Nebulae and Galactic Core
The ASV held their ‘Deep Sky’ section meeting at the LMDSS on July 10th and I wanted another chance to get more images of the sky, and hopefully at a higher magnification / focal length than my last few efforts. (50mm / 75mm effective is OK, but all the cool Deep Sky Objects (or DSOs) are too small to really see.)
Most of these images were taken with a 90mm (135mm effective) lens. Hopefully I will be able to use a longer focal length next time (although the aperture will be a lot smaller) and get some better ‘close up’ images. The hard part will be getting the camera aimed at the correct location, and having the DSO framed properly.
There were a good number of ASV members up there for the weekend, and the viewing field was an orderly array of telescopes - from a table-top one to something that looked more like a mortar standing a good 10 feet tall.
The imaging field was far quieter - only 4 or 5 of us there. Which suits me just fine, as I like my peace and quiet. Although the others were plagued by technical issues. One member packed up early as he could not get his controller working; and the member to my other side had guiding issues all night, which he tracked down to bugs in his bleeding-edge tracking software. Moral of the story? Don’t use bleeding-edge code in a production environment.
I had no end of trouble with getting my guide polar aligned, and was about to settle for “good enough” and use a super-wide lens all night when I asked if one of the other members present could help. Within 2 minutes he had my guide aligned perfectly - I just have to remember his trick for next time…
Unlike my last trip, I was more prepared with a massive battery pack and a dew-heater to keep the condensation off the lens. I am happy to say that it worked perfectly, keeping my lens free of any condensation when everything else was covered in either heavy dew or light frost. (And apparently the Saturday night was “warm” when compared to Friday, several people said there was frost everywhere as Friday night progressed into Saturday morning.)
And now to the images - unless stated otherwise, these are all stacks of 30-subframes with some manipulation in Affinity Photo for bring out all the detail and colours.
I am not happy with this image, as the stacking process gave me spirals of stars and a massively over-exposed core. It’s here sort of as a ’taster’ for the images to come.
Galactic Core, looking South
This one I am very happy with - the Samyang 14mm is a very sharp lens and gives great images. I did almost zero post-processing - a tweak of about 1% to brightness, contrast, and a gentle application of the Affinity ‘Star Eater’ macro. I’ve seen so many images of the Galactic Core that blew my mind, and now I am proud to say that I have produced one with the same impact.
Galactic Core, looking East
I’m not quite certain where this image fits into Image 2 - It’s somewhere to the left of the core. No doubt a more knowledgeable astronomer will identify it within seconds. The nebula at the top is the “Cat’s Paw” nebula, with the “Lobster” to the left of it.
Galactic Core and Nebula
Again, I’m not certain where this one is pointing - I was picking areas of the sky that looked interesting and then firing off a sequence of frames. Some of these worked really well, and some not so well. I’m also not that happy with this image - I was trying to lift the details and structure in the bottom half of the image and didn’t manage to achieve what I had been hoping for. Maybe next time…
More Galactic Core
This one was more luck than anything - one of the other members pointed to a location in the sky and said there was a good open cluster there. So I aimed the camera in roughly the right direction, got something on the screen that looked OK, and fired off a set of sub-frames.
Again, I have no idea what these clusters are - I thought the globular one was actually a very bright star until I started post-processing and then realised it was a very bright cluster. I have tried to get the open cluster brighter, but it needs more work to really do it justice. (And maybe a longer focal length to get a more zoomed-in view.)
Globular Cluster and Open Cluster
This was the last set of images for the night - a total of 80 sub-frames because the Rho Ophiuchi gas cloud is quite dim and hard to see.
Most of the images you see of Rho Ophiuchi are false-colour images or so over-processed until it looks like an explosion of neon. My camera doesn’t have any fancy filters and collects all visible light of all wavelengths, so what you see is more realistic - even if it’s not as visually exciting.
I’m really happy with this image, as the delicate streams of gas and dust are subtle and have a great structure. I would have liked a bit more colour and detail in the orange and blue sections of the gas cloud - maybe when I get more experienced with Affinity Photo I will be able to rework this image.
