We had two clear nights in a row here, and although it was the full moon I got very lucky - the moon was so low in the sky that it didn’t rise over the house next door! Talk about “lucky imaging”…

Even then, I had to wait until after midnight before I could start imaging because the roof of my house was in the way. I guess I can’t win them all…

One of the cooler things you can do with an image editing program such as Affinity Photo (or PhotoShop, or GIMP) is to replace parts of an image with another image. This comes in handy if/when you decide that the sky in an image is boring, or not what you wanted.

The two images below show the “before” and “after” of doing just this.

The original image is suitable dramatic, with brightly lit clouds (and perhaps a hint of Aurora Australis hiding in there) but the stars are smothered by the light pollution. The second image uses a shot of a darker sky with the stars far more visible.

The December new moon happened on the 23rd. (Hence why I was outside on Christmas Eve doing some imaging in my backyard.) I had not thought about taking a trip up to the ASV’s dark sky site at all - despite it being an obvious time to get away from the Christmas madness and have some quiet time imaging.

When the Ice Queen suggested it, I was indecisive until she explained her reasons for saying I should go. So I booked a bunk room, packed my car full of gear and headed off on Boxing Day. I won’t bore you with how bad the traffic was, and how the freeways were packed with people heading off on holiday. Nor will I tell you about the heat of the day - 38 degrees Celcius and a sun strong enough to pummel you into the ground. After the winter we’ve just gone through, seeing blue skies and sunshine was a great relief.

Why was I out imaging on Christmas Eve? Well, why not? It was a clear night with dark (for a suburban location) skies and the visibility was as good as it ever gets. I was also keeping an eye out for a fat guy dressed in a red suit and piloting a sleigh across the skies. No, I didn’t see him.

NGC2018 is a supernova remnant - the expanding cloud of highly energised debris ejected when a star reaches the final stage of it’s life and explodes in a massive explosion.

It’s “Orion Season” and everyone seems to be posting images of this iconic DSO. I would have joined the crowd a while ago except for the simple fact that I can’t see Orion above next door’s roof until this time of year.

After capturing a fantastic image of the Tarantula the other night, I was looking for a new target to image. Most of the ones I wanted to try were either blocked by buildings, or were not going to rise above the horizon for a few hours. A couple that I tried were simply too small to properly image from my back yard. From a dark sky site I would have a much better chance of imaging them and capturing all the tiny details. Maybe when I can get away to the LMDSS again, I will have a crack at them.

OK, a bit of a long(er) post here. Then again, maybe not…

As you’re aware, I picked up an Optolong L-Enhance filter for my astro setup a while back. Because of the weather (way too many cloudy and/or rainy nights) I haven’t been able to get any imaging done. However, we’ve had a couple of clear nights (and a couple more are forecast) so I had the rig out last night and imaging away.

One of the battles I’ve been fighting with my astro imaging is light pollution. The higher sensitivity of the astro-cam and the horrible LED streetlights means I can’t take long exposures to capture the faint detail of DSOs, and what images I do capture have a terrible blue colour to them.

In an ideal world, light pollution would be two or three distinct colours (like the old sodium or mercury vapour lamps) that a filter can remove. Sadly, the new LED lights emit a large number of colours (they all blend into what our eyes see as “white”), but have a very strong blue component.

Quite some time ago, Diego Colonnello ran a tutorial on the use of APP (Astro Pixel Processor) during one of the ASV’s Astrophotography section meetings. I didn’t pay much attention as I didn’t (and still don’t) use APP. He did make all his data available for people to process themselves. Thank you, Diego! Your generosity is very much appreciated.

I got bored the other day, and with all the clouds and rain stopping me from capturing my own data, I thought I’d have a go at processing Diego’s work.

It looks like summer is finally arriving here, and with the clear days come the prospect of clear night skies. (When the moon is not out and illuminating everything.)

With some previous images I captured, there were terrible bands of colour within the stacked images - so much so that I was tempted to throw the data away. (Thankfully, Siril has a ‘Remove Banding’ option that works miracles. So the data is recoverable - except that the images are either not very exciting, or don’t have enough data to be worth proceeding with.)

We had a (near miraculous) clear night here, so I had the rig outside to have another crack at imaging with the new camera.

Overall, I was happier with the results. Although I dropped the exposure time down to a mere 10 seconds, the ‘183MC-Pro is still picking up a lot of blue light pollution. In Siril, the blue channel is almost swamped with it, and the RGB image is a vivid blue.