NGC 1807 and NGC 1817 - Poor Man's Double Cluster

NGC 1807 and NGC 1817 are open cluster's in the constellation Taurus and located approximately 6400 ly from Earth. They are very close to each other and may actually be parts of a single large cluster.  Because they are so close and less star filled, they are nicknamed the Poor Man's Double Cluster.  I was not planning on imaging this but it was clear out and relatively warm was looking for something other than a nebula to image.  I saw this was in the perfect location.  It also helped that I saw two other recent images of this appear on Astrobin (thanks Ron and Gary).  The only odd thing that happened was after I was done with the light, dark, and bias frames, I took some flats like I normally do know, however, for some reason only jpeg exposures were saved.  I tried to add them into the stacking but DSS wouldn't have it. There are plenty of colorful stars if you look closely, the large star on the bottom is HP 24197.

NGC 1807 and NGC 1817 - Poor Man's Double Cluster

Location: Happy Frog Observatory, Monroe, CT
Date: 02-18-18
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i(a), Backyard EOS
Telescope: Orion ED80 80mm f/7.5 Apochromatic Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 600mm
f/7.5
Focal Reducer: Orion 0.8x Focal Reducer for Refractor Telescopes
Mount: Orion Atlas Pro
Filter: Astrodon UV/IR
Autoguiding: QHY-5L-II-M attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope with Helical Focuser
Exposure: 52 x 60s
ISO: 1600
Temp: 4 C
Post Processing: Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop, Gradient Exterminator, Astronomy Tools.
https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/

NGC 2174 - The Monkey Head Nebula - HaRGB

Finally a new image!  This is NGC 2174 or the Monkey Head Nebula named because of its resemblance to a monkey's head. It is an a star forming Hydrogen emission nebula located in the constellation Orion and is associated with the open star cluster NGC 2175.  The nebula lies approximately 6,400 light-years away from Earth and would take up an area larger than the moon if you were able to see it with the naked eye.  

It was pretty easy to locate and imaged the Ha around the same time I did the Jellyfish. Because of the strong Ha component, I decided to use the UHC filter to collect the color rather than a broadband filter. 

NGC 2174 - Monkey Head Nebula
Location: Home Monroe, CT
Date: 1-25-18(Ha), 2-8-18 (RGB)
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i(a), Backyard EOS
Telescope: Orion ED80 80mm f/7.5 Apochromatic Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 600mm
f/7.5
Focal Reducer: Orion 0.8x Focal Reducer for Refractor Telescopes
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ
Filter: Astrodon UV/IR, Astronomik Ha Clip-filter, Astronomik UHC Clip-filter
Autoguiding: QHY-5L-II-M attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope with Helical Focuser
Exposure: 27 x 180s (Ha), 90 x 120 (RGB)
ISO: 1600
Temp: -8 C, -4 C
Post Processing: Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop, Astronomy Tools, Lightroom, GE.
https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/

Messier Objects Using an ED80

Many star catalogs were in existence since the Babylonian star catalog came out in 1800 BC, however, none these catalogs focused on other objects. The Messier Catalog, first introduced in 1771 AD, maybe the first astronomical catalog of astronomical objects that focuses on nebulae and other oddities. Interestingly, French astronomer, Charles Messier whom the catalog is named after, made the catalog as a list of what not to look for as he was interested in searching for comets. He began his life-long search for comets early on in his career sparked in part by Halley's comet. He would eventually discover 15 of them. While searching for comets he began keeping a journal of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies, and star clusters which could resemble a comet through a small telescope (source: http://www.seasky.org/astronomy/astronomy-messier.html and wikipedia).

This entire image is 17000 by 11000 pixels (17 inches by 11 inches) so it should be printable as a small poster. Note: I have not tried to print it yet. Each individual image is 1200 pixels by 857 pixels (1.2 inches by 0.857 inches) and with a resolution set at 1000 pixels. You should be able to zoom in and still maintain a certain amount of high resolution.

Making this poster was a very tedious and time consuming operation for me as I am not a graphics person or photographer by training. I created in Photoshop and learned plenty of new PS actions along the way. I had to resize everyone of my images in order to make this image. I was horrified  opening some of these images which were processed years ago and seeing how bad I processed them. At the recommendation of Gary Imm (https://www.astrobin.com/315674/?nc=user), I have equalized the background to roughly the same shade of black. Some of my older images were so bad I had to start from scratch. The image is huge and the original PS - PSD file was over four GB (my computer has only 6 GB of RAM) when I only had 30 images uploaded so I save it as a PDF file which was 10x smaller but I was still able to keep it layered.  It is still huge at 911 MB and takes 5 minutes to open 15 minutes to save edits.  I have various JPEG versions which range from 90 MB to 5.5 MB.  The 5.5 MB version looks as good as the 90 MB version on a cursory review.

