NGC 672 in Triangulum

 This image is based on around 90mins of 114 s , gain 139, offset 21, exposures, all in luminance. Finally done some new flats, but moved the camera slightly when checking for dust, so still not the best.

NGC 672 in Triangulum

Interesting galaxy, plus  several small ones in the background.

Wikipedia: NGC 672 is a spiral galaxy in the northern constellation of Triangulum, positioned around 2° to the southwest of the star Alpha Trianguli.

This galaxy is located at a distance of approximately 23.4 megalight-years from the Milky Way,where it forms an interacting pair with the irregular galaxy IC 1727. In the neutral hydrogen radio band, a tidal bridge is observed between the galaxNGC 672 appears to be the more massive of the two, and hence IC 1727 shows more distortion from the interaction. Together they form members of a combined group of galaxies that includes NGC 784.

The morphological classification of NGC 672 is SB(s)cd, which indicates this is a barred spiral galaxy (SB), with no ring structure around the central bar (s), and moderately to loosely-wound spiral arms. In the visual spectrum, the galaxy appears symmetrical with clearly defined spiral arms.

Two Galaxies far far away

 Last few times I have ben concerned the mount was not accurately aligned, so the first thing done tonight was to check the polar alignment. I gave up using the polarscope and in the end used the Drift tool in APT. This seemed to work very well and thereafter  the     scope went to its target fairly accurately, with Sync being used to correct any slight errors.

I ended up looking at a couple of galaxies, one of which I imaged in Jan this year. Next job is to redo the flats, those dust bunnies are still there!

IC2166 in Lynx

IC2166 is a barred spiral galaxy about 120 million lights years away!

NGC 2403 in Camelopardalis

NGC 2403 (also known as Caldwell 7) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Camelopardalis. It is an outlying member of the M81 Group, and is approximately 8 million light-years distant. It bears a similarity to M33, being about 50,000 light years in diameter and containing numerous star-forming H II regions

Grainy Mars

 Too pixelated but hey ho

Some galaxies and an Open Cluster

The galaxy images are in mono. I need to take some new luminance flats as there are dust bunnies showing!  

NGC6688 is a galaxy in Lyra, with some friends.

NGC2300 is a galaxy in Cepheus, interacting with an elliptical galaxy.

M34 is an open cluster in Perseus.

NGC 281 The Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia

 This has taken a lot for time (for me), in total around 2hours 30 minutes per channel ,so around 10 hours total . I haven't tried to control the size of the stars,  will leave that, to another day maybe. The image has much less noise than most of the ones I do, because of the long integration time. The nebula is bigger than the field of view, I have missed the edges.

Wikipedia: NGC 281, IC 11 or Sh2-184 is a bright emission nebula and part of an H II region in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia and is part of the Milky Way's Perseus Spiral Arm. This 20×30 arcmin sized nebulosity is also associated with open cluster IC 1590, several Bok globules and the multiple star, B 1. It collectively forms Sh2-184, spanning over a larger area of 40 arcmin. A recent distance from radio parallaxes of water masers at 22 GHz made during 2014 is estimated it lies 2.82±0.20 kpc. (9200 ly.) from us. Colloquially, NGC 281 is also known as the Pacman Nebula for its resemblance to the video game character.

Mars and first colour image of Jupiter

 Mars was at its closest to Earth on 6th October, three days ago. It was quite high in the sky, so this is the best image I have to date.

The image of Jupiter was taken at the end of September, when it was low on the southern horizon, so in disturbed air.

NGC 281 Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia

 Ongoing, really. Only have 1 hr 15 mins in each channel so far.  The field of view is smaller than the nebula. Also , I haven't tried to control the star size( though I have had little to show for it to date when trying on other pics, I have yet to find a work flow that I can follow with the software I use).

Best Mars image so far

 Good seeing last night and Mars was fairly high in the sky.  

Polar cap, clouds on the limb, no canals or martianssss.

NGC40 Bow Tie Nebula in Cepheus

 The image is based on around 40 mins in each R, G, B and L, 118s subs, at a gain of 139. Calibrated with dark flats and flats.

