More Pics of Planetary Nebula
These are my recent pics of about 35 planetary nebula (PNe), taken by me between August 30-Sept 1, 2017. As in all pictures on this site, I used a Nexstar C8, iOptron ZEQ25 mount, ZWO ASI224MC camera, SharpCap 2.9 and basic screen captures. There was no post processing and all images were rendered at time of capture.
My method of capture was to adjust the Gamma, Contrast and Brightness, adjust the White Blue balance and White Red balance, plus using the histogram to adjust Brightness, Gradient and Blackness. All pics were Aligned on the stars in the field and in some cases, where there were no alignment stars, I would use a longer exposure for a one off image and capture, usually at 30s or 60s. There are some multiples of an object, but in most cases there are 1x1 bins and 2x2 bins of the same object.
Some of the pics show bright amp glow, because the object was too dim to be seen with less exposures and/or adjustment of the sliders. Please don't be too harsh on your criticism of my images, I am still learning.
My method of capture was to adjust the Gamma, Contrast and Brightness, adjust the White Blue balance and White Red balance, plus using the histogram to adjust Brightness, Gradient and Blackness. All pics were Aligned on the stars in the field and in some cases, where there were no alignment stars, I would use a longer exposure for a one off image and capture, usually at 30s or 60s. There are some multiples of an object, but in most cases there are 1x1 bins and 2x2 bins of the same object.
Some of the pics show bright amp glow, because the object was too dim to be seen with less exposures and/or adjustment of the sliders. Please don't be too harsh on your criticism of my images, I am still learning.
Click on an image to enlarge it.
I was recently outdoors, on a few nights back at the end of September, early October, grabbing more pictures of Planetary nebula (PNeb). I got inspired to pick off some of the Abell planetary nebula. I managed to get Abells 2, 3, 4, 6, 53, 55, 57, 71, 72, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83. In some of these pics, the nebula is barely visible, because either it was too faint to see amongst the starfield or the object was too big, thus a low surface brightness. I did my best to process these pics to bring out the nebula and reduce the dust and erratic pixels I call Pixel Rain.
Some of these pics are in black & white to bring out detail, some are in color, some are in color mono, meaning they are blue or green because of the use of a UHC filter placed in front of the camera. The bright mottled light to the upper right is amp glow, cost by hot pixels due to an overexposure of the image to bring out detail in the nebula. In some cases, I cropped it out but in others I left it in.
Some of these pics are in black & white to bring out detail, some are in color, some are in color mono, meaning they are blue or green because of the use of a UHC filter placed in front of the camera. The bright mottled light to the upper right is amp glow, cost by hot pixels due to an overexposure of the image to bring out detail in the nebula. In some cases, I cropped it out but in others I left it in.
Click on an image to make it larger.
October 27, 2017
Last week, October 17, was a clear and cold Tuesday night. No dew and great transparency. I went out with my gear and set up in a completely Moon free night sky at my favorite observing spot. I planned on imaging planetary nebula. My set up was my Celestron Nexstar C8, iOptron ZEQ25 mount, ZWO ASI224MC camera, my Toshiba laptop running Sharpcap 2.9. I stayed out until 2 AM. The temps dropped to 44 degrees. My friend had left a few hours earlier. I was tuned to the Beatles Station on SiriusXM for company and noise (bears were seen in the area the week before). I managed to get quite a few images and these are the images I took.
October 28, 2017
I planned on going out on Friday night October 27th for some stargazing/imaging. I did go out but came home around 2:30 am because my camera focal reducer and OIII filter had fogged over. Earlier in the evening, I noticed my corrector plate dewing over, so I connected power from my car via a 12v extension cable from the 12v port in the front of the car. I ran a three port adapter off the main cable and connected my dew heater and turned it on full, 100%. After about 20 minutes, the dew disappeared and I resumed my imaging. Later on, after I had fully charged my laptop at the same time, I noticed I was not getting any faint objects to appear in my images. I gave in and disassembled my gear, only to find that the focal reducer and nebula filter had fogged over. Next time I will attach a dew heater strip to the 2" visual back to warm the inside of the visual back that accommodates the camera with the reducer and filter attached. Hopefully that will end that fiasco. Here, I have some of the pics I did manage to take on Friday night.
July 7, 2018
Saturday night was a good night for me. The air was calm, light breeze, very little dew, very good transparency but the seeing was below average. I could not get very sharp images of the planets, however, my deep sky pics were the hoot!
My usual set up: Nexstar C8, iOptron ZEQ25, Celestron 6.3 FR/Flattener, ASI290mm with 1.25" UHC and UV/IR block, Sharpcap 3.1 Pro, Screen grabber.
My usual set up: Nexstar C8, iOptron ZEQ25, Celestron 6.3 FR/Flattener, ASI290mm with 1.25" UHC and UV/IR block, Sharpcap 3.1 Pro, Screen grabber.
July 9 and July 11, 2018
Monday and Wednesday night were two good nights, with average to above average transparency and seeing. I got some nice pics of Jupiter, Mars and Saturn on Wednesday night. Monday was the better night for planetary nebula. Here is my selection of imaged planetary nebula taken from Monday and Wednesday nights.
July 18 and 19, 2018
More obscure planetary nebula. I spent the last two night imaging some off the beaten path planetary nebula. A few I have never heard of before. Some were dim, but with excellent polar aligning and goto alignment, I got every object in a 1x1 field of view in my ASI290MM camera everytime. I just made sure to Sync to Target on either side of the meridian. I used a 1.25" UHC filter with an IR/UV block filter on top of that, using a 0.5 FR on my camera, inserted into my Nexstar C8.
July 20, 2018
Happy Moon Landing Day! 49 years ago, the astronauts of Apollo 11, landed on the Moon and walked on it. Last night, I went out and did some imaging. The seeing was excellent and got a lot of great images of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Look for those images on my Planets page. I imaged about 10 more obscure planetary nebula, with names like Weinberger-Sabbadin, IRAS, Wray and a few NGC's. Check out my new images below.