All of these images were taken using the same Orion ED80 80mm Apochromatic Refractor Telescope and Canon T3i/600D camera. This setup works well for large objects such as the Orion Nebula but not so well for very small objects like small globular clusters or far away galaxies. Because of this, I had my limits as to how far I could enlarge objects without sacrificing resolution so they are not to scale. For an interesting comparison Gary Imm made two versions of his catalog:  1) not to scale and 2) to scale (https://www.astrobin.com/315674/?nc=user).

Note: A higher quality image can be viewed and downloaded from the following site:

Image (https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/Messier-Objects/i-jLwF3JP/A)

IC443 - Jellyfish Nebula Ha, RGB, and HaRGB!

Recently, I shot the Jellyfish Nebula (IC 443) in the constellation Gemini.  It is located near the star Eta Geminorum (Propus) and lies approximately 5,000 light years from Earth.  It is suspected of being the remains of a supernova that occurred 3,000 - 30,000 years ago. Also interesting is that the same supernova event likely created the neutron star within this nebula (source: Wikipedia, APOD).

I first imaged it in Ha since the moon was out.  This is what I am doing these days during full moon phases.  I was able to get some RGB data this past week.  I decided to use my Astronomik UHC clip-in filter since I have had good luck with these types of emission nebula.

This was a pleasant object to image as it is easy to locate being so close to Eta Geminorum (Propus). Also, since I imaged the RGB over to nights, I basically just had to open the shed and point to the nebula as I left everything as is, that is already focused. That being said, this was one of the most difficult images I ever processed. The Ha was easy enough but the color image was a big pain. The color of the main part nebula was highly differentiated and not in a good way, Propus and Tejat (the two large stars) had horrible halos, and the secondary tail (left hand side) barely was visible. Also, My Ha image did not frame up as well as I thought it would. I spent many hours bouncing back and forth between PS and LR2, usually I do PS then LR2 and a final touch in PS. This object is one where a really good monochrome camera would be preferable as opposed to a DSLR. Most of the really good images of this object were taken with a dedicated astrophotography camera. Anyway, I am happy with how it finally turned out.

Ha

RGB

HaRGB-V1

HaRGB-V2 (less noise, looks better on lower quality monitors)

Jellyfish Nebula IC443
Location: Home Monroe, CT
Date: 1-24-18(Ha), 2-5-18 (RGB), 2-6-18 (RGB)
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i(a), Backyard EOS
Telescope: Orion ED80 80mm f/7.5 Apochromatic Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 600mm
f/7.5
Focal Reducer: Orion 0.8x Focal Reducer for Refractor Telescopes
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ
Filter: Astrodon UV/IR, Astronomik Ha Clip-filter, Astronomik UHC Clip-filter
Autoguiding: QHY-5L-II-M attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope with Helical Focuser
Exposure: 45 x 180s (Ha), 66 x 120 (RGB), 72 x 120 (RGB)

ISO: 1600
Temp: -8 C, -4 C, -2 C
Post Processing: Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop, Astronomy Tools, Lightroom, GE.
https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/

M79 - Not a Glorious Finish

I began this quest to image all 110 Messier Objects with the same camera (Canon T3i/600D) and telescope (Orion ED80 f/7.5) over three years ago.  Like many astrophotographers my first deep sky image was that of M42 - the Orion Nebula.   The image was only a 7-second shot but it was good enough to see the nebulosity and I subsequently re-imaged it for the catalog.  I am currently creating a collage with all of my images and will post once it is complete.

Link to my current images of Messier Objects:

https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/Messier-Objects/

It took a while to get this object because it was one the twenty five objects that was not visible from my yard.  My intent was to image this object on one of our regular meeting nights at Boothe Park, however, the season was getting closer to end an ideal night was going away.  Last Friday (2/2/18) was a good visual night but it was extremely cold with 20 mph gusts. Also, Boothe Park has lots of light pollution (Bortle 7, maybe 8) and the moon was out, although it was low.  I had to limit exposures to only 30 seconds.  Special thanks goes to Mark Holden, President of Boothe Memorial Astronomical Society, for braving the conditions with me. 

M79 (NGC 1904) is a globular cluster in the constellation Lepus and is at a distance of about 42,000 light years away from Earth and 60,000 light years away from the Galactic Center (source: wikipedia).  M7 looks pretty small in my little refractor but larger scopes can resolve individual stars.  Also, this globular cluster is thought to be a captured cluster from a close encounter with another galaxy.

M79
Location: Boothe Hill Park, Stratford, Ct
Date: 02-02-18
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i(a), Backyard EOS
Telescope: Orion ED80 80mm f/7.5 Apochromatic Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 600mm
f/7.5
Focal Reducer: Orion 0.8x Focal Reducer for Refractor Telescopes
Mount: Orion Atlas Pro
Filter: Astrodon UV/IR
Autoguiding: QHY-5L-II-M attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope with Helical Focuser
Exposure: 51 x 30s
ISO: 1600
Temp: -12 C
Post Processing: Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop, Lightroom, Gradient Exterminator, Astronomy Tools.
https://kurtzeppetello.smugmug.com/