The Lagoon & Trifid (M8 & M20) Region Using the Portable Setup!

I have not imaged this M8, the Lagoon Nebula, or M20, the Trifid Nebula much not because I don't like them but because I can't see them from my yard and they are too low and the trees are too high. To get them I traveled to my closest wide open field, St. John's Cemetery 👻, even better only a mile from my house. It is a relatively new cemetery that 80 years ago was a private airstrip. The town still maintains the grassy field (not the cemetery part) since the FAA uses this as an emergency landing location. The Lagoon, the large red-white cloud in the center, is approximately 5,000 light-years away and about 110 by 50 ly in size. The nebula contains some dark, collapsing clouds of protostellar material known as Bok globules. In addition, four Herbig-Haro (HH) objects (bright spots of nebulosity associated with newborn stars) have been detected in its confines. The Trifid Nebula, the smaller blue-red cloud, is about 4,100 ly away and consists of an open-star cluster, an emission nebula in red, and a reflection nebula in blue. Numerous other objects of interest are located in this image including another Messier object, M21, a star cluster adjacent to the Trifid Nebula.

There is a lot of detail visible in this image which is surprising since it was taken with a 200mm camera lens rather than a telescope. I wanted to test out the portability of my portable setup in an actual situation rather than just setting up at my house which I have been doing. The object itself was unplanned, meaning I did not know I would image this until I got there, however, the only other object I was thinking about was the nearby Eagle and Omega complex. It was visible for approximately 2.500 hours at this location but I was only to get about 1.5 hours - not a lot but enough to get a decent image. The portable setup works really well and the only issue I had was trying to find the Lagoon as the iOptron SkyGuider Pro is not go-to so I had to locate the object the old fashion way. The main thing I tested this night which I have not before was powering it in the field. For my other mounts and setups I use a Deep Cycle Marine battery to power the scopes, camera, dew heaters, computer, and etc. For this setup, the SkyGuider has its own power, there is no computer as the ASIAIR is controlled by a tablet. To power the camera and ASIAIR I used Maxoak K2 Laptop Power Bank ($129 Amazon) which still had plenty of power after I was done as did the SkyGuider - both of these would have worked for the entire night.

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The Lagoon & Trifid (M8 & M20) Region Using the Portable Setup!
Dates: 7-3
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC-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: iOptron SkyGuider Pro
Filter Wheel/Drawer: ZWO EOS Filter Drawer
Filter: IDAS NBZ
Focuser: None
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to a ZWO Mini 30/120mm Guidescope
Exposure: 41 x 120
Gain: 100
Sensor Temp: 0 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, StarXTerminator.
Power: Maxoak K2 Laptop Power Bank

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Simeiz 57 - Propeller Nebula (DWB 111/119)

The Propeller Nebula is located in the region of Cygnus streaming with gas, in particular hydrogen as evidenced from the image. Many popular objects are located within this rich gaseous region and the Propeller often gets included as part of a wide field image. The exact distance is not known, however, the Cygnus Complex is approximately 4,6oo light-years away. The object is a hydrogen gas emission nebula that happens to resemble a giant propeller, hence the name.

The most common designation is DWB 111, however, this is only part of the object and named after H. R. Dickel, H. Wendker, and J. H. Bieritz, who were studying and cataloging HII regions in the Cygnus X Complex in the 1960s. DWB 119 was the other half of the object. The earlier Simeiz Catalog was created in the 1950s by the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory at Simeiz in Ukraine (Russia annexed Crimea in 2014). This object was number 57 in that catalog so the designation for the whole object is Simeiz 57 (a.k.a. Simeis 57) .

So you may have noticed I captured it over a month ago and only now publishing it, this is due to a variety of factors including a lot of software and hardware glitches. One of my issues was that my laptop computer was seriously underpowered and some programs such as Topaz Denoise (new update) would no longer work. I now have a zippy desktop for processing and everything works and is much faster. This image is the first one where I used the new computer (partially). The data was collected using the IDAS NBZ filter which collects only hydrogen alpha (Ha) and oxygen III (OIII). I separated the Ha into the red channel and the OIII was a combo between green and blue where green was a higher percentage. The image is a close approximation of an monochrome HOO combo yet taken with a color camera (or that is the idea). This is a dimmer object than it appears so I am happy with the outcome.

Simeiz 57 - Propeller Nebula (DWB 111/119)
Dates: 6-17, 6-19, 6-28
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 800
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 2032mm (native), 1400mm
F/10 (native), F/7
Focal Reducer: Celestron 0.7 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: Lum 163 x 180
Gain: 139
Offset 0
Temp: 0 C
Processing: Asiair app, PixInsight, Photoshop, StarXTerminator, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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Astro Images from Co-NM Vacation

General Pics from the Deck
Some random quick shots of the night sky from my sister-in-laws deck. They have a great view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. They are at 35 degrees north latitude so that means Polaris (aka the North Star) is 35 degrees above the horizon. The Big Dipper is overhead. Also visible are the constellations Cygnus, Lyra, and Cassiopeia. These were taken with the Opteka Fisheye Lens which does a good job capturing photons although the stars aren't so good near the edges.

