Rosette Nebula

I chose the Rosette nebula again as my target of choice when I wanted to test if I can improve on the image quality when using the 0,7x reducer.

The Rosette nebula is a large and relatively bright emission nebula in the constellation Monoceros. Various parts of the nebula have separate NGC numbers and the embedded star cluster itself is NGC2244

This wider view was taken with the Takahashi FS-60CB and shows the surrounding area of the sky.

Later I discovered that the reducer only provides a 10% reduction in focal length, while introducing quite a bit of vignetting.

Rosette Nebula, Nikon D750a, Optolong l-enhance Filter, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8 with 0.7x Reducer, 61x120s, ISO400, Blur Exterminator, Noise Exterminator
Read More

M16 – The Eagle nebula

M16 has become famous with the famous image of the Hubble telescope showing the pillars of creation. They are also visible in the center of the image below.

This was a first, quick test with the 0,75x reducer (27TVPH) – but I think focus was not good, so my judgement about the quality of the image the focuser delivers is not final yet.

The Eagle Nebula – M16 30x120s, Nikon D750, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8 with 0,75x reducer., reprocessed using using BlurXTerminator and Noise XTerminator
Read More

Andromeda Galaxy – M31

In Autumn the Andromeda galaxy is conveniently placed in the darkes part of the sky for my home, the eastern sky.

Due to the vibration prone location of my telescope on the top of our house, I had to throw away 2/3rds of the individual exposures due to trailed stars, so I ended up with only 22,5 minutes of data. Another possibility is, that the guiding didn’t work properly, calibration was suspiciously short.

Anyways, here is the Andromeda galaxy at 1016mm focal length, Nikon D750, 45x30s, ISO 1600, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8, Meade LXD 650 mount.

45x30s, Astro-Physics 127mm f/8, Nikon D750, ISO 1600, preprocessed and stacked in Regim, developed in Photoshop and Lightroom.

Read More

The Moon and Sun two weeks before the 2017 solar eclipse

Two weeks before the moon will eclipse the sun, the moon was partially eclipsed by the Earth’s shadow

I had to turn around, when the road to my observing location was blocked, then I rushed to another spot, to find clouds on the horizon blocking the view for quite a while. But finally the still eclipsed moon emerged from the clouds and I was able to take some quick shots.

I used my 80mm refractor and a 300mm lens for the images.

Read More

M13, M5, M57

In spite of bad seeing and strong gusts of wind I did set up the big refractor to do some astrophotography. I spent quite some time to get things running – in the end the spring galaxies were already too far west in the glare of the train station, so I switched my targets to two globulars and a planetary nebula. Here is a list of what went wrong:

  • I wasn’t aware that the D750 uses a non-standard USB port on the camera, I had to search for half an hour to find the original cable
  • the laptop I usually use has been upgraded to Windows 10, installing the drivers for the guiding camera did not work
  • on the backup laptop guiding with PHD worked, but Backyard Nikon crashed and/or got no connection to the camera, I tried many combinations of USB extension cables, USB ports, removing the SD card, formatting the SD card, upgrading to BackyardNikon 1.0.5, in the end I focused using live view of the camera and used the built-in interval timer of the camera to shoot 30 second exposures…
  • the seeing was really terrible, making focusing difficult, and bloating the stars during the exposure
  • for reasons unkown (user error?) the quality setting on the camera was changed to FINE, so I only took JPEG images instead of NEF( Raw)

Read More

Preparing for the mercury transit

Today I was making sure everything is in working order for Monday’s transit of Mercury across the sun.

I was able to fix the issue of the declination runaway motor of our club’s LXD-650 mount, and took some images using the 127mm refractor with a 1,4x teleconverter.

The sun 05-05-2016, Astro-Phsyics 127mm f/8, Nikon TC-14E II, Nikon D750, 1/4000s, Baader ND3.8 photographic solar film

The sun 05-05-2016, Astro-Phsyics 127mm f/8, Nikon TC-14E II, Nikon D750, 1/4000s, Baader ND3.8 photographic solar film

Read More