Our Deep Space

Milky Way Mosaic - 10 panels

An update on my big mosaic project, I'm up to 14 panels now and figured I'd put 10 of them together. I might stitch the 14 panels if I have time tomorrow, but all in all this is coming together quite well. I figure if we have 3 clear nights next month I should be able to finish the acquisition portion. Still not sure whether or not my computer will be able to stitch the full resolution image, I may have to downsample it. The 10 panel mosaic is already 30,000x20,000 pixels and the psb files is 10gb, yikes. Well if all else fails I'll probably have to beg Bry to use her fancy computer ;) Each panel is a stack of at least 40 subs, each 1 minute at gain 100 and f2.5. Shot with an ASI2600mc Pro and Voigtlander 110mm f2.5 APO lens on a Sky Watch Star Adventurer tracking mount. All control done by ASIAir, no guiding, this is turned out to be a sweet little portable setup.

Rosette Halpha

Put together some h-alpha shots of the Rosette I've done over a few nights, around 5 hours total integration so not nearly enough considering I'm doing it with my ASI2600mc color camera. These are 4 minute exposures with the camera at Gain 100 on my William Optics GT81 (with Flat6Aii) and iOptron GEM45.

Horsehead and Flame Nebula H-alpha

Another h-alpha shot done with my ASI2600mc Pro and Baader 7nm H-alpha filter on a WO GT81 (with Flat6Aii reducer), iOptron GEM45 mount. This is roughly 6 hours of data, 4 minute subs at Gain 100.

The Tadpoles

Going through my directories of images cleaning up files and what do you know, another picture I had started and never really finished. This is The Tadpoles, in Hubble Palette, shot with an ASI183mm Pro and William Optics GT81 (with Flat6Aii reducer), I can't even remember what the total integration for each channel was it'd been so long. Kinda funny how these things slip through the cracks. All well, turned out alright, but needed a lot more integration time.

Rosette Nebula HOO

This is an ongoing experiment with my ASI2600mc Pro, doing narrowband imaging with the camera on my WO GT81. I've put together about 6 hours of both H-alpha and Oiii and wanted to do some HOO combinations and edits. I have some RGB shots I've done, I'm going to try doing a starmask and integration the RGB stars with this HOO edit to see what that looks like as well.

Orion Nebula and Running Man Nebula

Just a quick color version of the Orion and Running Man Nebula, this needs a lot more integration which I'll hopefully get to over the coming months weather permitting.

Heart of the Heart

Went back to my data from early 2020 and re-edited this shot of Melotte 15, shot with a ASI183mm Pro and William Optics GT81 (with 0.8x reducer/flattener) and H-alpha, Sii, Oiii narrowband filters.

Horsehead and Flame Test

This was purely a test of how these targets would be framed and also a light pollution filter I had lying around not being used. Just 30 x 2.5 minute subs, a little more than an hours worth. The luminance filter I've been using seems to allow too much blue and the telescope is probably slightly out of collimation which is causing some bad blue halos around stars. I wanted to test this LPF to see if it would mitigate those blue halos, which is mostly seemed to do.

NBRGBCombination

M33 HaLRGB

Finally decided to put this shot together, had to learn some new PixInsight techniques to properly combine the Luminance with the RGB and then H-alpha combine without it looking super awful. Altogether I think it turned out well given the limited amount of time I put into the acquisition. Shot with an ASI183mm Pro and William Optics GT81 (with Flat6Aii) on an iOptron GEM45.

M81 and M82 HaRGB

Another galaxy image I had been sitting on trying to figure out how to edit, this one of Bode's Nebula and the Cigar Galaxy, shot with an ASI183mm Pro and William Optics GT81 (with Flat6Aii) on an iOptron GEM45.

M45 - Pleiades

Working on this target again, had a few clear nights in the last couple weeks and got it up to 8.5 hours of integration. Shot with an ASI183mm Pro and William Optics GT81 (with Flat6Aii) on an iOptron GEM45 mount.

Orion's various nebula

We took a trip down to Bryce Canyon this last weekend which gave me a chance to test out a recently acquired ASI2600mc Pro. I used it with my Samyang 135mm on the best night we had and did 100 exposures at Gain 100 and f2.5. I didn't get a chance to dial in the tilt with the plate, but it turned out quite well given the limited exposure time. Lots of great dust in there and amazingly low noise with this camera, can't wait to use it more.

Pelican Nebula Hubble Palette

Feel like I've gotten enough acquired for this shot now through all 3 filters, this is the Pelican Nebula shot in SHO/Hubble Palette. Altogether about 18 hours of imaging, roughly 6 hours per filter, shot with an ASI183mm Pro on a William Optics GT81 (with 0.8x reducer), GEM45 tracking mount and 6nm h-alpha, 6nm Oiii, and 7nm Sii filters.

Elephant Trunk Nebula Hubble Pallet

This is a SHO combine on the Elephant Trunk Nebula, shot with an ASI183mm Pro and Samyang 135mm lens with Astrodon 6nm H-alpha and Oiii filters, ZWO 7nm Sii filter. Tracking mount is an iOptron GEM45 on a tri-pier. 80 x 3' at gain 111 and offset 11 for all 3 filters. Calibrated with a master dark. All stacking and combining done in PixInsight. Final edits done in Photoshop prior to export and upload.

