440 replies to this topic

[Jeff Morgan]

Another summer favorite, M8. This one is harder to shoot because of the range. Go for the tendrils, burn out the core. Go for a nice core, lose the tendrils. I've shot a bunch here but indecisive which I like best.

 

 

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[Jeff Morgan]

Another summer favorite, Sharpless 2-105. More popularly known as the Crescent Nebula.

 

Either Gavster or Alan Green (I think it was Gavster) pointed out an interesting feature within this nebula, the "Question Mark" feature. It is found immediately west of the brightest star within the Crescent, V1770 Cygni. And yes, it looks just like a ? symbol.

 

Going back with my 16" I could see it clearly, and it shows in the images I have taken with that scope. In the 180mm Takahashi Epsilon, I did not note it. However, in my 130mm refractor it hovers on the edge of visibility and begins to show in this image.

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[Jeff Morgan]

The Eastern Veil also known as Sharpless 2-103 or NGC 6992. 

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[Jeff Morgan]

The central portion of the Veil nebula sometimes referred to as Pickering's Wedge. It has at least two NGC numbers, 6974 and 6979.

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[Dale Eason]

Here is an open cluster NGC7789  Caroline's Rose near Cassiopeia.  10inch F3 home made dob using mirror made by Mike Lockwood.  Afocal with 55mm TV at 16x and 685 long pass filter.  Samsung Note 5 phone.  4 second single exposure at ISO 400.  Taken from my drive way in suburban LP Bortle 8-8.5 (nearly white) skies  I had been trying to see this at my house for years after seeing it in my 16 F5 at dark site Okie Tex. With NV that is now possible.  Though not as good as a dark site for sure.  Recently seen at Bortle 5 skies with much more detail and wonderful tiny white stars in arcs around a central region.  Here in town it is not as good but still wonderful to see without a long drive.  It was even visible hand held at 2x with same filter.

 

It is a nice tight cluster with many dimmer stars.

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[Dale Eason]

The soul nebula IC1848  from my drive way.  10inch F3 home made dob using mirror made by Mike Lockwood. NV mod3C  afocal with 55mm TV at 16x and Antlia 3.5nm HA filter.  Samsung Note 5 phone.  4 second single exposure at ISO 400.  Taken from my drive way in suburban LP Bortle 8-8.5 (nearly white) skies  First time view for me.  This view is very close to what I saw in the eyepiece.

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[Dale Eason]

The pacman NGC 281 Next to Alpha Cass.  From my drive way.  10inch F3 3D printed home made dob using mirror made by Mike Lockwood. NV mod3C  afocal with 55mm TV at 16x and Antlia 3.5nm HA filter.  Samsung Note 5 phone.  4 second single exposure at ISO 400.  Taken from my drive way in suburban LP Bortle 8-8.5 (nearly white) skies  This looks better than I saw visually because of the longer time integration brightened the dimmer portions and gave it more detail.

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[Jeff Morgan]

A two'fer today, Sharpless 2-108 in Cygnus, immediately southwest of Gamma Cygni (and visible in the first photo).

 

The first shot is afocal with the 55 Plossl (one of my last before getting the 67 conversion lens). The second is prime focus. I flipped the image to keep the orientation roughly the same. The camera orientation changed during the equipment configuration change, so there is a rotational difference. (That is why we call this amateur astronomy.)

 

Usually, the faster effective speed and brighter image are the best choice. But when the object is smaller, I often like to go for more magnification so as to have the object fill the field, upping the ISO to compensate somewhat. Lately, I have been shooting many nebula this way because they happen to be nicely sized for the scope I was using.

 

You be the judge.

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[Jeff Morgan]

The tail of Scorpius is a great area, so much to see! This one is the Prawn Nebula. I used a 0.7x reducer to include the clusters Trumpler 24 and Colinder 316.

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[Jeff Morgan]

There is more than one way to skin a cat!

 

Two views of Sh 2-8, the Cats Paw nebula. The first is prime focus. The second is using afocal reduction with the 55 Plossl, one of the last photos I took with it before getting the 67mm conversion lens. If you own the 55 Plossl and are on the fence with this purchase, I will say that I can not ever see myself removing the conversion lens from my 55.

 

More importantly perhaps is the location of the shots. One is from my SQM 20.5 back yard, the other is from a 21.5 sky just 13 miles/18 minutes away on the other side of Granite Mountain. Dark skies make a BIG difference, even with NV. 

 

The small irony of that is that I was using this area 18 years ago and had abandoned it for darker sites further away. And the SQM meter shows it to be as good as the one and only 0.2 worse than the other at 3x the distance. A big hat tip to CN member FredOz for re-acquainting me with it, and showing me a set-up spot that does not require 4WD to access. 

