Abell 1656 TEC 140
Abell 1656 - The Coma Cluster - is a cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Coma Berenices, located about 320-330 million lights years away. The cluster is dominated by two supergiant elliptical galaxies NGC 4874 and NGC 4889 which are visible in this image in the centre below the bright blue star (which is local to our own galaxy). NGC 4889 is the largest and most massive galaxy in the local universe and is vsoble in modest amateur telescopes despite the great distance. It contains the most massive black hole yet discovered. The galaxy itself is estimated to have more than 1000 times the mass of opur own Milky Way galaxy.
Image Technical Data
Image acquired spring 2020 (during the Coronavirus lockdown) in my backyard in Nottingham, UK. It was acquired with TEC 140 refractor (with field flattener) with Atik460 CCD camera and Astrodon LRGB Gen2 E series filters on my MESU 200 mount. Guiding was via off-axis guider.
Luminance 30 x 300s 1x1; Red 14 x 300s 2x2; Green 15 x 300s 2x2; Blue 14 x 300s 2x2
Data processed with PixInsight and Photoshop and data collected with SGP Pro and guided with PHD2.
IC1396 with Samyang 135mm
IC1396 - "the Elephant's Trunk Nebula" is a huge emission nebula in the constellation of Cepheus, about 2500 light years away. It has a huge angular diameter of about 2 x 3 degrees so it requires a wide field telescope/lens to capture it in its entirety.
It is a very popular imaging target both in a wide field setting like this picture and also as close up views of the "trunk" that you can see in the image at the 6 o'clock position.
Image Technical Data
Image data acquired September 13th 2019 from my backyard in Nottingham, UK. This image was taken with my Samyang 135mm lens with G2-8300 CCD camera and Astrodon RGBHa filters on NEQ6 mount. Everything is 300s in this image and binned 1x1:
Ha (3nm) x 13; Red x 12; Green x 8; Blue x 14
M27 - My First LRGB CCD Picture
M27 is known as The Dumbbell Nebula and is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Vulpecula - The Fox. It is located about 1250 light years away and represents the outer ejected gas envelope of a dying star.
This is the first image I took with my CCD camera - Atik460 - on the 28th October 2013. This is a lovely object in the summer and early autumn skies and is very pleasing visually in a pair of binoculars or a telescope. Its brightness and vivid colour make it a perennial favourite object for astro imagers.
Image Technical Data
This is a small dataset taken with my superb Skywatcher ED80 Black Diamond refractor and Atik 460 CCD camera with Baader LRGB filters on an NEQ6 mount, guided with a Skywatcher guidescope and QHY5 (I still have and use this guide setup). This is a superb imaging setup and despite its modest cost is capable of great results. I upgraded the ED80 to a Takahashi FSQ85 and sold the ED80. Be assured though, the super ED80 is capable of 90% of what the FDSQ can do at 10% of the cost. I kind of regret selling that ED80 now.
Luminance 8 x 300s 1x1; Red 6x 180s 1x1; Green 7 x 180s 1x1; Blue 7x 180s 1x1
Developed in PixInsight - first picture I ever developed with this software.
It looks quite nice for an early effort.
P.S. This excellent Atik 460 CCD camera and EFW2 filter wheel is still going strong after seven years of use (writing this in August 2020). I had to have a port repair on the EFW2's mini-USB port under Atik's fabulous customer service in 2019 but other than that no issues whatsoever with the camera or filter wheel. I have since upgraded the filters to Astrodon E series Gen2 LRGBHaOIII filters.
M97 - The Owl Nebula TEC 140
The Owl Nebula is a planetary nebula in the constellation of Ursa Major, one of three planetary nebulae in the Messier catalogue. It is visible as a faint smudge in amateur telescopes but the colours are not evident visually. It is called The Owl Nebula because of the resemblance to the face of an owl. 6 hours and 30 minutes of LRGB in this image
The annotated version above shows many distant galaxies in the same field of view as M97, although obviously these are very much more distant.
The HOO version above shows the Owl Nebula with Hydrogen Alpha mapped as Red channel and OIII mapped to Green and Blue to create the HOO palette colours. 3 hours and 30 minutes of HaOIII. This HOO image could really do with more data added to it in the Ha and OIII channels and I hope to do this next spring hopefully.
