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The Veil Nebula - 22nd June 2021 67 light frames 30 dark frames 21 flat frames 70 second exposures ISO 3200 Canon EOS Ra Sky Watcher 80ED (0.85x reducer flattener) L-eXtreme filter Un guided APT connected to camera (just for shutter release) I had such a drama trying to capture this. I started off by star aligning to the wrong star 🙈 then it took me two hours to even find and frame the target. This left me with just over an hour to image before it started getting light 😩 I’m pleased I managed to capture all three of the main parts on the first try, but I definitely want to try again to get more data/detail 😊

Taken last night with the Sky watcher Sky-max 150 pro, ZWO ASI 120 MC and a 2 X Barlow. 55 X 1000 frames SER files. Each SER file was stacked in Autostakkert. Adjusted with Registax wavelets. Video compiled in PIPP.

I got back from Spain a couple of days ago doing much needed maintenance to the observatory, ended up breaking down on my way back to the ferry so missed the boat and ended up staying a few extra days....was a bit of an experience, in the end I had to fly back and leaving the van there....hopefully it will get shipped back in a couple of weeks....fingers crossed.. Anyway!!..... M16 The Eagle Nebula imaged in SII Ha and OIII with the 17in Planewave and FLI's Kepler 4040 large format Cmos from Spain. Exposures were unguided, times were 4hrs in SII, 1hrs in Ha and 3.7 hrs in OIII all 180s exposures. Thanks for looking Peter

Pickering's Triangle in the Veil Nebula in Cygnus Taken over Saturday and Sunday nights, a total of 85 five minute exposures, i.e about 7 hours of data in total. Taken through the William Optics GT81, with ZWO 183mm pro cooled camera. Equal exposure on Ha, Oiii and Sii. Losmandy GM8 mount. Captured using Sequence Generator Pro, with PHD2 set to multi-star guiding. Stacked and pre-processed in PixInsight, finished off in Photoshop, with the use of a luminance layer Click and click again in Flickr for full resolution.

Hi everyone - I did this one as a 2 pane mosaic in Ha and O3. Approx 3hrs per filter;per panel with my redcat and 183MM and processed in pixinsight and photoshop. Considering the weather of late, a minor miracle! cheers 😉🔭

Not my finest hour but here is my first attempt at the Crescent Nebula. I'm limited to one night on one target at the moment (due to my technique) so didn't manage to get lots of photos before it started to get light, and can't add more data to it ☹️ 66 lights (70 second exposures, ISO 1600) 47 darks 22 flats Canon Ra Sky Watcher 80ED (with 0.85x reducer) L-eXtreme filter

Whilst my refractor was churning out subs of the Veil nebula, I got in the car and took my DSLR up to the top of the hill This is a crack at the Milky Way, as a bonus caught Jupiter and Saturn as well. Isn't it nice to have some clear nights again! This was taken from the top of the hill above Holloway, Derbyshire about midnight last night. Stacking did not seem to give me much benefit, so just developed this single 15 second exposure taken on the Canon M5. Sigma lens set at 14mm, ISO was 500. Single fixed, none tracking tripod. Noise filtering applied in Photoshop. Click and click again in Flickr for full resolution..

William Optics FLT 132 QSI 690 Astrodon 31mm 3nm HA: 12x600" Despite the stateof the guide graph. M20 transits at a massive 13° above the horizon from here and skirts the obs roofline. This is so far as low as I can go from the obs. Do the clicky dance for full res.

I am pretty excited about this one... When I started Astrophotography I had a list of 4 things that I wanted to try and image. The Orion Nebula, The Horse Head Nebula, The Andromeda Galaxy and the Eagle Nebula. By the time I'd worked out how to polar align I only managed one quick shot of the Orion Nebula before it disappeared and all of the others were out of view. I know my processing needs some work and the stars are well dodgy (I don't know why as I think I've balanced my telescope now )... but I've ticked off another one on my list!! Images taken on Saturday night 10/7/21 . 71 lights (70 second exposures ISO 1600) 1hr 22 minutes. 28 darks 35 flats (although I moved the focus by accident ) Canon EOS Ra Sky Watcher 80ED (with 0.85x reducer/flattener) L-eXtreme filter Un guided APT connected to camera just for shutter release. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker Opened stacked photo in APP to use the light pollution tool. A bit of noise reduction in Topaz DeNoise AI Really cropped as it was tiny in my FOV. Processed in Photoshop using stretches/levels and camera raw filter. I also used the 'actions' to make the stars a bit smaller. As always, plenty of room for improvement and I need to learn how to process properly but Yay!!! I got a photo of it (and I can just about make out the pillars in the middle)!! 😍

