Astro observation log 27.12.2021

Finally clear skies and I was at a bortle 2 location. I also had my new Canon EOS RP Camera.

M 42 – The Orion Nebula again

M 42 at a bortle 2 location was great! Last time I imaged the Orion Nebula I struggled with tracking. This time I had fine tracking (for my dobsonian anyway) and I finally got pretty round stars. I got 20 good 15 second exposures at 1600 ISO. After stacking in AstroPixelProcessor and post processing in Pixelmator Pro i got this result:

Around 15 light frames, and 20 dark frames stacked.

NGC 2024 – Flame Nebula

I have tried to observe the Flame Nebula visually many times, and I have failed every time. I was therefore planning to only do some testing photos of the region. I had trouble lining up the finder scope and camera, and I therefore did some visual observing. The nebula showed up surprisingly clear. Bortle 2 skies are really something.

Once back inside I regretted not observing more carefully visually as well as taking several image sequences. The Horsehead Nebula showed up quite clearly in my images, and with the bortle 2 skies, maybe it would have been visible visually as well.

5 lights stacked of the Flame nebula (upper left), Horsehead nebula (lower right) and NGC 2023 in the lower middle center.

M 33 – Triangulum galaxy

The galaxy showed up very clearly, and I got some images. Sadly the tracking worked badly in that region of the sky, and my focus was off. Looking forward to try this again some other time.

Single M33 shot

M 1 – Crab Nebula

I also got some images of the crab nebula. My focus work was not great, and I should use my Powermate next time, to get more nebula data.

NGC 281 – Pacman Nebula

I have tried and never even gotten close to observe this visually before. This night it was visible, and I got few images that were fine. I do not have enough data to stack, but my single ok light frame looks like this:

NGC 869/NGC 884 – Perseus double cluster

This cluster is easy to find, and with little battery left, and tracking that was not working, I decided to do 2 second shots. Stacking those resulted in this, which by far is my best open cluster image to date.

NGC 869 (left) and NGC 884 (right)

Closing thoughts

All in all this was a very rewarding session, and I finally got some deep sky data that was worth it to process. The Orion nebula image turned out way over my expectations.

I am thinking about getting an equatorial mount, and maybe a guide camera, so I can take longer exposures. It was also really great to finally see some of the more difficult nebulae visually.

Here’s to hoping I get a night in 2022 that beats this one.

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Jonas

Hacker and developer that loves to explore topics related to informatics, software engineering, mathematics, graphics, games, science.

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