It was hard to know where to point the camera in the park, especially at end of day in the area aptly called the 'flight deck'. After a number of so-so images of birds on the ground I was back to playing with birds in flight, and eventually racked the zoom all the way to the wide end to get a wider aperture. The sun was almost down and the sky colors here are slightly accentuated, as is the foreground brightness to just show a few of the many birds also on the ground.
The Flaming Star Nebula (IC405) is a relatively bright nebula in the constellation Auriga with both emission and reflection elements. It is estimated to be approximately 1,500 light years from Earth. This image uses a modified SHO palette in narrowband to represent the nebula, with extra RGB data collection to represent the stars in natural light. It is a first light image for a newly acquired QHY268M camera. Equipment: QHY268M Camera @ -5C and Gain:56 Offset:25 Software Bisque MyT Mount Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8 Antlia Pro Filters (3nm narrowband plus LRGB) Askar FMA180 Guidescope/ASI290MM Software: Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8 Lightroom CC Photoshop CC N.I.N.A. Control Software Star XTerminator (Russell Croman) Noise XTerminator (Russell Croman) Light Frames: Ha - 56 x 480 secs ( 7 hrs 28 mins) OIII - 78 x 480 secs (10 hrs 48 mins) SII - 81 x 480 secs (10 hrs and 18 mins) Red: 28 x 30 secs 14 mins) Green: 27 x 30 secs (13 mins 30 secs) Blue: 28 x 30 secs (14 mins) 29 hrs 21 mins 30 secs total Dark Frames: 10 x 30 secs (5 mins) 10 x 480 secs (1 hr 20 mins) Bias Frames 60 No Flat Frames
So getting a presentable image of this object was a real learning experience, both in the data collection and certainly in the data processing. I was constrained to using a mono camera, usually an advantage for deep sky imaging, but in the case of 'fast' moving and visually changing objects like a comet probably not the best choice. This image is made from about an hour's worth of total data, split up into 5 frames of 180 seconds each from 4 filters (LRGB). The frames were then dark subtracted and registered, and then the stars were batch removed and the star data and comet data processed separately, with the comet aligned using the newly improved Comet Alignment module in PixInsight. Finally, the 2 images were recombined to produce a composite with aligned comet data and pinpoint stars. This comet is currently rising close to 2200 MST, and is visible via binoculars in the night sky most of the night, although the moon will start to affect it's visibility. it may even be approaching naked eye visibility from extremely dark skies as it gets closer to the earth into the month of February on its journey now outbound from the Sun. It has an orbital period of ~50,000 years, so this is our only chance to experience its rare green glow. Equipment: QHY268M Camera @ -10C and Gain:56 Offset:25 Software Bisque MyT Mount Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph Refractor, 580mm @ f/5.8 Antlia Pro Filters (LRGB) Askar FMA180 Guidescope/ASI290MM Software: Pixinsight Commercial Version 1.8 Lightroom CC Photoshop CC N.I.N.A. Control Software Star XTerminator (Russell Croman) Noise XTerminator (Russell Croman) Light Frames: Luminance: 5 x 180 secs ( 15 mins) Red: 5 x 180 secs ( 15 mins) Green: 5 x 180 secs ( 15 mins) Blue: 5 x 180 secs ( 15 mins) 1 hr total Dark Frames: 10 x 180 secs (30 mins) No Bias Frames No Flat Frames
