Ma dernière session d'astrophoto de samedi soir. Un amas de galaxies (Abell 2151) dans la constellation d'Hercule. Plein de jolies petites tachounettes. Mais va falloir que je me résolve à nettoyer le capteur de ma caméra, il y a un gros pâté que je n'arrive pas à éliminer complètement pendant le traitement photo... 😱
Bon faut pas trop grossir non plus, les étoiles ne sont pas très rondes, je reprendrai le traitement + tard au calme... #astrodon#astronomie#astronomy#galaxies#siril#ekos
Je n'avais pas fait d'astrophoto depuis ... longtemps! Je m'y suis remis la nuit dernière, profitant des conditions météo enfin idéales. J'ai pas mal pataugé avant de pouvoir prendre une série d'images de l'amas globulaire Messier 5 dans la tête du Serpent. Les logiciels d'acquisition et de traitement ont beaucoup progressé en 18 mois... Le weekend n'est pas fini, encore des nuits blanches à venir ! #astrodon#astronomy#astronomie#DeepSky#astrophotography#stars#Ekos#Siril#StarClusters
I'm satisfied of the images I've been able to capture in 2023 despite multiple extended periods of cloud cover. This is a montage of most of those images, in no particular order.
Very likely my last image of 2023, this is the Jellyfish Nebula (IC443), the remnant of a supernova in the constellation Gemini. The two large orange stars are Mu and Eta Geminorum, two red giants at the feet of the rightmost of the two "stick figures" that form the constellation Gemini.
A widefield view of the Pleiades cluster and reflection nebula (M45) at the North-West end of the constellation Taurus. The surrounding interstellar dust in is illuminated by the blue giant stars of the cluster, giving this nice fuzzy blue cloud look.
While most images of the Pleiades focus on the cluster itself, I wanted to take a wider field image to show the extent of the interstellar dust in this area, including this long arching structure to the left of the cluster in the image.
The heart of the Heart Nebula (IC1805) in the constellation Cassiopeia.
This is the first image from my new 150/750mm f/5 Newtonian telescope, and the first image I produce in months due mostly to bad weather and some guiding issues with the new scope (resolved with off-axis guiding).
Thursday night was the local astronomy club meetup in the field. While we were chatting and doing visual astronomy, my astrophotography rig captured the data that I later processed into this image.
This is Sh2-132 (from the Sharpless catalogue), an emission nebula in the constellation Cepheus sometimes referred to as the Lion Nebula. Its glowing gases are ionized by very hot and massive stars, including two Wolf-Rayet stars and one class O star.
Here is a 3.3 x 2.2 degrees field of view in the constellation of Cepheus that includes many objects; the Lobster Claw Nebula (Sharpless 2-157), the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635), the NGC 7538 emission nebula and the Sharpless 2-161 H II region, as well as the Messier 52 and NGC 7510 open clusters.
The data was captured under bright moonlight on three nights between August 27 and September 3. The moonlight made the data noisy and difficult to process.
Almost OTD one year ago I started my journey down the astrophotography rabbit hole.
I took my first astronomical picture, the Andromeda galaxy (M31), with a stock DSLR, a zoom lens and a simple star tracker (Canon T7i, Canon 70-200mm f/4 and SW Star Adventurer, 176 x 60s). I was quite happy of the result and hooked into the hobby.
Fast forward one year and I shot the Andromeda galaxy again, this time with my latest process, techniques and equipment.
This is the Dark Shark Nebula, LDN 1235 from Lynds Dark Nebula catalogue, in the constellation of Cepheus. It is a large cloud of interstellar dust that reflects the light of surrounding stars.
I captured this image Tuesday night from La Mauricie National Park (QC, 🇨🇦) where the low light pollution (Bortle 3) allows capturing this very dim object in a reasonable amount of time.
