Celestron EdgeHD 8" with a ZWO M42 Filter Drawer

 

Recommended 105mm

My Optimal System 108.5mm

Sh2-73 - A Dusty Molecular Cloud

Sh2-73 was originally classified as an emission nebula hence added to the Sharpless Catalog of emission Nebula, however, it is actually a molecular cloud illuminated by the integrated light from the galaxy. It is located approximately 392 light-years (120 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation of Hercules. Although it was misclassified as an emission nebula, it has some colorful stars associated with it and is still very pleasing to image (in fact I think I like imaging dark reflection nebulae more than emission nebulae).

Capturing and processing was straightforward although I did lose a bit of some RGB data as I forgot to set the temperature to zero degrees - trying to do too many things at once. It is very dark and nothing was visible on the individual subframes which always concerns me when imaging. This may be the last image from this scope for a little while as I finally received the EdgeHD8 and will be busy activating that setup as well as the 200mm Canon Lens setup. This AT115 setup has been great and also very stable so I am keeping it untouched which is why I have been building a new imaging setup.

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Sh2-73
Dates: 6-5, 6-6, 6-9, 6-10, 6-16, 6-17
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm
f/7
Focal Reducer: 0.8x AstroTech Field Flatterner/Focal Reducer
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO L, R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope/ZWO 60mm Guidescope
Exposure: L 259 x 90, R 58 x 60, G 53 x 60, B 56 x 60
Gain: 139
Offset 21
Temp: 15 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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NGC 7023 Region (2021) - New Equipment

NGC 7023 or the Iris Nebula is a favorite of mine and only fitting it should be First Light for my ZWO ASI294MC connected to a Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM Lens with the ZWO Filter Drawer for Canon Lenses. The region is heavily laden with interstellar dust as can be seen in the image. The characteristic blue color from NGC 7023 comes from the dust grains reflecting light from the bright central star. Also interesting is that polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been detected within this nebula so it may be a good place to get some naphthalene (moth-balls).

Located in the constellation Cepheus these molecular clouds are approximately 1,300 light-years away in a rich field of stars. I had to do several rounds of star reduction and made processing a bit difficult. I consider this image satisfactory and would have needed to collect more data than the 2.65 hours to make it a noteworthy image.  I pushed the dusty areas as much as I could but really could not go any further. I am happy with what I did get for the limited time and there is some detail in the core. Most of the stars appear yellow but a good portion of those are yellow because the light is being filtered by the gas and dust of the molecular cloud.

This was a test done over three nights plagued with problems. It was not only first light with the camera and adapter but also of my second imaging computer so I can run two rigs. This Canon 200mm Lens to ASI294 setup was an afterthought while I was waiting for the EdgeHD8 to arrive (which came last week).  I used 90 second exposures as I have found this to be good value with unfiltered images from my yard.  Although the lens can go to F/2.8,I have found F/3.5 to be a decent value for imaging.  All of the data collected on the first night was lost because I had the gain set at zero rather than unity gain of 120. The second night I had data issues due to Microsoft OneDrive hijacking my computer trying to download while collecting images - I don't remember signing up for this but I uninstalled it and hopefully it stays gone. I also had trouble guiding, every time I turn on guiding it interferes with the imaging camera. I am pretty sure the PhD2 knows which camera is which but I had the issue with APT and NINA. Guiding works alone though. Fortunately with only a 200mm FL, guiding was not necessary so this image was made with 90 second exposures.  However, I do have to get this solved guiding is critical for the the Edge.

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NGC 7023 Region
Dates: 6-16, 6-17, 6-18
Camera: ZWO ASI294MC-Pro
Telescope: Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM Lens
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 200mm
f/3.5
Focal Reducer: none
Mount: Orion Atlas Pro
Filter Adaptor: ZWO - None
Filter: None
Focuser: None
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to a ZWO Mini guidescope - None
Exposure: L 106 x 90
Gain: 120
Offset 0
Temp: 0 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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Eclipse (2021)

Just when you thought you saw enough eclipse pictures I have to post mine.  A bit late as I had to work right after capturing and no time to process earlier - although there was not that much to do.  If anything I had to tone down the colors as it really looked like this.  Two of my image have sea birds flying by. The images were taken with my Canon T3i/600d modified camera with my Orion ED80 f/7.5 refractor mounted on an Explore Scientific Twilight Mount.  Location: Birdseye Boat Launch, Stratford CT.

