First light

I have been looking/drooling at a telephotolens from Pentax for a long time. I have gone back and forth for ages. And a few weeks ago, I finally jumped in, and bought it. The Pentax DA* 300mm f/4 ED (IF) SDM. I have been waiting anxiously to test it out on heavenly bodies. The initial test on terrestial objects proved very promising. Very sharp. I have wanted it to bring to solar eclipses. I already have the William Optics excellent Star 71 quintiplet APO. But it weigh 2.4 kg. Far from heavy, but still. When setting up the scope on my Star Adventurer on Svalbard for the sun eclipse March 20th 2015, it was obviously far out of balance for the small mount. The 300mm telephoto lens only weighs in at just over 1 kg, and is far better balanced (with the camera body attached), so it would be easier to handle. And easier to carry in my luggage.
This weekend, while attending the monthly astromeet at Harestua Solar observatory, the skies cleared, and I got the chance to really try it out. I had set my mind on a few objects. Unfortunately, one of the objects, the California Nebula, was a dud due to the autoguiding totally freaking out after a few minutes (while I was asleep...). So I came out in the morning only to find all my exposures were just streaks. And just as well. I normally take a few test-exposures using ISO 12800 to frame the object. And ISO 640 for the actual images. But I had forgotten to reset the ISO-settings. So the images where totally burned out. That is, the red channel was. I had used a deep red filter to get he H-alpha out. And thus the red channel was blown, with streaks of stars across it...
But below are the two images I did get.
First the North America nebula in the same field as the Pelican nebula. I used the B+W 091 deep red filter. This isn't quite an H-alpha filter, but it does filter out most of the light, and with the built-in IR-filter in the camera, it creates a wideband deep red quasi-h-alpha filter. It does work quite well. I opted to try really deep exposures, and set my remote shutter controller for 20 minute integrations. I first tried a proportionally shorter exposure at ISO 12800 to get an idea of the histogram. And it looked decent. I had to throw out a couple of exposures due to the autoguider software going nuts and revving the DEC axis constantly. I had to restart the program to make it stop. I did some basic processing like stretching, curves and star shrinking to get the nebula to stand out better.

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO 640, Pentax 300mm F/4, B+W 091 deep red filter, 14x20 min exposures. 20 flats. Guided with QHY5II and PHD2. Stacked in DSS, processed in FitsWork and PS. Click on the image for larger version.

The rest of the night, I tried and failed on the California nebula. The next night we had about half the night clear, and I pointed at the Andromeda Galaxy. A beloved and easy object for budding astrophotographers. Since the clouds were moving in, some of the images were too bright and where discarded. In the end, I managed to get 16 10-minute exposures that were passable. Also did some basic processing on this one too, since my main objective was to test the lens quality for astro work. Only DDP, star shrinking, and color enhancement.

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO 640, Pentax 300mm F/4, 16x10 min exposures. Guided with QHY5II and PHD2. Stacked in DSS, processed in FitsWork, Irfanview and PS. Click on the image for larger version.

In conclusion : A very successful test! I am looking forward to using this lens more in the future. And to bring it to the 2017 total solar eclipse in the US! What I intended it for!

Mercury transit May 9th

I put up my Lunt 35mm h-alpha telescope and plugged in my camera to film this event. The weather was magnificent. With temperatures in the high 20's (C), and only a few thin clouds scattered across the otherwise blue skies. I left early from work that day to make sure I had time to set up my gear at the roof of my apartment block.
I spent almost 9 hours up there. Only going down to my apartment to get something to drink or eat, or when nature called. Filming 15 seconds every minute. I was hoping to put together a timelapse of the whole thing. Some clouds, unfortunately, rolled over the sun and caused some blurring/extinction that made the images not good. And in addition, the roof isn't excactly stable, so I sometimes walked too close to the telescope, making the image jump all over. And AutoStakkert made a mess of those images. But as a whole, I think it was an interesting exercise. The sun wasn't exploding with action, but enough to make some interesting watch in adittion to the little dot called Mercury.
I forgot to check for dust on the camera, and it had lots, as can be seen on the video... In addition, my mount was not aligned, causing the sun to move around in the field, And thus, the dust spots also moves around in the video. Oh well. Maybe next time. :-)

Tech data : Lunt 35mm H-Alpha, QHY5II camera, 1 ms exposure. Processing in AutoStakkert 2, centering and timelapse video in PIPP. Coloring in PS.

