Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

I captured a wide-field image of the Sadr region using my Rokinon 135mm lens at f/2.8, mounted on a Canon 1300D DSLR camera, which was attached to my Star Adventurer 2i Pro tracking mount. The settings were 45 seconds at ISO 800 for 100 images, with 50 flat frames and 25 dark frames, all stacked in DeepSkyStacker and processed in Siril and GIMP 2.10. I used an intervalometer for camera control and a Bahtinov mask for focusing on a bright star. The image was taken from my backyard in Loughor under Bortle 5 skies.

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The Sadr Region

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 8:51 PM 0 Comments

M16 in HOO palette: A 94 minute total HOO integration using data from 16/6/24 taken with a 60 EDF refractor and additional data taken last night with a W.O, ZS71 refractor. Both data sets were star aligned and stacked/processed in PixInsight.

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M16 HOO palette

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 1:30 PM 0 Comments

A Seestar S50 was used to capture a 3 minute RAW AVI Through a Baader OD 5.0 solar filter and a Baader Ca K-line filter, controlling the exposure 10ms and gain 25 so that the blue channel was not overexposed. The best 75% of the frames were debayered and stacked in Autostakkert!4, wavelet processed in waveSharp and post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

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The Sun in Ca K-line light

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 8:41 PM 0 Comments

M71: Globular cluster in Sagitta - 48 mins of LRGB with an ASI 533MM camera and a William Optics Zenithstar 71mm refractor with a FF. Integration and processing done in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2024.

IC1396: Elephant Trunk nebula in Cepheus - 2 hours of HOO with an ASI 533MM camera and a William Optics Zenithstar 71mm refractor with a FF. Integration and processing done in Pixinsight and Adobe Photoshop 2024.

This was using a different blending mode for HOO in NB Normalisation of PI. 

TCrB (Blaze Star) - 17 mins of LRGB with associated annotated image - taken to monitor brightness prior to expected nova due soon. Imaged with an ASI 533MM camera and a William Optics Zenithstar 71mm refractor with a FF. Integration done in DSS with processing done in Pixinsight.

Moon and planets montage: Mobile phone and MILC camera images of 26 day old Moon showing an 8% waning slender crescent phase with Earthshine. Castor and Pollux in Gemini are above the Moon, with Mars and Jupiter further up. Mobile phone used was an Apple iPhone 11 at F1.8 and 0.5s hand held and the Milc camera images were taken with a Sony ZV-E10 camera mounted on a fixed tripod with a 300mm lens with crescent exposure at just 1/3000s at ISO 6,400 and F6.3 and the Earthshine image at 1/4s with the same ISO and aperture. Processing done in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop 2024.

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 11:29 AM 0 Comments

Montage:

During a members combined maintenance/solar day at the Brian Stokes Cygnus Observatory, the society’s 115mm Triplet was used for solar viewing using a Herschel Wedge and a Player One Apollo-M Mini camera. The PST was also used with the same camera to take Ha images of the Sun. Some large active regions and solar prominences were observed, much to everyone’s delight. The montage shows various white light on the left and Ha to the right.

Full Ha disc: Using Astro DMx Capture an 11,000 frame SER was taken of the Sun in Ha light using a Coronado PST. Some 15% of the images were stacked in Autostackert!4, wavelet sharpened in Registax and post processed in Pixinsight and Adobe 2024.

White Light solar quarter: Just 719 frames were taken in AstroDMx Capture of a quadrant of the Sun using a 115mm Triplet refractor fitted with a Herschel Wedge. A Player One Apollo-M Minin camera was used in conjunction with a 2x Barlow lens to give a closeup image of some of the active regions visible in this area. Again 15% of frames were stacked and processed using the same software. 

White light partial disc image: Some 469 frames were taken in Astro DMx Capture of as much of the Sun's disc that could be fitted into the frame using a 115mm Triplet refractor fitted with a Herschel Wedge using a Player One Apollo-M Minin camera. Once again 15% of frames were stacked and processed using the same software. 

Chris Bowden

posted by astroimager  # 11:18 AM 0 Comments

As we were testing AstroDMx Capture and imaging the Cygnus butterfly nebula at the imaging site at the front of the house, the Seestar S50 was imaging other objects from a flat roof at the back of the house. 36 minutes worth of 10s exposures were captured of M13 and 51 minutes worth of 10s exposures were made of M110, a companion galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy. Software used to process the data was PixInsight, Siril, GraXpert and Gimp 2.10.

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M13 globular cluster

posted by astroimager  # 7:36 PM 0 Comments

I captured the California Nebula using my Rokinon 135MM Prime lens at f2.8, mounted on a Canon 1300D DSLR camera, which was attached to a Star Adventure 2i pro tracking mount. The settings included ISO 800, an exposure time of 45 seconds, 50 flat frames, and 20 dark frames, all stacked in Sequator and processed in Siril and Gimp 2.10. I utilized an intervalometer for camera control and a Bahtinov mask to focus on a bright star. The image was taken under Bortle 5 skies at the Loughor Estuary Foreshore.

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The California nebula

Chris Playle

posted by astroimager  # 3:54 PM 0 Comments

The equipment comprised a William Optics 81 mm ED APO refractor with a 0.8 flattener/reducer ED APO refractor with an Altair magnetic 2" filter holder with an Altair Quadband filter; a  ZWO EAF and an Altair Hypercam 533C 14 bit OSC CMOS camera. The scope was mounted on a Celestron AVX GOTO mount which was controlled by AstroDMx Capture via an INDI server running on a Linux computer indoors.

The mount was placed on permanent marks on the ground which quickly gives quite a good polar alignment if care is taken with the placement of the tripod feet.

An SVBONY SV165 guide scope with a natively connected QHY-5II-M guide camera was used for PHD2 multistar pulse auto-guiding via the INDI server. The auto-guiding was controlled by a separate Linux laptop indoors.

AstroDMx Capture sent the scope/mount to a bright star which was used to focus the scope with a Bahtinov mask. The ZWO AEF was controlled by AstroDMx Capture via the INDI server.

RAW, 5 minute FITs files were captured with AstroDMx Capture for Windows. 45 minutes worth of data were captured on the Forsaken nebula IC5068 and 1 hour 55 minutes worth of data on the Cygnus Butterfly nebula, part of the Sadr nebula centred on the star HD194558 on a separate night

The data were debayered, calibrated, stacked and part processed in PixInsight and Post processed in the Gimp 2.10, Starnet++ or Star Xterminator, GraXpert and ACDSee.

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Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture saving RAW 5 minute exposures of the Forsaken nebula

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture saving RAW data on the Cygnus butterfly nebula

posted by astroimager  # 11:36 AM 0 Comments