The Leo Triplet with TEC140 and QHY268C
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.
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.
IC1396 - Elephant Trunk Nebula
I have imaged IC1396 before. It passes directly overhead at my location in Nottingham, UK.
Imaged here on 14-15 October 2020 with FSQ85 refractor and QHY268C OSC camera on MESU 200 mount.
A total of 55 x 240s exposures. Developed in PixInsight and Photoshop CC. Image capture with Sequence Generator Pro.
First Light Image From QHY268C and FSQ85
Full Size Image here (opens in a new tab).
This my first semi-completed image from the QHY268C and so far I am impressed with its performance. I discuss unboxing the camera and also how I connect it to the FSQ85 in other posts on my site.
This image - above - of The North American and Pelican Nebulae is a stack of 47 x 180s exposures at Gain 0 and Offset 30 at -15C on my Takahashi FSQ85. This is my first deep-sky CMOS camera and I had to research how to preprocess the data from the camera and I will discuss this in another post.
Since I acquired the camera and in keeping with the "new gear curse", I have been constantly frustrated by wet weather and cloudy skies for almost a month. The 47 exposures for this image were spread out over about seven imaging sessions, sometimes with as few as four exposures per session, such as been cloudy nature of the skies of late where I live - Nottingham, UK. I'd set up, get everything running and then it would cloud over.
I'm really happy how clean the images look as you can see from the single 180 exposure above. Very little processing work is needed to bring out the detail in good data. I was a bit concerned initially about the visual appearance of the master dark but it did the job of removing the artefacts in the lights.
Below is an annotated version of the main picture at top.
The relatively large APS-C sensor, 16-bit resolution and high pixel count, allied to very low noise and zero amp glow make this camera an incredibly powerful proposition. I understandf QHY and ZWO are about to release a mono version of this camera shortly.
I think it is not unreasonable to say the era of CCD in amateur photography is pretty much over with these incredibly powerful and cost effective CMOS cameras being released nowadays (Oct 2020).
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.
The California Nebula
The California Nebula - NGC 1499 - is a vast hydrogen gas emission nebula about 1000 light years away in the constellation of Perseus. It is named as such because of its vague resemblance to the US state of California.
It is a very large, faint and diffuse object, about four times the diameter of the moon. It is almost completely invisible visually without specialist filters and was not discovered until the advent of astrophotography in 1884. The nebula shines by reflecting the light of the bright star Markib. It shines red because Hydrogen atoms, when excited by nearby bright sources like stars, emit or re-radiate light at the 656nm wavelength which is in the red part of the spectrum to our eyes.
Image Technical Data
The California Nebula is so large that most telescopes cannot get the nebula in the field of view, nowhere near in fact. It is of course possible to create multi-panel mosaic images but these take a great deal of imaging sky time, something in very short supply in the UK rain and cloud infested skies! DSLR lenses are perfect for this type of wide field imaging, however. This image is almost eight degrees across by six degrees and was made with my wide field DSLR lens portable set up in my backyard, December 7th 2019. Samyang 135mm DSLR lens connected to Moravian Instruments G2-8300 cooled CCD camera and Astrodon E-series RGBHa (3nm) filters, all mounted on my Skywatcher NEQ6 mount.
All exposures binned 1x1:
Red > 14 x 300s ; Green > 8 x 300s ; Blue > 8 x 300s ; Ha(3nm) > 18 x 300s
To give a total integration time of four hours.
Captured with Sequence Generator Pro and processed with PixInsight.
M27 in The Hubble "HOO" Palette (TEC140)
M27 is a famous planetary nebula in the constellation of Vulpecula, The Fox. Despite its name, it has nothing whatever to do with planets, it is instead the remnants of a dying star that has cast off its outer atmosphere when nuclear reaction can no longer sustain it. Our Sun will look like this in five billion years from afar.
M27 is a fine object to view through a telescope. I have also imaged M27 several times over the years. Here for example.
The rendition on this page shows M27 in the HOO or Hydrogen-Oxygen-Oxygen palette which maps the Ha channel to Red and green and Blue to OIII (Oxygen 3). Planetary nebula are rich in Oxygen since it is one of the elements synthesised in the nuclear fusion processes as the star dies.
Image Technical Data
Imaged from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK, August 2019. I used my TEC 140 refractor and Atik 460 CCD camera and Astrodon HA (3nm) and OIII (3nm) filters - very expensive filters too! This was all mounted on my MESU 200 and guided with my OAG.
