Collinder 399 "The Coathanger" Samyang 135mm
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 1x1.
Red > 12 x 300s; Green 10 x 300s; Blue 11 x 300s
All processing is done in PixInsight and image capture was with SGP.
Rosette Nebula In A Very Wide Field
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.
M81 / M82 Group and IFN with Samyang 135mm
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 1x1.
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.
The Pleiades (M45) with FSQ85 and G2-8300
The magnificent Pleiades, known to many as the Seven Sisters, is an open cluster in the constellation of Taurus. The Pleiades have been known since the dawn of antiquity and even some cave paintings from 30000 years ago depict them on cave walls.
The cluster is 442 light years away and they are about 20 light years across. The exact distance has been a source of debate amongst astronomers for many years but the matter was recently settled using parallax data from the Gaia satellite.
Technical Data
Imaged with Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and G2-8300 CCD camera with Astrodon E-series RGB filters. It consists of 20 x 300 second exposures in each of those filters to give over 90 minutes in each of the three channels for a combined integration of about four and a half hours. As is normal with any type of cluster, I did not bother with a separate luminance channel and instead bin the RGB all at 1x1. This amount of exposure is necessary to bring out the faint dust clouds through with the star cluster is moving.
Image data acquired on November 2021 with NINA imaging software and processing was done with PixInsight and Photoshop. Very little in the way of image processing was done on the image. After preprocessing all I did removed the background gradient, used a bit of deconvolution and then stretched the image. I then applied a bit of noise reduction and a tiny bit of colour saturation. This shows the importance of a good data set; you hardly need to push the data that hard in processing to get a good result.
I have imaged M45 before with the same equipment combination that you can see here. However, on that image my exposures were shorter and I did not get as much of the dusty background that I have managed to achieve with the picture on this page.
I hope you like it!
M52 with FSQ85 and G2-8300 Camera
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 1x1 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 1x1 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.
Sh2-171 with FSQ85 Telescope and G2-8300 CCD camera
Sh2-171 is a star forming region in the constellation of Cepheus in the far northern hemisphere of the sky.
Imaged here with Takahashi FSQ85 and G2-8300 with Astrodon HaRGB filters.
M33 Galaxy in Triangulum FSQ85 with G2-8300
M33 is a galaxy about 2.8 - 3 million light years away in the constellation of Triangulum. Along with M33, it is one of the Local Group of galaxies with which our own Milky Way galaxy shares the local universe. M33 is the most distant object that the human naked eye can see, appearing as a ghostly white smudge on a very dark night from clear skies. It is a magnificent spiral galaxy about half the size of our own galaxy and because of its close proximity to us it appears very large in our skies and is am oft-photographed object by many, myself included.
I've imaged M33 multiple times. For example, with the same FSQ85 telescope here and also at a closer image scale with the TEC140 refractor here.
This time I have set the galaxy in a slightly wider field by utilising the FSQ85 0.73 reducer. I used the Moravian G2-8300 CCD camera and Astrodon RGB filters all binned 1x1. I did not use a separate luminance channel.
The data collected for the image was collected from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK on 4/5 and 8th of November 2021 and is a modest data set of 15 x 300s exposures in each of the three filters to give a total integration of nearly four hours. However, because of the proximity of M33 and its brightness this data set has revealed a very pleasing, detailed and colourful result. What do you think?
Image data captured with NINA automation software and processed in PixInsight.
A Set of Images of NGC7000, The North American Nebula. Is Ha data worth it?
A perennial favourite object to image in the summer and autumn months in the Northern Hemisphere. I've imaged this target with multiple equipment combinations over the years. For example, in One Shot Colour (OSC), in widefield and in a very wide field.
As part of the image I used my existing Ha dataset from 2018/2019 which consists of 48 x 600 second exposures. I discuss capture of this image here.
I then captured the RGB dataset in October 2021. This image is my first image set that I captured using the excellent NINA (Nighttime Imaging "N" Astronomy) imaging software. I captured four hours of RGB data through Astrodon 31mm E series Gen 2 filters binned at 1x1. This consisted of 300 second exposures. Seeing and transparency were not good but clear nights have been very infrequent in the UK in the past six months so I went for it regardless.
