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Skywatcher Sprit 100ED + ASI1600MM + Baader LRGB

20x600"L + 7x300"RGB

Cuenca, Spain

Canon 5D Mark III

ISO 3200 - 45s

SkyWatcher 150/750 EQ3 Reflector Telescope

Moon and Mars in the top corner.

NGC281, the Pacman Nebula in hydrogen alpha.

 

10 x 8 min lights at ISO400 + darks, flats & bias.

Skywatcher 130pds

HEQ5 pro

Self debayered 350d + 6nm ha clip

Aberkenfig, South Wales

Lat +51.542 Long -3.593

 

Skywatcher 254mm Newtonian Reflector, Nikon D780 at prime focus with Skywatcher Coma Corrector, EQ6 Syntrek Mount.

 

Imaging session commenced 22:39 UTC with a 79% illuminated waxing gibbous moon near the celestial equator, just below the Circlet of Pisces.

 

50 x 13s at ISO 800

18 dark frames & 18 flats.

 

Processed with Deep Sky Stacker and levels adjusted with Lightroom & G.I.M.P. Final image cropped.

 

Best viewed using the expansion arrows.

Yesterday, I uploaded an image of the M13 which I felt rather chuffed with considering its taken in London on an Alt-az mount at my living room window. So I proudly showed my mentor, Rupert. (see my previous one in my gallery for comparison) .

 

Then he tells me, I can do better with the data I have. Throw away all of the ISO 3200s and ISO 6400s and just stack the ISO 1600s...then do my usual post processing. And bloody hell, sure enough, I get a hell of a lot more detail and colours from just using the ISO 1600 frames (420 X 4sec exposures). This is because the higher ISOs' higher noise levels serve as a bottleneck to extracting all the information possible. lower ISOs retain a wider dynamic range of colour information and less noise. Now I knew this about ISOs but I thought combining all the data from all ISOs with separate master dark frames for each ISO would give me even more data. But nope, my mentor, Rupert was right (as he always is), its the opposite.

  

So yesterday, I set about showing that we can do deep space astrophotography from inside the house at a bedroom or living room window in inner London but today, I humbly present a better example.

 

My original writeup on this restricted capture imaging project and my thoughts on The Great Hercules Cluster M13 is on my previous image.

 

Info:

 

Light Pollution Bortle grade (1 darkest sky, 9 highest light pollution) : 8-9

 

Telescope: 80mm Equinox APO refractor with a field flattener

Mount: Nexstar 6/8SE Alt Az on a sturdy table but on rickety floor boards!

Camera: Canon 650D unmodded

No light pollution filters

  

420 X 4 Sec Light frames

ISO 1600

50 Dark frames

 

Stacked with DSS (Deep Sky Stacker). Manually adjusted RGB levels.

 

Used curves and levels repeatedly with saturation in Photoshop and Camera Raw.

Mars through a small refractor with 360mm focal length and 2x Barlow.

 

William Optics Zenithstar61

Skywatcher AZ-GTI mount

ZWO ASI224MC- camera

(30sec avi-file in Raw8-format, gain200, 3847 frames)

...best 10% stacked in AS!3

Single Shot

Pentax K5iis

sw Skymax 127

sw star adventurer

Skywatcher 120ED

F=1800mm

img132e

Autostakkert2

PixInsight

Waxing Gibbous Almost Pink Supermoon

 

Skywatcher 200p on NEQ6 mount. ASI294MC Pro camera. Baader MPCC M3 coma corrector, no filter.

 

The best 25% of frames from 2000 X 32 microsecond images, gain 380, sensor temperature -20C. Recorded as a .ser video. Processed in Autostakkert to align and stack and then Photoshop with Topaz denoise AI filter.

 

The sky wasn't fully dark and seeing was quite bad. 25th April 2021.

Skywatcher 200/800

TeleVue 3x Barlow

AZ-EQ6 GT

ZWO Asi 178MC-s camera

2022 10 16

This time a cloud-free sky allowed me to image the approx. 96% illuminated moon.

 

Imaged with a 120mm Skywatcher Esprit refractor and a Nikon D5300.

