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Galaxies

The Leo Triplet with TEC140 and QHY268C

Leo Triplet FSQ85 and QHY268C

The Leo Triplet is a popular and famous group of galaxies in the constellation of Leo, best viewed in late winter/early spring in the Northern Hemisphere. They are often imaged together like this as the triplet or as individual galaxies. They are located about 35 million light years away and consists of the Messier galaxies M66 (top left in the image), M65 (bottom left ) and to the right we have NGC 3628, commonly called The Hamburger Galaxy. The galaxies are easily visible in a small to mid-sized telescope as faint smudges in this isosceles triangular pattern. The galaxies are sometimes called the M66 Group but ask any astronomer and they will immediately know what you mean if you mention the Leo Triplet! Another famous galaxy group in Leo is the M96 group. The Leo Triplet Technical Details Image captured from my back yard observatory in Nottingham, UK on the…

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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

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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Cameras Nebulae Telescopes

First Light Image From QHY268C and FSQ85

Complete_OSC_NAN_smaller

North American and Pelican Nebulae Full Size Image here (opens in a new tab).This my first semi-completed image from the QHY268C and so far I am impressed with its performance.  I discuss unboxing the camera and also how I connect it to the FSQ85 in other posts on my site.This image – above – of The North American and Pelican Nebulae is a stack of 47 x 180s exposures at Gain 0 and Offset 30 at -15C on my Takahashi FSQ85. This is my first deep-sky CMOS camera and I had to research how to preprocess the data from the camera and I will discuss this in another post.Since I acquired the camera and in keeping with the “new gear curse”, I have been constantly frustrated by wet weather and cloudy skies for almost a month.  The 47 exposures for this image were spread out over about seven imaging sessions,…

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Nebulae

The Rosette Nebula FSQ85

Rosette Nebula

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…

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