NGC6888

The Crescent Nebula

     This is an image I captured last fall I had forgotten about.   Taken over two nights using  my Modded Canon T3i (600D).  One evening I gathered 12, 600sec. frames @ 1600iso using a 12nm Ha filter, and the second I captured 12, 360sec, frames @ 1600iso in RGB.  Both sets of images were stacked and processed using PhotoShop CC.   

NGC6888 captured using my Tele Vue NP101 from Sherkston ON.

  

Goodby Jupiter

Looks like imaging Jupiter is over for the season.  I did manage to get a few more attempts,  Last Saturday I was hoping to capture a double moon transit, and the Great Red Spot.  Well the clouds rolled in before that all happened, but I did capture two of its moons. I also seem to be getting better at capturing and processing planetary images as well.

Ganymede & Io

Great Red Spot

Coming Soon

Saturn   

Jupiter Time

     With Jupiter at it's closest to distance to Earth this year, I decided to change things up and try imaging it.  

Telescope::: Tele Vue NP101 with a 3 x Barlow

Camera::: Celestron NexImage 5

Processing::: RegiStax6 and Photoshop CC

I captured 4000 frame AVI's and in RegiStax I stacked the best 200 frames.

First Image of 2017

     It wasn't the greatest night for imaging, but this was my last chance to capture Mars and Neptune in the same picture.  This image was taken with my Tele Vue NP101 and Canon T3i.  Actually I think the haze might have improved the image.  If you look closely at Neptune you will see a tiny speck, that isn't a star,  it is Triton, one of Neptune's moons.

 

 

 

    

ISS Transiting the Sun

This past summer I was told of a great website (ISS Transit Finder).  Inputting your Lat. and Lon. it will calculate if and when the ISS will cross between you and the Sun, and Moon.  So I punched my data and "bingo" there was going to be a pass, actually 2 passes came up, a week apart.  I decided to try capturing this event.  Well the weather wasn't good for the first pass, but I set up anyway.  I set up my Lunt LS60-THa solar scope with a MallinCam Micro ex.  What I needed to do is capture a video of the transit.  The actual transit takes less than 1 second.  in this case it was .54 sec.  Even with the skies so poor I figured I would try a test run.  I wasn't even sure how accurate this info was going to be.  I had a few friends over to witness this event.  Just as it was time for the transit the clouds thinned a bit.  We didn't see a thing.  But after playing back the video we did catch a glimpse of the ISS.  Wow, this actually worked.  The fallowing week the weather was perfect.  I was already to go.  I was sertup like the previous week with the Lunt solar scope.  I started capturing the video and with in a second there it went.  

I took the captured AVI video and used the 20 frames that showed the ISS transit.  Using RegiStax this is what I was able to get.  Next time I will speed up the frame rate of the camera to get a better image.

 

Imaging in Ha

Its been a while since Ive posted any images. Sorry.   This past fall I started imaging with a 12nm Ha filter. This type of filter only allows Hydrogen's deep red light to pass threw to the camera.  This is very useful for imaging very faint nebulae. Even under moon lit skies.  The only drawback is you need to double your exposure times or double the iso.  These images where comprised of 10 min. exposures @ 1600iso. In processing the images where converted to grey-scale,   and then some where colorized red.

 M16 (Eagle Nebula)

The Elephant's Trunk (IC1396)

 The Bubble (NGC7635)

The Rosette Nebula {NGC2238)