Copyright and personal information:

My name: Cornelis van Zuilen

My instagram: www.instagram.com/cvz_astrophotography/

Heiloo, The Netherlands

 

Equipment used:

Telescope: Askar 103APO

Main camera: ZWO ASI294MC Pro

Filters: Optolong L-Pro

Guidescope: SvBony Sv106 50mm

Guide camera: ZWO ASI224MC

Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-R Pro

 

Exposures:

Optolong L-Pro

1hr 30min

136x 180sec

 

0hr 2 min

126x 1sec

 

Calibration frames for each stack:

20 Darks

20 Flats

20 Dark flats

 

Processed in Pixinsight

  

Extra information:

Each year since 2021 I try to take at least one night of exposures of the Orion Nebula, but the final picture I made this year is by far the best one I've ever made. It's also the first time that I was able to see the 4 main trapezium stars in the core and a small protoplanetary disc slightly to the right of it (between the two bigger stars). This result motivates me to take an even better picture next year. Maybe with at least 10 hours of data? Maybe also use my dualband filter? Who knows, lets see what will happen. For now I hope you enjoy this picture as much as I do!

The western portion of the Veil Nebula in Cygnus (NGC6960).

 

I've reprocessed data taken in 2012 to include this image in my forthcoming book on astrophotography.

 

Camera: Canon 300D

Scope: Skywatcher MN190

Focal length: 1000mm f/5.2

Exposure: 40 x 5minutes @ISO800

SkyWatcher 70mm SK707AZ2 + Filter Thousand Oaks + barlow 2X + super 25mm.

 

Afocal, Lumia 640.

Edited with MS Picture Manager

Telescope: Skywatcher 102/1300 MC

Camera: Canon 500D

Mount: Skywatcher AZ GTi

20 x 1 ms stacked

Date: 2020.12.23

Time: 17:00 UT

Location: Kaposvár, Hungary

 

www.instagram.com/balazs_benei/

Taken with a Skywatcher ED80 Refractor and Olympus E-410 at prime focus. Baader Astrosolar filter fitted to telescope. Best 10 of 15 images stacked in Registax 6

Skywatcher Maksutov Telescope 102/1300

NGC 7822

 

Skywatcher 200p, NEQ6 mount, Optolong CLS-CCD filter, Baader MPCC M3 coma corrector, ASI294MC Pro at -20C.

 

NINA Observatory Software.

 

72 x 2 minute exposures (2 hours 24 minutes) at Gain 121, dithering every 7 frames, Offset 30, 20 dark frames, 40 flat fields, 40 dark flat frames.

 

Processed in APP, Topaz de-noise and Photoshop.

 

8th January 2021

 

Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer mount

Sky-Watcher Evostar 72ED (72/420mm)

Lacerta Herschel wedge (ND3 filter replaced with ND1.8)

ZWO EFW

Altair NUV filter

Barlow 3x

ZWO ASI174MM

oaCapture 1.8.0 (captured 5000 frames per panel, 129fps)

AviStack 2 (stacked 512 frames per panel)

ImPPG (sharpening)

Hugin (assembled 6 panel panorama)

RawTherapee (false coloring and final tweaks)

Skywatcher 120ED

F=1800mm

img132e

Autostakkert2

PixInsight

 

Sri Damansara, Malaysia

I'm excited to share this one with you! This target (IC 443) was on the top of my to-shoot list when my camera broke in early January... so when I got the loaner-camera, I started working on it. It took me 4 separate nights of shooting to get the full amount of exposures I was hoping for with this one, but I think it was worth the wait.

 

The end result came from about 8 hours of exposures, hand-selected from about 16 hours of candidates). The Jellyfish nebula currently sits above Orion's left shoulder in Gemini. It is a supernova-remnant that is about 5,000 light-years away. The bright star is a red giant named Propus. The colors are a little different and interesting, here! This region emits largely in the Hydrogen-alpha (H) and Sulfur-ii (S) part of the spectrum, which give it the reddish-orange hue you see here in the Hubble palette. There's just a bit of Oxygen-iii (O) which outlines a few parts in blue. The Hubble palette means mapping SHO to RGB. I've said more about it in other posts when I describe my narrowband-imaging process.

 

Telescope: Skywatcher 150PDS on Skywatcher HEQ5 Pro

Camera: ZWO ASI1600 MM Pro with ZWO EFW and filters

NGC7023 (Iris Nebula), with Luminance data added to previous RGB information.

 

Camera: QHY163M

Scope: Skywatcher MN190

Focal length: 1000mm f/5.26

 

Exposures:

Luminance - 20 x 600s bin2

Red - 12 x 300s bin2

Green - 10 x 300s bin2

Blue - 10 x 300s bin2

 

Taken 14th & 16th May 2018, from Cumbria (UK).

 

Processed in Pixinsight, ImagesPlus and Photoshop.

