astroimaging, astronomy, nebulae, widefield

Belt, Sword, Loop

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An area of winter sky that surely needs little introduction. This is a widefield shot of central Orion, showing the three belt stars Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka and the “sword” (Orion Nebula and the Running Man Nebula). Widefield Image of Orion's belt and sword regionThe whole region is surrounded by the arc of Barnard’s Loop, a 2 million year old supernova remnant (the precursor of this was in a multiple star system and created several “runaway stars” including AE Aurigae, Mu Columbae and 53 Arietis), as well as a multitude of other nebulae and dust clouds that form part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. 

Around Alnitak, the easternmost star of the belt, the Horsehead Nebula (B33) and surrounding hydrogen emission is present, as well as the slightly more orange Flame Nebula (NGC2024) to its east.

Orion's belt and sword region using 85mm lens - annotated image.Also visible is the reflection nebula complex containing M78 and further towards the top of the image is the dark nebula LDN 1622, sometimes called “The Bogeyman”. To the west (right) of the Orion Nebula is Sh2-278, with further fainter areas of nebulosity beyond this surrounding Eta Orionis. These  correspond to members of the LBN catalogue (LBN 907, 910, 915, 919, 937, 942, 945), though much more signal is needed to really get these to show well!

Image was taken on 25th/26th November 2017 from West Oxfordshire. Canon 350d (modded with Baader filter), Canon 85mm EF f1.8 USM lens (at f4.5). Image consists of 21 exposures of 5 min each at ISO 400, totalling 1h45m. Reduction and processing was performed using PixInsight and Photoshop.

Image centred at:
RA: 05h 29m 19s
Dec: +32° 29′ 10″
Field is 15° x 10°

 

astroimaging, astronomy, equipment, widefield

Widefield Heart, Soul & Double Cluster

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Image centred at:
RA: 02h 44m 19s
Dec: +61° 17′ 24″
Field is 15°x10°.
(Plate-solve by nova.astrometry.net)

Taken on the night of the 25th November 2017 from West Oxfordshire, this image is a widefield rendition of the Heart and Soul Nebulae (IC1805/Sh2-190 and IC1848/Sh2-199), which includes the Double Cluster (NGC 869 and NGC 884) in Perseus. 

Widefield image of Heart and Soul Nebulae (IC1805/Sh2-190, IC1848/Sh2-199) and Double Cluster (NGC 869 and NGC 884) and Surrounds

This was the first real test of a new widefield config that’s now driven by a Raspberry Pi 3 running KStars and Ekos under Ubuntu Mate. The RPi3 controls the camera: a Baader filter modded Canon 350d (with shutter control via a serial release cable); a Moonlite compatible, Arduino based motor focuser (with stepper driven belt drive for the lens) ; and the Losmandy GM-8 mount it all sits upon. I can remote onto the RPi using VNC to control the session as it goes, and Ekos does everything including pointing and plate-solves, camera control and autofocusing. Everything is mounted on a somewhat Heath-Robinson arrangement on a standard Losmandy dovetail (lots of velcro pads!).

Within the camera is an IDAS P2 filter – this is a multi-bandpass, light pollution suppression filter that allows for an increase in contrast between deep sky objects and the background sky levels – it isn’t a substitute for full narrowband filters, but it at least allows an improved colour rendition of the target. It’s held in an MFA (mount filter adaptor) that screws into a small hole inside the camera body, holding the filter between the EF lens and the flip mirror. 

Exposures here were 5 minutes long each at ISO400 f4.5, with 45 subframes in total – combined exposure is 3h45m. Reduction and processing took place in Pixinsight, with only a small bit of amp glow removal in Photoshop. 

Annotated widefield image of the Heart and Soul Nebulae the Double Cluster and surrounds.

An annotated image showing the position of deep sky objects, coordinates and constellation figures/boundaries is also shown. There are, however, several objects that aren’t included in the labelling here – the reflection nebula LBN 142.14+01.97 (LBN 682/Ced 14) in Camelopardalis is just visible to the left (east) of faint emission nebula Sh2-202. Open cluster Stock 2 is located (just) in Cassiopeia (to the right of the constellation label text!). And, though labelled up as SH2-191 and Sh2-197, the obscured local galaxies Maffei 1 and 2 are just visible as small, reddened smudges south of the Heart. 

astroimaging, astronomy, lunar

Nov 2017 Lunar Mosaic

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The 4th November 2017 gave me clear skies with a very bright moon in the sky – this gave me  good opportunity to use the rebuilt 14″ Newtonian scope for some imaging work, now that the scope truss tubes have been correctly milled down to the right length. 

Using the ASI120MM camera with a 742nm nr-IR filter, I imaged the moon at its native focal length (1582mm), using Firecapture to grab the video. The data totalled 56GB in all!

