IC1396, The Elephant trunk nebula.

IC1396, The Elephant trunk nebula. This patch of nebulosity lies in the constellation of Cepheus the king. I took these images on two separate evenings under clear moonless sky conditions with stars visible down to magnitude 5. On this occasion I was not using auto guiding and only using 60 second sub frames with the camera set on x 2 bin mode. I then combined the data with matching dark frames and flat field frames to reduce the effect of noise and vignetting in the final images making the two sections mosaic. The telescope I was using was an f/6.3, 4 inch refractor, a Vixen Atlux mount, a set of Astronomik narrowband filters and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. The exposure times were 60 minutes using a H A filter, 20 minutes using an O111 filter, 20 minutes using an S11 filter, 15 minutes using a H beta filter and 15 minutes using a blue filter.

SH2-101, The Tulip nebula and M56, globular star cluster.

SH2-101, The Tulip nebula. Ths nebula lies in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan in a region named Fish on the platter. I was using my four inch F/6.3 refractor, a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding, a set of Astronomik narrowband filters 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. The total exposure time was 65 minutes using a H Alpha filter, ten minutes using a blue filter, 20 minutes using an s11 filter. The O111 filter was taken using 60 second subframes with matching dark frames with a total exposure time of 45 minutes. The arrow indicates what I believe to be the location of Cygnus X-1 

Click on an image to get a closer view

The Tulip nebula

Hubble palette

RGB

RGB + Hubble palette

M56. This globular star cluster lies in the constrellation of Lyra the Harp. This image was taken using a 4inch F/6.3 refractor, a vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding, a set of Astronomik narrowband filters 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. The exposure time was ten minutes using a blue filter, ten minutes using an O111 filter and 50 minutes using a H Alpha filter.

M56