Pocketrubbish

Finally had a decent night! Last months weather was poor but we got a break last weekend. Perfect conditions all night long. This is a pretty tough target, tons of bright stars combined with super faint dust make processing interesting. I think I may revisit this area soon Image Location and Date: Orange County Astronomers [...]

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Had a go at the Rosette over the last two weekends. I knew it would fill up my frame (and then some) but thats okay, I wanted all the pretty inner details. I captured the RGB last weekend, only got a couple hours because of snow/fog/clouds. Went out last night during the first quarter moon [...]

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Since I moved up to the 800mm focal length scope M42 doesn’t fit neatly into the frame on a APS-C DSLR and since I wanted to image it this season I decided a four frame mosaic was the way to go. This was taken over three nights, got around 3 hours per frame. I used [...]

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Only night I got to out this November was the Friday after Thanksgiving so even though the moon was up until around 2 am I decided to go for it. I captured three hours of HA data until the moon went down using my Astronomik 12nm HA Clip-in filter and then another two hours of [...]

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    Took this over the course of two nights while waiting for the California Nebula to rise. First night had passing clouds for awhile so I can had toss a few frames. CLS filter helped bring out some of the HA around the nebula but I think this would be worth going back and [...]

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This was taken over the course of two nights from Tierra Del Sol, CA. Each frame was 3-4 hours of exposure time except for the top right frame, I only got 2 hours because of passing clouds. I used my CLS-CCD filter which REALLY helps with lining up the frames. No feathering was done on [...]

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What a big difference the CLS filter makes, almost looks like I did hargb. I was lucky enough to get 5 hours on this target from a green zone. DSLR cooler (thanks Stephen!) helped big time with the noise. Image Location and Date: OCA dark site @ Anza, CA Object: Sadr and surrounding nebulosity. Mount: [...]

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Recently took a week off work and since I’m trying not to spend too much money right now I decided to take my vacation at my club’s dark sky site. This is the first of many images I grabbed… nice thing about having six-seven nights to image is that I have no problem focusing on [...]

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Finally got a clear night to image (since I live in socal that means we had some clouds for 2 or 3 day). Temps were very nice for me, not so much for the camera. I need to finish that cooler box! Image Location and Date: OCA dark site @ Anza, CA Object: Cocoon Nebula [...]

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I think this is still a work in progress, looks like I need to get at least four more frames (two up top, two on the bottom) to complete this. So far it is 2×2. Each frame is 2.5 hours worth of integration time with plenty of darks and flats. Image Location and Date: OCA [...]

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Couldn’t help myself. Enjoy the full res version!       *

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Instead of going for my h-alpha/rgb combo with the dual Tair-3s I decided to try to use them for a multi pane mosaic. Integrating the images from the two cameras was easier than I expected with Pixinsight’s registration and mosaic tools. Taken over three nights I have nearly 30 hours of total exposure time, however [...]

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Okay, here goes. I’m going to try my best to remember all the steps I took but I’ll probably leave out a lot of details. This image is actually going to be displayed in an upcoming art show called Stellar that is space themed. AFAIK I’m the only astrophotographer participating out of maybe 30 some [...]

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Image Location and Date: SDAA dark site @ Tierra Del Sol, CA Object: IC1396 Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150mm Newtonian Imaging FL: 750mm Imaging focal ratio: f5 Imaging camera: Canon 1100D (Rebel T3) Modded Lights: CLS Filter 5x1200sec @ ISO 1600, HA 12nm Filter 13x1200sec @ISO1600 Calibration: Darks, flats Guide scope: [...]

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This sure was challenging! Two out of the three nights I arrived late and couldn’t start work until Orion well into the light pollution of north San Diego county. Taking stuff out of the car, polar alignment, mount alignment, focus and framing really eat up my dark sky time but I don’t have much of [...]

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Image Location and Date: OCA dark sky site in Anza, CA on January 17th, 2012 Object: Great Orion Nebula Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150mm Newtonian Imaging FL: 750mm Imaging focal ratio: f5 Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D Lights: 6 x 600sec, 15 x 300sec, 20 x 60sec @ ISO 800 (155 [...]

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Image Location and Date: OCA dark sky site in Anza, CA on January 28th, 2012 Object: Cone Nebula Region Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G Imaging scope: Tair-3c Imaging FL: 300mm Imaging focal ratio: RGB-f8 Ha-f4.5 Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D Lights: 7 x 1200sec, 13 x 600sec Calibration: Darks + Flats Guide scope: Vixen 8×50mm finder [...]

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Still working hard on this. Getting there… This is the first large mosaic I’ve ever worked on and it is quite a tough one. Still working on getting all the background gradients in each frame squared away, you can still see the seam areas. I need to get more data for some of the frames, [...]

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RGB: H-Alpha: Image Location and Date: SDAA dark sky site at Tierra Del Sol on December 31st, 2011 Object: Caldwell 49: The Rosette Nebula. Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G Imaging scope: Tair-3C Imaging FL: 300mm Imaging focal ratio: f4.5 Imaging camera: Modified Canon 350D Lights: 17 x 600sec @ ISO 800 in Hydrogen-Alpha, 13 x 600sec [...]

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I used some data I have for an ongoing mosaic project to throw this together in Pixinsight. One thing I’m missing is reflectivity of the Orion Nebula against the galactic dust background, not sure what happened there. *

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