It was definitely time to try the LX200 again. I had major grief earlier in the year with Sequence Generator Pro never starting sequences properly when I used the longer focal length scope. It turned out it was PHD2 setting time needed to be increased to allow for the greater arcsecs/pixel generated by the longer focal length. Set it all up on Wednesday night, with a pretty full moon and poor seeing, so I wasn’t expecting much. Only got 10 minutes on each filter and there were horrendous gradients because of the moon. So stacked in PIxInsight, and then opened the file for each filter in Photoshop, and used the Gradient Xterminator Plugin to remove the gradients. I must say it did a fantastic job. Reduced the size of the final image to sharpen it up, as I had so little data. Really pleased to get this in such poor conditions.

A few photos from my holiday in the New Forest. The weather was great, sunny every day, in the end I started to hate it and wanted it to rain, it was so draining. Visited so many places, ate and drank way to much but enjoyed every minute of it. Nature wise visited Latchmore Brook, Crockford Stream, Stagbury pond, and Hatchett pond on the hunt for dragonflies. Managed to add another three to my list which now stands at 35 out of 44 UK odonata. Small Red danselfly male Golden Ringed Dragonfly Beautiful Demoiselles Scarce blue tailed damselflies Keeled skimmer female Southern damselfly male Mating pair of silver studded blues

To complement my solar from today I couldnt resist getting out in the cool of the evening for this. Scope - Towa 339 80mm f15. Camera - Olympus OM D EM1. 200asa, 1/65s x 100 subs. Pipp, AS3 and a touch of sharpening and contrast in PS Click and click to zoom in

First light zwo 533mc ,very good first light everything seemed to go well other than forgetting Bias frames approx 4hrs of data guiding in Ra needs sorting rms coming in at 1.08rms so m37 first target binned 2x2 using the 200pds this is going to be excellent on galaxies ,so a quick process i will gather bias later and restack

Just an hours worth of 60s subs, guiding was very poor due to the light sky!! Darks, Flats and dark Flats added. Usual kit, SW 150PDS Hypercam 183c NEQ6 APT, DSS and CS6.

LDN1251 in Cepheus, Imaged from Spain with the Tak Epsilon 180ed. I've just fitted a new ZWO ASI2600MC to it and this is the first image. 96x 300s exposures, 8hrs total. I really like this chip!. Plagued with satellite trails I was still able to use every exposure. The shear number of subs gave a good rejection in the stack with no signs of satellites in the final image even after such an aggressive process. Processed with Pixinsight and Photoshop Thanks for looking Peter

Since the football was on last night 😴 I decided to have a go at processing one of my Milky Way photos that I took in Suffolk last month. Not the best data and still a lot of work to do (including learning how to use layers and masks). I also should have taken a separate photo of the foreground but forgot 🙈 Canon EOS Ra Sigma 24-35mm Art lens at 35mm F/2.5 Untracked on the world's worst tripod (hence the dodgy stars). 15 x 13 second exposures stacked in Sequator (I just played around with the single stacked image). ISO 3200 I have now bought a new Star Adventurer so can't wait until the weather clears up and I can hopefully get under some dark skies to give it a try 😊 P.s. My other Milky Way photos were featured in the Ipswich Star and East Anglia Daily Times (although the reporter originally referred to me as an 'Astrology' Photographer!) 🙈😂😂... https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/milky-way-spotted-in-shingle-street-8077234

3.5 hrs on the crescent nebula ,zwo533MC /200pds , forgot flats Doh ,so 15 Darks stacked in ASTAP ,processed in Startools 1.8

Whoops.. Didn't mean to post without a picture.. blush.. 30 seconds at ISO 500, Canon M5 and Canon 10-18mm zoom at 14mm Cheers

Hi everyone - I went for a widefield view of this bit in Cygnus with my Redcat. Processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop. 6hrs data in total. Hope you like it

snapped 3 with the phone and stitched in ICE

Don't know about you but I could use a clear night (or two)! In the meantime, have a look at these beauties

Ok, So you're probably getting sick of me by now, but with all these clear nights I'm like a kid in a sweet shop trying loads of new targets 😂 This is my attempt at the Heart Nebula. After stacking it 5 times I was about ready to bin it as it was suffering with lots of vertical banding all over it 🙈 After taking advice from a new Astro friend, I tried stacking it one last time and added some bias frames to the mix (and got super picky with the light frames I used) I definitely want to revisit this as it is lacking in detail and suffering from noise because of the limited data. I so pleased that I managed to salvage something so the night of imaging wasn't a complete waste 😊 59 lights (70 second exposures ISO 1600) Dark, flat and bias frames. Canon Ra Sky Watcher 80ED L-eXtreme filter Stacked in DSS and processed in Photoshop (using Camera Raw)