Milky Way Core

I continued processing this image which is a 2-panel mosaic of the core of the Milky Way shot with an unmodified Nikon Z7 and Voigtlander 65mm f2 on a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer. I'm still working on a large mosaic of the Milky Way with my Z7 and 85mm lens, but haven't been happy with the stitching so far. In this 65mm mosaic shot last year, Jupiter is to the right of the core and very bright, I never finished this mosaic because Jupiter had moved so much over the course of a month or two that I was having trouble stitching the frames together.

Sadr Region Mosaic v2

15 panels of the planned 20 panel mosaic down, shot with an ASI183mm and Samyang 135mm lens on a Sky Watcher AZ-GTi mount, ZWO EAF used for autofocus, Each panel is 20x3' subs at gain 111 and offset 11. I have about 3.5 more panels to finish for the h-alpha portion to be complete, then I'll start the Oiii, hope that Oiii done by the end of the October (fingers crossed for more clear nights!). I need to go back and redo some of the panels background extraction/stretch, but it's coming together quite nicely so far. Seeing was awful last night so a few of the panels have poor stars, but at such high resolution it's not immediately noticeable.

m51 The Whirlpool Galaxy

I've been working on this one for a while, shot with a ASI183mm and WO GT81 on a belt modified Sirius EQ-G from our home in Bortle 5/6 skies near Salt Lake City. This is a LRGB combination: 40 x 1 minute at Gain 53 for each RGB 140 x 1 minute at Gain 53 for Luminance Learning that RGB and LRGB combination with a monochrome camera is still a very difficult thing to get right, this target is about at the limit of my setup's resolving power in terms of decent detail, still a fun and challenging one to try out!

Iris Nebula

Definitely the hardest object I've ever attempted to image, this is a reflection nebula buried in dust. From my bortle 5/6 location it takes a huge amount of integration to pull detail out from the background. This is a beautiful blue target, reminds me of the Pleiades in terms of colors, with dark dusty clouds that obscure stars in the background. Shot with an ASI183mm on a William Optics GT81 with a Sirius EQ-G mount, using ZWO LRGB filters. All subs done at gain 53 and offset 11: 211 x 120" for L 125 x 120" for each RGB.

Western Veil Nebula

My bi-color edit of the Western Veil Nebula, a supernova remnant packed with H-alpha and Oiii. This has been a fun project, a very difficult one to capture in narrowband, maybe someday I'll add RGB stars to the scene to give it a bit more pop. I'm happy with the detail I was able to extract given the relatively short integration time, both H-alpha and Oiii managed quite a bit of signal. Shot with an ASI183mm-Pro and WO GT81 on a Sirius EQ-G mount, all subs are at Gain 178 and offset 11, 5 minutes per sub H-alpha was 72 total subs, Oiii was 63 total subs. Editing done in PixInsight, Photoshop, and Lightroom.

Heart Nebula Small Setup

Elephant Trunk

Here's a shot I've been sitting on for about...6 months. Stupid COVID, I had done pretty much all the subs for this, but got so busy with other stuff I completely forgot about finishing it, all I had to do was get new dark frames for calibration. So I put this edit together really quick yesterday, it's such an interesting feature with tons of dust and makes a very "artsy" SHO target. Shot with an ASI183mm Pro on a William Optics GT81 with a Sirius EQ-G mount, gain 178 offset 11. 90 x 5' subs for H-alpha 90 x 5' subs for Oiii 83 x 5' subs for Sii PixInsight Calibrated, registered, and stacked Each stack aligned to H-alpha DynamicBackgroundExtraction Stretched with EZ Processing Suite Combined channels with PixInsight Saved as BMP for editing in Photoshop In Photoshop I did mostly curves and saturation enhancements before uploading.

Veil Nebula Wide

Another "drive by" quick imaging session of a target that is part of my massive mosaic, this one of the Veil Nebula. I managed a quick 1 hour per filter session last night before clouds moved in, tried desperately to not push the editing of the precious little data that's there. This is such a hard target, it really is a delicate veil and I think the vast majority of people push their editing too far. I'd love to push the total integration time up to 3-4 hours per filter to get a really good wide shot to go with my more tightly framed Eastern Veil image from earlier this year. Another target that's getting late in the year to shoot, really limited to maybe 3-4 hours in a night right now before it gets too low on the horizon.

North America and Pelican Nebula

A quick hubble pallet integration of the North America and Pelican Nebula. I setup and ran this last night as just a quick test to see how doing all 3 filters in one panel would work in terms of time efficiency, I only got 28 subs per filter before the region set below the horizon and after tossing out some bad frames thanks to clouds I ended up only stacking 24 subs for each filter. Not bad and I think a bit of a time saver given I only dithered every 3rd sub rather than every sub. On a clear relatively moon free night this is probably the best use of time for the Rokinon 135m/ASI183mm setup, getting a panel done this way results in cleaner combining of the filters as well in post processing I think.