Heart and Soul nebulae, processed on 2016-10-15
In the camp at the Rotunda Pass, my plan was to acquire hours of light on the Heart and Soul, but the sky thought otherwise. I squeezed out about 8 fair exposures, 4 being with good and 4 with decent transparency (ie less contrast). So the instruments: Canon 1100D mod, 8×3 minutes, ISO 1600 at 200mm F/4 on the HEQ5 mount. I reprocessed the picture with the new star removal tool I developed a few days ago.
The gamma Cygni region, reprocessed on 2016-10-14
I wasn’t satisfied with the outcome of my star handling program so I rewrote it. The goal was to obtain an image that is as technically accurate as possible, while contains less artifacts and it is more appealing than the original.
I recorded with the Canon 1100D mod 21×150 sec, ISO 1600, with the lens Canon EF 200mm f2.8L II USM dialed to F/4, mounted on the HEQ5. The main feature is the red glow of the ionized hydrogen region around γ Cygni (the brightest star in the frame) with dramatic gaps caused by clouds of dark nebulae. The Crescent Nebula is also there. The object is also known as NGC 6888, Caldwell 27, Sharpless 105, and is a nebula blown by the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163) expected to go supernova in the next 100k years.
Veil Nebula, about 4 hours
This post is outdated, this is the new article.
A dense starfield can be the amateur astronomer’s nightmare for it can effectively hide the faint nebula behind it. The more errors add up, the less is reveiled of the target. Why? Because the stars that are supposed to be pointlike get big, lens errors blow up the stars, bad seeing blows up the stars, any amount of dew on the lens or fog spoil the stars while the nebula is still there. So I thought of something: what if I could tune the volume of the stars. Another train of thought arose from an image artifact I keep getting – a panda eye like feature, ie a dark ring around the pointlike luminous stars. These two problems amazingly have almost the same solution: throw out the stars and use the remaining context. The point being aesthetics and not science, I started to brew a software.
Rosette Nebula
I reprocessed 20×150 sec, ISO 800, F/4 raws of the Caldwell 49 Rosette nebula using my star handling routine as a step. The camera was the Canon 1100D mod, and the mount the old EQ3. Light acquired on 2016-04-03 at Gyerőfidongó/Dângău Mare.
Veil Nebula, about 4 hours
In summer 2015 I acquiered some 4 hours of light with the then unmodified Canon 1100D and the Canon EF 200mm f2.8L II USM. I gave it another try to see how processing the old raw material turns out, deploying my star handling program. I think the result shows improvement.
The Milky Way in Chepheus and Cygnus
I imaged the Cygnus-Cepheus region of the Milky Way characterized by bright emission nebulae, countless stars and dark clouds of interstellar dust. Deneb with NGC 7000 North America and its neighbour, the Pelican, and gamma Cygni with the nebulae rules the upper right corner of the frame, while on the left the much fainter IC 1396 holds the Elephant’s Trunk. Downwards from the center the Cocoon Nebula ( IC 5146 / Caldwell 19) is also visible, amongst other fainter and less prominent deep sky objects.
This time I used the cheapest lens I have, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II in manual focus mode, which is held tight and in focus by some hard wire I put on it. Although dialed to F/4, it performed pretty well, given the circumstances. In order to avoid having bad corners, I made a mosaic with big overlaps. So the HEQ5 mount held the Canon 1100D mod camera on a ball head, with the lens. 50×3 minutes, ISO 800, F/4. I also used the healing program – source code below.
NGC 7000 as I processed it on 2016-09-22
Back in December 2015 my modded camera had the first Ha-enhanced light. As I keep most raws, I dag up those in order to test whether my processing abilities have evolved. One aspect is the healing algorithm I wrote to handle the dense star fields – ie: remove all highlights and their immediate context and fill the holes from the remaining image data. Canon 1100D mod, 20×110 sec, ISO 1600, Canon 200mm f/2.8 lens dialed to f/4.5, EQ3 mount, unguided. More than fairly dark sky of a place near Dangau Mare, Cluj county, Romania. (tovább…)
Dark Skies 2016 Astrocamp, Rotunda Pass
Amateur astronomers from Máramarossziget/Sighetu Marmației organized the Dark Skies 2016 Astronomy Camp at the Rotunda Pass. The area is one of the last remaining dark spots in the EU, so dark that the clouds appear to be dark brown/black.
The camp being meant mainly for visual observers, had no electricity, just a generator run in the evening, during the dinner to recharge the gadgets. It is the owner’s fault we had no running water at all, an issue I would have imagined for the savanna/desert in Namibia, not the Romanian countryside with a long estabilished cabin with as much water that my jacket got wet in a clear night. So much for the level of civilisation and decency. (tovább…)
M16
I imaged the Messier 16 and Messier 17 objects, the Eagle and the Swan Nebulae. My specific target was the Pillars of Creation region in the M16, a region best known due to the Hubble space telescope.
I set up my instruments – Canon 1100D mod @ 150/750 Newtonian with corrector on HEQ5, unguided – at Gyerőfidongó (Dângău Mare, CJ) on a field with decent sky. I took 30×60 sec of each object, ISO 1600 of M16 and ISO 3200 of M17.
Gamma Cygni region, 32×30 sec, ISO 3200
As a plan B, I imaged the γ Cygni region with my usual equipment, the Canon 200mm @ f/3.2 Canon 1100D mod 32×30 sec, ISO 3200, HEQ5 PRO. Plan B, because I forgot to bring the screws which set the altitude/latitude of the mount, thus effectively criplling the mount’s precision. With some non invasive, duct tape improvisation I managed to take surprisingly good 30 sec subs at 200 mm, the 150/750 newtonian being out of question. This is the result.
