Recent Images

Mirach's Ghost

NGC 404

Andromeda

20/10/24

This is NGC 404, Mirach's Ghost. It's a Lenticula Galaxy, almost lost in the glare of the bright star Mirach, 7 arc-minutes away. Captured using the 110mm APO and the ASI1600MM in LRGB. I managed 30 odd minutes of clear view over the roof tops before the 92% lit Moon rose with the Pleiades. So I captured about half the time with the Moon about 30° away. I tried 2 minute exposures and was pleased to see that Mirach's Ghost was well clear of the star's interference so the Lost Pearl can be seen as a distant Galaxy with a bright core to the right and below Mirach.

18 x 120 seconds Luminance, 6 x 120 seconds RGB. Stellarium, Pegasus Unity, CPWI, NINA, PHD2. Stacked and Processed in PixInsight. 

The Cygnus Wall 

C20, NGC 7000

Cygnus

28/08/24

Here's my go at Caldwell 20, the North America nebula or more specifically, the Cygnus Wall part of it. Seems to be a popular target this week! I captured data over two nights, 2 hours on 26/08/24 and 7 hours on 27/08/24. The first session was intermittent cloud so I didn't use any of it in the end. The second session was very clear all night long. While I was at it I did an All Sky Video of the night sky. 

54 x 240 seconds Luminance, 17 x 240 seconds RGB. Stellarium, Pegasus Unity, CPWI, NINA, PHD2. Stacked and Processed in PixInsight. The colours are a little unexpected but the Photometric Colour Calibration Process seemed happy with it.

Tweedledum Cluster 

NGC6633

Ophiuchus

21/08/24

In my rekindled love of the Open Cluster, here's NGC6633, the Tweedledum Cluster. The blue/white cluster stars stand out well from the background stars. It's a bit of an experiment in that since the NBers use RGB for their stars, I limited the number of Luminance exposures and did loops of 10 x L, 10 x R, 10 x G and 10 x B, all at 120 seconds. Not sure if it worked! The ability to rotate the imaging train easily on the refractor is brilliant! That with the NINA Slew, Solve and Rotate function makes composition so much easier, even if you do have to recalibrate the guiding! 90 minutes total, Pegasus Unity, CPWI, NINA, PHD2, PixInsight, GraXpert, Irfanview. No calibration frames. I must put a new Dark Frame Library together for the refractor now that we have a few days of cloudy weather and try and get into the habit of doing twilight flats in leu of building a new light box! 

Perseid Meteor 

Cassiopeia

20/08/24

This is a single frame from my new All Sky Camera setup. A week after the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The camera was running all night and this meteor flew across at 03:00 in the morning.

Polarissima Cluster 

C1, NGC 188

Cepheus

06/08/24

I'm getting right into Open Star Clusters! Here is the first on Patrick's list. An Open Cluster with another one behind it in the distance and then another one behind that at an even further distance!

The Omega Nebula 

M17, NGC6618

Sagittarius

30/07/24 

M17 was sitting at or below 25° altitude so my expectations were not good. But I was well chuffed with how this came out, all things considered. I might try getting some more data on this one to give it the attention it deserves. 30ish x 120 second frames.

Cygnus Emission Nebula

NGC6914

Cygnus

19/07/24

34 x L, 10 x R, 8 x G, 8 x B all at 180seconds. Flats and Darks. 3 hours integration.

I tried the ASI1600MM on the back of the new Refractor. So I went for an LRGB of NGC6914 in Cygnus, a reflection nebula near Sadr in a large emission nebula intermingled with dark nebula too. Looks like one of the blue subs had a satellite trail that didn't get Winsorize Sigma clipped. I should probably blink and process them again. And I need to do the filter offsets again, the blues were not quite in focus. My guiding could have been better, I'm sure the AVX can do better! More tweaking and twiddling required!