Western Veil Nebula

The Veil Nebula taken over 10 hrs and 3 nights. Its 1470 Light years away in Cygnus its a supernova super hot remnant glowing with doubly ionised blue oxygen and red ionised hydrogen.

Wizard nebula (Ha Nebula and Rgb Stars)

The Wizard Nebula NGC 7380 is a star forming area 100 light years across in the constellation of Cepheus.
Its 7,200 Light Years away and only 4 million years young.
Cepheus was the of Cassiopeia in Greek Mythology.
Exposure time for the Ha (Nebula)was 1hour 36 minutes (12 minutes x 8@iso 1600) and the Stars  were 34 x 5 minutes (2hrs 50 minutes @iso 800).
Scope was ED80 pro

Crescent Nebula Ha+RGB

And here it is. Blown away by the details in the hydrogen clouds.
Processed in Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop CC by combining the red channel in the RGB image with the Ha data.

The Crescent Nebula NGC6888

This amazing Nebula is about 4700 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus. The bright star inside the nebula is a massive Wolf-Rayet star called WR 136 which is nearing the end of its life. Its shedding its outer layers of hydrogen at enormous speeds (2500 km per second). The star will eventually explode as a supernova.
This is not the finished image but I just had to post my first narrow band image.
My new H-ALPHA 12NM filter, fits in front of the camera sensor and only allows a specific, wavelength (656nm) of light through. The reddish colour is produced when hydrogen is super heated. It enables the camera to capture loads more detail by blocking things like light pollution and moon glow. The individual exposure times were 15 minutes each, much longer than usual so much more detail is in the image. This image had only 75 minutes of data so I am hoping to get some more clear sky's soon. Although its black and white at the moment, this will be the red detail in the final red blue and green colour image.

America and Pelican Nebulae (Barn Door Test)

After hundreds of hours of building and testing my Barn Door Mount, I am finally happy with the tracking accuracy. This image was shot with a 200 mm lens. 21 x 91 second exposures at ISO 1600 combined with 10 dark frames only, using Deepskystacker and Photoshop CC.

How I made my DIY Barn Door Tracking Mount

The Whale barred spiral galaxy NGC 4631

The Whale galaxy is about 30 mly away. Its 90,000 ly in diameter and contains about 50 billion stars. Its calf swimming along just above is a dwarf eliptical galaxy called NGC 4627.
Below left is the Crowbar or Hockey Stick galaxy which is actually 2 galaxies NGC 4656 & NGC 4657. Although this is a cropped image I'm still pleased with the amount of detail.
I used 29 x 5 minute exposures at ISO 1600 with my ED 80 scope and light pollution filter even though the sky was good due to a new moon. I added 20 each of Flat,dark and Bias calibration frames. Within an about my scope needed a Meridian flip. I normally don't like doing this as its often a pain realigning losing valuable imaging time.This time however I used Astro Tortilla and plate solved it in 28 seconds. The target was bang in the centre. Just amazing!!!

M13 : Great Cluster in Hercules

Messier 13 is a Globular Cluster of 300,000 stars in the constellation of Hercules. Its 25,100 light years away, 145 light years in diameter and 11.65 billion years old. 

In 1974 a radio wave message, directed at the cluster was sent from the Arecibo Observatory. The message contained information such as details about the Human Race, DNA, Atomic numbers and Earth's position. The message will take 25,100 years to get there and if any one lives there it will take 25,100 years to get back. We already know of 15 stars in this cluster which have orbiting planets, so you never know.

You may notice that there is a small galaxy in the bottom left of the image. Its called NGC 6207 and its only small because its so far away at a distance of 30 million light years.

So when you look at this amazing cluster of stars, its relatively close to us but where is it?

This is where it is within the constellation of Hercules.

The Stars in the constellation are only a few hundred light years away but M13 is much further away at 250,100 light years away.

All of the stars in the image are within the disk of our own galaxy. However, clusters are often positioned just above or below.

M13 is no exception.

This diagram below courtesy of thinkastronomy.com shows where we are in relation to M13 and our position in our galaxy the milky way.