I found i had a few hours spare on Friday so went to check if Cotgrave Woods had any purple emperors. It turned out to be a lovely couple of hours spent. Counted 12 species of butterfly and 2 species of dragonfly. Saw White letter hairstreak up high in the tree canopy and one purple emperor sniffing round horse poo. It's been a pretty good month I've managed the Great Reed Warbler at Besthorpe, Roller in Suffolk, Black Browed Albatross at Bempton, and dipped the Rufous Turtle Dove at Easington.

Lunt 60mm RTF DS ZWO178 cam 251/1000 frames Do the clicky dance for full res. HDR Crops Full discs

Not much change today. False colour added in PS 6.

1st one off the rank at 1-50 am. its been a while so I'm very rusty but... C11 ZWO 178 mono with rgb filters

Taken last week on an orchid hunting session in Buckinghamshire. Years since I'd seen a marbled white, lovely to see again. It's perched on a chalk fragrant orchid

Managed to squeeze in an hour or two and finaly tried out the StellaLyra F12, i spent half that time waiting for something to clear the trees 😒 I think its time to consider an ADC..what do you think? StellaLyra 8" f/12 M-LRS Classical Cassegrain ZWO224MC 3000 frames Autostakkert/Registax...

Nowadays, when I spend astrocash, the object needs to be able to do at least two jobs. I decided to splash out on a Gibraltar mount to provide a rapid-response mount for my 20x100 BigBins, and to hold my 152mm/1200 mm achromatic refractor, which gets very little use because it is so ungainly. The mount came from TS in Germany, but Altair Astro market the Explore Scientific-branded version which is identical. I am re-deploying the Orion tripod from my parallelogram arm (OK for small binoculars, but the BigBins are too heavy for the arm). The tripod is light but stable and has a rising column. Seen here at Staunton Harold reservoir. The friction is adjustable to hold the bins in place, and you pan the rig by holding the elevation pivot discs and using it like a submarine periscope. Smooth travel and very steady. The mount will take at least 11 Kg and is suitable as an unmotorised planet-sweeper. My Bresser 152L is 138 cm long (4'6" in old money) and although it will fit on my iOptron AZ Pro mount, it does have clearence issues at high elevations. No such problem with the laid-back Gibraltar mount, though: ... and it will reach zenith, though I'd probably have to use a car creeper to sit on: Stable even at this altitude, so I am happy that this is a robust system. The fork separates from the riser easily so the rig can be split for transport, and is very quick and easy to set up, so it'll be fun trying to catch the ISS next time it's anywhere near!

Last night I added my AA Tri band filter to my Canon 1000d and tried for the Eastern veil again. Although I need to rotate the camera 90', I was amazed at the extra colours (mainly blue and cyan) that were in the image. So next time out I will try longer exposures and spend more time imaging!! Nearly a full Moon and a not too dark sky, 12 x 180s ISO 800 in APT guided in PHD and finished with DSS and PS6.

Tried the new zwo ADC last night, only had an hour but a notable difference in the colour..hoping to get a better run tonight if work permits..

This must be my first solar in about 3 years reckon. Part of my getting the Towa fully up and running I made an adaptor this am to fit a 1.25" nosepiece to an Micro 4/3 camera ring so had to try it out. White light using Lunt wedge on my Towa 339 80mm F15 refractor. Taken with Olympus OM D EM 1 mirrorless. 100 subs at 640s 200asa. Pipp, AS3 and Photoshop for sharpening, curves and false colour. It was flippin hot doing this so I didnt hang about but I enjoyed it. Click and click for zoom

I've concluded I don't do enough planetary. Nice to get Jupiter after so long. 75% of 2000 frames at f20 with my C8 and Altair Astro 290C

Changed the Hypercam for my modded 1000d and spent time setting it all up. 60 x 60s ISO 800 +Darks, Bias and Flats. APT, guided, DSS and PS6 I will try longer exposures in future now it is running OK!!

