IC1396 is a fabulous and well known nebula complex in the Far Northern constellation of Cepheus and is about 2400 light years distant.  It is comprised of a huge cloud of excited hydrogen gas known as a HII region (pronounced H-two).  Some nice features include the Elephant’s Trunk nebula embedded in it.

Full resolution (8Meg) image here (opens in a new tab):

https://thekirkshouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/IC_1396_WF.jpg

Technical Details

Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK on the nights of 15 and 16th October 2023 when almost directly overhead. It consist of 54 x 240s exposures with a QHYCCD One Shot Colour (OSC) camera with a gain of 30 and offset of 0 through a Takahashi FSQ85 telescope with the 0.67 focal reducer/flattener.

Sky conditions and transparency were both poor, as usual for the UK in all but the rarest nights of seeing.

I hope you like it 🙂

A magnificent spiral galaxy with TEC 140 and Atik 460

Many astronomers consider NGC 2903 the best and brightest galaxy that isn’t included in the famous Messier list and are surprised Messier himself didn’t include it in his catalogue.  It is very photogenic and brighter than several other galaxies that are included in Messier’s list such as M65 and M66.  It is located in Leo to the right of the “sickle” of Leo and is about 30 million light years distant.

Full resolution image here (opens in a new tab). If you open the full resolution image you will see many tiny, remote galaxies in the depths of the Universe.

Technical Detail

Imaged with my TEC140 telescope and Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series LRGB filters on the 25th and 26th March 2022.  The data set is as follows with the luminance binned 1×1 and the RGB at 2×2:

Lum 24 x 300s ; Red 12 x 180s ; Blue 9 x 180s ; Green 34 x 180s

(yes, I know that’s a lot of Green!  I overdid the green because I misconfigured the NINA automation software but decided to throw it all into the image anyway).

This gives a total integration time of four hours and 45 minutes in total exposure.

 

Developed in PixInsight for all pre and post processing.  Since it is a good data set all I did after preprocessing was combine the master LRGB files, apply DBE to remove background gradients (and since I am in Bortle 5 sub-urban neighbourhood there are security lights going on and off all night).  I then applied Blur Exterminator and some noise reduction.  I then stretched the image and applied a bit of colour saturation.  That’s all I did.  It took about 45 minutes in total and most of that time was waiting for WBPP to complete.

An image of Orion from January 2023 taken with a QHY268C cooled astronomy camera mated with a Samyang 135mm lens to give a very wide field view.

Full sized image here (opens in a new tab).

The image is composed of 56 x 120s exposures at F2.8. I used my wide field rig with autofocus to get the stars and nebulosity sharp and tight.  I captured flats, darks and dark-flats.  Mounted on NEQ6 with a guider scope and image data captured with NINA.  All pre and post development is done in PixInsight.

Captured over two nights 20th and 23rd January 2023 when Orion was high to the south.  From my back yard in Saxondale, Nottinghamshire – suburban, Bortle 4-5.

I have also captured the Constellation of Orion here.

Collinder 399 or Brocchi’s Cluster is offered nicknamed “The Coathanger” for its striking resemblance to that wardrobe item! If you look at the stars in the middle of the image and it looks very much like a coathanger on its side.  It is located within the constellation of Vulpecula – The Fox – within a larger asterism called The Summer Triangle. The Coathanger is a chance, line-of-sight effect and the stars that form the appearance of the coathanger are not physically associated with each other at all and range from 350 to 2300 light years in distance.

The stars are backdropped against the vast clouds of glowing hydrogen that dominate the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy.

Image Technical Data

Uncompressed version of the image is here (opens in new tab).

Image captured in my backyard in Nottingham, UK on Sunday 20th September 2020.  I used a Samyang (Rokinon) 135mm DSLR lens with a Moravian Instruments G2-8300 cooled CCD camera.  This was mounted on my NEQ6 mount and guided with a Skywatcher Evoguider and ASI120MM guidecam.  All exposures are binned 1×1.

Red > 12 x 300s; Green 10 x 300s; Blue 11 x 300s

All processing is done in PixInsight and image capture was with SGP.

