Fits Available on Cosmic Homebrew

Galaxies

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 20:17:25 +0100

Raw Stacks

Bode’s Galaxy M 81

Bode’s Galaxy M81 is a great target for galaxy season in the northern hemisphere. It is high in the sky rather close to the NCP which makes tracking easy and keeps it visible for a long time during the night. It is one of the few objects where a lot of fine-structure can be seen inside the galaxy. The whole area has a lot of faint dust that my image below does not capture.

Raw stack from PixInsight can be downloaded here. It was calibrated with bias and flat frames. Standard settings from WBPP (2024) were used, incl. CFA drizzle at scale 1. It is slightly oversampled. This is 275x 180s at gain 101. Although I am generally not a fan of AI tools, I used BlurXTerminator for this image.

My processed imaged with details can be found on Astrobin. You can read about the this galaxy here on Wikipedia.

Fireworks Galaxy NGC 6946

The Fireworks Galaxy NGC 6946: This is the result from three nights. It’s amazing to see how fast you can swamp the readnoise with the ASI533MC. The sensitivity seems to be roughly 4x that of my old Nikon D3400. And this is with the uncooled model! Sadly, my seeing is mostly meh. It’s always 3“ at my place. Rarely it’s 2.5“ and similar rarely it’s 3.5“. Kind of boring.

This image was done with a Celestron C8, the original 0.63x reducer/corrector and an ASI533MC (uncooled). Everything was mounted on a Skywatcher HEQ5 (with Rowan Belt Mod) together with 15 kg of counterweights on my backyard pier. During processing I had to toss 40% of my frames from twining the nights due to wind and clouds. The HEQ5 is small for a C8 after all and it wasn’t the best weather. Integration time is a bit over 14 hrs from a three nights.

My processed imaged with details can be found on Astrobin. You can read about the this galaxy here on Wikipedia.

Spiral Galaxy NGC 891

The side-on-visible spiral galaxy NGC 891, also called the Outer Limits Galaxy. I consider it to be a very special object because it’s arguably one of my best images: I like the side-on view with lots of details in the galaxy and the nice colorful stars. This image was done with a Celestron C8, the original 0.63x reducer/corrector and a Nikon D3400 (unmodified). Everything was mounted on a Skywatcher HEQ5 (with Rowan Belt Mod) together with 15 kg of counterweights on my backyard pier. Integration time is a almost 9 hrs from three nights.

My processed imaged with details can be found on Astrobin. You can read about the this galaxy here on Wikipedia.

NGC 2403

The galaxy NGC 2403 s a great target for galaxy season in the northern hemisphere. It is high in the sky rather close to the NCP which makes tracking easy and keeps it visible for a long time during the night. It is one of the less popular but very beautiful objects.

My processed imaged with details can be found on Astrobin. You can read about the this galaxy here on Wikipedia.

Pinwheel Galaxy M 101 (widefield)

Another object that is high in the sky in the northern hemisphere: the Pinwheel Galaxy M101.

This image shows a widefield view of the area. It was acquired with a 20 EUR Sigma zoom lens at 195mm focal length (stopped down to f/7 for better quality) and a unmodified Nikon D3400. Everything was mounted on a Skywatcher HEQ5 (with Rowan Belt Mod). I collected almost 11 hrs over five nights.

Raw stack from PixInsight can be downloaded here. It was calibrated with bias and flat frames. Standard settings from WBPP (2024) were used, incl. CFA drizzle at scale 1. This is 128x 300s subexposures.

My processed imaged with details can be found on Astrobin. You can read about the this galaxy here on Wikipedia.

Nebulas

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 19:13:56 +0200

Raw Stacks

North American Nebula NGC 7000

This image shows a widefield view of the North American and Pelican Nebula are in Cygnus. It was acquired with a 20 EUR Sigma zoom lens at 195mm focal length (stopped down to f/7 for better quality) and a unmodified Nikon D3400. A ZWO Duoband filter was placed in front of the lens. Everything was mounted on a AZ-GTI in EQ mode. I collected data on three nights, some of the Ha data was captured in astronomical twilight.

Processing was done in a special way. Since the duoband filter passes light at Ha and OIII wavelength (12nm and 30nm width) I seperated the RAW data into its individual Bayer matrix components using SplitCFA in PixInsight: Red was assigned to Ha, Green to OIII and Blue also to OIII. The oxygen signal ends up in the blue and green channel because for a typical Bayer matrix, both color channels have a significant overlap. This allows to do a freestyle HOO color combination when processing.

Raw stack from PixInsight can be downloaded here. The zip files contains a stack of the red channel as Ha (132x 300s) and blue/green as OIII (195x300s).

My processed imaged with details can be found on Astrobin. You can read about the this galaxy here on Wikipedia.

Little Dumbell Nebula M 76

The Little Dumbell Nebula M76 is one of the smaller yet interesting objects

My processed imaged with details can be found on Astrobin. You can read about the this galaxy here on Wikipedia.

Star Clusters (Open and Globulars)

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 11:28:11 +0200

Raw Stacks

Double-Cluster_2x30x180s.zip

Double Cluster NGC 864 and NGC 869

The Double Cluster in Perseus consists of two open star clusters NGC 869 and NGC 869. They span around 1° on the sky, which makes them a joy to observe and image in smaller scopes. This image was done with a Celestron C8, the 0.63x reducer/corrector and an ASI533MC (uncooled). The small FOV necessitated making this a mosaic.

Individual stacks can be downloaded here. Each panel is 30x 180s at gain 101.

My processed imaged with details can be found on Astrobin. You can read about the Double Cluster here.