Image Technical Data
This image was captured with TEC 140 refractor and Atik 460 CCD with Astrodon LRGBHaOIII (3nm) filters during Spring 2020 (during the coronavirus lockdown in the UK) from my backyard in Nottingham. Mount is my MESU 200 guided with OAG. There is a quite a lot of data in these images as follows. Everything binned 1x1:
Lum 20 x 600s; Red 13 x 30s; Green 12 x 300s; Blue 13 x 300s; Ha 12 x 600s; OIII 9 x 600s
M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules
M13 is arguably the greatest of the Northern hemisphere globular clusters and, after Omega Centauri, the greatest globular cluster in the sky.
It is a located about 26000 light years away and has a diameter of about 120 light years. It is one of about 250 globular clusters that surround the nucleus of our galaxy. Most galaxies have globular clusters in orbit around them and the reason why is still unclear. What is clear is that the clusters and the stars within them are extremely old, in the region of ten billion years old or twice the age of the sun.
M13 is visible with the naked eye on a dark night as a fuzzy star. A telescope reveals its starry nature and a scope over 8 inches will show many stars and is an amazing site to behold.
The above image is a composite of LRGB data with one hour of data in each of the RGB channels and two hours in the luminance, everything binned 1x1, giving a total of five hours imaging time. TEC 140 refractor and Atik 460 camera CCD camera with Baader LRGB filters. on MESU 200 mount. The data was collected in 2018 and processed in PixInsight. HDR tool makes a big impact in bringing out the detail in the core of the cluster.
TIP: In this picture look for the "Propeller". Can you see it? :)
M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy with TEC140 and Atik460
M101 - The Pinwheel Galaxy - is a spectacular, face-on "Grand Design" spiral galaxy located about 20 million light years away. It is quite a hard object to observe visually unless your skies are dark due to the galaxy's very low surface brightness. In the image below you can see the many red HII (pronounced "H-two") star forming regions. The galaxy is not a part of the local group of galaxies and is receding away from us with the expansion of the universe.
The image was acquired in my back yard observatory in Nottingham, UK with my TEC140 refractor and Atik 460 CCD camera with LRGBHa Astrodon Filters between 2018 and 2020. I used off-axis guiding to keep the telescope precisely aligned and the whole imaging ensemble was atop my MESU200 mount. M101 is not easily captured from my observatory since it is sandwiched between the neighbour's house and my house meaning that I can only grab it when it is almost at the zenith, which is where I captured these images in the early springtimes. Consequently, it took several years to acquire the data needed to build the image.
The imaging data set is as follows:
Luminance > 20 x 900s binned 1×1 ; Red > 18 x 300s 2×2 ; Green > 18 x 300s 2×2 ; Blue > 18 x 300s 2×2 ; Ha > 24 x 300s 1x1
This gives a total integration time of about 11.5 hours. This is a large investment of time on a single object in the UK skies, where clear nights are a great rarity.
I used Sequence Generator Pro for image capture. I then used PixInsight for pre processing to get to the five LRGBHa master files. I then used PixInsight to create the HaRGB and Luminance master TIFF files. I then switched to Photoshop to do the blending of these two L and HaRGB with multiple layers of blending saturation and tweaking. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I find it easier and more intuitive to do this in Photoshop as opposed to LRGB combination tool and/or PixelMath in PixInsight since blending inside Photoshop gives immediate feedback off the effect when the sliders are tweaked. A personal preference and I am sure many folks are completely happy doing this task purely inside PixInsight.
Above is five hours of luminance only. It reveals much of the fine structure inside the galaxy's core and spiral arms. This data was then blended into the RGBHa composite.
Markarian's Chain
A famous string of galaxies in the constellation of Virgo, named after the astronomer Benjamin Markarian who first discovered their common motion. The chain contains several Messier catalogue objects and is visible in the late winter and spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The galaxies are located between 65-75 million light years away and are nice objects to observe with a telescope if you can do so from a dark sight.
This image was created from a data set acquired in Spring 2019 with my FSQ85 refractor.
Image is centred on "The Eyes" of NGC4435 and NGC4438 just below dead centre of the image. At the bottom is the monstrous supergiant elliptical galaxy M87, the most massive object in the local universe harbouring the famous black hole recently imaged with the event horizon telescope.
Below is an inverted version that help show the galaxies with more contrast.
Technical Information
The data set was acquired with my FSQ85 refractor with the 0.73 reducer and Moravian Instruments G2-8300 CCD camera with Astrodon LRGB filters.
