Category: Deep Sky

With the end of summer twilight and the return of dark nights this is my first target of the season. The Tulip Nebula is often imaged in narrowband and with a wide field the surrounding area is full of Ha. There are also some OIII filaments.

This image is comprised of RGB frames (1/1/2 hours) combined with 2 hours of Ha and 9 hours of OIII. All subframes are 20 minutes.

Combination is using the Pixinsight EmissionLineIntegration script.

I took my first two Ha images of Sh2-216 back in January 2017 and followed them up with some more in November. The initial results were shown here: http://andrewluck.me.uk/?p=1269.

Due to the extreme faintness of the object I’d opted to use 1 hour exposures for a total of 10 hours. Initial processing was enough to show detail in the nebula but the background showed some processing artifacts.

Fast forward to September 2020 and some clear sky opportunities lead to my acquiring another 7 hours of Ha exposures. As some online images showed some OIII in the nebula as well I added 17 hours of OIII images (1 hour images) and to complete the set a further 12 hours of RGB images (20 minutes each).

To combine the images I created an RGB image and then used the PixInsight NBRGBCombination script to blend in the Ha and OIII.

This is the processed result of 10 hours worth of 20 minute RGB sub-frames.

Published in Astronomy Now: December 2018

The constellation Auriga contains two bright areas of Ha emission; IC405 and IC410. The Baby-Q with the Moravian G3-16200 has a large enough field of view that I can fit both into the same picture.

This is seven 20 minute exposures through my Baader 3.5nM Ha filter. Processed in Pixinsight.

Back in January I took a couple of 1 hour exposures of Sh2-216 using my Ha filter. Nearly one year later, a spell of good weather over a weekend meant that I was able to add a few more and I now have 10 hours worth.

Sh2-216 has been calculated at a distance of 129 parsec (420 light years) by measuring the parallax of the central star which places it much closer than the Helix and Dumbbell nebulae at 219 & 379 parsec respectively.

It measures about 2 arc degrees on the sky and is very faint.

It’s been a while since I last visited this object, a dust cloud on the Andromeda / Cassiopeia border (http://andrewluck.me.uk/?p=1058 & http://andrewluck.me.uk/?p=948). This is the first time with a monochrome camera and RGB filters; previous attempts have been with the KAF8300 equipped QHY9C OSC camera.

The field with the G3-16200 is much larger and provides a better context for the object. Better data, and much improved processing skills have revealed a lot more of the surrounding faint clouds.

This is about 12 hours of RGB data acquired in 10 minute subframes. I’m not a fan of LRGB imaging and very rarely use luminance, preferring instead to spend longer capturing the colour data at bin 1×1. Processing is exclusively Pixinsight.

Published in Astronomy Now (Jan 2018)

Displaying the monochrome Ha image in a local exhibition of pictures was a spur to getting to grips with the colour data I’ve acquired for this image. With the Ha & RGB data this now amounts to 51 hours in 10 & 20 minute sub-frames.

The image is reduced to 40% of full size for display here (click on the thumbnail).

Simeis147

This object is the remnant of a supernova explosion that occurred some 40,000 years ago and the shell has been expanding ever since. It now spans about 3 degrees on the sky, which at it’s estimated distance of 3000 light years is 157 light years in diameter.

This image was published in the June 2017 edition of Astronomy Now.