Saturn a few weeks after its opposition, August 2020.
Saturn
Seeing was terrible, but I'm still relatively satisfied with the results, given how difficult these planets are this year from this latitude.
This is the third processed image from my trip to Namibia, probably the best one of the entire set, since it has the most data: almost three half nights of "gross time", but barely 4 hours after discarding bad frames.
Lagoon and Trifida nebulae
To the right, you can see the big and gorgeous Lagoon nebula. On the left side, the much smaller, but still nice and interesting (and more coloured) Trifid Nebula.
They're both also known respectively as M 8 and M 20, from the Messier catalogue.
Technical data:
Camera: ASI183MM
Mount: Star Adventurer (no autoguiding).
Telescope: TS Apo 60mm F/5.5 with 0.79x focal reducer (focal length: 265mm).
Filters: Astronomik LRGB Typ IIc
Shooting software: AstroPhoto Plus
Processing: Pixinsight
More details and...
Another update from my trip to Namibia. Here's a second processed image, the Tarantula Nebula, this time inside the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Tarantula Nebula
This is a star forming region, very similar to the famous Orion Nebula that we can see from our latitudes, only this is way bigger. If the Tarantula Nebula was as close to us as the Orion Nebula it would even cast a visible shadow.
Technical data:
Camera: ASI183MM
Mount: Star Adventurer (no autoguiding).
Telescope: TS Apo 60mm F/5.5 with 0.79x focal reducer (focal length: 265mm).
Filters: Astronomik LRGB Typ IIc
Shooting software: AstroPhoto Plus
Processing: Pixinsight
More details and full resolution image on the Astrobin page
After long planning I finally went to Namibia, under one of the darkest sky on the planet, with the main intent of a fully astronomical holiday. The trip was exausting, and I've barely started processing images. Here's a first image:
Small Magellanic Cloud
It's a zoomed detail of the Small Magellanic cloud, one of the two dwarf companion galaxies of our Milky Way.
Technical data:
Camera: ASI183MM
Mount: Star Adventurer (no autoguiding).
Telescope: TS Apo 60mm F/5.5 with 0.79x focal reducer (focal length: 265mm).
Filters: Astronomik LRGB Typ IIc
Shooting software: AstroPhoto Plus
Processing: Pixinsight
More details and full resolution image on the Astrobin page
This is the first of a series of articles. As I'm always experimenting and tuning my setup, I'm not sure how many more articles I'll be writing.
A few years ago I began to introduce myself to astrophotography. I had some fairly nice equipment back then: a SkyWatcher HEQ5 mount, a Meade ACF 8", guide scope and camera, a borrowed reflex, laptop, 12v car battery.
Although this is pretty much entry level equipment, barely sufficient to getting started, it had been already quite expensive (almost 2000€ just for scope and mount, even though the scope was second hand), bulky and heavy. I ended up barely using it, both because of a relatively steep learning curve and because I honestly was getting tired of carrying around 20/30KG of equipment with barely any tangible result.
Then a few things happened: the mount was stolen, I sold the optical tube, and ended up moving to London, where I embraced a new "astronomical philosophy": the lighter, the better.
Last saturday, after lots of garden testing and software checks, I've finally been able to drive to a dark place for a few deep sky shots.
The driving part itself was the most "scary", as I'm still new to driving in the "wrong side" of the road... Getting the hang of it, though..
I chose to go observing with the HantsAstro stargazing group.. they met in a quite dark site (at least for being not too far from London), and their website and facebook pages really did inspire me. I'm really glad I joined them, as it was a really pleasant evening, with lots of nice people.
My target for the evening was the center of the Cygnus constellation, between Deneb and Sadr. It's an area full of nebulae, perfect for a wide field lens. Technical data, together with stars and object names, can be found in the astrobin technical page.
Cygnus' heart
This weekend weather in London was quite amazing: sunny, a bit too windy, but sky almost perfect. Seeing forecast was also encouraging, so on Friday evening I took a chance to shoot at Jupiter.
It was a bit of an unlucky evening: firstly I discovered that I forgot my red dot finder on, so the battery was totally drained. After struggling for a while trying to align my GoTo mount without it, I decided it was worth to leave the telescope alone for a few minutes (my garden is easly visible from the street... I didn't want to do it unless absolutely necessary) and got back inside to find new batteries.
After everything was aligned, and I was ready to observe and record my images, I noticed that the image wasn't exactly satisfying at the eyepiece. When I replaced the eyepiece with the camera, the very unfocused image revealed me why: some tree branches were in the way, and of course the image was deteriorated from the interference!
I looked around me to see if I could find a better sp...
I'm currently living in a house with a very nice backyard, right outside London. Still a lot of light pollution, but it can be manageable, and useful for testing my equipment before running to darker locations.
This was meant to be a (L)RGB shot, but light pollution and humidity made the blue and green channels pretty useless, while red channel produced quite good results
Last friday night the sky was finally very clear, so I made a few shots.
M 42, HorseHead, Flame Nebula
Blog article: [url=http://blog.gulinux.net/blog/2016-11-29-wide-field-orion-nebula-flame-horsehead]http://blog.gulinux.net/blog/2016-11-29-wide-field-orion-nebula-flame-horsehead[/url]
The brilliant Orion Nebula (M42) is very well defined...
This sunspot was particularly big, so I waited for the best moment to try and catch it.
Seeing wasn’t great, and my solar filter was a bit damaged, but the final image doesn’t look too bad anyway.
Sunspot 2546
Unfortunately, this will be the last image for a while.
Just a few hours later, someone opened my car, and took away my HEQ5 mount, together with all my eyepieces and the camera I used for all my planetary shots.
I’ll also be relocating in a while, so I’ll wait a few months before buying a new setup.
If someone is interested, I’m selling my current main optical tube here: http://www.astrosell.it/annuncio.php?Id=70007
This was meant to be an improvement to the previous ISS shooting, since I tried to do it with a bigger telescope, but the low altitude and the very bad seeing did actually worsen the quality.
The shape of the Space Station is anyway clearly visible, as it passes in front of the Moon. It is dark, this time, because it already entered in Earth shadow. We could actually see it rising, bright as usual, and then slowly fade until it completely disappeared just a few seconds before crossing the Moon.
Technical details of the shot can be found on the pagina Youtube.
ISS transit over the Moon - April 2016
This was meant to be an improvement to the previous ISS shooting, since I tried to do it with a bigger telescope, but the low altitude and the very bad seeing did actually worsen the quality.