NGC 4395 (2021) and Processing Tutorial

Located approximately 14 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici is the beautiful spiral galaxy (also designated as a dwarf galaxy) NGC 4395.  It is 50,000 light-year across and is unique in that it has low surface brightness considering its proximity to Earth.  NGC 4395 has an active galactic nucleus (ANG) which means radiation is produced by matter falling into a central black hole, however, it is six times smaller than our own galaxy's AGN.  These types of galaxies are known as a Seyfert Galaxy.  It is one of the most faint nearby Seyfert galaxies known but it does have three bright nebulous regions, NGC 4399, NGC 4400, and NGC 4401, located on the spiral arms. 

This galaxy is in a good location for imaging in the Northern hemisphere but is not imaged much likely due to it's low surface brightness.  For this image I collected three hours of luminosity alone and tried to capture 1.5 hours for each RGB channel.  I collected much more data but I was very selective on which subframes to use.  Also I believe my luminosity filter is defective as I have been getting artifacts on my images for a long time now that has been a pain in the you know what to remove.  I cleaned the filter a while ago and did notice film thing but did not think it was a problem until now.  So, rather than purchase a new one - I just shot without any filter since I am not sure what they do anyway.

  

If you do attempt to image NGC 4395 I would recommend collecting a minimum of three hours of luminosity as it is a relatively galaxy for being so close.  

I have also attached my processing flow that I used for this image.  The PixInsight portion is standard to most of my images but once I get it to Photoshop, it turns into a pinch of this and dash of that.  The numbers in parenthesis are times that correspond to a video. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma0x1aMcFDs 

Preprocess

• PixInsight

1. Blink - visual subframe inspection (3:23)

2. SubframeSelector (3:40)

3. Blink - visual final subframe inspection (4:26) 

4. Weighted Batch Pre-Process - stacking (4:46)

 

Processing

• PixInsight

5. Dynamic Crop (5:53)

• RGB

6. ChannelManagement > ChannelCombination - combine RGB (6:12)

7. BackgroundModelization > DynamicBackgroundExtraction (and/or Automatic) (6:12)

8. NoiseReduction > TGVDenoise - reduce noise (6:47)

9. NoiseReduction > MultilinearTransform - reduce noise (7:33)

10. IntensityTransformations > HistogramTransformation - make nonlinear image (8:09)

• Luminosity

11. BackgroundModernization > DynamicBackgroundExtraction - smooth image (8:42) 

12. Deconvolution - sharpen & brighten (9:02)

13. NoiseReduction > TGVDenoise - reduce noise (9:56)

14. NoiseReduction > MultilinearTransform - reduce noise (10:29)

15. IntensityTransformations > HistogramTransformation - make nonlinear image (11:04)

16. MorphologicalTransformation (11:23)

• Combine

17. IntensityTransformations > CurvesTransformation - equalize background intensity of 

RGB and Lum visually (11.39)

18. LRGBCombination (11:50)

[Not on video - IntensityTransformations > CurvesTransformation - equalize

background intensity of both versions of LRGB (max & partial)]

• Photoshop

19. Combine max galaxy with partial image (30%) (12:12)

20. TopazDenoise (74%) (12:23)

21. Curves (12:41)

22. ColorRange > Select & Mask > Layer Mask (12:49)

23. Select & Color (13:01)

24. Channel Mix (13:18)

25. Vibrance (13:31)

26. Deep Space Noise Reduction (13:39)

27. Star color (13:48)

28. Select Bright Stars (13:56)

29. ColorRange > Select & Mask > Layer Mask (14:01)

30. Star color adjustment (14:11)

31. Repeat to your liking (14:38)

NGC 4395
Dates: 5-11, 5-12, 5-13, 5-14, 5-16, 5-17, 5-18
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm
f/7
Focal Reducer: 0.8x AstroTech Field Flatterner/Focal Reducer
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO L, R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope/ZWO 60mm Guidescope
Exposure: L 181 x 60, R 99 x 60, G 111 x 60, B 93 x 60
Gain: 139
Offset 21
Temp: 15 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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M3 (2021)

This is my latest version of the Globular Cluster, M3, located 34,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici.  I decided to image this again since it was in a great location and the moon was out and it has been three years since my last version.  Containing more than 500,000 stars M3 also has the distinction of having more variable stars than any other cluster in our galaxy.  A variable star is one in which the brightness changes periodically with time and M3 contains at at least 274 of them.

