Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Rosette Nebula

I had 2 clear nights in a row so I decided to give the Rosette Nebula another try. These were the 1st clear nights since the beginning of November.
 
 A little background on the Nebula first:
 
The Rosette Nebula  (Caldwell 49 or NGC 2237) is a large, circular H II region located in the constellation Monoceros .  Open cluster's NGC 2244 (Caldwell 50) stars have been formed from the nebula's matter.
The Rosette Nebula consists of 5 parts NGC 2237,NGC 2238,NGC 2239,NGC 2244,NGC 2246. The cluster and nebula are about 5,000 light-years from Earth and measure roughly 130 light years in diameter.  The nebula is estimated to be around 10,000 solar masses
 
 My last attempts were back in November of 2011 when I just started Astrophotography. The 1st was with my 8" Meade LX-50 and the 2nd was with an Orion ST-80T refractor. Both images were captured with a Canon T3i

 


I knew I would only have 2 clear nights, so I decided to capture enough sub-exposures through all of my filters to do 2 different versions. I wish I could have spent more time, but clear skies have been rare.
 
Telescope-AstroTech AT65EDQ
Mount-Orion Sirius
Camera-QHY9M
Guiding-Starlight Express OAG,QHY5L-II & Phd
12/26/13,12/27/13
6hrs:
R- 7x10 minutes
G-5x10 minutes
B-6x10 minutes
Ha-3x20 minutes(as green)
OIII-3x20 minutes(as blue)
SII-3x20 minutes(as red)

 The 1st is a more "natural" look, using the Red,Green & Blue filters with a small amount of Ha & OIII filters. The images were combined and processed in Photoshop CS6




The only filter I did not use on this one was the SII.
 
 I added that for the next image done in HST(Hubble Space Telescope) Palette.


 
 
 
Thanks for stopping by & looking!

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Friday, December 20, 2013

Cloudy Nights!

It's been quite a while since I've been able to image DSO's(Deep Sky Objects). The weather here has been horrible for what seems like months. I did however have a brief window to try out my new UV filter on Venus.



These images were taken on Dec 3,2013 with my 8" Meade LX-50 SCT, an Orion 2x's Barlow and a QHY5L-II camera. I captured 3200 frames using the Baader "Venus" filter and Fire Capture software. The sky conditions weren't the greatest when I took these, but beggars can't be choosers at this point! I just hope it clears soon, I know I can capture better results
 
 
Having no clear skies to speak of, I also put together a collage of all of my planetary images I've captured with the QHY5L-II since acquiring it in June.
 
 
The last DSO target I was able to image was M42 the Orion Nebula, way back on Nov 8,2013.
Shot with a AstroTech AT65EDQ refractor & QHY9M CCD camera through LRGB filters:
Luminance- 4x600s
Red-5x600s
Green-5x600s
Blue-2x600s
Again clouds interfered so this project was cut short:
 
 
 
 Looking for another cloudy night project, I decided to combine all the data I collected last year with this year's effort.
 
 
Last years M42 taken with my ED102T & QHY9M.
 
10/21/2012,10/22/2012, 11/10/2012 & 11/18/2012
R-3x10min 1x20min
G-3x10min 4x20min
B-3x10min 4x20min
Ha- 3x20 min
 
Combined all my 65mm/102mm subs using Nebulosity 3. Post processed with Photoshop CS6 & StarTools
Some of my previous attempts at M42
 
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