Sh2-171 in Cepheus Sh2-171 is a star forming region in the constellation of Cepheus in the far northern hemisphere of the sky. Imaged here with Takahashi FSQ85 and G2-8300 with Astrodon HaRGB filters.
M33 is a galaxy about 2.8 – 3 million light years away in the constellation of Triangulum. Along with M33, it is one of the Local Group of galaxies with which our own Milky Way galaxy shares the local universe. M33 is the most distant object that the human naked eye can see, appearing as a ghostly white smudge on a very dark night from clear skies. It is a magnificent spiral galaxy about half the size of our own galaxy and because of its close proximity to us it appears very large in our skies and is am oft-photographed object by many, myself included. M33 Galaxy in Triangulum I’ve imaged M33 multiple times. For example, with the same FSQ85 telescope here and also at a closer image scale with the TEC140 refractor here. This time I have set the galaxy in a slightly wider field by utilising the FSQ85 0.73…
HaRGB A perennial favourite object to image in the summer and autumn months in the Northern Hemisphere. I’ve imaged this target with multiple equipment combinations over the years. For example, in One Shot Colour (OSC), in widefield and in a very wide field.As part of the image I used my existing Ha dataset from 2018/2019 which consists of 48 x 600 second exposures. I discuss capture of this image here. 48 x 600s Ha Image I then captured the RGB dataset in October 2021. This image is my first image set that I captured using the excellent NINA (Nighttime Imaging “N” Astronomy) imaging software. I captured four hours of RGB data through Astrodon 31mm E series Gen 2 filters binned at 1×1. This consisted of 300 second exposures. Seeing and transparency were not good but clear nights have been very infrequent in the UK in the past six months so I…
The Rosette Nebula is a huge emission nebula in the Orion arm of the galaxy located in the constellation of Monoceros. It is about 5500 light years away and about 150 light years across and stars are being born from the hydrogen that comprises the nebula. The Rosette Nebula Image Technical Data Imaged with Takahashi FSQ85 at native focal length with my Moravian Instruments G2-8300 cooled CCD camera and Astrodon RGBHa filters. Data collected from my backyard observatory on 8th January 2018. Image data is as follows (Ha is 1×1 and RGB is 2×2) Ha > 14 x 1200s ; Red > 17 x 300s ; Green 12 x 300s ; Blue > 20 x 300s Ha (3nm) Image As can be seen above, the Ha image is extremely detailed and shows a huge amount of detail. This is 3.5 hours of exposures through the Astrodon 3nm Ha filter. RGB…
Simeis 147 (Sharpless Sh2-240) sometimes called The Spaghetti Nebula is a supernova remnant of a star that exploded forty thousand years ago. It sits across the border of Taurus and Auriga and is a huge object, about six moon widths across. It is located about 3000 light years away. Because of its extremely low surface brightness it was only discovered as recently as 1952. It is an exceptionally difficult object to observe visually and to have any hope of seeing it with your own eyes at the eyepiece requires extremely dark skies (Bortle 1), specialist filters, immaculate seeing and transparency and extreme dark adaption of your eyes. This rules out almost anywhere near civilisation. Personally speaking, I have never known any astronomer who has seen it visually. Even with photography it requires very long exposure times to bring out any detail. Simeis 147 Image Technical Data This image was created…