I cropped this quite a bit since I used a 115mm refractor but I kind of liked how the bright orange double star B-pm-151 in the lower right came out so not too much.  Also visible is a small edge-on galaxy, NGC 5263, on the center right located 226 million light-years away.  This came out much better than I was expecting but there is much room for improvement especially around the edge of the cluster.  

I only collected a total of 4.2 hours of RGB data for this but captured much more than that amount.  I am actually happy though because over the last couple of images I have become more fastidious with subframes and have a new routine.  My new regime is: 1) remove obvious bad subframes visually, 2) use PixInsight Subframeselector, and 3) a final visual check.  I did not do any luminosity as I honestly just ran out of time.  I started this last month when the moon was out, then horrible weather came, then we finally got a break and I was able to finish but my frames were so much better without the moon I decided to add better RGB data.

Dates: 4-23, 4-27, 5-1, 5-8, 5-16

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M3 (2021)
Dates: 4-23, 4-27, 5-1, 5-8, 5-16
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm
f/7
Focal Reducer: 0.8x AstroTech Field Flatterner/Focal Reducer
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope/ZWO 60mm Guidescope
Exposure: R 93 x 60, G 87 x 60, B 76 x 60
Gain: 139
Offset 21
Temp: 15 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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Leo Triplet - Hamburger with faint tail?

Located in the constellation of Leo this set of three galaxies (NGC 3628, M65, M66) is a very popular target during galaxy season (mid-April through May) for astrophotographers. All three galaxies are close enough to be interacting with each other but only NGC 3628 and M66 are noticeably distorted. M66 is the closest galaxy at 33 million light-years (bottom left), while M65 is the next closest at 35 million light-years (bottom right), and NGC 3628 is the farthest at 40 million light-years.

My original image of this was from over four years ago and this time around I was most interested in the rarely captured tidal tail coming off the left-side of NGC 3628 (a.k.a. The Hamburger Galaxy). I was not aware of this tail until I read an article on the Leo Triplet in the April 2021 issue of Sky & Telescope. Tidal tails consist of stars and gas formed during close encounters of two galaxies. In this case, NGC 3628 and M66, which had their closest encounter at only 82,000 light-years 800 mya . The tail extends a whopping 300,000 light-years and there is a recently discovered dwarf galaxy (Leo-TDG) at the end. I was not confident that I would get anything in my borderline Bortle 5 sky, however, there are some hints of it if you look closely, especially near the upper corner of the galaxy (Yay - it is not a failure). The dwarf galaxy would be off the image even if it were visible. I like the prominent dust lane that bisects this galaxy into two halves (or buns holding the hamburger). One other noteworthy thing with NGC 3628 is a small fuzzy blob just below the the central portion of the galaxy - it is not clear what this is, but Halton Arp, American Astronomer and author of Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies believed they were material ejected from the core.

I thought M65 and M66 both came out well and their central structures are well detailed - much better than I was expecting. All three of these galaxies are disturbed somewhat and are included in Dr. Arp's catalog (There you Gary Imm, I finally did some Arp objects). I thought about posting these separately but thought I might be pushing it with my refractor and they are already cropped a bit so I lift it alone.

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Leo Triplet
Dates: 4-3, 4-4, 4-5, 4-6, 4-7, 4-8
Camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro
Telescope: Astro-Tech AT115EDT 115mm Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 805mm
f/7
Focal Reducer: 0.8x AstroTech Field Flatterner/Focal Reducer
Mount: Orion Sirius
Filter Wheel: ZWO EFW 8 x 1.25"
Filter: ZWO L, R, G, B
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Autoguiding: ASI120 Mini attached to an Agena 50mm Guide Scope/ZWO 60mm Guidescope
Exposure: L 367 x 60, R 97 x 60, G 99 x 60, B 102 x 60
Gain: 139
Offset 21
Temp: 8 C
Processing: NINA, PixInsight, Photoshop, Topaz DeNoiseAI.

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http://astroquest1.blogspot.com/
https://www.astrobin.com/users/kurtzepp/collections/
http://youtube.com/c/AstroQuest1