homepage Forums SimHQ Community Event Photography & Video A few recent Astro-Images....

After almost a year of shooting wider field targets through refractor telescopes, I decided to go back and image through my Schmitt Cassegrain Telescope (SCT). The SCT has a much longer focal length which equates to higher magnification (you guys already knew that though ;)). That makes things more challenging as any tracking errors are also magnified.

The Bubble Nebula (NGC7635) found in the Constellation of Cassiopeia. This one is awaiting some true colour data. In the mean time I ran it through a False Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) action in Photoshop. It should be pretty close to how it should look.


M16 - The Eagle Nebula in the Constellation of Serpens. This is a 'Stellar Nursery'. New stars are being formed in the huge columns of gas and dust.


And finally NGC 6946. A Face on Spiral Galaxy in Cephus. It is fairly close to us as galaxies go, a mere 10 million light years.

i love it when you post these shots Paul!! absolutely amazing work

hope u don't mind i did a quick curves tweek along with a little saturation and i have a CA action

Thanks for doing that Bob. It looks great. Sometimes it is hard to judge how best to process these images. Lower contrast can bring out a lot more faint nebulocity while higher contrast brings some nice sharp detail in the more prominent features. Sometimes it is best to do two separate versions that compliment each other (which we have now with your version). Cool stuff!

Very cool stuff. I wonder if overlaying the two images might provide a combination of more detail and faint features.

It's amazing to see that other galaxy when you consider the size of them - just mind-boggling.

Yours are always the most amazing posts, Paul. Thanks for sharing them.

Very cool. Eagle Nebula is appropriately named. 10 million light years huh? Really hard to get one's arms around that isn't it? Fantastically huge our galaxy...

BeachAV8R

Excellent shots!

Thanks guys:) I am glad you like my images. It is indeed mind boggling to contemplate the distances involved. All the nebulae I image are within our own Milkyway Galaxy. Usually the distances of these objects are in the thousands of light years from us. The Galaxies are far more distant (Millions of light years). The furthest Galaxy I have managed to capture is called IC1296. It is a face on spiral galaxy found in the same part of the night sky as the Ring Nebula (M57). The Ring Nebula is about 2000 Light Years away while IC1296 is estimated to be 200 Million Light Years distant.. that's a long trip anyway you look at it....



The pointer with the question mark shows a small 'faint fuzzy' in the background. That will be another distant Galaxy but I haven't identified it yet.

this is such an awesome shot, off to ludicrous speed

Paul,

What is the red dot circled below?

Good spot Byro ;). That is a 'hot pixel' that showed up while I was taking the red data set. You get hot pixels on all CCD images that use longer exposures. The way to eliminate them is to either cool the CCD (some amateur astronomers go to great lengths to cool their cameras), or you can use 'Dark Frames' that are subtracted from the final image. The camera I have uses this method. You have to take a series of dark frames over a range of temperatures and exposure times. The camera has a temperature sensor and the software will automatically pull an appropriate dark frame from the library (every time I take a dark frame with the lens cap on it is saved to the library with temperature and exposure time information). The selected dark frame is then applied to the current image. You get hot pixels when the temperature changed from that at which the dark frame was taken.

If you look closely there are also some hot pixels in the luminance layer as I can see some small trailing patterns of white pixels across the frame. Basically I need to take more dark frames.

Thanks for the explanation, Paul.

Here is the Bubble Nebula image with the colour data added:

Your pictures continue to amaze me.