Saturday 31 December 2016

IC 405

IC 405. This object is commonly named the Flaming star nebula, SH2-229. It lies in the constellation of Auriga at a distance of about 1,500 light years. I took this image on a clear moonless night under heavy light polluted sky conditions. I was using my ten inch F4.8 reflector, PHD auto guiding and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the
final image. Some of the colour data is a combination of narrowband data and RGB colour data using S11 for red HA for green and O111 for blue. The total exposure times was 60 minutes for H Alpha, 30 minutes for S11 and 30 minutes for O111 filter. However the total exposure times for the RGB colour data was 20 minutes for each filter.












Monday 5 December 2016

The Tadpole Nebula

IC410 . The Tadpole nebula.This emission nebula lies in the constellation of Auriga at a distance of about 10,000 light years. I took this image under clear moonless sky conditions using my ten inch f/4.8 reflector an Atik 383L mono CCD camera and PHD auto guiding. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image. The total exposure times was sixty minutes using a H-Alpha filter, sixty minutes using an OIII filter, sixty minutes using an SII filter and twenty minutes using a blue filter.


NGC6888

These images of NGC6888 was taken on two seperate evenings. using R.G.B. and narrow band filters HA, OIII and SII . I was using my ten inch f/4.8 reflector an Atik 383L mono CCD camera and PHD auto guiding. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image. The total exposure time was 40 minutes for each RGB filter, 60 minutes using a H Alpha filter, 30 minutes using an OIII filter and 30 minutes using an SII filter.




The Soap Bubble nebula

PN G75.5 1.7 The Soap Bubble Nebula. This is a very faint planetary nebula in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan. It lies near NGC6888 the Crescent nebula and was discovered in June 2008. Its low surface brightness is the reason why it was discovered so recently. I consider this planetary nebula to be very challenging for CCD imagers especially from a light polluted location. I took this image under clear, moonless sky conditions using my ten inch f/4.8 reflector, an Atik383L mono CCD camera with PHD auto guiding . I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image . Thetotal exposure times was sixty minutes using a H Alpha filter, forty minutes using an OIII filter and twenty minutes using a blue filter.