Horsehead Nebula, Flame Nebula, and Orion Nebula (OHS)

This region of space never disappoints. All the gas and dust that make up the nebulae are part of the Orion Molecular cloud located in the Constellation of Orion. The big three are the Orion Nebula (M42) at ~1344 light-years away, the Horsehead Nebula (B33) at ~1375 light-years away, and finally the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024 & Sh2-277) at ~1350 light-years distance. All three are impressive emission nebulae in their own right but there is a lot of faint secondary gas and dust between the nebulae which is one of the goals for this image.

This is the second time I imaged this with Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM lens only this time I wanted to try something different from last year's traditional HaRGB image so I went with all narrowband. Rather than doing the normal SHO blend I went to an OHS blend that was described by Antoine & Dalia Grelin (Galactic Hunter) when they did this last year. Their image was fantastic and I wanted to see if I could get a decent image of it as well using their method. I am very pleased with the results and I think this blend allowed for more detail to be visible. The swirly gas stringers scattered throughout this field are breathtaking. I especially like the ones above the B33 and the ones south of M42. There is much more fine detail in each nebula than there is in any of my previous attempts. Most times I would not say zoom in but this one holds up even when zoomed in a bit.

In order to do this I connected a ZWO EFW (1.25") to the camera lens using the low profile ZWO adaptor and attached it to my Sirius Mount located in the astronomy shed. In addition, rather than using the internal lens aperture to control the f-stop, I used stepdown rings in order to obtain the focal ratio of f/4. The reason for doing this is that the star shapes come out much better and it eliminates the eight-sided star spikes from the lenses aperture control.

Dates: 2-14-22, 2-15, 2-18, 2-20, 2-21, 2-25, 2-26, 2-27, 2-28, 3-3, 3-4      

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Horsehead Nebula, Flame Nebula, and Orion Nebula

Dates: 2-14-22, 2-15, 2-18, 2-20, 2-21, 2-25, 2-26, 2-27, 2-28, 3-3, 3-4
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM Lens
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 200mm 

f/4 with stepdown rings
Focal Reducer: None
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO Ha, OIII, SII
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to a ZWO Mini 30/120mm Guidescope
Exposure: Ha 156 x 180, OIII 94 x 180, SII 141 x 180, Ha 36 x 10, OIII 20 x 10, SII 16 x 10
Gain: 139
Offset 20
Sensor Temp: -20 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoiseAI, StarXTerminator.

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M82 - Cigar Galaxy (2022)

Messier 82 (M82 or NGC 3034) or more commonly known as the Cigar Galaxy is an edge-on galaxy approximately 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. M82 is very close to another spectacular galaxy M81 or Bode's Galaxy (a.k.a. NGC 3031) which it is often imaged with. Another nearby galaxy NGC 3077 along with M81 and M82 form what is known as the M81 Local Group. The tidal forces from the largest of the three galaxies, M81, is causing the central portion of M82 to have a star formation rate 10 times that of the Milky Way. This can be seen in the red hydrogen strands emanating from the center of the galaxy.  Getting those streamers was one of my goals and is also one of my favorite parts of the image.

M82 is a very popular object which is usually done every couple of years, however, the last time I did this was five years ago. Why so long, poor FOV and not enough focal length. This is much improved from my previous attempts - Yay, I have improved. I started this in the front lawn since we had a freak warm spell. We had a snowstorm a few days later so I dug a path for my Scopebuggy and collected some good data but the bricks which the buggy rested on froze to the ground so I had to hammer them off and then carefully drag the Scopebuggy over the frozen ground - it was a pretty funny site but not to be repeated. The following nights I found a new location on my driveway that gave three hours of imaging time - good enough.

One particular night I had horrible streaks on two hours of subframes and was thinking my mount was broken. It did not occur to me that the 18 mph plus wind gusts would affect the EdgeHD800 with the dew shield that resembles a giant sail. I got some weather data from a nearby airport and did some analysis - pretty enlightening. I made a video of my findings: 

Link Here: https://youtu.be/72Ec1SzgQ1E.

Processing took my usual way too long but in the end I am happy with what I ended up with.  The very cool red steamers emanating from the central portion show up very well.  I used the IDAS NBZ dual band filter (Ha and OIII) to start with but then decided to get some straight RGB data with the Optolong Luminosity. The RGB data was quite detailed and easily blended the stars into the Ha-OIII image. I tried to do straight blends, split dual blends, split RGB blends but nothing seemed to work. So in the end I did several small incremental galaxy blends to incorporate the RGB galaxy with the one captured with the NBZ filter. Though the Luminosity data showed a lot of detail, it was much noisier than the data collected with the NBZ filter - the background was extraordinarily smooth from the beginning.

M82 - Cigar Galaxy
Dates: 2-20, 2-21, 2-25, 2-26, 2-28, 3-3
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 800
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 2032mm (native)
F/10 (native)
Focal Reducer: Celestron .7 Reducer Lens
Mount: Orion Atlas Pro
Filter Adaptor: ZWO Filter Drawer
Filter: IDAS NBZ (2-inch) and Optolong Luminosity (2-inch)
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Orion ST80
Exposure: NBZ 153 x 180, Lum 230 x 90

Gain: 139
Offset 0
Temp: -20 C
Processing: Asiair app, PixInsight, Photoshop, Star Exterminator, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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Heart of the Rosette Nebula (SH2-275)

It seems like I am never truly 'done' as I keep doing minor tweaks until I can't stand it anymore, then I am done! So this was my attempt at getting a detailed image of the central portion of the Rosette Nebula also known as SH2-275 or Caldwell 49. Located in Monoceros the Rosette is approximately 5000 Light-years away and 130 LY across. It consists of numerous young stars produced as the gas that makes up the nebula condenses as a result of tidal forces and gravity. Also found here are dark nebulae which completely block light from behind.

The central open star cluster for which my image is focused on is known as NGC 2244. I first imaged this several years ago with a much larger field of view as is commonly done in order to get the entire complex into the image. I really wanted to try and see if I could pull out some fine detail with the Edge800 this time around.

I went with the IDAS NBZ filter which is a dual band (Ha-OIIl) filter for OSC cameras like the ASI294MC which is what I used. This camera pairs up well with the longer focal length Edge800 with the (0.7x) FR. I am very impressed with this Filter as well as it does a great job with this scope at F/7 but also when using the Hyperstar at F/1.9. I have not tried it at the native F/10 but I think I would be pushing my luck at that point. Some of my favorite parts are the bright dense areas on the left along with the dark zones on the bottom. The loop in the central portion came out really well as did the golden swirls on the right side.

In order to get the colors separated the RGB channels and used the red channel for Ha. A blend of 70% green and 30% blue was used to make the OIII. I did try to make a synthetic SII image using various methods but nothing worked out well so I stuck with the HOO combination. The data was pretty good even though I did some imaging when the moon was out (of course not right next to the object). In fact this data was better than I collected on any previous attempt.  Since the moon was out I was very fastidious going through the data and ended up not using 77 exposures (~ one third of the data).

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Sharpened

Original

Rosette Nebula SH2-275 (NGC 2244)
Dates: 2-8, 2-9, 2-10, 2-14, 2-15, 2-18
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 800
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 2032mm (native)
F/10 (native)
Focal Reducer: Celestron .7 Reducer Lens
Mount: Orion Atlas Pro
Filter Adaptor: ZWO Filter Drawer
Filter: IDAS NBZ (2-inch)
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Orion ST80
Exposure: IDAS NBZ 149 x 180
Gain: 139
Offset 0
Temp: -20 C
Processing: Asiair app, PixInsight, Photoshop, Star Exterminator, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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