Wikipedia:     NGC 40 (also known as the Bow-Tie Nebula and Caldwell 2) is a planetary nebula discovered by William Herschel on November 25, 1788, and is composed of hot gas around a dying star. The star has ejected its outer layer which has left behind a smaller, hot star with a temperature on the surface of about 50,000 degrees Celsius. Radiation from the star causes the shed outer layer to heat to about 10,000 degrees Celsius, and is about one light-year across. About 30,000 years from now, scientists theorize that NGC 40 will fade away, leaving only a white dwarf star approximately the size of Earth.

First Image of Mars

 Last night I captured several 1000 frame videos of Mars. Unfortunately, the highest resolution ones were too dark and I haven't been able to process the images.  I was able to get some red, green and blue images at a lower resolution and so have my first ever image of Mars, in colour too.

I also processed an image of Saturn, captured in mono, on 8th August.

Naked Eye Comet, Neowise.

Mark 1 eyeball, 5 s exposures or thereabouts , with 55mm Nikon lens , camera on a tripod.

Comet Neowise

Comet Neowise

Jupiter, Saturn and the Cygnus Wall

Still no nautical night but hey ho.

Jupiter was visible just after midnight, but low on the southern horizon, along with Saturn. I have the wrong scope for planets but wanted to see what the ZWO camera would be like so took a few thousand frames and stacked in Registax. Only Luminance, so no colour this time. Jupiter's mooons are a bonus.

The main target was the Cygnus Wall in Cygnus, but given the amount of twilight, in total I only have around 4 hours  in LRGB, at the usual gain od 139 and exposures of 118s. The blue streak is Deneb, I think, its brightness creeping into the lower right corner.

Wikipedia:  The North America Nebula covers an area of more than four times the size of the full moon, but its surface brightness is low, so normally it cannot be seen with the unaided eye. Binoculars and telescopes with large fields of view (approximately 3°) will show it as a foggy patch of light under sufficiently dark skies. However, using a UHC filter, which filters out some unwanted wavelengths of light, it can be seen without magnification under dark skies. Its shape and reddish color (from the hydrogen Hα emission line) show up only in photographs of the area.

The portion of the nebula resembling Mexico and Central America is known as the Cygnus Wall. This region exhibits the most concentrated star formation. The North America Nebula and the nearby Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) are parts of the same interstellar cloud of ionized hydrogen (H II region). Between the Earth and the nebula complex lies a band of interstellar dust that absorbs the light of stars and nebulae behind it, and thereby determines the nebula's apparent shape. The distance of the nebula complex is not precisely known, nor is the star responsible for ionizing the hydrogen so that it emits light. If the star inducing the ionization is Deneb, as some sources say,[citation needed] the nebula complex would be about 1,800 light-years' distance, and its absolute size (6° apparent diameter on the sky) would be 100 light-years.

Cave Nebula in Cassiopeia

I came across this in the 'romp' and even though the conditions were poor decided to have a go at a stacked colour image. This is based on 22 mins in L,R,G and B, 114 s exposures. I will revisit to get better data when nautical night returns.

Summer Romp in Nautical Twilight

A warm summers night, nicer outside than insdie a hot house. No nautical night, so I thought I would just browse the heavens, keeping  a single frame as a souvenir of my tour. The colour image is based on single frames of L, R, G, B.  Usual exposure length around 3 mins.

Brocchi's Cluster (part of )

Cave Nebula in Cygnus

Dumbbell Nebula

IC 1848 and IC1871

M8 Lagoon Nebula

M11 Wild Duck Cluster

M16 Eagle Nebula

M17 Omega Nebula

M18

M0 Trifid Nebula

M22

M56

M71

M57 Ring Nebula

Part of the Veil Nebula

Pelican Nebula in Cygnus

This is based on 114s subs, around 60 mins in L,R, G and B. First time I have used the ZWO camera with the Skywatcher refractor.

Wikipedia:The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC 5070 and IC 5067[1]) is an H II region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name. The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust.

The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward. Particularly dense filaments of cold gas are seen to still remain, and among these are found two jets emitted from the Herbig–Haro object 555. Millions of years from now this nebula might no longer be known as the Pelican, as the balance and placement of stars and gas will leave something that appears completely different.