It's probably nearly 5 decades since I last intentionally tried to image meteors, but given the favorable Perseids return this year (the Moon is only 4 days old at the peak) I thought I might have another go. However, with my shortest focal length lens of 50mm on my Canon D200 APS-C camera, the FOV is somewhat limited (26 x 17 deg) so, being optimistic for a clear spell over the maximum, I treated myself to a Canon EF-S 10 - 18 mm lens (giving a FOV of 128 x 85 deg at 10mm). Thought I should try it out in advance so used a fixed tripod with 30sec exposures. DSS failed to stack any of the images properly so I inspected the individual images and began to think I had wasted my money - stars were round in some portions of the images and appeared elongated in different directions in other areas. It wasn't until I stacked the images with no alignment to understand what I was seeing, the rotation of the sky north and south of the celestial equator. And certainly, 30s exposure is too long to give 'round stars' at the equator even at 10mm! In the end, using the manual alignment tool in IRIS (which caters for all kinds of alignment and scaling differences between images) I stacked just 9 of the images. Being taken at ISO3200 on a very warm night, the noise is horrendous and I've yet to create any calibration images. However, reasonably pleased with the result (the bright star just above centre is Vega).

Unmodded Canon 250D with Canon 100mm f2 lens, 40 x 60s exposures.

Been trying out the RC on these two tonight. Very much a learning session to see what I could achieve. Collected over 100 Gigs of data so it is going to take me a while to sort through it all. Did a quick process of a couple of SER files just to see what I have managed to obtain. These two were taken with the 10 inch RC and the ZWO ASI 120 MC via a 2 X Barlow and the ADC. 5000 frames captured in Firecapture at 800 x 800 ROI. Stacked in Autostakkert Touch of wavelets in Registax Quick polish in PS 6. I did try out the 5 X Power mate but after having to clean it a few times to get rid of the bunnies the seeing had dropped off too much to really get a decent image. Which was a shame as it produced a very large image at full res. I will be interested to see how the rest turn out but not right now as I need some sleep. Saturn Jupiter

Looks better than it did in real life!! Storm on it's way in!! Apologies for the dust bunnies!!

Interesting Sun bothering session today. Rig got cleaned a couple of times as it poured down with rain even though the Sun was shinning 😎 Caught me out more than once. Still not to worry it cleaned the dust off the gear. 😂 Managed to grab a few SER files. I have been experimenting with the processing again. Used the HRD Toning in PS 6 on this one. False colour added in PS 6.

For saying there isnt much darkness around this month you guys have been busy, loads of pics to go through this month. Comets, Asteroids, Meteors A lovely atmospheric shot of a meteor from Alis80b https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19580-a-meteor-and-the-milky-way/ Graham caught a belter of a meteor trace https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19581-someone-must-have-seen-this-one/ Deep Sky Ibbos started us off with a deep shot of M16 in Ha https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19548-m16-ha/ then added S11 and O3 to give us a very nice SHO shot https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19609-m16-sho/ Then gave us an M13 https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19624-m13-for-a-change-this-time-with-the-wo132/ ChrisP was imaging in SHO with the Butterfly Nebula https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19532-ic1318-the-butterfly-nebula-in-sho/ Graham gave his RC a go with M16 https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19564-my-first-crack-at-m16/ then added S11 and O3 https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19577-m16-in-hubbleish/ RonC gave us the Cocoon https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19576-ic-5146-the-cocoon-nebula/ Alis80b gave us a detailed close up of the NA https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19584-north-american-nebula-with-my-new-filter-😊/ and a shot of the Veil complex https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19631-the-veil-nebula/ A triple posting fro Carastro putting her Samyang 135 F2 through it's paces https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19603-propeller-tulip-widefield-clamshell-and-a-mosaic/ A nice detailed IC 1396 from 8472 using the old Pentax on a modern CCD. https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19560-ic1396-in-sho/ Derbyshire Dave gave IC 1396 a go also with his Elephants Trunk detail https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19594-the-elephant-trunk-nebula-ic1396-in-ha/ Planetary Graham gave us the first Saturn of the year https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19574-first-saturn-of-the-year/ Solar Lots of solar images posted this month. We were all expecting lots of eclipse images from earlier this month but the good ole UK weather did it's usual trick but some got tantalising glimpses through cloud. Here's a précis of the posts Graham https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19533-solar-from-today-06062021/ https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19555-solar-from-this-evening-09062021/ Live eclipse streaming video https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19563-live-stream-of-the-partial-solar-eclipse/ Ibbo A superb ISS transit video https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19541-iss-solar-transit-6-6-21/ plus a collection of different wavelengths https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19589-3-flavours-of-sol-15-6-21/ and an excellent set of close up and FD images https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19639-sol-30-6-2021/ ChrisP https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19538-solar-in-white-light-06062021-getting-prepped-for-the-partial-eclipse/ https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19557-10-seconds-of-clear-sky/ Alis80b was lucky enough to see some of the eclipse https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19562-cloudy-partial-eclipse-🙈/ Sunny Phil caught some of the Eclipse also https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19561-eclipse/ Clive as well https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19569-35-mins-in-brid/ Widefield Some lovely MW shots from Alis80b https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19520-the-milky-way-from-my-garden-😊/ https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19551-the-milky-way-from-shingle-street-suffolk/ https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19572-cygnus-region-of-the-milky-way/ TasKing gave us some trails https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19575-star-trails-from-kelling-may-2021/ I recognise those trees J NLCs from ChrisP https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19583-noctilucent-clouds-15062021-3am/ and a MW from Longnor https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19559-a-couple-of-nights-in-the-peak-district-milky-way-over-longnor/ Bootes and Corona B from Sunny Phil https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19627-bootes-and-corona-borealis/ Some great images this month folks and lots of them for saying it is a month with little darkness. So all that remains for me to do is choose an image, hmm, never easy this. I am torn between three images which have made me say wow... Ibbo's ISS solar Transit and his M13 and Grahams eclipse streaming. The prep that went into the ISS transit and the Eclipse streaming is what impresses me as well as the resulting images. Sooooo. flicking between the two Grahams Eclipse by a gnats wotsit then Ibbos ISS transit. Well done guys. https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19563-live-stream-of-the-partial-solar-eclipse/ https://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/19541-iss-solar-transit-6-6-21/

