Chris Howard's Blog, page 24
May 23, 2021
NGC 1499 California Nebula in Ha + SII. While the clouds and...
NGC 1499 California Nebula in Ha + SII. While the clouds and rain hang about, I’m reprocessing some data from late last year. False color imaging is fascinating, and I’m retrying the bi-color, Hydrogen-alpha and Sulfur 2 made up of Red and Blue with equal parts Green. The dark clouds of interstellar dust and pockets of hydrogen stand out more this time. NGC1499 is an emission nebula in the constellation Perseus, about 1000 lightyears away from us. https://SaltwaterWitch.com
May 20, 2021
New Astro Project of the Week video is live!
New Astro Project of the Week video is live! I am exploring ways to make an inexpensive Flat Frame Light, starting with a smallish one that will work with the #SpaceCat or #RedCat 51s and other small refractors. Also works with your DSLR lenses!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4cVx7ZnvB0
May 16, 2021
Coathanger Cluster and Dark Nebulae - That’s why our...
Coathanger Cluster and Dark Nebulae - That’s why our galaxy is called the Milky Way. The starfield is so dense along the galactic plane, especially as you move toward the core, that the merged brightness of stars is all you see. This is a shot of the “coathanger” cluster–that’s the four stars making a hook in the center with the line of stars running underneath (Al Sufi’s Cluster, Brocchi’s Cluster, Cr 399). The dark clouds in this frame are just that, massive clouds of interstellar dust, molecular hydrogen, and other debris that swirls around our galaxy between the stars–especially between us and these stars–because that’s pretty much everything else. It’s dust and stars. There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way and as you look toward the center, you are looking through a hundred-thousand lightyears of the stellar disk–everything that orbits in the galaxy with us. We’re 27,000 lightyears out from the core, so you are looking through that as well as everything orbiting on the other side of the core. Yup, it’s a bunch of stars, as many as 400 billion just in our galaxy.
I will admit to not being a star cluster guy. Some of them are absolutely fascinating, but they’re just not my thing. You show me some dark nebulae, anything from the Barnard Catalog or Lynd’s Dark Nebula Catalog, and I’m there. There are a few stand-out dark nebulae below this frame to the right (LDN 770, 778), but there a batch in this frame including LDN 740, and lower left LDN 741, 745.
Notes: This is 81 x 60-second sub-exposures stacked in DSS and processed in PS2021. Equipment: William Optics SpaceCat 51 APO refractor, ZWO ASI071MC, no filters, DeepSkyDad AF3 focuser, iOptron CEM25P mount.
May 15, 2021
Did some astro-imaging last night! I think of narrowband imaging...
Did some astro-imaging last night! I think of narrowband imaging as my thing, but it’s always fun to use the cooled color camera on what are typically narrowband deep sky targets–the emission nebula NGC 7000 (North America Nebula) in this case. You can probably see why it’s called the North America Nebula. To the right of it is the Pelican Nebula (IC 5070) with IC 5068 on the lower right. As you can see, I also managed to capture a few stars. That bright area in the upper right is one of the brightest stars in the sky, Deneb, encroaching on the frame. This is 42 x 2-minute sub-exposures stacked in DSS and processed in PS2021. Equipment: William Optics SpaceCat 51 APO refractor, ZWO ASI071MC, no filters, DeepSkyDad AF3 focuser, iOptron CEM25P mount.
April 24, 2021
Finally finished setting up the astro gear. This is the...
Finally finished setting up the astro gear. This is the narrowband rig with the ZWO EAF (new version) instead of the Moonlite focus motor and controller. I’m hoping for enough clear sky tonight to polar align and maybe take some test shots. The moon is nearly full, and then we’re heading into rain tomorrow–so, I’ll take what I can get.
March 3, 2021
An old sketch of Kassandra and Ephoros–and a goofy looking...
An old sketch of Kassandra and Ephoros–and a goofy looking fish in the background. I’m looking through my old art folders, and some cool stuff in here.
November 23, 2020
Seagull Nebula (IC 2177 and NGC 2327) in the Constellation Canis...
Seagull Nebula (IC 2177 and NGC 2327) in the Constellation Canis Major. 60 x 240sec sub-exposures in Hydrogen-alpha. Gear notes: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mount, William Optics GT81 Apochromatic Refractor 392mm at f/4.7, ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro monochrome camera, Astronomik 6nm filters, Moonlite focuser, Raspberry Pi 4 4GB / 128GB running INDI/KStars/Ekos
November 17, 2020
M81 and M82 - After the earth rotates Orion and Monoceros out of...
M81 and M82 - After the earth rotates Orion and Monoceros out of view in the south, I’m not left with a lot of nebulae to go after other than the very faint diffuse nebula Sh 2-240 in Taurus and maybe a couple others. There are a bunch of galaxies though… But with the scope I’m using for nebulae (William Optics GT81 with 392mm focal length), most are too small. M81 (Bode’s Galaxy) and M82 (Cigar Galaxy) however, are just large enough to capture. This shot is made up of 30 x 60-second subs in Hydrogen-alpha, Green, and Blue filters that I’ve mapped to RGB. With the Ha filter you lose some of that broadband Red light, but the trade-off (better IMO) is you capture any large H2 regions in the galaxies. Those are the red and pink chunky bits in Bode’s Galaxy and a lot more of that “starburst” core of the Cigar Galaxy—so, basically I’m capturing nebulae in someone else’s galaxy, almost 12 million lightyears away from us. Cool. Both of these Messier Objects are in the Constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper). Gear notes: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mount, William Optics GT81 Apochromatic Refractor 392mm at f/4.7, ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro monochrome camera, Astronomik 6nm filters, Moonlite focuser, Raspberry Pi 4 4GB / 128GB running INDI/KStars/Ekos.
November 16, 2020
From the November 15 imaging run. The Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237)...
From the November 15 imaging run. The Rosette Nebula (NGC 2237) in the Constellation Monoceros is another deep sky object I typically capture every year–at least once! Trailing Orion across the sky, it’s over a 100 light-years across and about 5000 lightyears away from us. 50 x 240 second sub-exposures in Ha. Gear notes: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mount, William Optics GT81 Apochromatic Refractor 392mm at f/4.7, ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro monochrome camera, Astronomik 6nm filters, Moonlite focuser, Raspberry Pi 4 4GB / 128GB running INDI/KStars/Ekos More of my Astro stuff here: https://SaltwaterWitch.com
November 15, 2020
California Nebula in Ha + SII, Tuesday night I captured 50 x...
California Nebula in Ha + SII, Tuesday night I captured 50 x 4-minute sub-exposures in Hydrogen-alpha for NGC 1499 (California Nebula) and last night I captured 60 x 240 second exposures in Sulfur 2 (SII), combining them here into a color image, with Ha in red, SII in blue, and each shared equally across the green channel of an RGB image. There just isn’t any OIII (Oxygen) in the mix for this massive emission nebula in the Constellation Perseus. Gear notes: SkyWatcher EQ6-R Pro mount, William Optics GT81 Apochromatic Refractor 392mm at f/4.7, ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro monochrome camera, Astronomik 6nm filters, Raspberry Pi 4 4GB / 128GB running INDI/KStars/Ekos
