The Moon, 24 Dec 2020 LRGBHa with TEC140
Technical Details
This image of The Moon is a composite picture taken with my TEC140 refractor and an ASI174M high speed mono camera through Baader LRGB and Neodymium filters - the same filters that can be used for Deep Sky imaging (and I have used them for exactly that purpose too).
Moon is in a 73% waxing gibbous phase in the constellation of Taurus.
I captured 2000 frames through the Baader luminance filter and another 2000 through the neodymium filter. I then registered and combined the master image from each of these with Pixelmath with scaling. I used Multi-Scale linear transformation to sharpen the image and a very slight HDR transformation to bring out the fainter detail. This created the master luminance.
Each master R, G and B sub is the best 50% of 5000 frames. I registered the separate RGB channels with the master luminance and then used channel combination to make an RGB image after linear fitting them as individual master subs to attain the same intensity across the three channels. All these steps done with PixInsight.
I then combined the master Luminance with the master RGB to create the picture above in Photoshop with a slight tweak of the vibrance and saturation with Camera Raw filter.
I hope you like it! It is fun and enjoyable creating these lunar images.
The Moon, 24 Dec 2020, FSQ85 and QHY268C
This is a one shot colour picture of The Moon through my Takahashi FSQ85 telescope and my QHY268C colour camera. Seeing between bouts of cloud dodging was quite good with very little in the way of shimmering. This is the best 40% of 5000 frames captured with Fire Capture. I did not use the full resolution of the QHY268's 6000x4000 sensor, I just captured the central 1600x1200. Unusual to see the FSQ85 used as a planetary or lunar scope but it does excel at this as well as deep sky astrophotography work. It is also a very good instrument for visual observations.
Processed with Autostakkert, PixInsight and Photoshop. I hope you like it. It could do with a bit more colour to bring out the colour in the Mare (sea) regions.
The Moon
The Moon was at about first quarter when I captured this image. There are a lot of firsts in this image when capturing as I discuss below.
First up, this is the first time I used the QHY268C for planetary photography in video mode. Before now, I always used this camera in long exposure mode. I think the camera works very well and when I cropped the capture area down to 1600x1200 from its native 6000x4000, I was capturing16fps in Sharpcap, which is quite reasonable.
Secondly, this is the first time I used my Takahashi FSQ85 as a planetary/lunar scope. I think it worked our pretty well. I would normally have moved the camera over to the TEC140 or even the C925 SCT scope, however, I do not yuet have the adapters for the QHY268C to do that just yet.
Technical Details
As mentioned, imaged with FSQ85 and QHY268C. I used Lakeside motorfocus and captured 2000 frames in Sharpcap - another first use of this software (excellent) and utilised the best 35% of the frames in Autostakkert.
I used Photoshop to process the outputr from Autostakkert. Try as I might, and despite colour correction, I still think there is a slight green tinge to The Moon in this image so I will experiment with some different processing techniques.
EDIT: I am leaving the image as is but the reason for the green tinge is because I did not equalise the RGB channel intensities properly. There are several ways to achieve this. You can use linear fit in PixInsight and use the weakest median channel as the master with which to equalise the other two channels. Or, again with PixInsight, you could combine the RGB with channel combination with the channel intensities as they emerge from the stacking program and then do a colour combination to equalise the three channels. Or, you could use autocolour in Photoshop to achieve the colour calibration. Actually, there is a fourth way too, bu using Helmut Bornemann's autocolour script in PixInsight.
http://www.skypixels.at/pixinsight_scripts.html
The Heart Nebula - IC1805
A famous emission nebula in the Northern constellation of Cassiopeia, the Heart Nebula is a huge star forming region located about 8000 light years away, out in the Perseus Arm of our galaxy. It is often imaged as a pair of nebulae alongside the Soul Nebula as the famous Heart and Soul Nebulae. I have imaged them together here as well as The Soul nebula here, presented on its own. It is also known as IC1805 and Sharpless S2-190.
It is a beautiful nebula and I have even seen it portrayed on Valentine cards :)
Technical Details
Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK on 20 December 2020. Seeing conditions and sky transparency were reasonable. I used Takahashi FSQ85 refractor at native focal length and a QHY268C OSC CMOS camera. I took 42 x 180s exposures and the data was captured with Sequence Generator Pro. Processed in PixInsight and Photoshop.
The Soul Nebula with QHY268C and FSQ85
The Soul Nebula is a large emission nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It is commonly imaged with the nearby Heart Nebula as a nebula pair, not unsurprisingly called the Heart and Soul Nebulae such as my rendition here.
The Soul Nebula is a vast star forming region and is located about 7000 light years away, in the Perseus Arm of our galaxy, outward from the core. It is sometimes called the baby nebula because it resembles a baby!
Technical Data
Imaged with my Takahashi FSQ85 refractor at its native focal length and I used my QHY268C colour camera on MESU 200 mount using off-axis guiding. The mage comprises 42 x 3 minute exposures to give a total integration time of just over two hours. It could use some more data, especially some Ha data to bring put more detail in the nebula.
Seeing and transparency were average and the data was captured November 2020.