What a beautiful day. I was up at the crack of dawn getting ready for some sun bothering with my newly upgraded Lunt. I have changed the Blue glass filter in the Blocking filter and what a difference it has made. The amount of detail I can now see is incredible. Much more contrast . Using my newly made Flat Field adapter also improved things . I also changed tact with my processing. I have down loaded Autostakkert and used it instead of Registax. All colour has been added in PS 6. Close ups using a 2 X Barlow. All images are a fraction of full res size. Click on an image a couple of times to get to full res. Full Disc. Sunspot 1. Sunspot 2. Largest Prom.

Spent an hour on Thursday photographing leafcutter bees arriving at our bee box. Amazing creatures.. They fly pieces of leaf into their homes (in our bee box) to block up the entrances to protect the eggs that they lay there.. I've made a collage out of some of the shots of them flying in.. Click and Click again in Flickr to see them in more detail. This all started by taking chunks out of leaves.. like this.. And it ends by them sealing their offspring in their own secure homes..

I decided to try my hand at imaging again last Saturday (it's been over a year) and here are my attempts using the Nikon D750 & Esprit 100. Due to unforeseen circumstances I wasn't able to stay out for as long as I'd have liked and NGC 7000 was sort of an experiment to see if I could capture any data from my back garden, I was quite surprised by the result. These were processed in Photoshop, probably quite badly as I really need to spend some time learning how to process images properly. I've got a copy of Making Every Photon Count so I'll have read and may try processing these again sometime 🙂 M27 - 31 x 30s ISO 800 NGC 7000 10 x 30s ISO 1600

Ed 80 ZWO cam 251 frames

Another sneek inbetween the aerials, low and a bit washed out but not complaining as its the first of the year for me..i believe thats Ganymede showing its face, taken around 2am

Well I tried this object with the Tri band filter on the Canon 1000dm, not entirely happy with it as I expected more Green and Blue to show in the image?? This is 40 x 180s at ISO 800 with the usual kit. Nearly a full Moon and clouds drifting in and out all night! !

A random set of RGB files stacked and processed from this am. My yearly battle with WinJupos is about to begin-I could be sometime. Imaging telescopes Ceslestron C11 Imaging cameras: ZWO Asi178 mono Mounts: NEQ-6 Pro Software: Autostakkert 2 · Registax6 · Firecapture Filters: Astronomik RGB Type II (31.8mm) Accessory: ZWO ADC Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector

I probably won't post many photos in this section but thought this may be of interest... to anyone who is interested 😊 I can't actually remember when I took any photos with a 'proper' camera. These are all taken with my Canon EOS Ra (with my old Canon lens). Canon's website states... "The EOS Ra is a dedicated camera for Astrophotography subjects, and is not recommended for everyday photographic use" Thought I'd give it a go anyway on my recent trip to Suffolk. I don't think it did too bad (considering it's a dedicated Astro camera) 😊

Oh yeah, there,s badges now, never noticed till now. Doesnt bother me, just reminds me of gold and silver stars at primary school too many years ago 🙂 I look upon stuff like this as a requirement that you young uns need these days 🙂with your soshal meejah stuff 🙂 Thanks for the work Craig