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G2-8300

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Nebulae

The North American Nebula with Samyang 135mm

Hydrogen Alpha North American and Pelican Nebulae Above is 120 minutes worth of Hydrogen Alpha data captured in five minute exposures with an Astrodon Ha 3nm filter and a Samyang 135mm camera lens on a Moravian Instruments G2-8300 CCD camera. RGB data I then captured one hour in each of the Astrodon R,G and B filters with the same rig as detailed for the Ha image, again in five minute exposures. However, use of the superb Astrodon E series RGB filters produce a nice image and the colours are brought out quite nicely although it lacks a bit of punch and vibrancy. The bright star to the right is Deneb. HaRGB image In Photoshop I broke out the red channel and then blended it as a 50:50 mix with the Ha image (at the top of this page) before recombining back into RGB. I also saved a copy of this…

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Galaxies

Markarian’s Chain

A famous string of galaxies in the constellation of Virgo, named after the astronomer Benjamin Markarian who first discovered their common motion.  The chain contains several Messier catalogue objects and is visible in the late winter and spring in the Northern Hemisphere.  The galaxies are located between 65-75 million light years away and are nice objects to observe with a telescope if you can do so from a dark sight.This image was created from a data set acquired in Spring 2019 with my FSQ85 refractor.Image is centred on “The Eyes” of NGC4435 and NGC4438 just below dead centre of the image.  At the bottom is the monstrous supergiant elliptical galaxy M87, the most massive object in the local universe harbouring the famous black hole recently imaged with the event horizon telescope. Markarian’s Chain in Virgo  Below is an inverted version that help show the galaxies with more contrast. Inverted Version…

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Nebulae

The North American and Pelican Nebulae in Hydrogen Alpha

North American Nebula

The North American Nebula and the adjacent Pelican nebula to the right of it are popular objects of the summer and autumn sky in the Northern Hemisphere.  Both of these objects are aptly named because the nebula to the left really does look like the continent of North America being looked at by a pelican to the right!This post discusses a version of these objects in the light of Hydrogen Alpha 3nm only.  You can see the vast amount of detail that is emitted at this wavelength by the clouds of hydrogen that the nebulae are composed from.This picture is composed of 48 x 600s exposures with a Takahashi FSQ85 refractor and Moravian G2-8300 CCD camera with an Astrodon 31mm 3nm Ha filter and the Takahashi 0.73 reducer.  The image discussed here is a pure Ha monochrome image but I also combined this data set with RGB colour data as…

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Galaxies

Virgo Cluster in Wide Field Setting

Virgo in Widefield

This is the Virgo Cluster of galaxies presented in a wide field setting. The cluster is a popular area for amateur astronomers and professionals alike and contains some very important galaxies, the most important of which is M87, the supergiant elliptical galaxy and one of the largest galaxies in the local universe. You can see Markarian’s Chain demonstrated at an unfamiliar angle in this picture. The picture is comprised from data captured during late March 2020 and I used my Samyang 135mm DSLR lens connected to G2-8300 cooled CCD camera from Moravian Instruments and Astrodon RGB filters. The picture is comprised of 70 minutes (of five minute exposures binned 1×1) in each of the red, green and blue filters to give a total integration time of three hours and thirty minutes. The data was developed with PixInsight and Photoshop. The Virgo Galaxy Cluster The Virgo Galaxy Cluster Inverted The Virgo…

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