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 🙂
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.
M31 is one of the most favoured and popular imaging targets in the night sky; it is bright, large and very photogenic. I have imaged this galaxy numerous times, for example, in this LRGB version and in this OSC version. Since the galaxy is so large, each of these images is set in a wide field, one of 3 degrees horizontally and 2 degrees vertically across the field of view which equates to six times the diameter of the full moon. Many newcomers do not appreciate how large these objects are in the sky. Large but VERY dim!
The above image is at a resolution of 4.16arcsec/pixel. On such a large object as M31 this allows the entire galaxy to be imaged in one field of view on a wide field refractor such as the FSQ85 but does not allow for a “closer in” and more detailed image.
In order to do the latter, I created a mosaic of four panels to image the right hand side “west” of the galaxy at the greater resolution with my TEC140 and Atik 460. All I needed is the luminance data and then I could use this to blend with the lower resolution OSC data at the top of this post in Photoshop.
Each of the four luminance panels is a total of 90 minutes of 300 sec exposures captured with the TEC140 and Atik460 CCD camera with a Astrodon luminance filter. The luminance image above is a total of six hours of imaging time. I then processed these four images and knitted them together in PixInsight. I then registered this four-panel luminance with the OSC data at the top of the post and then used it as a luminance layer to give the best of both worlds; the colour of the OSC/FSQ85 wide field image with the detail of the TEC140/Atik460 image!
I hope you like it! 🙂
This is my first ever image capture with the excellent NINA software. I used my wide-field rig which consists of the Samyang 135mm lens and QHY268C OSC camera using an IDAS 2″ LP filter. The wide angle view brings out the North American nebula (NGC 7000) and The Pelican nebula to its right very nicely. There is also a lot of other background luminosity in the image.
The image set is a modest 18 x 180s exposures captured in August 2021, all the data being binned 1×1. Pre-processed and processed in PixInsight with a few tweaks in Photoshop.
The Leo Triplet is a popular and famous group of galaxies in the constellation of Leo, best viewed in late winter/early spring in the Northern Hemisphere. They are often imaged together like this as the triplet or as individual galaxies.
They are located about 35 million light years away and consists of the Messier galaxies M66 (top left in the image), M65 (bottom left ) and to the right we have NGC 3628, commonly called The Hamburger Galaxy.
The galaxies are easily visible in a small to mid-sized telescope as faint smudges in this isosceles triangular pattern. The galaxies are sometimes called the M66 Group but ask any astronomer and they will immediately know what you mean if you mention the Leo Triplet! Another famous galaxy group in Leo is the M96 group.
Technical Details
Image captured from my back yard observatory in Nottingham, UK on the 20th March 2021 just to the East of the Meridian line. I captured 40 x 180s exposures with my QHY268C One-Shot-Colour camera on my TEC140 refractor using off-axis guiding on my MESU 200 mount. The only filter I used was a LDAS Light pollution filter since I live in a residential area with Bortle 5 sky conditions.
Seeing and transparency were terrible and I debated with myself long and hard whether I bothered imaging at all on that night. However, since in the UK we have just endured the worst winter for cloud I can remember in 30 years of practical astronomy, I decided that beggars can’t be choosers and I went ahead with it anyway. I am glad I did since the outcome is not too bad.
Ideally it could use more exposure time and I will add to this as and when we get some more clear sky time.
Images exposures captured with Sequence Generator Pro and processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC.
The image above is a crop of the image below. I include this since some people my prefer the wider field.
Easily visible with the naked eye, M45, The Pleiades – sometimes referred to as The Seven Sisters, is a well known and famous Open Cluster in the constellation of Taurus. IT has been known since ancient times due to its prominence. The cluster is located between 450-500 light years away and contains several hundreds member stars. The cluster is quite young by astronomy standards and the cluster is moving through a cloud of gas which is easily visible in images and can been seen visually in a dark sky as well.
Technical Details
Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham on Saturday 9th January 2021 when high to The South. A meridian flip occurred half way through the data acquisition. I used my Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and QHY268C One Shot Colour camera. The image was created with quite a small data set of only 38 x 180s exposures.
Data acquired with Sequence Generator Pro and processed with PixInsight and Photoshop CC 2021. Very little processing has been done other than some noise reduction and a stretch into the none-linear state and a bit of vibrance added to the colour.
I have imaged M45 before. In a close-up setting and also in a widefield setting.
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 6000×4000 sensor, I just captured the central 1600×1200. 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 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 1600×1200 from its native 6000×4000, 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
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 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.