nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

Stepping Beyond and I have had our share of rain, clouds, and more rain. Last week we had three consecutive nights of good to great skies. I used three kits at the same time and took advantage of the clear nights the best way I knew how.

Two images took two nights of total exposure time - the Rosette was taken in one night.

All three images were taken with ASI1600MM-C Pro cooled cameras on either an Edge800 SCT or Stellarvue 70T. I was able to get an average of 7 hours of exposure time for all three images ....I used 180 second exposures on the SV70T and 300 seconds on the SCT. Gains and offsets varied with each filter but a 1200 ADU mean was my goal for each filter. I used Astronomik 6nm NB filters for both kits. .....I also setup a Alt Az SCT scope to do some visual while the imaging was going on. I almost had forgotten how much fun it was to do visual astronomy.

I used Sequence Generator Pro to control this mess and PixInsight to fix the mess.

The Rosette, NGC2238; IC443, Jellyfish nebula; and M1, crab nebula.

I also attached the gear used - btw, I had to expand the platform and move one pier (too close and poor planning initially) The kit on tripod with the Vixen scope and AVX mount is equipped for solar imaging....when time allows I have had a few hours of daytime solar imaging.

Poor Man's Observatory

(Download)

Rosette Nebula

(Download)

M1 with focusing issues but processed anyway.

(Download)

IC443 Jellyfish Nebula

(Download)

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

So kool!

Marc G Loc: East Grinstead, West Sussex, England

Great images & sweet kit

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Really nice work. I noticed that open cluster NGC 2252 just to the left of the Rosette nebula came out well also. In the upper right hand corner of the image of IC443 there appears to be a small blue planetary nebula, do you know what it is? I couldn't find it in my charts.

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

I do not have a clue!

tony85629 Loc: Sahuarita, Az

Very nice work. Particularly liked your Jellyfish. Did you use Ha, OIII and OII?

SonnyE Loc: Communist California, USA

OH! So beautiful, Ed!


I am so envious! All I want is a single working mount. And you have a veritable Candy Store of them!
LOL!

But February-March will see a new Losmandy in my spot. Cashing in cans and saving pennies.
(Not really. Saw a dime on the ground when leaving the market yesterday. Walked on by.)

Hah! I see you got out the AVX. Hope it holds up for you!

Europa Loc: West Hills, CA

Damn!

That’s a good way to make use of a few good nights. I like “ create the mess, fix the mess” 😀

btrlvngthruchem

They're all good but the Jellyfish is exceptional. Super nice work. I'm blown away by your "poor-man's observatory" and also so envious. I'd really like to know if you take everything down after an imaging session and if not, what do you do to protect everything?

Thanks,

Jay

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

No.....I stayed with SHO but ended up trying some funking things in Pixinsight to bring more contrast to what was otherwise a pretty flat/dull data set.

I know the stars are pitiful in this image.....my original sequence included 5 second RBG images as I had planned to replace the stars but clouds moved in and the sequence was aborted before I could gather those. I processed anyway and went wild in post doing some "not so conventional things"!

I revisit this target every year - may even return to it this year if only STEPPING BEYOND would stop praying for rain every week:) He lives up the road from me!

For the record - rain and tornados have been so bad we have had our power off, from Thursday until this morning, Saturday. ....and the scopes were all left outside during 7 inches of rain and winds that took down trees, blew off roofs, moved tractor trailers from the interstate to nearby parking lots - exciting. But the 360 Telegizmos kept everything DRY! I keep one on each of the 4 outside kits year around! More rain is coming this afternoon...there is a 12 hour break and then another week of rain!

Below is the starless version that just needs the RGB stars ...this version was also finished off in PSCC.

(Download)

tony85629 Loc: Sahuarita, Az

Sorry, what is SHO?

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

Narrowband imaging uses filters Ha, SII, and OIII (there are others but this constitutes the most used by astro imagers). Many nebula are photographed using the Hubble Palette. When doing this you use a mono camera and you substitute the SII filtered images for the RED channel, Ha for the GREEN, and OIII for the BLUE. The Hubble telescope was optimised for signal and contrast and this array of filters does a decent to outstanding job of rendering that contrast. Ha equates to the bandwidth passthrough filter for hydrogen gas emission, SII for sulfur and OIII for oxygen.

RGB = SHO

tony85629 Loc: Sahuarita, Az

Thanks My typo I meant SII not OII

nikonshooter Loc: Spartanburg, South Carolina

My gear stays up year around. I use Telegizmos to cover the kits. They are well made - water repellent - help in the heat of the summer to reduce the temps - and durable. I have one for each kit. They just weathered 7 inches of rain over a 12 hour period - high winds - E1 Tornado on Thursday that spared our home but hit others close by.....but the winds at our home were crazy! I pulled the covers off yesterday and all was dry! It's snowing now and they will protect my gear as good as if they were inside.

http://www.telegizmos.com/