Data set is as follows: Lum > 26 x 600s ; Red 14 x 300s ; Green > 14 x 300s ; Blue > 14 x 300s
Everything binned 1x1 on my MESU 200 mount and using off axis guiding. The data was acquired in two nights. The data is processed with PixInsight and Photoshop.
Below are two annotated versions; a simpler version showing the main Messier, NGC and IC catalogues and then, at the bottom, a version adding the hundreds of PGC (Primary Galaxy Catalogue) objects deep in the universe many of which are billions of light years away.
The North American and Pelican Nebulae in Hydrogen Alpha
The North American Nebula and the adjacent Pelican nebula to the right of it are popular objects of the summer and autumn sky in the Northern Hemisphere. Both of these objects are aptly named because the nebula to the left really does look like the continent of North America being looked at by a pelican to the right!
This post discusses a version of these objects in the light of Hydrogen Alpha 3nm only. You can see the vast amount of detail that is emitted at this wavelength by the clouds of hydrogen that the nebulae are composed from.
This picture is composed of 48 x 600s exposures with a Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and Moravian G2-8300 CCD camera with an Astrodon 31mm 3nm Ha filter and the Takahashi 0.73 reducer. The image discussed here is a pure Ha monochrome image but I also combined this data set with RGB colour data as well that you can see here.
A snippet of the above picture showing The Pelican nebula.
This shows the portion of the nebula commonly known as "The Wall"
The Perseus Galaxy Cluster - Abell 426
The Perseus Galaxy Cluster (Abell 426) is one of the most massive known objects in The Universe. It is a supercluster of galaxies with thousands of individual members located between 230-280 million light years away. The galaxies are located within a vast cloud of enveloping gas, the gas being much more massive than the total mass of the galaxies themselves. This area is very important for physicists testing the theory of relativity.
It is clear from the red patches on the main Perseus galaxy itself (NGC 1275) slightly to left and bottom of this images centre (at the eight o'clock position) that something dramatic is happening inside this galaxy.
Technical Information
Imaged from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK with my TEC 140 refractor and Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon LRGB filters between October 2019 to January 2020. The image was created from 20 x 900s luminance exposures collected on the 27/28 Oct 2019. The red, green and blue channels were collected between October 2019 and January 2020 over multiple and frustrating imaging sessions due to a very wet winter in the UK with almost total cloud cover for weeks on end. As much data had to be thrown away as is presented here!
Lum > 20 x 900s; Red > 14 x 300s; Green 14 x 300s; Blue 14 x 300s. Everything binned 1x1.
This data set gives a total integration (exposure) time of 8 hours and 30 minutes.
Guiding was with OAG on my MESU 200 mount. Image data acquired with Sequence Generator Pro and developed in PixInsight and PhotoShop CC.
The chart above shows an annotated version of the primary picture. The principle galaxy NGC1275 is shown a third of the way from the left border and just below the centre line. If you then look carefully at the NGC 1275 galaxy in the main image clearly something very significant is taking place inside the galaxy, twisting and distorting it. This galaxy is called Perseus A and is one of the brightest sources of radio and X-rays in the sky.
Technical Data
Abell 2151 - The Hercules Cluster
Abell 2151 is a cluster of galaxies about 500 million light years away in the constellation of Hercules. There are a total of about 300-400 galaxies in this image. I am especially interested in these remote galaxy clusters and it is sobering to think how many planets and civilisations must exist amidst this vastness. Countless trillions.
Image Technical Data
Technical Details
Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham over four nights in late April and May 2020, during the Coronavirus lockdown. We had some superb clear skies over the UK during this period with very good visibility and seeing - highly unusual for the UK. I used my TEC 140 refactor at its native focal length of F7 and Atik 460 cooled CCD camera with Astrodon LRGB filters. The telescope was mounted on my MESU 200 mount and guided with OAG.
All data is binned 1x1:
Lum > 23 x 600s ; Red 14 x 300s ; Green > 12 x 300s ; Blue > 16 x 300s
The total integration time is seven hours and twenty minutes; this is quite an investment of time in one object by UK standards.
Captured with Sequence Generator Pro and processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC.
The two images immediately above are annotated versions of the primary picture at the top. The version to the left shows the annotation with the NGC/IC catalogs of galaxies. The one of the right adds the many PGC (Principle Galaxy Catalog) galaxies, many of which are much more remote than Abell 2151 and are billions of light years distant in the depths of the Universe.
To the left is a star chart showing the location (in red circle) of the Hercules cluster.
Alternate Version