You can download this brilliant program called "Where is M13"  by Bill Tschumy from -
http://www.thinkastronomy.com/M13/common/download.html

My image was made from 27 x 2 minute exposures combined with 41 darks, 21 flats and 20 bias frames. Camera was an astro modded Canon 40d without LP filter. Phd2 guiding was used and for the first time I successfully used Astro Tortilla to plate solve rather than aligning the scope to three stars.

M101 The Pinwheel Galaxy Widefield

M101 is a beautiful Face-on Galaxy about 21 million light years away and 170,000 light years across. Its also home to 1 trillion stars and can be found in the constellation Ursa Major ( The Plough).
The image contains 8 galaxies including NGC 5474, the fuzzy galaxy near the bottom right of the image. Its the closest galaxy to the the Pinwheel galaxy and they have both been distorted by the gravitational forces between the two.
This wide field image is 2.5 degrees across and a full moon is about 0.5 degrees across.
The diagram below shows its position relative to the Plough.

The image _ ISO 1600 x 300 seconds 67 images stacked in Deep Sky Stacker.

My Widefield Imaging Setup and Wiring

One of my goals this year was to remove the 240 volt AC supply and replace it with a single 12 volt DC supply. Its obviously safer with all that dew forming on the wires. Having said that I was running a supply out to a sealed box by the scope and then using 12v DC adaptors from there. The supply was also protected with the RCB's in the house so it was pretty safe. The real reason for the change was to reduce the setup time and the amount of equipment needed and to that end, the case with the 5 metres heavy cable rolled up inside is no more. Having damaged the scope a while ago I have had time to do some positive changes and converting the supply to incorporate Cigar lighter connections should ensure that the current will flow in the right direction thus avoiding another expensive fry up.

Astro photography with a Light Pollution filter

I live in a heavily light polluted area between Bournemouth and Poole on the south coast of England.

To show you how bad it is, checkout this single 160 second image of Messier 3 taken with my astro-modded Canon 40d. Even though much of the street lighting has been upgraded to white LED down lighters rather than the old sodium lights, you can see its still a problem. The unwanted light pollution bloats the stars and hides some of the detail.

     

This second image was taken using the same camera and settings with only one difference.I inserted an Astronomik CLS Visual Light pollution Clip-Filter

The filter is 1 mm thick and made of glass. Simply push it in place in front of the sensor and its ready!

This is how the filter works (I will try to keep it short).

Visible light is measure in wavelengths from 400 to 700 nano metres. To give you an idea where the colours are, Blue is 425nm, Green is 510nm, Yellow is 570nm and Red is 650nm.
The orange type of artificial light pollution, say from street lighting ranges from 525 to 620. Whilst blue light pollution from LED's such as the new street lighting is 418nm. All of these wavelengths need to be blocked by the filter.
The filter allows through over 90% of the following wavelengths that come from space.
425nm to 520nm and 620nm to 700nm.
Specific wavelengths often needed are;
H-Alpha 656nm  from red emission nebulae

H-Beta and O-111 for enhancing blue objects

Messier 67 (NGC 2682)

Messier 67 (NGC 2682) is sometimes called the King Cobra Cluster.
It's an open cluster of more than 500 stars in the of constellation of Cancer the Crab.
At 2700 light years away and 21 light years across, M67 appears to be roughly the same size as the full Moon.
Messier 67 is also one of the oldest known open clusters at the ripe old age of about 3.7 billion years.
Seeing over the past few weeks has been poor and I'm still honing  my setup down after my frying my mount's electrics.
Usual 80ED / 40d setup. ISO 1600 x 240 seconds.

Orion through the clouds

Having broken my HEQ5 mount by connecting it to the wrong side of the 12v supply and frying the mother board I have had to resort to using my old home made Barn Door Mount.
The new board costs around £109 so it will be a few months before I can use my Skywatcher ED80.
This image started out as a timelapse but the clouds rolled in and left me with just a few images covered in cloud. So this image is a single shot only 10 seconds duration using my nifty fifty Canon f1.8 prime lens. The camera was my old Canon 40d with an Astronomik light pollution filter inserted. The image has turned out to be quite popular on twitter being seen almost 700 times so far, so I'm quite pleased that what looked like a poor evening for astrophotography produced this image.