Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

A fair few members attended the Brian Stokes Cygnus Observatory for some early sightings of the annual Perseid meteor shower on the night of the 11th August - one night ahead of the expected peak due to adverse weather forecast for the night of the 12th. Despite some clouds and a few light showers, quite a few fainter meteors wee seen and one extremely bright fireball at 23:37 which amazed and delighted attendees.as it streaked across the sky blazing bright as it fragmented and exploded in the sky behind some broken clouds.The image was one of 175 x 50s time-lapse images taken with a Sony A77 Milc camera using a 16mm F2.8 lens shot at ISO 1000. The camera was driven with an AstroTrac mounted on a fixed tripod.

Click on an image to get a closer view

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 5:30 PM 0 Comments

The Eastern veil nebula. Settings were ISO 3200, 1min 20s exposure using my 1300DLSR Canon camera,the camera was mounted on an 80ED APO Skywatcher refractor telescope with a field flattener and a 2inch Optolong L-eNhance filter. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 GOTO Mount. I used a Bahtinov mask for focusing on a bright star and an intervalometer to control the camera.The image is a stack of 150 images, 20 flat frames, 25 dark frames and 35 Bias frames all stacked in DSS and Processed in Gimp 2.10 and Free photo noise .

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The Eastern Veil nebula

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 4:37 PM 0 Comments

Following a change out of my guide camera to a QHY5P-II C model I was glad of some clear conditions on the night of the 9th August to set it up, calibrate and optimise it. With guiding established I used my main imaging camera (an ASI 533MM Pro) to take some tests images of M16 (The Eagle nebula) in Ha; shooting just 8 mins of data (4 x 2 min subs) which looked fine in this rich hydrogen region of the Milky Way. I then went on to image M31 (the Andromeda galaxy) in RGB shooting half a dozen images with each filter, giving a little over half an hour’s worth of data in total (18 x 2 min subs) which also looked fine. Finally I used the remaining hours of night time to shoot some OIII and SII data (9 x 4 min OIII & 10 x 4 min SII) of the Soul nebula (IC1848) to complete an SHO composition of the nebula using the Ha data I had taken on the 7th August.

The Eagle nebula

Whilst imaging I also used a Sony A77 Milc camera driven by an AstroTrac on a fixed tripod to take some time lapse data of the sky using a 16mm lens to try to capture any early Perseid meteors. I set up my deckchair for some comfortable viewing and despite seeing several bright meteors, my camera was pointed the wrong way to capture all but one (as is usual for such undertakings!) I attach the image showing the meteor captured at 02:09 hrs which can be seen in the lower right of the frame during this 30s exposure with the camera set to ISO 3200 and F2.8. The wide field image afforded by the 16mm lens used covers some 85 x 48° of sky and due to the high sensitivity settings used also captured M31 and M33 galaxies amongst others in the frame. The glare of the last quarter moon was partly shielded by the house, but caused an all over sky glow.

Capturing Perseids

M16 was stacked in DSS and processed in Pixinsight and Adobe CS2. M31 and IC1848 were stacked in Pixinsight and processed in Pixinsight and Adobe CS2. The single meteor image was processed in Adobe CS2.

posted by astroimager  # 2:36 PM 0 Comments

I reprocessed our image from August 7th to give better definition and colour to the Pillars of creation region.

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The Eagle nebula

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 12:56 AM 0 Comments

I took this image around 9am this morning. Best 20% of 2000 frames. Not as much activity as I've seen on other images recently. Stacked in Autostakkert, sharpened etc in IMPPG, then completed in PS3.

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Anne Startup

posted by astroimager  # 12:02 PM 0 Comments

A Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom bridge camera fitted with an ICE ND100000 solar filter and mounted on a static tripod was used to capture 254 images of the Sun. The images were precisely cropped in Nicola Mackin's AstroCrop before being Stacked in Siril, wavelet processed in Registax 5.1 and post processed in Gimp 2.10 and Image Magick.

Click on the image to get a closer view.

