Tag: OPTeam

Elephant’s Trunk Nebula – IC 1396

The weather in New England has been full of a lot of misses over the past month or so. Either too cloudy, too hot, or both. At the beginning of August, I decided to use the Radian Raptor 61mm to shoot the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula.

Processed as a HOO palette image using Astro Pixel Processor to separate the color channels, I really liked how this came out versus the “normal” processing and also the simulated SHO processing I did.

Radian Raptor 61
Canon EOS Ra
Optolong L-Pro Filter
ZWO 30mm f4 MiniScope (guide)
ZWO asi224mc (guide)
Pegasus Powerbox Advanced

19 x 360s
Dark, flat, bias and dark flat frames for calibration
ISO 800 – Taken in Providence, RI – Bortle 8

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Looking at Cygnus

Milky Way season has officially begun and that means we get to start observing and photographing beautiful nebulae. One of the most popular regions that gets looked at towards the end of Spring and the start of Summer is the constellation Cygnus. Famous constellations that include The North American Nebula, The Veil, the Crescent Nebula, and more can be found in this constellation. So far, I have been able to capture the North American and Pelican Nebulae together, which is close to the bright star Deneb, as well as the Sadr Region which includes the Crescent Nebula. Deneb and Sadr make up the two brightest stars in the Swan constellation, and around both of them is a lot of beautiful nebulae and stellar dust.

Above is the Sadr and its surrounding sky which features such Nebula like the Crescent. This area is full of rich Ha and comes out beautifully. The shot above is a total of 3 hours and 50 min integration time in one session.

Here we have the North American and Pelican Nebulae which are near the star Deneb. This is one of my favorite nebula in the night sky period. Previously, I posted these images processed as a simulated SHO. This shot is a total of 3 hours and 35 minutes integration time in one session.

I shot both of these targets with a Canon EOS Ra through the Radian Raptor 61 using and Optolong L-eNhanced filter. This is the second time I have been able to use the Raptor for what I intended it for and will be will be writing something on it soon!

Clear Skies!

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Orion & Horsehead Nebulae – SHO Palette

I decided to go back and rework some of my data from March and see what I could come up with. After reprocessing my Rosette & Cone wide field image in a simulated SHO palette, I decided to try and do the Orion and Horsehead wide field shot.

I did the stacking, channel combining and initial processing in Astro Pixel Processor then took the image over to Photoshop. I had to do it separately for the longer exposure and then the shorter exposure to create two separate images to use to try and combine them to soften the blown out core a bit. I believe my long exposures where simply too long to be real effective, but I was able to soften it a bit. I needed the longer exposure to pull out the detail in the Horsehead and Flame Nebulae, so I will need to research a bit more if I try this again in the future. I am thinking I may need to take three different data sets at different exposures and combine them over two. For reference, I have been using AstroBackyard’s Tutorial on HDR Composites. As always, Trevor Jones provides a lot of good information!

Image Information:

120 x 60s
60 x 10s
Darks, flats, dark flats and biases for both sets
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TPO Ultrawide 180 Astrophotography Lens
Canon EOS Ra
Optolong L-eNhanced Filter
ZWO 30mm f4 MiniScope (guide)
ZWO asi 224mc (guide)

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Betelgeuse

We were blessed to be able to go on a quick two week trip down south from New England to see some of my wife’s family and some of mine. Unfortunately, even though I brought my entire astrophotography rig down, I did not very many clear nights. The one good night I did get, I was not in a good place to setup my entire rig (could not see Polaris to polar align, a lot of trees, etc). However, I still was able to get out and do some experimenting by taking one second exposures with the Canon EOS Ra attached to the TPO 180 Ultrawide Astrophotography Lens. One of the targets I choose to hit up was Betelgeuse. Late last year I promised a friend that if I ever had a chance to set my camera to Betelgeuse i would and I hate to admit that I simply never took the time to do so, until now.

Above is Betelgeuse with some surrounding sky with no annotation, annotated and in negative. I really had a good time experimenting while getting this shot. This data was collected in Griffin, GA.

100 x 1s (1600 ISO)
50 x 1s (3200 ISO)
20 / 20 darks, flats, dark flats and biases
Bortle 6
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TPO Ultrawide 180 Astrophotography Lens
Canon EOS Ra
Tripod with Orion Panhead

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The Rosette & Cone Nebulae

After doing a widefield session where I was able to get both M42 and the Horsehead Nebula in one frame, I decided to look at some other targets I could do with my set up and one, or rather two targets umped out right away: The Rosette Nebula and the Cone Nebula.

Both of these targets quickly became favorites of mine, especially the Rosette. I spent five days in January getting almost 12 total hours of data integration and loved every minute of it. The Cone Nebula, which includes the Christmas Tree Cluster started out a little rockier, but with another evening of data beyond my first, came out really well too. This time I was able to get both of the Nebulae in the same frame at the same time!

TPO UltraWide 180 f/4.5 Astrophotography Lens & Guide Scope
Canon EOS Ra
Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Optolong L-eNhanced filter
ZWO 30mm f4 MiniScope (guide)
ZWO ASI224mc (guide)

30 x 300s
20 dark frames
50 flat frames
50 dark flat frames
50 bias frames
800 ISO – Bortle 8

Captured in APT with guiding done with PHD2. Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop

Rosette & Cone Nebulae – Annotated by astrobin.com

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The Orion & Horsehead Nebulae

Ever since I began doing astrophotography, both the Orion Nebula and the Horsehead Nebula were always high interest targets for me. Up until last October, once I got a mount that could track and a telescope with a focal length capable of taking images of these two targets, I had to settle for views through an eyepiece or trying to take a lot of short exposures at really wide focal lengths to try and get an image. Even once I got a mount and a good telescope, I was still restricted in getting one target at a time. I kept seeing people post pictures with both in the field of view, but due to the limitations of my set up, I was unable to do the same… until now!

Thanks to the TPO UltraWide 180 f/4.5 Astrophotography Lens & Guide Scope I was able to get both targets, and more, into the same frame!

TPO UltraWide 180 f/4.5 Astrophotography Lens & Guide Scope
Canon EOS Ra
Sky Watcher EQ6-R Pro
Optolong L-eNhanced filter
ZWO 30mm f4 MiniScope (guide)
ZWO ASI224mc (guide)

Do to how my setup is currently with this scope, it is impossible for me to rotate the camera to frame the shot differently, but luckily the framing was good to go how it was! I will be writing a post soon going over how I have it set up with my current gear.

26 x 300s
20 dark frames
60 flat frames
50 dark flat frames
50 bias frames
800 ISO – Bortle 8

Captured in APT with guiding done with PHD2. Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop

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