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[Jeff Morgan]

Open clusters have a huge range of appearance and appeal, both with NV and conventional eyepieces. Aperture and intensification can have a huge impact on appearance and appeal. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.

 

In 2011 I was using a 4.7" refractor and happened across NGC 6281 in Scorpius. It was highly interesting and I dubbed it the "Lunar Lander Cluster":

 

https://www.cloudyni...ster/?p=4278620

 

In larger apertures and NV I can not see it. Maybe if I backed off the magnification some ...

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[Jeff Morgan]

NGC 6242, an open cluster near the Prawn Nebula. A bit underexposed, not as good as the visual presentation. I could have used a higher ISO setting here. Or fixable in photo editing software, but not done here to comply with forum rules.

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[Jeff Morgan]

Two views of M11, the Wild Duck Cluster taken a few minutes apart.

 

The first is a close up obtained at prime focus using a 2.5x Powermate yielding f/17.5. 

 

The second is prime focus, native f/7 of the telescope. The wider views also reveals dark nebulas Barnard 320 and Barnard 112.

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[Jeff Morgan]

Here is an object that is rewarding with large apertures or small, h-alpha or no filter at all.

 

Filterless, it contains another "Klingon Battle Cruiser" asterism - a good top view of the infamous D7. Unfortunately, too much filter blots it out. From my observing log:

 

Jul 3, 2018, Z16, Home: Jackpot! A really cool combined nebula and star cluster. This one is complex and requires a configuration change between barlow (and possible long pass filter) to the fastest focal reducer or afocal setting available. Star cluster is small with few members but has a very interesting outline - it looks like a Klingon D7 battle cruiser as viewed from above! The Command Boom and Engineering Sections are quite easy to imagine for any Star Trek fan. Not sure which stars are actually cluster members, but I don’t care - it’s way cool! Best view (cluster) was in the 1.5x Barlow.

 

When viewing the cluster at prime focus it was very clear (no filter) that there is extensive nebula in the area. Switching to the 55 a focal and a 7 nm filter (better than 12nm on this object) reveals extensive nebula that spills outside of the 1.6° field. Very detailed and bright. Wisps and whorls. Smaller to the west larger to the east. Definitely a Phonetography target, would have done this but moonrise was fast approaching …

 

Jun 26, 2019, Z16, Home: Nice cluster spectacular nebula! Didn’t realize how small the Klingon D7 asterism was. Bridge of ship just touches brightest part of nebula.

 

Jun 27, 2019, Epsilon, Home: A better view in the Zambuto but the Epsilon gives context to the entire nebula. Very curdled appearance with several detached sections and dark lanes. Three small detached patches bisected by dark lane and then the top of the nebula opens up almost like wings with a dark gap and then a really bright knot on the other side of the gap. Some small patches of nebulosity to the south and east of the line of five bright stars. A Top-Tier nebula for sure.

 

Jul 2, 2019, Epsilon, Home: Great, but again not quite as nice as in the 16”. A very complex nebulosity field. The north and western portions are bright an arc of nebula city curling around almost reminiscent of M 42 with a very bright spot in the center. The east and southern portions are much different character like a dark line that separates the bright portion from three small patches. And then there’s an even fainter area of nebulosity somewhat south and east of the three patches. Compelling view in the 7nm. Swapping to the long pass filter to view the cluster the Klingon D7 asterism is clearly seen even in the small image scale of the Epsilon. Due to the prominence of the nebula over the cluster, database entry re-classified from Type OC to Type BN.

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[Scottsdale90]

Here are some targets I went after now that I have a wider field scope. Bortle 1 sky 5300 ft.  I got an Esprit100ED F5.5 APO and added an Apex 0.65x focal reducer. Took the Heart, Soul, and Veil afocally at F2, and NGC7000 at Prime focus F3.6.  Used my Astronomik 6nm HA filter for all but the Heart. I found the Heart showed more nebula contrast with an Optolong L-Enhance filter which is 10nm HA and 24nm O3.  Did not try the Optolong on the other objects due to time constraints, also doing some EAA astrophotography. If you're interested in the color EAA/Sharpcap stuff, check my Instagram @azastroguy.   Used iPhone11 running nightcap for these photos.

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[Jeff Morgan]

Three-for-Tuesday. Sharpless 2-29, 2-31, and 2-32. This is a complicated area covered by many catalogs:

 

RCW 146c

Gum 75

IC 1724

NGC 6557

LBN 28

 

Take your pick! Not that it is tremendously important (I tend to regard it as one large object, just like M42), but getting proper ID's on these is a bit of a task. With the two bright condensations on the north edge as eyes and thin dark lane or nebula across the middle as a mouth I can almost imagine the face of JarJar Binks when I look at this one.

