Our Deep Space

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.

Heart Nebula Hubble

First full narrowband image I've done, the Heart Nebula and Melotte 15. It's been tricky learning how to properly combine the SHO, still working on stretching and editing the image without blowing out noise. This is a total of 18 hours over the 3 filters and even still it's amazing how much noise there is in the darker areas. Equipment: WO GT81 w/Flat6Aii F/R ZWO ASI183mm and Orio Orion Sirius EQ-G Mount (Belt Modified) Acquisition: LRGB acquired at Gain 111 and offset 11, all 8 minute subs 45 x H-alpha 48 x Oiii 46 x Sii Calibrated with darks only, all pre-processing and editing done in PixInsight

M101 HaLRGB

I've been working on this simultaneously with the Heart Nebula NB image, first full HaLRGB image I've ever done and boy is it difficult. I don't feel like the color balance is correct, still learning how to properly combine the RGB, Luminance, and Ha layers. This was about the best I could come up with, any suggestions would be much appreciated. Equipment: WO GT81 w/Flat6Aii F/R ZWO ASI183mm w/ZWO LRGB Filters and Orion H-alpha 7nm Filter Orion Sirius EQ-G Mount (Belt Modified) Acquisition: LRGB acquired at Gain 53 and offset 11, all 2 minute subs 180 x Lum 45 x R, G, and B 40 x H-alpha Calibrated with darks only, all pre-processing and editing done in PixInsight

Milky Way Core Region, nebulosity edit

This is a little bit different of an edit than I normally do, one done to emphasize the nebulosity around the Milky Way (at the sacrifice of sharpness and increase in noise). Shot with my NIkon D600 and Rokinon 85mm f1.4 lens on an iOptron Skytracker, 6 panels stitched together, each panel is a stack of 8 shots, ISO 400, f2.5, and 2 of each exposure at 4 minutes, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, and 1 minute. Each panel was stacked with Deep Sky Stacker, initial edits done with PixInsight, then all the panels were stitched with PTGui and final edits were done with Photoshop and Lightroom. Shot from a Bortle 4/5 zone at Rockport Reservoir, Utah. I think overall it'll look cleaner once I can collect more shots to reduce the noise, not bad though given that each frame is 20 minutes total integration from a fairly light polluted area.

Orion Nebula and Running Man Nebula

Last day of August, can't help but feel the change of seasons in the air as we transition from summer to fall. With the change in seasons we also shift from prime Milky Way season with the core visible to winter season where we can no longer see the core of our galaxy. Here in the northern hemisphere it also means longer and colder nights and I have to think about other things to image and work on. This time of year we also start seeing the Orion constellation rise earlier and earlier, my main goal this fall and winter will be putting together a series of images of the constellation at various focal lengths. Here's a shot of the Orion and Running Man Nebula from last year, this will be my benchmark to improve on.

Pleiades Dust

Decided to do a bit better edit of this, added some flats into the calibration and did my normal PixInsight workflow with a stronger star size reduction in Photoshop afterwards.