Equipment: Skywatcher ED80 at F/7.5,  Skywatcher EQ6 Pro GEM, ZWO 1600MM Pro, ZWO EFW with ZWO LRGB filters, QHY5IIC guide camera on Skywatcher 9 x 50 finderscope

NGC 6946 Fireworks Galaxy in Cepheus

Subs of 114s, around an hour in each of L,R,G and B. Moon was around 4 days old and not a lot of astronomical night!

Wikipedia:

NGC 6946 (also known as the Fireworks Galaxy or Caldwell 12) is a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with a small bright nucleus, whose location in the sky straddles the boundary between the northern constellations of Cepheus and Cygnus. Its distance from Earth is about 25.2 million light-years or 7.72 megaparsecs.

Various unusual celestial objects have been observed within NGC 6964. This includes the so-called 'Red Ellipse' along one of the northern arms that looks like a super-bubble or very large supernova remnant, and which may have been formed by an open cluster containing massive stars. There are also two regions of unusual dark lanes of nebulosity, while within the spiral arms several regions appear devoid of stars and gaseous hydrogen, some spanning up to two kiloparsecs across. A third peculiar object, discovered in 1967, is now known as "Hodge's Complex". This was once thought to be a young supergiant cluster, but in 2017 it was conjectured to be an interacting dwarf galaxy superimposed on NGC 6964.

NGC 6888 The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus

The image is based on 114s subs, around 2 hours in each of L, R , G and B. Processed in DSS, PS and Lightroom.

APOD: NGC 6888, also known as the Crescent Nebula, is a cosmic bubble about 25 light-years across, blown by winds from its central, bright, massive star. This sharp telescopic portrait uses narrow band image data that isolates light from hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the wind-blown nebula. The oxygen atoms produce the blue-green hue that seems to enshroud the detailed folds and filaments. Visible within the nebula, NGC 6888's central star is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star (WR 136). The star is shedding its outer envelope in a strong stellar wind, ejecting the equivalent of the Sun's mass every 10,000 years. The nebula's complex structures are likely the result of this strong wind interacting with material ejected in an earlier phase. Burning fuel at a prodigious rate and near the end of its stellar life this star should ultimately go out with a bang in a spectacular supernova explosion. Found in the nebula rich constellation Cygnus, NGC 6888 is about 5,000 light-years away.

Equipment: Celestron 9.25 XLT at F10,  Skywatcher EQ6 Pro GEM, ZWO 1600MM Pro, ZWO EFW with ZWO LRGB filters, QHY5IIC guide camera on Skywatcher 9 x 50 finderscope

The Whale, Ring and Crescent

Losing the  (astronomical) night, so short on exposures. The Whale (NGC 4631) and the Creseent lack data to show decent images. The Ring has a LOT of data, but not enough to show the faint outer ring clearly. So, all work in progress I suppose.

Wikipedia:

The Ring Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 57, M57 or NGC 6720) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra.Such objects are formed when a shell of ionized gas is expelled into the surrounding interstellar medium by a star in the last stages of its evolution before becoming a white dwarf.

The Crescent Nebula (also known as NGC 6888, Caldwell 27, Sharpless 105) is an emission nebula in the constellation Cygnus, about 5000 light-years away from Earth. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1792. It is formed by the fast stellar wind from the Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163) colliding with and energizing the slower moving wind ejected by the star when it became a red giant around 250,000 to 400,000 years ago. The result of the collision is a shell and two shock waves, one moving outward and one moving inward. The inward moving shock wave heats the stellar wind to X-ray-emitting temperatures.

NGC 4631 (also known as the Whale Galaxy or Caldwell 32) is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. This galaxy's slightly distorted wedge shape gives it the appearance of a herring or a whale, hence its nickname. Because this nearby galaxy is seen edge-on from Earth, professional astronomers observe this galaxy to better understand the gas and stars located outside the plane of the galaxy.

Comet 2017 T2 Panstarrs

This is the result of  12 x 60s subs in each of luminance, red, green and blue light. There was a 10 sec pause between each image to give more time for the comet to move (requirement for the processing technique). According to the method I was following, the total data time should be under an hour because comets are such dynamic objects

I was trying to follow Bernard Hubl's method but in the end had to use Deep Sky Stacker and its 'comets and stars' function. 

For Luminance  I produced an image of the comet only.

