Orion Nebula

Improved astrophotography capabilities

My new equipment

After deciding to buy a proper equatorial mount (an SW EQ6-R Pro) with an astrograf , imaging has become much easier. I have also finally learned how to do collimation of mirrors well enough for it not to be a complete nightmare. It is still pretty nightmarish in the cold and dark, but what isn’t.

Guiding (using this camera in my finder scope to track stars) also has helped imaging a lot, since it partially compensates for polar align not being perfect, as well as allowing really long exposures if needed. From the city I do not see polaris, so I just do a very rough polar align and hope guiding deals with the tracking issues. I should probably learn to improve polar align based on mount tracking errors, but it seems like such tedious procedure. I have yet to find the energy to learn it.

The quality curse

One nice thing about lucky imaging DSOs is that most non tracking related image defects are not really a problem, since they are swamped by tracking issues. I was super happy if I got halfway decent data. Now with proper tracking I get really annoyed by tiny technical defects.

Anyway here are my best images from this year so far. I had a lot of fun taking these and editing them. They are all taken with only dark calibration frames, and either using fake flats or no flats. AstroPixelProcessor is magic, all the DSO images are stacked partly post processed using it.

The images

M31 – Andromeda galaxy, as well as M110 and M32. Approximately 2 hours of 180s exposures at 1600 ISO.

M42 – The Orion nebula. I think I managed to nicely balance the very bright core and the rest of the nebula. A mix of 30s and 60s exposures at 800 ISO. In total 1 hour of exposure. Then some creative editing to keep some detail in the core.

Moon, with increased colors saturation to show the different shades of gray reflected. This is 130 images stacked, from a series of 1000 images. It was stacked using PlanetarySystemStacker, which is very neat for us Mac users who otherwise do not really have any great native stacking applications for planetary images.

M45 – Pleiades. This was a hard edit since it was taken from bortle 6 skies with no filters or anything. UGC 2838 is also visible in the upper right part of the image. That is one pretty faint galaxy!

I am bitten so hard by this hobby so expect more astrophotography related content. I will try and post other stuff as well, but this is way too much fun.

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.

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.

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.

Less light pollution; better photos.

So I finally got to try to take astro photographies from somewhere with less light pollution. I still have trouble with movement from either my tracking lagging a bit, or me not having a remote control for the camera (so I cause movement in the telescope when I start the shot).

M42 – Orion Nebula again

M42 is so easy to find observe and shoot. I also finally got to see some of the Flame Nebula, by doing a 30 seconds exposure into what looked like nothing at all. It sadly did not turn out very well because of movement in the camera, but I finally saw something! Anyway, here is my M42 shot. Getting better at this!

M42 20s exposure with pretty much no editing. Increased contrast a bit and moved the black point.

M31 – Andromeda Galaxy

The moon would easily fit in this picture, but the Andromeda galaxy takes more space, so this is mostly the core and some of the arms. I think I could fit most of the galaxy if I had rotated the camera. I randomly also caught M32 (barely visible at the left edge) and M110 (in the lower right corner). Looking forward to try Andromeda with an even longer exposure, or many stacked images.