Got this data July 30th - 3h 40minutes total
Askar D1 and D2 filters, Sharpstar 13028HNT and Touptek 2600C
More details in AstroBin: https://app.astrobin.com/i/trmotf
Stacked and processed in PI. ADBE on both, star correction, sharpening, extract S/H/O channels, recombine into color using SetiAstro's perfect palette picker (dynamic inverse)
Do you think it's Foolish to image at full moon?
IC 63, The Ghost of Cassiopeia in HaLRGB
Taken in rural Eastern Ontario, Bortle 4.5
Gear: QHY 268M, ZWO 107FF 4'' refractor, Optolong LRGBHa filters
Acquisition last week
RGB 48min each, L 4h, Ha 2.5h
Processed in Pixinsight and Affinity Photo 2
This is St. Andrews United Church in a small border village between Ontario and Quebec, Canada. It's colloquially called Round Church (and it's located on a Round Church road, which is cute). It's an octagonal structure, so I'd say that is well close enough.
Anyway, here's my experiment with a Canon RP full frame camera and 50mm prime lens at f/1.7
Ground and sky taken separately from the same location on the same night. Was I not in focus by accident, or was it an artistic choice?? Hmmm.
Introducing IC5146 - Cocoon Nebula
This region uniquely combines an emission nebula (glowing red from hydrogen gas ionized by young stars), a reflection nebula (glowing blue where starlight scatters off interstellar dust), and dark absorption nebulae. Visually, the nebula appears at the end of a long, dark trail of cold molecular dust known as Barnard 168 (B168), which blocks out the background stars of the Milky Way. The glow of the cocoon is driven by a massive, extremely young central star named BD +46°3474. This hot, B-type star is only about 100,000 years old and is carving out a cavity in its parent molecular cloud.
I've been working/staring at this for the last two days and as usual, I can't tell what's good or bad anymore, so I'm posting my most recent processing attempt. This has probably been one of my most involved trial and error data processing so far. If you're interested in this sort of thing I'll leave a short description of the processing steps I used.
The data has been captured using monochrome astrophotography camera in combination with color filters that isolate, or capture a certain light wavelength that corresponds to different colors - in my case those filters were (R)ed, (B)lue, (G)reen, (Lum)inance [this is the sum total of all light combined, virtually amounts almost no light being filtered out] and (H)ydrogen-alpha, the near-infrared color that active nebulae emit.
The gist of working with these captured colors is to
- combine the RGB filters, clean up the image
- clean up the Luminance image
- remove stars from both RGB and Lum images, discard Lum stars as we don't need them
- process, color balance, add contrast and do some other adjustments on both starless RGB and Lum images
- combine Lum and RGB into one - this gives maximum color and structure to the image
- clean up the Hydrogen-alpha image, process it separately
- combine Hydrogen-alpha with LRGB image from previous steps for the close to the final result
- make a sacrifice to astronomy gods to retain your sanity
- make final color grading and other color balance adjustments to the final image
- contemplate all the choices that lead you to this point in your life
I hope this glimpse behind the curtains provided some entertainment value. As always, I appreciate all your support in this journey, thank you!
P.S.
ZWO FF107 4'', 750mm focal length, IMX571, Optolong filters, average guiding RMS 0.8
Ha: 7.5h
R / G / B: 1.5h each
Lum: 4h
A lovely night spent the other day at the local lavender farm (LouLou Lavender) in Eastern Ontario, Canada
A blue hour focus bracketed shot for the foreground and about 15 minutes worth of Milky Way 30s shots, at 24mm focal length and f/4, sat on MSM Nomad star tracker🙏
Taken over last week in my home area, South Glengarry, ON, Canada. If you like this consider following me here or on Facebook https://facebook.com/the.rural.photons
Shot across the road from my home, Bortle 4.5, rural Eastern Ontario, Canada. Tripod, Canon RP, 24mm f/4 stack of 45 images 10s each. Stacked in Sequator and blended in Affinity Photo 2
It's crazy how little nighttime we have close to the Solstice!
This was shot last week over two clear nights we had here in Eastern Ontario.
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ZWO 107FF 4 inch refractor, QHY268M mono camera.
