From Wikipedia:

The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 or B33) is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of Alnitak, the easternmost star of Orion’s Belt, and is part of the much larger Orion molecular cloud complex. It appears within the southern region of the dense dust cloud known as Lynds 1630, along the edge of the much larger, active star-forming H II region called IC 434.

From Wikipedia:

The Sculptor Galaxy (also known as the Silver Coin, Silver Dollar Galaxy, NGC 253, or Caldwell 65) is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Sculptor. The Sculptor Galaxy is a starburst galaxy, which means that it is currently undergoing a period of intense star formation.

As one of the brightest galaxies in the sky, the Sculptor Galaxy can be seen through binoculars and is near the star Beta Ceti. It is considered one of the most easily viewed galaxies in the sky after the Andromeda Galaxy.

The Helix Nebula (also known as NGC 7293) is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Aquarius. This object is one of the closest of all the bright planetary nebulae to Earth. Measured by the Gaia mission, the nebula is roughly 650 light-years away. It is similar in appearance to the Cat’s Eye Nebula and the Ring Nebula. The Helix Nebula has sometimes been referred to as the “Eye of God” as well as the “Eye of Sauron”

The image that nearly never was…

I started out wanting to capture the Helix Nebula (NGC7293) as it’s big and bright at the moment. Nope, stopped by guiding issues - my software decided to try and guide on a hot-pixel in the guide camera. Something I’ve never had happen before. So I did the usual things of trying different camera settings before giving up.

Roll forward a few weeks and we (finally) got another clear night. So I tried the Helix again. Nope, still no guiding. Luckily, I had researched a few back-up targets to try, so I moved over to M20.

With all the miserable weather we’ve had lately, I’ve had no chance to get the rig out under the stars to capture more photos of different targets. So I decided to try my hand at processing the Eta Carina mosaic that I did back in March.

I used the same raw images as before, but stacked and processed them in a totally different way.

Using Sirilic, I stacked each set of images individually to create 4 panels which were gently processed (ie, stretching, green noise removal, etc) before being converted into PNGs and then stitched together with AutoPanoGiga (aka APG).

Who’s up for a ghostly, spooky space wolf?

There’s not a lot of information about this nebula. It seems to be a very photogenic, but forgotten denizen of the night sky.

Located in the constellation of Scorpius, a huge cloud of dust blocks out the light from a glowing cloud of energised Hydrogen gas located behind it.

The shape makes a viewer envisage a wolf, endlessly racing through space in pursuit of it’s prey.

We finally had another clear night here, so I had the rig all outside and ready to capture tonight’s target - IC4628. I’ve seen some interesting images of this emission nebula, and decided it was time to take the plunge and have a go at it.

I spent time making certain I had the camera aligned correctly, so that I had the longest side of the sensor horizontal. Previously, it was at whatever angle it ended up after I assembled the optical train. Which made for some interesting, and potentially odd-looking images; especially if you are used to seeing the target in a particular orientation…

One of the issues I’ve been having with the astro-cam has been framing - getting my intended target the ‘right way up’ in the camera. I’ve also been troubled by having the camera rotated at different angles (relative to the long axis of the telescope). This comes about because all the components are threaded together, and different components have different lengths of thread available.

So taking the filter holder out and installing the 21mm spacer leaves the camera at a different rotation. As you can imagine, stacking and processing data taken over a couple of sessions can be difficult if I’ve changed the components in the optical train.

My latest image is probably one of the most imaged nebulae in the southern skies after the ‘big ones’ of Eta Carina, The Running Chicken and Rho Ophiuchi. I’m not putting the Orion Nebula in this list because that’s primarily a Northern Hemisphere sight, and we’re limited to a couple of months where it’s visible. I think just about every astophotographer will image this one at least once, simply because it’s such a fantastic sight to behold.

If you’ve ever stripped down an HEQ5 mount (either the standard or Pro versions) you’ll know that you need to carefully adjust the backlash in the gear trains. This includes both the motor to worm drive trio of gears and the worm drive to ‘giant brass cylinder’ gear.

It’s a fiddly job and requires a delicate hand to find that perfect balance point between too loose and having backlash, and too tight and finding the gears are binding.