Canon T3i/600D Modified

Opteka 6.5mm f/3.5 Fisheye

ISO 1600

f/5.6

Filter Astronomik OWB

Exposure 30s

Couple Moon Shots
Couple moon shots from Wednesday night in Santa Fe. The clouds gave provided a very cool background. Two of the images were taken with the 50mm Lens and the really close up pic was with the 200mm Lens.

Canon T3i/600D Modified

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 (Nifty Fifty)

ISO 400

f/7.1

Filter Astronomik OWB

Exposure 1s

Canon T3i/600D Modified

Canon EF 200mm f/2.8 USM II

ISO 400

f/10

Filter Astronomik OWB

Exposure 0.5s

Dusty Area Around The Shark Nebula (LDN 1235)

The main focus of this project was LDN 1235 commonly known as the Shark Nebula. It is a dark reflection nebula approximately 15 light-years across and made up of interstellar dust located about 650 LY away in Cepheus. In addition to the LDN 1235, there is a lot of other "stuff" in this image as well. One of my favorite objects was VDB152 which is a blue reflection nebula at the end of a snake-like dark nebula which extends from the middle of the Shark to the upper left corner. I also like the stars in this region as they are quite colorful but overly large.

This was a last minute decision to image this as we had an unexpected clear night last month and I wanted to test my portable mount. I am quite happy with the result, especially considering it is only 3.5 hours. I was concerned about doing a dark nebula as I knew I would have only one night on it. For bright nebulae 3.5 hours is enough for a decent image if your system is fast enough but for dark nebulae in a somewhat light-polluted area it is iffy. I decided to give it a shot and am glad I did. The SkyGuider Pro is not a goto mount so trying to frame it was a little trying especially since nothing shows up in any of the subframes except the stars.

Shark Nebula - LDN 1235
Dates: 6-4
Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC-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: iOptron SkyGuider Pro
Filter Wheel/Drawer: ZWO EOS Filter Drawer
Filter: Baader UV/IR
Focuser: None
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to a ZWO Mini 30/120mm Guidescope
Exposure: 104 x 120
Gain: 100
Offset 20
Sensor Temp: 0 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, StarXTerminator.

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The Valentine Rose Nebula - Sh2-174, Better Call Glenn & Joe

Sh2-174 or the Valentine Rose Nebula (PK 120+18.1) was originally thought to have been a planetary nebula with ionized hydrogen and oxygen but one of the issues was that no white dwarf progenitor star had been found. Finally a white dwarf was discovered in the central portion of the blue region. It is the small blue star south of the very large white star in the top of the blue region. Most PNs have the progenitor star in the center but this one was offset so it was suggested that the strong tidal nature of the area blew the gases away from the star. However, a 2008 doctoral student discovered the star is much older than the nebula and could not have caused it. So the new hypothesis is that the white dwarf is merely passing through the ionized hydrogen cloud. The nebula is located about 950 light-years away in the constellation of Cepheus.

This image of SH2-174 was a collaboration project between myself, Glenn Clouder and Joe Navara. Together we have just under 72 hours of total integration time on this target. Joe did the initial preprocessing and although all of us produced an image, Glenn's was clearly the best so we went with his version. Kudos to Glenn!

Other images consist mainly of Ha and OIII so we decided to be a little different and collected SII in addition. Joe and I did a traditional SHO combination whereas Glenn went with a HSO combination. This object is very dim so you will need lots of exposure. I decided to use my EdgeHD800 with Hyperstar in order to collect my portion of Ha. For the SII and OIII I used my AT115 refractor with a 0.8x FR. Joe collected all his data with a Williams Optics WP81 refractor with a 0.8x FR while Glenn went with a OOUK CT10 Newtonian reflector.

Check out the video of our collaboration:
https://youtu.be/mnuHcGJL5lw

Imaging Details:
Kurt
EdgeHD800 w/hyperstar Ha 108 x 300s (9h)
AT115 Refractor w/0.8FR OIII 100 x 300s (8.3h)
AT115 Refractor w/0.8FR SII 36 x 300s (3h)

Joe
WO Z81 w/.8FR Ha 40 x 600s (6.7h)
WO Z81 w/.8FR OII 48 x 600s (8h)
WO Z81 w/.8FR SII 70 x 600s (11.7h)

Glenn
OOUK CT10
Ha 57 X 600s (9.5h)
Oiii 36 X 600s (6h)
Sii 58 X 600s (9.7h)