 

Actually easy to see and very detailed, but easy to pass by for it's more famous neighbor 1 degree to the west: the Lagoon Nebula.

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[Jeff Morgan]

Another soon-to-be-gone summer favorite, M8 the Trifid nebula.

 

Due to the file size posting limitations, I typically use Full Size Lowest Quality settings on the photo export. While this provides a nice big image, quality obviously suffers compared to the 5mb original TIFF files. So this time I will attempt posting two images: the first the normal way, the second Medium Size Highest Quality. I am hopeful that this will comply with the CN size limitations and preserve most of the original quality.

 

And of course be large enough to see. 

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[Jeff Morgan]

M17, the Omega Nebula. Another shot at prime focus for more favorable magnification.

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[Jeff Morgan]

And while in the neighborhood of M17, one can not help to stop by M16.

 

Again, I opted for prime focus to fill the field of the 5" refractor. Still not enough aperture and focal length to get details on the Pillars of Creation, but definitely hinting at it. I can hardly wait to get back to this one with my 16" scope and new iPhone.

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[Eddgie]

Great pic of the Eagle.  Yeah, I can see the main dark lanes of the Pillars easily.   Very nice. 

[Jeff Morgan]

Of course the Eagle gets all the attention in Serpens. In my pre-NV days I scoured the area with a variety of instruments large and small. I logged many objects, including seven spiral galaxies. But only one emission nebula - M16.

 

With an image intensifier eastern Serpens becomes a playground, and I quickly logged nine (9) additional emission nebula. None of them were particularly difficult from my suburban skies. Three of them (Sh 2-46, -50, and -54) are quite nice indeed. The brightest of them is Sh 2-54, very large and detailed. This image also includes NGC 6604, a loose and sparse open cluster just below center. It is pretty small and does not show well at this image scale, but will help orient the field.

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[Jeff Morgan]

Another view of the Tulip Nebula, Sharpless 2-101 in Cygnus, this time with a 5" refractor. 

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[Jeff Morgan]

A view of Seimis 57, also known as the Propeller nebula, through the 5" refractor. Another prime focus shot, trading image brightness for scale.

 

The stretch of sky from the Seimis 57 to Omicron (northwest section of Cygnus) does not get much mention, but it is full of nebulosity strands that resemble streaks of high cirrus clouds in the daytime sky sometimes referred to as "Mares Tails". Seimis 57 is a rather small object in a sea of these mares tails.

 

Being a Star Trek fan, when I look at the Propeller I see a better match to the Klingon Trefoil insignia. See image here:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon

 

 

Perhaps a name change is in order?

 

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[Jeff Morgan]

More on the aforementioned northwest Cygnus area. A post by Dale Eason called my attention to the area around Omicron:

 

https://www.cloudyni...one/?p=10289701

 

It is an extremely interesting and productive area visually. I attempted to catch Dale's "Claw Nebula" but had a technical issue. The diopter ring on my NV eyepiece appeared to have rotated due to the torque of the cell phone camera.

 

The resulting image was not very good (note smearing of bright star, possibly Omicron, near field edge). Therefore, I did not make any notes or annotate it. All I can tell you is it is in the Omicron area, ISO was 3200, and I used a 7nm h-alpha filter with the 5" refactor. Not even sure what the NV configuration was! I'm just throwing it out so people can see what to expect in the region.

 

From my latitude Cygnus is reasonably good into November and I endeavor to get a better photo of this area.

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[Jeff Morgan]

I was out Sunday the 6th with a narrow window before moonrise, and I wanted to get a better image of Eason's Nebula. (Since it does not appear to have a catalog name, I took the liberty of provisionally naming it after Dale  .)

 

Then I panned around a bit to see the size and brightness of the extents and started picking up the Propeller - I never realized how close together they were! So I took an exposure of that field too.

 

Looking at the images yesterday I noted a 5-star chain common to both images, and used that to create a composite image. I'm not a Photoshop guru by any means (evidence to follow). However, it does faithfully show the distance, size, and brightness relationship between the two nebulas. If you can see the Propeller, you can see Eason's Nebula.

 

The individual exposures are both with a TMB 130SS f/7 refractor, Mod 3C, and Tele Vue 67 Plossl. The exposure is 3200 ISO, 1/3 second, 45 frame average and 7nm filter. The apparent size difference is solely due to me - the 67 Plossl does appear to vignette the field edge, so in software I used a circle selection to select the non-vignetted field. Since I was eyeballing it, the resulting image circles are slightly different sized.

 

Omicron is the bright star in the right circle, lower right edge. That would be the North edge of the composite field with West being the upper right corner.

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