M74 is a magnificent spiral galaxy about 32 million light years away in the constellation of Pisces.  It has quite low surface brightness which makes it quite a hard galaxy to observe.  It bears a passing resemblance to M101 I always think, but is much dimmer.

Imaged on 15th December 2022 when to The South.  I used my TEC 140 refractor with its field flattener, an Atik 460 CCD camera with Astrodon E series 1.25″ LRGB filters.  All on my MESU 200 mount which was off-axis guided.  The objective lens was very dirty and I cleaned it the following day.  Despite that, the image came out quite nice.

This image is made from quite a modest data set comprising the following

LUM > 12 x 300s ; Red > 9 x 300s ; Green 9 x 300s ; Blue > 9 x 300s

Which gives a total integration (exposure) time of three hours and fifteen minutes in total.

I captured the data with NINA software and did all processing with PixInsight.

Image taken with a Samyang 135mm DSLR lens and QHY268C Colour CMOS camera in January 25th 2023 when high to The South.  A total of 30 x 120s exposures at F4.  I used NINA software for image acquisition and processed in PixInsight.  I wanted to set the Rosette in a very wide field so as to see the surrounding nebulosity.

I have imaged The Rosette Nebula before with a FSQ85 telescope which can be found here. 

The M81 and M82 galaxies in Ursa Major showing the background Integrated Flux Nebula. 

These are a well known and popular pair of galaxies and can be seen with binoculars.  I’ve imaged them here in a very wide field with a DSLR camera lens – the Samyang 135mm connected to a G2-8300 CCD camera and filter assembly using Astrodon LRGB filters

The cloudy dust that is visible is not passing cloud!  Rather, it is the extremely faint dust and gas that exists in the space between the galaxies – in intergalactic space.  Hence it is called the Integrated Flux Nebula or IFN.  It is extremely faint and is only visible with very long exposures and integration times.  Careful processing is needed not to inadvertently cut it out of the image.

Technical Data

Imaged in my back yard in Nottingham in March 2020 with Samyang 135mm and G2-8300 CCD camera on a NEQ6 mount.  I used a separate guide scope.  I only got round to processing this data set in 2023 having completely forgotten about it!

All exposures 300 seconds in length and binned 1×1.

Lum > 24 ; Blue > 15; Red > 15; Green > 14

This gives a total of Lum > 120mins; Blue > 75mins; Red > 75 mins; Green > 70 mins

For a total integration (exposure) time of 5 hours and 40 minutes for the image.

M52 is a fabulous open star cluster in Cassiopeia.  It is set against a huge amount of nebulosity that spans across the constellations of Cassiopeia and Cepheus.   In this image The Bubble Nebula can be seen at the four o’clock position with respect to M52 and many other objects in the Sharpless Catalogue of nebulae are also visible.  These are detailed in the annotated version of the image below.  The square red box on the finder chart on the right represents the image.

Full resolution image here (opens in a new tab).

Technical Information

Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham, UK on 28 November 2021 with a FSQ85 refractor and a Moravian G2-8300 cooled CCD camera with Astrodon HaRGB filters on my MESU200 mount guided with OAG.

All image data is binned 1×1:  Note I do not capture a separate luminance when I bin all of the data channels is 1×1 in order to save some precious (In the UK) clear sky time.  I do know purist swill say that it is best still to capture a luminance because that captures all of the light frequencies at the 1×1 level.  I agree.

Ha> 9 x 300s ; Red > 9 x 300s ; Green 9 x 300s ; Blue > 9 x 300s

Image capture is with NINA and processing in PixInsight.

The planet Mars captured with my Celestron C925 SCT telescope and my ASI224MC colour camera.  I used a Powermate x2 barlow lens to give a higher image scale together with an Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC).

A total of 12000 frames were captured using Firecapture to a SSD drive on my capture PC.  I used Autostakkert to process the best 20% and then PixInsight to bring out the details with 8 wavelet layers.  A bit of unsharp mask afterwards to sharpen it up a bit.

Mars was to the East of the meridian and about 40 degrees in altitude.

From my backyard in Nottingham, UK.

I am quite new to using the ADC and what I did was use the colour alignment tool in Firecapture to “tune” the ADC to get the colours all as perfectly aligned as I could.