The finished mosaic consists of 18 frames: each of these was the result of stacking the best 12%  (quality-wise) of 3000 frames. Each of the frames were 0.18ms each (with gain set to 54), and were captured at around 31 frames per second.  To try to avoid issues with exposure mismatch, all the exposure details were kept identical throughout the 36 minutes  or so it took to complete the whole set of videos across the face of the moon.

99% Moon on 2017-11-04
Mosaic of 99% Moon on 2017-11-04 at 80% resolution (3MB image size)

The videos captured were aligned and stacked using Autostakkert2, and each of the stacked images were processed using identical wavelet settings in Registax6. 

To create the mosaic itself, I took all the images into Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) and let it get on with the process of aligning and stitching the images together. It did a remarkably good job! I had also tried the Photomerge function in CS4, but ICE did a better job here: Photomerge was good but left a couple of slight merging artifacts – misalignments on the limb, mostly. 

Final processing took place in Photoshop (smart sharpening, levels, curves, etc) with the result being a 20Mpixel image weighing in at 7+ MB for a high quality jpg. Here, I’ve reduced the image to 80% of the original resolution to aid web viewing!

Images were taken starting at 2215UT from West Oxfordshire, UK. 

astroimaging, astronomy, nebulae

IC1396A – Elephant’s Trunk Nebula

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Image centred at (nova.astrometry.net plate-solve):
RA: 21h 34m 17.296s
Dec: +57° 30′ 37.211″
Up is 2.19° E of N

IC1396 is a very large region of HII emission located in the Milky Way within Cepheus, which spans over 5 degrees of sky. Within IC1396, to the western side, is the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, known as IC1396A, and VdB 142, which is a reflection nebula at the end of the “trunk”.

IC1396A - The Elephant's Trunk Nebula in Cepheus - LRGBIC1396A itself is a dense globule of gas and dust that appears to be lined by bright pink emission from atomic hydrogen. This emission is due to excitation by the giant triple star system HD 206267 (off field to the left). The globule appears to be an area of star formation, and contains two young stars in the head of the globule that have created a cavity by the action of their own stellar winds. 

These F-type stars provide the illumination for the rare yellow reflection nebula seen in the head of the globule, as well as the radiation causing the pink hydrogen emission within the cavity. The combined action of HD 206267 and the two young stars has resulted in areas of high compression in the nebula, triggering the formation of protostars.

Data was captured on the night of the 21st September 2017 from West Oxfordshire. Image details are as follows:

L:R:G:B = 130:45:35:35
(L:10m subs, RGB: 5m subs, 2x bin)

Taken using a WO FLT110 @ f5.6 with SBIG ST2000XM, on Losmandy Titan.

Processing was performed in Pixinsight – control over the star sizes is tricky here, and I may try and improve on this later. There’s also a (relatively) small amount of data used here – this is certainly a subject that would benefit from adding more exposure (which may also help with star control), as well as H-Alpha data to increase signal and contrast in the emission nebula areas.

astroimaging, astronomy, nebulae

Simeis 57 – Propeller Nebula in Cygnus

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The Propeller Nebula (Simeis 57) in Cygnus - 7hrs ExposureI had opportunity on the 19th/20th September 2017 to add another 3h40m of exposure to my previous image of the Propeller Nebula (Simeis 57/ DWB111/119) – see “A Crescent and A Propeller” for the previous version. Here is the reprocessed version of the data, taken through an H Alpha filter, which is centered at RA: 20h 16m 08s, DEC: +43° 40′ 42″ (plate-solve from nova.astrometry.net).

Simeis 57 - Annotated with Simbad query resultsThe extra time on this subject has brought out some of the fainter background nebulosity and enhanced dark nebulae in the field. The image at left is an annotated image (using the Image Solver and Annotate Image scripts in Pixinsight). As shown, the Propeller itself is catalogued as DWB111 (south) and DWB 119 (north), with DWB118 representing the surrounding nebulosity, with DWB 108 further to the south below the southern “prop”. There are a few catalogued dark nebulae in the field – Dobashi 2501; Dobashi 2511/TGU H469 P16 which sits between DWB118 and DWB 107 (off field to lower left); and TGU H469 P18 to the west of the main nebula. 

For more information about this region, and pretty much the only bit of published research I can find on it(!), see the paper “Israel, F.P. , Kloppenburg, M., Dewdney, P.E., Bally, J. (2003), The peculiar nebula Simeis 57, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 398, 1063 – 1071“.

All data was taken from West Oxfordshire on 9th/10th and 19th/20th September. William Optics FLT110 @f5.6 on a Losmandy Titan, SBIG ST2000XM CCD and an Astrodon 5nm HA filter.