I tend to be put off RGB most nights due to the really bad gradients I seem to get. No doubt something to do with a lot of LP in my vicinity. I’ve done a lot of work on getting my flat frames better, but this has only made a slight difference. Thankfully I’ve been able to pull something out of this in PixInsight with a modest number of subs.

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with Baader 1.25″ RGB CCD Set
Scope: Borg 101EDII with 0.85x Reducer @ F5.3
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight
Exposures: 4 x 10 mins per colour
Calibration: 25 x Bias, Flats, Darks

I’ve been tinkering with full narrowband on and off for ages, but never managed to get anything resembling an image. I don’t know if it’s just now that I’ve moved to a 100mm scope, but things seem to be falling into place now.

So here is my first ever full narrowband image, to say I’m chuffed with this would be an understatement. There’s still a lot of bits to figure out mind you, like purple haloing and the purple sky background. I might add another hour each to OIII and SII to see if I can get it a bit smoother. I had to download a trial of Photoshop CS5 to tweak the colour as I couldn’t find a way to do it in PixInsight, so it might be worth buying just for final tweaking. I’ve added the Hα only in as well.

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with Baader 1.25″ Hα / OIII / SII
Scope: Borg 101EDII with 0.85x Reducer @ F5.3
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight, Photoshop CS5
Exposures: 9 x 10 mins (Hα), 6 x 10 mins (OIII), 9 x 10 mins (SII)
Calibration: 25 x Bias, Flats, Darks

This is the first proper outing for the new 101EDII. Just a test run of 7 x 15 min subs on this quite dense area of Cygnus. Auto focusing worked really well and pulled in a HFD of 2.15 which is the lowest I’ve seen, it usually gets somewhere between 3 and 4. I’ve also added a S2 filter to the wheel, so will try and get Hα/O3/S2 on this over the next few clear nights (it could take a while!!)

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with Baader 1.25″ 7nm Hα Filter
Scope: Borg 101EDII with 0.85x Reducer @ F5.3
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight
Exposures: 7 x 15 mins
Calibration: 20 x Darks

With the clocks moved forward it’s only a few weeks before Astronomical darkness is gone in Scotland until August. I haven’t managed many images in 2011 due to a cracked CCD as well as some other technical issues. Thankfully Atik agreed to replace the cracked 383L+ with a brand new camera, so all is back to normal. This was the last thing I had left to process, it was a pain to sort out the gradients in the image and has finally convinced me to get a Gerd Neumann panel to try and make my flat frames more consistent.

The 77ED front objective is now sold and hopefully next season will see the arrival of a new 101EDII objective, and a few refinements to the automation process including full auto-focus which is being developed at the moment. Part of this is also to build a cloud sensor which I have been testing and will be a really good way to measuring sky quality.

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with Baader 1.25″ RGB
Scope: Borg 77ED with 0.85x Reducer @ F5.5
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight
Exposures: 4 x 15mins (each colour) = 3 hours
Calibration: 100 Bias, 100 Flats (per colour), 100 Darks

It’s been a month since I used my gear, mainly because of rubbish weather. The clear skies convinced me to spend a few hours digging the obs out from underneath over a foot of snow and ice. It was so bad, that when the obs went to close itself this morning, it failed and woke me up, as it had frozen open as it was -10 outside. Even though there was no moon, RGB was not going well and just far too bright, probably because of LP reflections from all the snow. It was good to get back out again, these will turn into full narrowband projects if the weather keeps up

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with Baader 1.25″ 7nm Hα Filter
Scope: Borg 77ED with 0.85x Reducer @ F5.5
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight
Exposures: 7 x 20 mins (IC5067/70), 3 x 20 mins (NGC1499), 5 x 20 mins (B33/IC434)
Calibration: None (yet)

With Cygnus high just now there are so many different targets, this is one that I missed last year. It extends further than this but I can get most of in the my field of view. 20 minute subs bring out a lot of fine nebulosity but I really need more to keep the noise down. Once the moon has gone I can try and get some O3 and then maybe S2 as this area has great separation between the different spectral lines.

