Last Night's Astro Image

Have to admit that I haven't got a clue about nebula this and that or ha filters but just looking at the photos makes me think about the scale of everything, if I look up at home I can only see a few stars, so to see just how many stars are out there is mind numbing, by the way, please don't correct me about what are stars and what are other things, I just like there beauty and can live happily not knowing the difference.

Great thought producing photos Neil.

Thanks Ian, if you can get to see the winter night sky in the Lake District, Exmoor, Elan Valley, Kielder Forest or most of Scotland.

Worth the trip if you know it will be clear.

Neil

I added Oiii and Sii layers to the Ha image above to get this false-colour image. Hydrogen (red) is pretty much all the bright areas, green is sulphur, which gives gold with the red. Oxygen is blue, which was magenta but tweaked to make it appear blue so it stands out more.

Looks quite spectacular, but actually has quite a lot of faults...

Might be more of these with my workshop going into hibernation for a while

Neil

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Plenty good enough to impress the majority of us, Neil

MichaelG.

Narrowband HSO image:

Compare to this (over sharpened) DSLR image I posted with great pride in 2015:

Wow. If I could just capture that image into a ring, it would look good.

If I flew my starship to some point where the nebula would show around that size, then dropped out of hyperspace and switched off the lights, which if either of those images would be closest to what I'd see?

If you look at Orion's sword, the middle of the three stars is a bit fuzzy - that's the 'bird shaped' nebula in the images. It's about the size of the full moon from earth, but we only see the brightest part with the naked eye.

Getting closer wouldn't make the darkest parts any more visible, but the pink/white part of the top photo which is visible might show the blue/greenish tinge which is sometimes visible through a telescope.

The very centre is densely filled with stars and very bright. If you got close enough it would resolve into spectacular, bright, details.

Hmmmm... well, I've seen it through my 6" Celestron, but IIRC there wasn't much colour apparent.

I think I'll get out the starship and take a gander as soon as my dilithium crystals arrive.

So the darker red cloudy parts probably wouldn't be visible even from somewhere closer in space?

Well not quite at Neil's level but last night my 11 year old and I went out to take a photo of Venus and the crescent moon with an SLR and a 50mm lens. It wasn't that spectacular but what we did get was a busy night for satellites. Just about every other photo we took had one or more satellites on it. On the first two they show satellites moving close together and on a parallel track. Do you think this could be space junk? Maybe a satellite and nose cone for instance. Top right corner in the first photo.

If you have an i pad look out for an app called night sky. Not only does it show planets, stars, galaxies etc. but also all satelites and space junk and can show the night sky from any point on earth. It will also show infra red and microwave.

Edited By Eric Cox on 28/03/2020 10:18:16

Possibly not!

| Posted by Buffer on 28/03/2020 08:49:11:

On the first two they show satellites moving close together and on a parallel track. Do you think this could be space junk? Maybe a satellite and nose cone for instance. Top right corner in the first photo.

:

I There are more and more 'formations' of satellites ruining the sky now, mostly courtesy of Elon Musk.

Neil

We have had a few decent nights recently, a couple of the results:

The intended target, the Cone Nebul is just poking into the top of this shot, I think this is the 'Fox Fur' nebula.

This the the 'Leo Triplet' of galaxies, the one at the bottom is the 'Hamburger Galaxy':

And M51, the 'Whirlpool Galaxy':

Nice stuff Neil! "Amateur" astrophotography certainly has come a long way over the last few decades. Decent CCDs I guess (?)

CMOS!

Most of the pics I've posted were done using a modified DSLR, although I've switched to using a cooled mono camera with filters now.

From Friday night (we've had an amazing run of clear nights):

Neil

I see Venus is in the Severn Sisters tonight. Are you planning to get an image?

Rich

I decided it was too cloudy, but a mate got some nice images by cloud dodging.

Neil

Another few clear nights:

M106:

M101:

And a few views of the moon.

B&W:

The above combined with red, green and blue filters:

And finally using narrowband filters for sulphur, hydrogen and oxygen giving a slightly different result:

Over the last week I imaged a lot of subjects for my Messier Object collection.

M13, the Great Cluster in Hercules is a bit special so it got extra imaging (and processing) time.

Right click and 'view image' then zoom in, this is about 1/5 full size (1/25 by area!)

Neil