Decided to put the 8mm Peleng to work so I drove up Palomar Mountain around 2 in the morning to catch the summer milky way rising. Conditions were perfect… weather was nice, there was a fog below the mountains that was blocking all the LP and the moon had just set. So even though I had to work in the morning I decided to drive the 1.5 hours up to the top and go for it.

My new Canon T3 will not come to focus with the 8mm, I suspect this is because it is full spectrum modified and I need to adjust the sensor position. No matter, I still have my 350D. Roughly polar aligned the CG-4 and started taking a series of 300sec exposures.

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Did this over two nights with excellent conditions. Wish I had more aperture and a longer focal length for it but I think I got some detail.

Image Location and Date: SDAA dark site @ Tierra Del Sol, CA
Object: NGC4565
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: 29x600sec @ ISO 1600 (4 hours 50 minutes)
Calibration: Darks, flats
Guide scope: 50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight.

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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: 50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight.

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I had gone out to my clubs dark site for several nights to work on a widefield mosaic of the Orion/Gemini area, once that set I had some free time to shot a few objects I’ve always wanted to go for. I noticed Omega Centauri was barely above the mountains to the south around 1 am so I pointed the 6″ and snapped away. Seeing was excellent that night so even though it was very very low the color wasn’t too washed out.

Image Location and Date: OCA dark sky site in Anza, CA on March 22nd, 2012
Object: Omega Centauri
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: 23x120sec @ ISO 800
Calibration: Darks, flats
Guide scope: Tair-3c with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight + Photoshop for final color adjustment.

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This is always a fun target, good test to see how deep I can push the new camera. Pretty damn deep it looks like! You can easily pick out M 84, Ic 3303, Ngc 4387, Ngc 4388, Ngc 4402 , M 86, Ngc 4407, Ngc 4425, Ngc 4435, Ngc 4438, Ngc 4461, Ngc 4473, Ngc 4477, Ngc 4458, M86, M84, Ic 3393 and Ngc 4479. I need to find some reference material to see how deep I’m getting. I also plan on shooting this area again next month in a mosaic from Tierra Del Sol which is a bit darker than Anza.

Image Location and Date: OCA dark sky site in Anza, CA on February 25th, 2012
Object: Markarian’s Chain in the Virgo Galaxy Cluster.
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: 22x600sec @ ISO 800
Calibration: Darks, flats
Guide scope: Tair-3c with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight + Photoshop for final color adjustment.

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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 a choice when I can’t leave work until five and the dark site is three hours away in traffic. Still worth it!

But because it was setting I had a lot of problems with gradients, very tough to get rid of but I think I did a decent job. I must say, my new 1100d is a fantastic camera! I modified it three days after picking it up.

Processing was a challenge because of the gradients. Pixinsight’s DBE tool got quite a workout but I was careful not to get rid of any of the faint dust and gas that IS actually there. I plan on dishing myself some more punishments by creating a mosaic of this region later in March for an art show I was invited to participate in.

Image Location and Date: OCA dark sky site in Anza, CA on February 17th, 24th and 25th, 2012
Object: M78
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: 71x300sec @ ISO 1600
Calibration: Darks, flats
Guide scope: Tair-3c with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight + Photoshop for final color adjustment.

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Image Location and Date: OCA dark sky site in Anza, CA on February 17th, 2012
Object: Leo Triplet. M65, M66 and NGC3628
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Imaging scope: Omni XLT 150mm Newtonian
Imaging FL: 750mm
Imaging focal ratio: f5
Imaging camera: Canon 1100D (Rebel T3) Unmodified
Lights: 28x300sec @ ISO 1600
Calibration: Darks, flats
Guide scope: Vixen 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight + Photoshop for final color adjustment.

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The first entry is rather embarrassing. It was taken on Christmas Eve 2009. I had driven out to Tierra Del Sol by myself for a night of imaging since I didn’t have anything better to do for Christmas. It was cold, clear and dark. I was the only person there and I arrived after sundown so it was quite spooky trying to get my bearings. It was only my third month as a member of SDAA so I was still trying to get the hang of things. Tons of weird noises out in that desert.

I was having issues with my camera control software for my Nikon D60 so I ended up having to take each exposure manually. Since I was using a CG-4 equatorial mount without autoguiding I was limited to 30 second exposures so I had to sit there in the cold pressing the remote release, waiting, pressing the release… waiting… on and on until I decided to pack up. Wind, periodic error and high clouds limited me to around 65 usable frames totaling about 32 minutes in exposure time. Pretty bad considering it was a two hour drive to get there and I was facing another two hours to drive back.

Got home, loaded the images in Deep Sky Stacker and I was blown away.

My second attempt I came better prepared. I had a new mount (Celestron CG5) and an autoguider which enabled me to go up to 5 minutes if conditions were perfect. This particular night (February 5th 2011) was a bit breezy so I had to limit the exposures to 3 minutes. Still much longer than my previous limit of 30 seconds with the CG4. And I still had to throw away about half my frames leaving me with around one hour worth of data. A new Baader Multi Purpose Coma Corrector helped with star elongation on the edges. Fantastic!

Flash forward about a year and I’ve got a new mount (Orion Atlas EQ-G) that allows me to get as long an exposure as I feel like it. Sky conditions at the dark sites I go to limit me to around 10 minutes or so per subframe, a fantastic improvement over what the CG5 was able to do. I’ve got a new camera as well, a Canon 350D modified with a Baader IR filter. My setup is nearly automatic now… I just have to polar align, build my sky model, focus and start shooting. I’ll usually set my alarm when it comes to meridian flip time so I can be certain everything is still lined up… I don’t quite trust auto-meridian flip yet. I got about three hours of data, some in 10 minute exposures with the 60 second and five minute exposures thrown in for the HDR combination. I was wary of blowing out the core as was the case in my first two attempts.

In addition to new equipment I purchased Pixinsight, a fantastic bit of software for processing astronomical images. Learning my way around that has been a bit daunting but as I progress it becomes clear how sophisticated it is compared with other photo editing software such as Photoshop.

I like this image yet I recognize I still have a very long way to go. First order of business is to purchase a newer camera. The 350D was a great camera in 2006 when it was released but there have been tremendous improvements in sensor technology since then. The noise is very hard to control on the 350d and the amp glow in the corners is a nightmare, even with properly applied dark frames. Currently looking at a 450D for it’s low noise and liveview feature.

The image could also use more exposure time, as well as a blend with some hydrogen-alpha data. I could do a better job of taking flat frames and a better job of framing this. But until next year, this is it.

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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 Minutes)
Calibration: Darks
Guide scope: Vixen 8×50mm finder with Orion StarShoot Auto Guider
Other details: guiding with PHD, captured with APT, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in PixInsight + Photoshop for final color adjustment.

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