The Veil Nebula, is part of the Cygnus Loop, radio source W78, or Sharpless 103. Other parts of the loop include the ‘Eastern Veil’, the ‘Western Veil’ or ‘Witch’s Broom Nebula’, and Pickering’s Triangular Wisp. It is a large, relatively faint supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus. The source supernova exploded some 5,000 to 8,000 years ago, and the remnants have since expanded to cover an area of ~3×3 degrees; about 6 times the diameter or 36 times the area of a full moon. The distance to the nebula is not precisely known, with estimates ranging from 1,400 to 2,600 light-years. It was discovered on 1784 September 5 by William Herschel. He described the western end of the nebula as “Extended; passes thro’ 52 Cygni… near 2 degree in length.” and described the eastern end as “Branching nebulosity… The following part divides into several streams uniting again towards the south.”

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with Baader 1.25″ 7nm Hα Filter
Scope: Skywatcher Equinox 80 with Televue TRF-2008
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight
Exposures: 8 x 1200 secs (2 hours 40 mins)
Calibration: 20 x Darks

This was one of the first targets I tried when I started imaging, and it’s being a faint nebula it’s quite hard to capture. I tried it with an 8″ Newt but it works out a better target for a short focal length scope as it has a huge trail of dark dust behind it. This is my first RGB image with the new Atik and I’m quite pleased with the result. The Baader RGB set has less LP filtration than dedicated LP filters, and this could account for the huge amount of colour gradients I was getting, it took 3 hours to pull most of the crap out of this one. I need to look at how best to deal with this either through better calibration or processing.

I managed to get a hour of Hα but have left that as a separate image to concentrate on the RGB processing. I may try and integrate it later on.

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with 1.25″ Baader RGB, 7nm Hα
Scope: Skywatcher Equinox 80 with Televue TRF-2008
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight, Photoshop
Exposures: RGB: 4 x 15mins each (3 Hours), Ha: 3 x 1200 secs (1 Hour)
Dithering: 1 pixel per sub
Calibration: 20 x Darks, 50 x Bias

I still have a few gremlins to sort out before Kielder, a bit of tilt that I can’t seem to track down and a weird spike effect in DEC that is causing it to guide slightly worse than in RA. Tonight I managed to get a quick two hours Ha on the Crescent Nebula. I’ve never imaged this area before and I’m surprised at how much nebulosity there is, a mosaic could be on the cards here.

The Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888 or Caldwell 27) is an emission nebula in the Cygnus constellation, about 5000 light years away. 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 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

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with 1.25″ 7nm Baader Ha
Scope: Skywatcher Equinox 80 with Televue TRF-2008
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight
Exposures: Ha: 6 x 1200 secs (2 Hours), O3: 6 x 1200 secs (2 Hours)
Dithering: 1 pixel per sub
Calibration: 20 x Darks

A bi-colour rendition of my previous Hα image with almost 3 hours of O3 added

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with Astronomik 1.25″ 6nm Hα Filter
Scope: Skywatcher Equinox 80 with Televue TRF-2008
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight
Exposures: Hα: 17 x 900 secs (4 hour 15 mins), O3: 11 x 900 secs (2 hours 45 mins)
Calibration: 20 x Darks

It’s finally dark here in Scotland and the start of a new season. This is the first picture from my new CCD, the Atik 383L+ Mono. It’s also the first successful image with my new automated system. A miracle two clear nights over the weekend was enough to get over 4 hours on this target. I’ve not done any calibration on this yet. I’m having difficulty capturing both the darks and the flats. I have to wait till the ambient temperature drops to at least 12 degrees to get to the -25 degrees CCD temperature the light frames were taken at. I also have to figure out a way of getting dimmer flats as I have the same problem a lot of other people have with the 383, you need a good 3 secs to stop the shutter smearing but dim enough light that it doesn’t saturate the chip.

The Elephant Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust in the star cluster IC1396 and ionized gas region located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth. It is commonly called the Elephant Trunk nebula because of its appearance at visible wavelengths, where it is a dark patch with a bright, sinuous rim. The bright rim is the surface of the dense cloud that is being illuminated and ionized by a very bright, massive star that is just to the west of IC1396a. The entire IC1396 region is ionized by the massive star, except for dense globules that can protect themselves from the star’s harsh ultraviolet rays.

Camera: Atik 383L+ Mono with Astronomik 1.25″ 6nm Hα Filter
Scope: Skywatcher Equinox 80 with Televue TRF-2008
Mount: EQ6 with EQMOD
Guiding: Orion ST80 with QHY5
Capture Software: CCD Commander, Maxim DL
Processing Software: Deep Sky Stacker, PixInsight
Exposures: 17 x 900 secs (4 hour 15 mins)
Calibration: 20 x Darks