I am very impressed with the quality of the standard RGB image above. Since the data is binned 1x1, I did not feel the need to capture any luminance channel at all. Indeed the RGB alone is so good that the Ha data addition, whilst it does add some signal, adds so little to the final result that I question the time I spent capturing the Ha data. For sure, the Ha image is a pretty picture all on its own. However, it does add something to the picture as detailed below.
Despite the expense in time of gathering the Ha data, you can see that when it is blended with the RGB it brings out some fainter structures in the nebula. Whether or not a full eight hours is needed though, I doubt.
The Rosette Nebula FSQ85
The Rosette Nebula is a huge emission nebula in the Orion arm of the galaxy located in the constellation of Monoceros. It is about 5500 light years away and about 150 light years across and stars are being born from the hydrogen that comprises the nebula.
Image Technical Data
Imaged with Takahashi FSQ85 at native focal length with my Moravian Instruments G2-8300 cooled CCD camera and Astrodon RGBHa filters. Data collected from my backyard observatory on 8th January 2018.
Image data is as follows (Ha is 1x1 and RGB is 2x2)
Ha > 14 x 1200s ; Red > 17 x 300s ; Green 12 x 300s ; Blue > 20 x 300s
As can be seen above, the Ha image is extremely detailed and shows a huge amount of detail. This is 3.5 hours of exposures through the Astrodon 3nm Ha filter.
Above is the RGB only image which is binned 2x2. It is a good picture in its own right but it is a bit flat and lacks the pizazz and sparkle of the Ha image. It is the combination of the Ha and the RGB that creates the colourful and detailed main image at the top. There are many ways this combination can be achieved. Here, I did it all in PixInsight whereas on some other pictures I used PI and Photoshop. What I did here was when in the linear state used the emission line script to add the Ha data to the red part of the image. Then after stretching the images I used the NBRGB script to combine the images in the linear state.
Simeis 147 (Samyang 135 mm)
Simeis 147 (Sharpless Sh2-240) sometimes called The Spaghetti Nebula is a supernova remnant of a star that exploded forty thousand years ago. It sits across the border of Taurus and Auriga and is a huge object, about six moon widths across. It is located about 3000 light years away. Because of its extremely low surface brightness it was only discovered as recently as 1952. It is an exceptionally difficult object to observe visually and to have any hope of seeing it with your own eyes at the eyepiece requires extremely dark skies (Bortle 1), specialist filters, immaculate seeing and transparency and extreme dark adaption of your eyes. This rules out almost anywhere near civilisation. Personally speaking, I have never known any astronomer who has seen it visually. Even with photography it requires very long exposure times to bring out any detail.
Image Technical Data
This image was created with my wide-field rig in my backyard in Nottingham UK (Bortle 5 on the dark sky scale) on the 20 and 21 December 2019. It is such a wide-field object that I used my Samyang 135mm lens and Moravian Instruments G2-8300 cooled CCD camera with Astrodon RGB and Ha(3nm) filters. This delivers a FoV of 8x6 degrees.
All exposures binned 1x1:
Ha (3nm) > 22 x 300s ; Red > 8 x 300s ; Green > 9 x 300s ; Blue > 10 x 300s
The total integration time is four hours so far and this is a rather short time for this object. More data would bring out finer structures in the nebula. As a result, I may revisit this at some point and add to the data set already acquired. However, the current result is not so bad for the limited amount of data so far captured. Simeis 147 is so faint that it can consume as much data as you can throw at it and I have seen images of it with 30,40 and even 50 hours of data!
The Image data is captured with Sequence Generator Pro and processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC.
Other versions of this object often include an Oxygen channel (OIII) because supernova remnants are rich in Hydrogen and Oxygen. I may capture this channel too at some point.
Above is the RGB only data. As you can see, there is very little to show for the data collected. It is when you blend this RGB with the Ha channel data below - especially with the red channel - that the detail in the main picture in this post at the top is revealed.