The Horsehead

One of the most iconic nebulas in the sky is the Horsehead nebula in the Orion constellation. It is a dark nebula that obscures the light from the red hydrogen nebula behind it. I wanted to do a deep exposure of this nebula in addition to the M42 in the same area. This area is also covered in beautiful nebulosity with great details and colour.
I originally intended to have a larger field for my image, but due to some mistakes, I needed to crop the image. First, every night, I used the previous nights images to get a feel for the field. Unfortunately, this meant that the field crept slowly to one side. Secondly, since the humidity was so low, I didn't bother pulling out the dew cap. When looking at the images afterwards, I noticed a faint "rainbow" pattern on the upper left part of the image. I realized this was light from the middle star in the Orion's belt shining in from the side and creating the rainbow. The following nights, I pulled out the dewcap and the rainbow was gone. But I had to crop the image to remove the hints of it. I had to drop about 2 hours worth of exposures, leaving me with about 10 hours 20 minutes of good to semi-good frames to stack.
I tried to get as much details out of the Flame nebula to the left. But I had to balance details for noise. And this is how far I got this time around. Maybe later I will try to kick the noise out to get more details.

Tech Details : Pentax K5, ISO 640, William Optics 132FLT w/ WO AFR-IV flattener/reducer (=F/5.6), on a 10Micron GM2000HPS mount. Guiding with QHY5-II with PHD2. 62x10 min exposures. Stacked in DSS, processed in FitsWork, PS and IrfanView.

M42, the never ending story

I guess M42 is the most imaged object in the skies. But there is a reason for that. It contains details and colours like almost no other object. And it is HUGE! You can image almost any field surrounding this nebula, and you will find more nebulosity. I have seen tight crops taken with long focal length telescopes, and wide field taken with short telelenses. They are all filled with beautiful nebulosity.
My latest take on this beautiful object is from my many nights under Moroccan skies the first two weeks of January this year. I had rented a William Optics 132FLT and had brought my own field flattener/reducer that I use for my own 98FLT. With that in place, I got a focal length of approximately 740mm give or take. Giving a slightly tight field of view.
I collected photons for several nights, totalling approximately 10 hours 30 minutes in 63 subexposures. In addition to 1 minute exposures for the central parts and 5 second exposures for the Trapezium.
I love the details I was able to extraxt from such a long exposure. My previous attempt only had 1 hour of exposure, and naturally, it lacked a lot. This version I absolutely loved working on!
I will probably make new attempts at processing this image at a later stage, but it is obvious from this short processing run that there is a lot to be extracted if I take the time. Click on the image for a larger version to enjoy the colours and the details!

Tech Details : Pentax K5, ISO 640, William Optics 132FLT w/ WO AFR-IV flattener/reducer (=F/5.6), on a 10Micron GM2000HPS mount. Guiding with QHY5-II with PHD2. 63x10 min exposures for the main parts, 70x1 min for the central parts and 70x5sec for the trapezium. Stacked in DSS, processed in FitsWork, PS and IrfanView.

Did a new processing of the image. Better color and details around the trapezium and, to me at least, a better color balance overall. Also decided to flip it "the right way" as seen from the Earth.

Close encounter of the rare kind

On the morning of January 9th 2016, Venus and Saturn flew past eachother no more than a few arc-minutes apart. There have been some of these events in my days, but most of them have been unubservable due to weather. It looked like I was going to miss this one too, as the clouds were pulling over the area where the planets were. But a few openings in the clouds let me take some quick photos. The following is a blend of two images, given that Venus is hundreds of times brighter than Saturn as seen from Earth. So I took two photos of varying length and blended them in PS. Click on the photo to get full-size image.

Tech data : Pentax K5, ISO640, William Optics 132FLT w/ AVR-IV resulting in F/5.6, Exposures 1/250th sec (Saturn) and 1/5000th sec (Venus). Blended in PS.