I drove to my observation site under thick clouds both Friday and Sunday night in the hope that it would clear up like the uncertain and rapidly changing forecasts indicated. Both trips paid off and I was able to watch the Perseids meteor showers while my photo rig was capturing this image of the NGC 7822 nebula.
I captured two and a half additional nights of data on NGC 7822, this time with a different dual narrow-band filter that captures the Oxygen III emission line in the green and blue channels of the camera and the Sulphur II emission line on the red channel.
Combining this new data with the original data (Oxygen III and Hydrogen Alpha), I produced an SHO image where the Sulphur II, Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen III emission lines are assigned to the the red, green and blue channels of the image respectively.
In total 13h 30m of data, 5h 5m on the Oiii+Ha filter and 8h 25m on the Oiii+Sii filter.
After over a month of cloudy nights, the sky finally opened up last Sunday night. I took this opportunity to get out and try a new filter I ordered in March and received early July - Astrophotography is definitely exercising my patience.
These are the North America and Pelican nebulae (NGC 7000 & IC 5070) in the Cygnus constellation. The image uses the HOO palette where the Hydrogen emission line (Ha) is mapped to the red channel of the image and the Oxygen emission line (Oiii) is mapped to the green and blue channels.
The dark nebula LDN 935 is a gigantic interstellar dust cloud that separates the two emission nebulae by blocking the light they emit, giving this dark appearance.
The Eagle Nebula (IC 4703, aka M16) in the Serpens constellation shot over two very short June nights.
At the heart of the Eagle Nebula are the Pillars of Creation, made popular by the Hubble space telescope (1995 & 2015) and also later shot by the James Webb space telescope. Although not as detailed and spectacular as the images from these large space telescopes, It's surprising what details an amateur, armed with a 0.072m telescope, a lawn chair and a laptop, can get ;)
We've had four consecutive clear nights this week, a rare event! Despite being the shortest nights of the year, I managed to get a little over five hours of usable data over two nights on the western part of the Veil Nebula.
This nebula is the visible part of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant in the Cygnus constellation. Located at approximately 2400 light years from Earth, the remains of the supernova that exploded 10,000 to 20,000 years ago now span approximately 130 light years across.
Visible in this image are the Western Veil nebula aka "Witch's Broom" (NGC 6960), Pickering's Triangle as well as NGC 6974 and NGC 6979.
Another widefield shot, the Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) and the surrounding dust clouds in the Cepheus constellation.
Contrary to emission nebulae which consist of ionized gases that emit light, this is a reflection nebula; interstellar dust clouds that reflect the light of surrounding stars. Given their faint luminosity, emission nebulae are challenging to capture and required dark skies with low light pollution and no moon glow.
This image was captured during the new moon, from the dark skies (Bortle 3) of the La Mauricie National Park in Québec 🇨🇦.
A widefield (4.8 x 3.2 degrees) view of the Tulip Nebula (Sharpless 101) and its surroundings in the Cygnus constellation shot on May 22.
This area of the Cygnus constellation is filled with emission nebulae as well as dark nebulae; interstellar dust clouds that block the light from the emission nebulae.
With an approximate distance of 6000 light years from Earth, this field of view covers approximately 400 light years across.
The Messier 106 galaxy (M106) and some of its neighbours in the Canes Venatici constellation shot over 1-1/2 nights on April 15 & 16.
M106 is approximately 22-25 Million light years from Earth and is part of the Canes II group of galaxies, which is part of the Local Supercluster. It is comparable in size and luminosity to the Andromeda galaxy, though ~10 times more distant, hence its smaller apparent size from Earth.
This image is composed from a stack of 90 x 300s sub-exposures (7h 30m total). Captured with an Askar FRA400 astrograph (400mm focal length, f/5.6) and a ZWO ASI183MC Pro RGB camera with an Optolong L-Enhance light pollution filter and using the Kstars/Ekos and PHD2 software (Astroberry image) on a Raspberry Pi 4. Stacking and processing with Pixinsight and Darktable.