Acquisition: R, G, B filters 40 minutes each, Luminance 3h and Hydrogen alpha 30 minutes.
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Stacked and processed in Pixinsight: combined RGB, extracted background from RGB, L, Ha, Continuum subtracted Ha from R in RGB, added resulted pure Ha to RGB in linear. Stretched HaRGB and L separately, combined L into HaRGB.
THE ELEPHANT TRUNK NEBULA
The sky gods have not been too kind to astrophotographers this year for us here in Eastern Canada, but patience is the name of the game. The amount of times my wife had asked me "Why are you doing this to yourself?" when I say "it stopped working I gotta go check, be back soon" is so high it's funny. But she knows I like it and the end results most times are worth all the tediousness that comes with this technical and at times capricious pasttime.
Anyway, that being said allow me to introduce the star of today's post -- The Elephant’s Trunk Nebula (IC 1396A) is one of the sky’s most fascinating star-forming regions. Located about 2,400 light-years away in Cepheus, this dark, dusty pillar is part of the larger IC 1396 complex. Powerful ultraviolet radiation from nearby young stars is compressing and reshaping the gas, creating the iconic trunk-like form while also sparking the birth of new stars within it. It’s a striking example of how stellar energy can both destroy and create at the same time. 🌌✨
This particular image is composed of three stacks of images around 6h of data each, totaling 17h altogether. The camera I used is a monochrome camera that requires the use of filters to capture a particular spectra of light at a time, then combine those spectra images, assign them to Red Green Blue color channels in a particular way thus composing a color image.
Equipment used was ZWO 107FF telescope, petzval design quintuplet refractor, QHY268M mono camera, and for this project, three narrowband filters that capture color emitted from specific chemical elements, Oxygen3, Sulphur2 and Hydrogen-alpha. These particular element lines are only widely present in "emission nebulas", or stellar nurseries with chemically active spaces.
Apologies for the lengthy post, I hope you find these tidbits interesting to read and observe.
Love me some Ophiuchis. What a treat for the eyes. Or a fever dream if overcooked... Please tell me how you feel about this rendition?! 😀 The damned thing only goes as high as 20 degrees in the aky out here.
Anyway, this is a 2 panel mosaic taken from Bortle 4.5 sky in Eastern Ontario, Canada. One panel is around 8h of acquisition, and another about 3h. I used a Sharpstar 61 III Apochromatic refractor with 0.75 reducer and ToupTek 2600C color camera with IMX571 sensor.
Acquired over 6 nights in total this year.
Stacked panels separately in Pixinsight. Did star correction, ADBE, background neutralization, then mosaic by coordinates, photometric mosaic, plate solved, SPCC, separated stars out, multiscale adaptive stretch, a lot of GHS and curves, dark structure enhance, stretched stars with SetiAstro star stretch. Combined in Affinity Photo 2 layers based editor, some final adjustments there and voila!
Eastern Ontario, Cooper's Marsh Conservation Authority.
Ground: blue hour
Sky: 100x10s f/4 iso1600
Sky: Canon RP 90x10s f/4 iso1600 untracked
Ground: focus stacked panorama at blue hour each panel 1/40s f/20 iso400
Honestly very impressed with Jaskier costume from Aliexpress 👀
Captured with Coronado SolarMax 90 single etalon using SharpCap's planetary live stacking timelapse mode.
The activity in top left sunspot is intense - a few M-flares, I think
Hello friends!
This is my take on the Messier 104 - The Sombrero Galaxy
Taken in Eastern Ontario, Canada, Bortle 4.7 skies
This target doesn't really go high in the sky for us, so getting good data is sometimes a challenge.
I shot this on a ZWO FF107 4 inch refractor with a IMX571 sensor monochrome camera. Total integration is 4h on luminance, 40min R and B, 10 minutes G filters
Stacked and processed in Pixinsight and Darktable
8 hours split between 4 nights with Ophiuchis being between 17 and 20° above the horizon, the highest they go in my location.
Birtle 4.7, Eastern Ontario, Canada
ClearSky ST-20 mount, Sharpstar 61 III APO + 0.75 reducer
IMX571 with IDAS LP3 filter
Stacked and processed in Pixinsight and Darktable