SK Astro
Author

Stephen Kirk

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Lunar

The Moon

The Moon was at about first quarter when I captured this image.  There are a lot of firsts in this image when capturing as I discuss below. Moon, 22 Dec 2020 First up, this is the first time I used the QHY268C for planetary photography in video mode.  Before now, I always used this camera in long exposure mode.  I think the camera works very well and when I cropped the capture area down to 1600×1200 from its native 6000×4000, I was capturing16fps in Sharpcap, which is quite reasonable.Secondly, this is the first time I used my Takahashi FSQ85 as a planetary/lunar scope.    I think it worked our pretty well.  I would normally have moved the camera over to the TEC140 or even the C925 SCT scope, however, I do not yuet have the adapters for the QHY268C to do that just yet. Technical Details As mentioned, imaged with…

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Nebulae

The Heart Nebula – IC1805

A famous emission nebula in the Northern constellation of Cassiopeia, the Heart Nebula is a huge star forming region located about 8000 light years away, out in the Perseus Arm of our galaxy.  It is often imaged as a pair of nebulae alongside the Soul Nebula as the famous Heart and Soul Nebulae. I have imaged them together here  as well as The Soul nebula here, presented on its own.  It is also known as IC1805 and Sharpless S2-190. The Heart Nebula It is a beautiful nebula and I have even seen it portrayed on Valentine cards 🙂  Technical Details Imaged from my back yard in Nottingham, UK on 20 December 2020.  Seeing conditions and sky transparency were reasonable.  I used Takahashi FSQ85 refractor at native focal length and a QHY268C OSC CMOS camera.  I took 42 x 180s exposures and the data was captured with Sequence Generator Pro.  Processed…

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Nebulae

The Soul Nebula with QHY268C and FSQ85

Soul_Nebula

The Soul Nebula – IC1848 The Soul Nebula is a large emission nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It is commonly imaged with the nearby Heart Nebula as a nebula pair, not unsurprisingly called the Heart and Soul Nebulae such as my rendition here. The Soul Nebula is a vast star forming region and is located about 7000 light years away, in the Perseus Arm of our galaxy, outward from the core. It is sometimes called the baby nebula because it resembles a baby! Technical Data Imaged with my Takahashi FSQ85 refractor at its native focal length and I used my QHY268C colour camera on MESU 200 mount using off-axis guiding. The mage comprises 42 x 3 minute exposures to give a total integration time of just over two hours. It could use some more data, especially some Ha data to bring put more detail in the nebula. Seeing and…

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Galaxies

M31 with QHY268C

Final_M31_PS

I have imaged M31 several times before and on this occasion I thought I’d turn the QHY268C onto the galaxy. M31 – The Great Andromeda Galaxy (82 subs) This image is made up from a total of 82 exposures, each of 180 seconds for a total integration time of about 2.5 hours. I used my Takahashi FSQ85 refractor at its native focal length. I used an LDAS 2″ light pollution filter in front of the camera to try and cut through the light pollution a bit. Imaged from my backyard in Nottingham, October 2020 on MESU 200 mount and OAG used with an ASI 120mm guidecam. Data captured with Sequence Generator PRo and processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop CC. M31 – The Great Andromeda Galaxy (49 subs)

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Nebulae

IC1396 – Elephant Trunk Nebula

The Elephant Trunk Nebula

IC1396 Elephant Trunk Nebula I have imaged IC1396 before.  It passes directly overhead at my location in Nottingham, UK.Imaged here on 14-15 October 2020 with FSQ85 refractor and QHY268C OSC camera on MESU 200 mount.A total of 55 x 240s exposures.  Developed in PixInsight and Photoshop CC.  Image capture with Sequence Generator Pro. Annotated Version

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