September 28, 2010

Widefield Orion’s Sword in HaRGB – APOD 5th October 2010!!

(Welcome to all the NASA APOD visitors for today, 5th October 2010)

The image here is the outcome of an idea that started last week, when I saw Maurice Toet’s 4 pane Mosaic of Orion’s sword area, and realised that it matched almost exacty the area I imaged in Hydrogen Alpha at Kelling Heath a few weeks back. Maurice was kind enough to provide me with the TIF file of the mosaic, and I set to work in combining the two sets of data.

Using Registar, PixInsight and CS2, and adding in some Hydrogen Alpha data as luminance for B33 and NGC2024 from Darren Jehan and Tim Jardine, the many many hours of trial and error produced the following image. It was an absolute joy to work on, and I am not sure it could be improved all that much without a major rework from scratch. It is one of those images that require a decently calibrated monitor, as my laptop screen shows it too light and salmon pink, while my decent screens at home and at work all show a vibrant Ha red in the background.

The details for the image data used in this final version is listed after the image. I would like to thank Maurice, Darren and Tim for all helping this project by allowing me to use their data.

(Click on image for larger version)

RGB Mosaic Data
Name: Maurice Toet
OTA: Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5
Imaging: Q453-HR (QHY8)
Mount: Losmandy GM-8
Taken from : Etoile St. Cyrice, Hautes-Alpes, France
Date: January 25 – 26 and 27 – 28, 2009
Web: www.dutchdeepsky.com

Widefield Hydrogen Alpha data
Name: Steve Loughran
OTA: Borg 60 @ f/3.8
Imaging: SXVF M25C
Mount: EQ6
Taken from: Kelling Heath Star Party
Date: September 12th, 2010
Web: www.steves-astro.com

RGB M42/M43/NGC1977 data (used as Luminance)
Name: Steve Loughran
OTA: Skywatcher 190 MakNewt @ f/5.3
Imaging: QHY8
Mount: EQ6
Taken from: Cambridge, UK
Date: December 6th, 2008
Web: www.steves-astro.com

Horsehead (B33) Hydrogen Alpha data (used as Luminance)
Name: Darren Jehan
OTA: 12″ f/4 newtonian
Imaging: SXVF-H9
Mount: EQ6
Taken from: Kelling Heath Star Party
Date: September 12th, 2010
Web: darrenjehan.me.uk

Flame (NGC2024) Hydrogen Alpha data (used as Luminance)
Name: Tim Jardine
OTA: Celestron C9.25 @ ~f/6
Imaging: SX H9
Mount: EQ6
Taken from: Coventry,UK
Date: December 1st, 2009

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September 13, 2010

Heart and Soul from kelling

Another image from the Kelling star party. Due to the massive field of view on this, PoleAlignMax bombs out with some error message, and Pinpoint gets a bit upset too. As such, I wasnt abler to use CCD Commander to plate solve and recenter at the correct co-ords… so the image is not quite where I`d like it to be, but it will do.

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 60 @ f/3.8
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + Maxim
Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 7 x 900s, Baader 7nm Ha (51 bias, 51 flats)
Orchestrated: CDD Commander
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2 + PixInsight

(Click on image for larger version)

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September 13, 2010

Horsehead/Flame/M42 from Kelling

After a whopping 110 days without getting outside with my astro kit (various reasons), the skies cleared at Kelling on Saturday and allowed me to grab some imaging time again. It was also the first light for my newly aquired Borg 60, which performed just as I had imagined it would 🙂

Here is one of the two images I am working on at the moment.

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 60 @ f/3.8
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + Maxim
Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 8 x 600s, Baader 7nm Ha (51 bias, 51 flats)
Orchestrated: CDD Commander
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2 + PixInsight

Unsure how this will look on your monitor, it looks OK on my calibrated laptop, OK on my calibrated secondary monitor, but the jpg version looks much darker for some reason.

(Click on image for larger version)

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