First light with the newly acquired Skywatcher 130PDS

 

8 x lights (10 mins, ISO1600) + darks, flats & bias

 

Skywatcher 130PDS

HEQ5

Canon 350d (mono - self debayered)

6nm Ha Clip Filter

PHD2 guiding (ST80 & QHY5L-II)

Skywatcher ED80 @600m

ATIK 383L with 7nm Baader Ha

14x30min

plus

Canon EOS 450d

16x5min for colour.

IC434 total of 2.5 hours exposures with an unmodified Nikon D700.

Skywatcher 10" newton telescope.

This is my current imaging setup with the Star Adventurer and the ASI1600MM-Cool.

Still tuning it, but it should work well once I'll receive the rings and dovetail.

The guiding scope is an Orion 50mm mini guider and the camera an ASI120MM ST4.

The tripod is a Manfrotto 535, very sturdy and light, perfect for this setup.

Skywatcher Equinox 80 - Sony A6000. Stacked 800 pictures in Registax

Skywatcher 250/1200 dobson

Zwo ASI 120MC

Celestron 2x barlow

Scattata il 30/03/2015 con Skywatcher 80Ed e Canon7d post produzione con Lightroom

50mm f4

11x180sec

iso1000

Tracked with Skywatcher SA

Aberkenfig, South Wales

Lat 51.542 N Long 3.593 W

 

Skywatcher 254mm Newtonian Reflector, Nikon D780 at prime focus. EQ6 Syntrek Mount.

 

42 frames used in final processing.

15 x 30s @ ISO 1600

9 x 25s @ ISO 2500

6 x 25s @ ISO 2000

6 x 20s @ ISO 2000

6 x 20s @ ISO 1600

 

Also 18 Dark Frames

 

Processed with Deep Sky Stacker and final levels adjusted with Adobe Lightroom & G.I.M.P. Final image cropped.

 

Did not get satisfactory flat frames on this one, so I may re-visit this at a later date

Skywatcher 150PDS

Celestron CG5

TS optics 3x Barlow lens & Nikon 2x teleconverter

Microsoft LifeCam Studio

 

Firecapture v2.4

5000 frames total

 

AS!3 top 50% of frames stacked

RegiStax 6 wavelets

GIMP 2.10

Finally got half an hour of green data to finish a colour version. This uses H-alpha and Red combined as layers in GIMP to make a Red channel that is also used as Luminance, a la Robert Gendler method; but I'm experimenting really. Some unsharp mask but no noise reduction.

 

8x300s each of Ha/R/G/B Baader filters

Telescope: Esprit 100ED 550mm

Camera: Atik 460EX

Mount: AZEQ6

  

Skywatcher StarAdventurer

 

Nikon d610

432mm /f6/ iso1600

Total 2hrs 6min 174frames

Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop

 

Taken with a Skywatcher ED80 Refractor using a Baader Astrosolar Filter and a Canon 600D at prime focus. Atmospheric turbulence very bad today, image was blurring continually. Best 10 of 50 images stacked using Autostakkert 2

Skywatcher 200/1000,Canon 1200d Astrodon+filtre CLS

160x120" à 800 isos

Montes Apenninus are a rugged mountain range on the northern part of the Moon's near side. They are named after the Apennine Mountains in Italy. With their formation dating back about 3.9 billion years, Montes Apenninus are still relatively young.

13 x 30 min subs.

 

Optics: Takahashi Baby Q FSQ-85ED F5.3

 

Camera: Xpress Trius SX-694 Mono Cooled to -15C

 

Image Scale: 2.08 Arcsec

 

Guiding: OAG, Lodestar X2

 

Filter: Baader Ha

 

Mount: Skywatcher AZ EQ6-GT EQ & Alt-Az Mount connected to the Sky X and Eqmod via HitecAstro EQDIR adapter

 

Image Acquisition: Sequence Generator Pro

 

Stacking and Calibrating: Pixinsight

 

Processing: Pixinsight 1.8, Photoshop CC

Skywatcher 12" goto dob, 5x TeleVue Powermate, ZWO224MC, Sharpcap, PIPP, AS3

  

2021-08-25-1135_0__pipp_AS_P15_lapl5_ap1195_Drizzle15_conv_RS1

Taken with a Skywatcher ED80 Refractor fitted with a Baader Astrosolar Filter and a Canon 600D at prime focus. Best 12 of 40 images stacked using Autostakkert 2. Most of the frames had cloud in them.