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager  # 8:45 PM 0 Comments

M17 The Omega, or the Swan nebula. I used a 1300D DLSR Canon camera. Settings were 1 min at 3200 ISO. The camera was mounted on an 80ED APO Skywatcher refractor telescope with a field flattener and a 2 inch Optolong L-eNhance filter. The telescope was mounted on an EQ5 GOTO Mount. I used a Bahtinov mask for focusing on a bright star, and an intervalomerter to control the camera. The image is a stack of 140 images, 20 flat frames and 25 dark frames, stacked in DSS and processed in Gimp 2.10 and Free Photo Noise.  The image was taken down in Pitton cross campsite on the Gower peninsula under Bortle three skies. 

posted by astroimager  # 1:57 PM 0 Comments

Stack of 1 hours worth of 5 minute exposures captured with AstroDMx Capture, using a Stella Mira 66 ED APO refractor with a field flattener and Altair magnetic 2" filter holder with an Altair Quadband filter and a SV405CC OSC 14 bit CMOS camera. The data were calibrated, registered, stacked and part processed in Siril; post processed in The Gimp 2.10, Starnet++, Neat image and PhotoScape X Pro.

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The Western Veil Nebula and Pickering's Triangle

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 10:32 PM 0 Comments

The Eagle nebula. Stack of 1 hours worth of 5 minute exposures captured with AstroDMx Capture, using a Stella Mira 66 ED APO refractor with a field flattener and Altair magnetic 2" filter holder with an Altair Quadband filter and a SV405CC OSC 14 bit CMOS camera. The data were calibrated, registered, stacked and part processed in Siril; post processed in The Gimp 2.10, Starnet++, Neat image and PhotoScape X Pro.

Click on the image to get a closer view

M16 the Eagle nebula

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 4:55 PM 0 Comments

To find out why the target had been only partially framed by plate solving, I retraced my steps from the night before setting up the scope on my lawn to be able to acquire the target without being obstructed by the house. I shot one test Ha frame and as suspected NINA was off target and cropped the nebula as it did the night before, so I re-framed the nebula manually to fit it all in the frame.

I intended replicating the SHO data set to match the previous night's set from Fairwood, but only managed 9 x 4 min Ha subs before being clouded out. I used DSS to do a quick mosaic stack of the combined Ha data only including the 7 x Ha 4 min sub data taken at Fairwood the previous night. The image was then processed in Pixinsight and Adobe CS2. A montage of some screen dumps taken during last night's capture process shows the issue comparing my results from the previous night. This was a useful exercise and one to watch out for next time when using NINA to target the Soul nebula!

The Ha only composition comprises 16 x 4 min subs (just over an hours total exposure) taken with an ASI 533mm Pro camera fitted to an Altair 60 EDF doublet refractor fitted with a 0.8 x FR.

posted by astroimager  # 4:28 PM 0 Comments

Several members enjoyed a fine night at the Brian Stokes Cygnus Observatory sharing knowledge and viewing a range of objects including the Moon, Saturn and Jupiter and quite a few early Perseid meteors. The ideal conditions after storm Antonio produced clear skies and fine views of the Milkyway prior to the waning gibbous moon rising. Several narrow band images were taken through 60mm and 73mm refractors with both mono and OSC cameras until first light.

Click on an image to get a closer view

Altair 60mm doublet refractor with 0.8 x FR fitted with an ASI 533mm Pro camera and SHO filters. Data acquired with NINA and processed in Pixinsight.

Omega nebula M17 – 47 x 3 min SHO subs (2.35hrs total exposure)

                  Pinwheel galaxy M101 and supernova SN 2023ixf  9 x 2 min luminance subs (18 mins total exposure)

Soul nebula (IC1848) – 21 x 4 min subs (1.4hrs total exposure) 

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 9:12 PM 0 Comments

A Panasonic Lumix DMCFZ72, 60x optical zoom bridge camera fitted with an ICE ND100000 solar filter and mounted on a static tripod was used to capture 150 images of the Sun. The images were precisely cropped in Nicola Mackin's AstroCrop before being Stacked in Siril, wavelet processed in WaveSharp and post processed in Gimp 2.10.

Click on the image to get a closer view

posted by astroimager  # 1:52 PM 0 Comments