All data is binned 1x1:
Ha > 18 x 300s ; OIII > 12 x 300s
This is quite a short integration but the result is quite nice I think. This is largely down to the utterly superb Astrodon filters and the extremely tight 3nm emission passband.
I did not blend the data Ha, OIII, OIII >>> one on one to R, G, B Insteads I used the following PixelMath formula:
Red > Ha(i.e. one to one)
Green > (OIII * 0.85) + (Ha * 0.15)
Blue > (OIII * 0.8) + (Ha * 0.2)
Then add them all together to give the colour result. Making only small changes to the formulae can make quite a large difference to the outcome and will emphasis the green, blue or red more depending on which colour formula you wish to adjust.
NGC 7814 - The Little Sombrero Galaxy - TEC 140
NGC 7814 is an edge-on spiral galaxy 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus. IT is nicknamed "The Little Sombrero" because of its likeness to The Sombrero Galaxy M104 in Virgo. Close examination of the picture reveals many tiny galaxies, up to a billion light years away in the depths of The Universe.
The dust lanes of the edge-on spiral arms can be easily seen.
Image Technical Data
NGC 7814 is very remote and so needs a long integration (exposure) time. This image was captured from my backyard observatory in Nottingham, UK over the course of three nights in October 2019 (a very wet period in the UK and the capture nights were 2,17 and 24). It took significant dedication to capture the subframes for this image given the dreary weather circumstances and I nearly gave up on several occasions! I used my TEC 140 refractor with Atik 460 cooled CCD camera with Astrodon E Series Generation 2 filters on my OAG guided MESU 200 mount.
Integration is a total of nine hours comprised of:
Luminance > 22 x 900s binned 1x1 ; Red > 17 x 300s 2x2 ; Green > 14 x 300s 2x2 ; Blue > 14 x 300s 2x2
Image capture in Sequence Generator Pro and processing in PixInsight and Photoshop CC. The bright star to the top centre is very difficult to control. This star is of course a foreground star in our own galaxy and is millions of times nearer to the Earth than the galaxy.
NGC 6946 - The Fireworks Galaxy - TEC 140
NGC6946 is located on the border between Cygnus and Cepheus and is a fairly bright galaxy about 25 million light years away. It is dubbed the "The Fireworks Galaxy" due to the unusually high number of supernovae that have occured here - ten - that have been observed during the last century. Typically a galaxy would normally have one per century and it is not known why this galaxy has had ten times the average.
The galaxy is quite heavily obscured by dust within our own galaxy and this is probably the reason why it was not accorded the honour of a Messier catalogue number.
Image Technical Details
Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK, during September 2020 whilst high overhead. I used my TEC140 refractor with Atik 460 CCD camera and Astrodon LRGB Generation 2 E series filters and a Ha (3nm) filter. Out in front of the filter wheel was an IDAS light pollution filter. MESU 200 Mount was guided with an off-axis guider. Transparency for the luminance was good but was poor for the RGB and Ha data.
Lum > 36 x 300s 1x1s ; RGB > 14 in each x 300s 2x2 ; Ha > 14 x 300s 2x2
Image capture in SGP and processing in PixInsight and Photoshop CC.
The Heart and Soul Nebulae Samyang 135mm
The Heart and Soul Nebulae are a well known and famous pairing of Nebulae in the late summer/autumn sky of the Northern Hemisphere. These nebulae are located far away - 7500 light years - in the Perseus arm of the galaxy, further out from the core of the galaxy than the Sun and are vast star forming regions rich in Hydrogen Alpha that gives the images the intense red glow.
All image data collected with a Samyang 135mm lens at F2.8 with a Moravian G2-8300 CCD camera. Below is the RGB image gathered with Astrodon RGB filters. All binned 1x1: Red 14 x 300s; Green 13 x 300s; Blue 14 x 300s. This gives an RGB integration time of 210 minutes or three and a half hours.
The picture looks nice but it does lack punch and vibrancy as it stands. It needs the addition of the Hydrogen Alpha data that will enhance the details.
Below is the Hydrogen Alpha channel that consists of 36 x 300s exposure with an Astrodon 3nm Ha filter with Samyang 135mm and G2-8300 CCD camera, collected with an Astrodon 31mm 3nm Ha filter. The amount of detail in this image is very evident. Below this is a starless version of the Ha image used to blend into the RGB image.
I finally created the blended HaRGB images by using layers of the Ha channel blended at different opacities as overlay and lighting layers in Photoshop. This gives the best of both worlds; the colour present in the RGB and the detail in the Ha image. The total integration time of the image is about six and a half hours.
Finally an annotated version of the image showing many Sharpless Catalog (Sh2) objects present.
