eclipse.
Maximum Eclipse – South LouisianaTele Vue Optics’ TV-85 at F/5.6, Thousand Oaks polymer solar filter, QHY183c astro camera at 1C, 6.8ms, Gain 11, Offset 0. There are 14 frames total in this animation.
I got up early and setup, polar aligned, etc. Started taking images just before it started and got a few during the eclipse. After the eclipse, I got a few more images of the sun and its spots.
Tele Vue Optics’ TV-85 at F/5.6, Thousand Oaks polymer solar filter, QHY183c astro camera at 1C, 6.8ms, Gain 11, Offset 0.Sunspot Closeup – Televue TV-85 at F/5.6, Thousand Oaks polymer solar filter, QHY183c astro camera at 1C, 6.8ms, Gain 11, Offset 0.
