More Astrophotography Adventures

Last night, the skies were beautifully clear. Even at the local observing spot which is plagued by light pollution, I was able to make out the Double Cluster, Andromeda and the brighter clusters in Auriga with my naked eyes. Not bad!

Two targets last night. First was to revisit the Sword of Orion region. Yeah, I know. another shot of this region. Astrophotography is an iterative process. Some folks get great shots the first two nights out, others take eons to get it right. I fall into the latter category! Anyway, below is the best shot from last night. I was able to bring out much better Running Man detail (nebulosity left of the Great Orion Nebula), and was also able to better draw out the extended nebulosity from the M42 Nebula itself. this was the result of increasing individual exposure times to two minutes. There is some light to the right of the photo, and I am not sure if this is perhaps the CCD chip from my DSLR. I have tried running the image utilizing a number of different post-processing tools but fail to remove it. Oh well.

Image Details:

• William Optics 66mm Petzval, mounted on an 8" LX200 SCT with Milburn Wedge
• Nikon D40
• 4* 2 minute exposures
• 3* 2 minute darks
• 5 * flat frames
• Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Mild curve adjustment in Photoshop
• Noise reduction in Neat Image

Click on the image for full size


















My other target was the M35 open cluster in Auriga. Instead of using my 8" SCT, I wanted to try and get a wider field of view, so used the WO 66mm for this. It's not an overly bright image, but did closely resemble or represent an improved version of how it appeared in the sk last night.

Image Details:

• William Optics 66mm Petzval, mounted on an 8" LX200 SCT with Milburn Wedge
• Nikon D40
• 12 * 30 second exposures
• 2 * 30 second darks
• Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker
• Mild sharpening in Photoshop

Click on the image for full size




















Another fun part of the evening was being joined by a mate of mine with his Celestron C6. It's a nimble little scope, and gave very nice views of various objects last night. He went through the on-board star tour which revealed such obnscure sights like the "W" cluster (rather apt considering it was Bush's last day in office!) and the "Coat Hangar" cluster!!! Who knew??? ;-) I still think the C6 is potentially the ebst grab-and-go GOTO scope out there. The new ETX-LS from Meade might give it a run for its money...