For R, G and B I produced an image of the comet plus stars. The channels were combined in PS

I stretched both the L and the RGB images in PS and then combined them. 

 The trouble I found with this is that stretching to show  the faint tail with the limited data meant I also developed the streaks left by the stars. My knowledge of PS is not up to removing  broad faint streaks but leaving the tail.

Anyway, for better or worse:

Comet C/2017 T2 Panstarrs

C/2017 T2 (PANSTARRS)

Magnitude: 8.6

Phase: 36 °

Distance: 1.6765au

Solar distance: 1.6185au

Velocity: 33.1km/s

Estimated tail length: 0.04au

Messier 57 Ring Nebula in Lyra

Messier 57 is is just coming into a position for a decent look around 11 30 pm. IT is a colourful object and I thought it would give me a good target with which to practice my colour developing in PS/Lightroom. I have read so much about how to produce a LRGB image from the four stacked/calibrated luminance, red, blue and green images,  a lot seems contradicatory and some, when followed, gave me colour yes, but not as we know it. I am sure a fair chunk must be put down to me. Anyway, I now have a work flow which gives me colour, sometimes resembling what other people have obtained. Progess of sorts.

This images is based on 114s subs at gain 139, offset 21.

L 39, R 20, G 20, B 19

Calibrated  and stacked in DSS (flats, dark flats and darks)

NASA: M57, or the Ring Nebula, is a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a sun-like star. The tiny white dot in the centre of the nebula is the star’s hot core, called a white dwarf. M57 is about 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, and is best observed during August. Discovered by the French astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix in 1779, the Ring Nebula has an apparent magnitude of 8.8 and can be spotted with moderately sized telescopes.

Equipment: Celestron 9.25 XLT at F10,  Skywatcher EQ6 Pro GEM, ZWO 1600MM Pro, ZWO EFW with ZWO LRGB filters, QHY5IIC guide camera on Skywatcher 9 x 50 finderscope, Celestron Focus Motor

Software: Ascom 6, Eqmod, Cartes du Ciel, AstroPhotography Tool, PHD2

Supernova in Virgo

Clouds rolled in , so only 45 mins worth of luminance (15 x 180s, gain 139, offset 21).    9th May 2020 22:25 UT

Supernova only discovered 2 days ago.

Galaxies in Cepheus

I now have around 5 hours of data in luminance for NGC2300 and friends. Not the best night still, since the moon was almost full, but the image is pretty good.

I will move on to RGB when I can.

10th May 2020

I have now captured around 3 1/2 hours in luminance and 2 hours each of R, G and B. I have had to rethink how I process in LRGB; now, combine RGB straight away aftaer registration and stacking and keep checking colour balance.

Arp 114 in Cepheus

NGC 2300 and NGC 2276 - Arp 114 in Cepheus

This is a pair of galaxies from Arp's catalogue. My intention is for this to be the start of a lot of data collection; the object is well placed and is always above the horizon from Locking. However, gibbous moon, clouds, ...sigh. Hence a lot of noise, light gradients  and nowhere near enough subs.

Wikipedia: Halton Christian "Chip" Arp (March 21, 1927 – December 28, 2013) was an American astronomer. He was known for his 1966 Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, which (it was later theorized) catalogues many examples of interacting and merging galaxies, though Arp disputed the idea, claiming apparent associations were prime examples of ejections. Arp was also known as a critic of the Big Bang theory and for advocating a non-standard cosmology incorporating intrinsic redshift.

This image is based on 30 x 114s luminance filter, gain 139  , offset 21, -15 degrees C (darks, flats and dark flats).

Astronomers don't think the two galaxies are interacting; 

"An odd couple lives some 100 million light years away. Here we find a spiral galaxy, NGC 2276 on the left, and its neighbor NGC 2300 on the right. There are quite a few intriguing questions concerning this pair. First of all NGC 2276 displays a perturbed spiral structure yet astronomers seem to agree that NGC 2300 is not the source of the angst. Instead, astronomers have learned that there is an abundance of gas (not shown in this picture) surrounding these galaxies. It could be that NGC 2276's motion through the gas affects its morphology." http://www.jwinman.com/starcharts/NGC%202300%20chart.htm

There are other galaxies visible, including IC 455