M16, The Eagle nebula.

M16, The Eagle  nebula. This image was taken on two separate evenings, 90 minutes using a H Alpha filter . ten minutes using an O111 filter, 15 minutes using an S11 filter and 15 minutes using a H Beta filter. I was using my 4 inch F/6.3 refractor, a Vixen Atlux mount PHD auto guiding, a set of Astronomik narrowband filters and a Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field and bias frames to reduce the effect of noise and vignetting in the final image.

Click on the image to get a closer view

The Eagle nebula

RGB plus Hubble Palette

IC443, The Jellyfish nebula

This image was taken using my 4 inch f/6.3 refractor, a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD  auto-guiding, a set of Astronomiik narrowband filters, S11, O111 and H Alpha, with an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with bias and flat field frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image. The H Alpha luminance data was taken on two separate evenings, combined with some old narrowband colour data. The total exposure time was 60 minutes using O111 and S11 filters and 120 minutes using a H Alpha filter.

RGB image

Hubble Palette

Hubble Palette + RGB

More renderings of the Rosette nebula

Here are another two versions of the Rosette nebula image using H-Beta and O111 as the blue channel combined with H-Alpha as the red channel.  The image is Bi colour whereas the second image is Bi colour combined with the Hubble palette

Bi Colour

Bi colour combined with the Hubble palette

The Rosette nebula

NGC2244.Two of these three images of the Rosette Nebula reveal extra data taken using an Astronomik H Beta filter. I was using a 4 inch F /6.3 refractor , a Vixen Atlux mount , PH auto guiding , a set of Astronomik narrowband filters , HA , S11, O111 and H Beta . with an Atik 383L mono CCD camera . I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field and bias frames to reduce the effect of noise and vignetting in the final image. The total exposure time was 30 minutes using an S11 filter , 30 minutes using an O111 filter , 60 minutes using a H Alpha filter and 65 minutes using a H Beta filter

H-alpha H-beta bicolour

Hubble palette

Hubble palette plus H-beta

The Coma cluster

NGC4872. The Coma cluster. This group of galaxies lies in the constellation of Coma Berenices. I took this image using my four inch f/6.3 refractor, a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding, with  a set of Astronomik R.G.B. filters, an IDAS filter, and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames and bias frames to reduce the effect of noise and vignetting in the final image. The total exposure time was ten minutes for each colour filter and two hours for the luminance channel using the IDAS filter.

This image of the Coma cluster contains data from two telescopes , a 4 inch refractor and a ten inch reflector.

M105. NGC3389

M105. NGC3389. This group of galaxies lies in the northern part of the constellation of Leo. I was using my 4 inch f/6.3 refractor, a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding and an Atik 383L mono CCD camera. I used an Idas filter for the luminance data and RGB filter for the colour data. I captured five minute sub frames with matching dark frames and combined them with flat field frames and bias frames to reduce the effect of noize and vignetting in the final image. The total exposure time was 60 minutes using the Idas filter and ten minutes for each RGB filter.

B33

Here is an image of B33 taken using a blue filter on two separate evenings. To prevent the stars from saturating I only captured 60 second sub frames with matching dark frames. I then combined them with flat field frames and bias frames to reduce the effect of vignetting in the final image. The total exposure time was two hours. The colour data were taken using H-alpha for red O111 for green and aditional blue filter for blue. plus a combination of old RGB data.

Captured through a blue filter

Final colour image

Southern skies

These camera on tripod shots was taken from a Cape Verde resort using 4 x 20 second exposures, stacked together with the camera set at ISO 3200. The camera was a Cannon 50D and a Tamron 18mm - 270mm zoom lens. The images show the Southern Cross, Centaurus, Omega Centauri NGC5139 and the Jewel box cluster.

Southern Cross

Centaurus Crux

M78

M78. This image of M78 was taken on four separate evenings. On the first evening I used an IDAS filter to collect 90 minutes of general luminance data. On the second evening I captured two hours of O111 data, on the third evening I captured four hours and ten minutes of data using a H Alpha filter and on the fourth evening three hours of data using a blue filter a total exposure time of 10 hours and ten minutes. I was using my four inch F/6.3 refractor. a Vixen Atlux mount, PHD auto guiding, A set of Astronomik RGB and 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 and bias frames to reduce the effect of noise and vignetting in the final image.

Cygnus loop with 3 telescopes

Cygnus Loop. This image contains data taken from three telescopes, a ten inch reflector ,  a four inch refractor and an 80mm refractor.