This image shows detail in a very small part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy visible from the Southern Hemisphere.

 

Object Details:

 

Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) mag +0.8

NGC 1856 Star Cluster (mag +10.1)

NGC 1858 Open Cluster with nebulosity (mag +9.9)

NGC 1855 Globular Cluster (mag +10.4)

NGC 1854 Open Cluster with nebulosity (mag +10.4)

NGC 1850 Globular Cluster (mag +9.0)

Constellation: Dorado.

Visual magnitude: as above

Apparent diameter of LMC: 645 x 550 arc-min. (about 20 Lunar Diameters).

Actual diameter: 29,700 light years.

Distance: 160,000 light years.

Altitude: 42° above SW horizon.

 

Image:

 

Exposure: 5 min

Date: 2018-03-11.

Location: Field night at The Oaks, NSW, with Macarthur Astronomical Society

Sky: semi-dark rural with North Easterly metropolitan sky-glow.

Cloud: clear.

Moon: New Moon.

Image acquisition software: SharpCap.

Image post-processing: Deep Sky Stacker > GIMP.

Cropping: no.

Saved as Fits file.

 

Astronomy Gear:

Imaging telescope: Skywatcher Esprit 120ED Super APO triplet refractor.

Focal length: 840 mm, focal ratio: f/7.

Imaging camera: ZWO ASI 071 MC Pro.

Guiding camera: Orion StarShoot.

Guiding control software: unguided

Guiding accuracy: n.a.

Telescope mount: SkyWatcher EQ6-R.

Polar aligning method: QHYCCD PoleMaster.

Polar alignment error: n.a.

Field flattener: yes; filter: no.

 

Observing Notes:

I’ve been having poor results over the last three months due to inaccurate star alignments. This night was no different and I also had issues with a loose lens on my Polemaster and the guide scope did not want to operate.

 

Spending all evening dealing with technical problems on a field night was disappointing and this shot was a last resort quick snatch of 36 frames, so as not to go home without at least one image. I was not even sure exactly where I was aiming and had to subsequently identify the objects in the frame.

 

I’ve had two observing sessions at home since then and with the alignment very erratic I need to find an opportunity to take the scope in for maintenance. So no more sessions for a while! 😦

 

SharpCap Camera Settings:

 

[ZWO ASI071MC Pro]

Debayer Preview=On

Pan=0

Tilt=0

Output Format=TIFF files (*.tif)

Binning=1

Capture Area=4944×3284

Colour Space=RAW8

Hardware Binning=Off

Turbo USB=80(Auto)

Flip=None

Frame Rate Limit=Maximum

Gain=376

Exposure=8

Timestamp Frames=On

White Bal (B)=55(Auto)

White Bal (R)=38(Auto)

Brightness=44

Temperature=15.5

Cooler Power=100

Target Temperature=-10

Cooler=On

Auto Exp Max Gain=300

Auto Exp Max Exp M S=30000

Auto Exp Target Brightness=100

Mono Bin=Off

Anti Dew Heater=On

Apply Flat=None

Subtract Dark=None

#Black Point

Display Black Point=0

#MidTone Point

Display MidTone Point=0.5

#White Point

Display White Point=1

TimeStamp=2018-03-11T11:14:04.9204590Z

SharpCapVersion=3.1.5059.0

TotalExposure(s)=288

StackedFrames=36

I had a quick look at Saturn tonight using my Skywatcher 180 mak and Nikon Z50 . I got a bit of detail, but not great colour, so perhaps will try again another night.

this is a stack of about 3000 images

15th Sept 2021

Single shot with a Sky-Watcher Skymax-127 / Nikon D3300 at prime focus

SkyWatcher 70mm SK707AZ2 + Filter Thousand Oaks

Eyepiece: super 10mm.

 

Edited with MS Picture Manager

Aberkenfig, South Wales

Lat +51.542 Long -3.593

 

Skywatcher 254mm Newtonian Reflector, Olympus E410 at prime focus. EQ6 Syntrek Mount.

 

36 suitable light frames of 40s at 800 ISO. Also 10 dark frames.

 

Processed with Deep Sky Stacker and final levels adjusted with G.I.M.P.

 

An open star cluster located in the constellation of Canis Major. The camera's imaging chip just about framing the subject. A difficult one to capture from my location due to its low elevation, light pollution and trees obscuring most of the southern horizon.

 

The image displays coma towards the edges. This is is one drawback of a parabolic f/4.8 Newtonian.

 

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