Horsehead in quasi-h-alpha.

I have been struggling with light pollution from my roof-top veranda in the middle of Oslo. I have tried light pollution filters, but have been dissatisfied with the results. Maybe I am doing it wrong. I have been thinking of bying a set of narrow-band filters for the usual suspects : H-alpha, OIII and H-beta. But those would only be usable for the telescopes. Not my tele-photo lenses. And I really wanted to use those too with such filters. Especially for large nebula structures. But such filters do not exists in the sizes needed (82mm). So I had this idea. What if I use a light pollution filter in conjunction with an ordinary color enhancer filter? I found filter types that would filter out the different parts of the LPS spectrums. I have an 82mm IDAS LPS-P2 filter for my telephoto lenses.
This weekend, I wanted to try a filter I had bought on e-bay. An IR630 filter. This is supposed to filter out everything below 630nm. And thus, the only thing left in the LP-flter, is the H-alpha and SII area. I have tried an 091 deep red filter with a 85mm lens. But I need to stop it down more to get good results. But it showed very much promise. Now I bought the IR630 in both 46 and 82mm edition. The 46 for my telescope. It is slightly deeper red than the 091. I attached the IR630 to my Astronomik CLS filter through a 48-46 adapter, and attached this to the field flattener of my APO.
I waited for the skies to clear, and managed to get about 2 hours worth of 2 minute exposures. Stacked them in DSS and processed the final image with DDP. Then some processing in Gimp. The result is VERY satisfying. Although this is nothing compared to a narrowband image on a mono CCD, I am pleased with the result, given the short exposure. The two other wavelengths, H-beta and OIII are currently more difficult to obtain, since I haven't found a proper filter for this. But I am planning to try to aquire a filter that filters out everything above around 510 nm. Then the CLS filter should do the rest.
Technical data :
Pentax K5, ISO 1600, TS triplet APO w/ WO field flattener, Celestron AVX, 60x2min unguided. 20 flats. Stacked in DSS, processed in Gimp. Reduced to 50%.

ISON

This morning, I also, in addition to Lovejoy, tried to capture ISON in the morning glow. It was not easy. But I managed to capture much of it with a long tail. Much longer than I anticipated. I had read somewhere that the tail was about 0.5 degrees long. But in my image, the tail extended to the edge of the frame, possibly further than that. Giving a length of at least 2 degrees. Unfortunately, my colors are weird, so I had to crop the image some to remove the most weird part. But at least my image shows the comet and it's long tail
Technical : Pentax K5, ISO 400, 38x30 seconds exposure. Teleskop-Service 80mm/6 triplet APO. Sky-Watcher EQ3 Pro Synscan mount. Stacking in DSS, processing in PS. Final adjustments in Irfanview.
EDIT : Fixed the colours.

Love(joy) is in the air

On the 17'th, I and an couple of friends headed up into the hills north of Oslo to see ISON and Lovejoy. And to try to photograph them. Lovejoy was a joy (no pun intended) to both watch and shoot. It was bright and with a lovely long tail. I have estimated the tail to be more than 2 degrees long. It certainly filled the view of my camera. Below is a 59 minute exposure of Lovejoy. I did take 60 minutes, but due to strong winds, two 30-second exposures had to be dropped. Thats why the two glitches in the startrails.
Technical info : Pentax K5, ISO 800, 118x30 sec exposure, Teleskop-Service 80mm/6 triplet APO. Sky-Watcher EQ3 Pro Synscan. Flats using homemade flat-box, darks. (Actually, there was no point in darks since Pentax K5 is practically noiseless. The darks were... well... dark. Even stretching them to the max revealed nothing. Just black.) Stacked in DSS, processed in PS. Final gamma in Irfanview.
EDIT : Fixed the colors.

First night with my new RC

I wanted to test my new 6" RC on some distant, small object that would be too small for my 80mm apo. So this Saturday, I headed out of town for some dark(-ish) skies. I had a list of objects to attempt.
M27, the Dumbbell nebula
M2, M15 and NGC6934, globular clusters
NGC6946, a galaxy
M1, the Crab nebula
and of course
ISON, the comet.
I also attempted a couple of other objects, but had no luck aquiring enough light for them.

Common technical details :

TPO 6" F/9 RC
Pentax K5, ISO 1600
Celestron Advanced VX
Stacking in DSS, processing in PS and IrfacnView

M27 : A condensation-strip from a passing airplane cut this exposure short. I had planned 1 hour, but stopped at 40 minutes.

The Globular clusters : 20 minutes exposures

M2 :

M15 :

NGC 6934 :

NGC 6946, galaxy. It was obvious thar F/9 requires a lot of exposure for these distant objects. But I managed to dig out some of the structures in this galaxy.

M1 needed a lot of exposures, that is obvious. Even 1.5 hours was not enough to pull out all of the color and structures. But it is there...

At the end of the night, I made an attempt at ISON once more. I pulled out the autoguider and made 7 3.5 minute exposures. I saw afterwards that I should probably have cut down to 2 minutes to avoid the stretching of the core. Deep Sky Stacker still refused to stack on the core, so I had to do the stacking manually. Still not the best of images of this comet, but better than I have achieved before.

First light with TPO Ritchey Chretien

Despite the fact that I got my new "cloud-attractor" on Tuesday, The skies were clear today. So I got the chance to test my new scope. There were some thin clouds that passed every now and then. But I got some inital testing done. Short exposures of M57, the Ring Nebula and M27, the Dumbell Nebula showed promising future for astrophoto with this new scope. More to come in the future. Thats for sure!

Technical details for both images :
Pentax K5, ISO 1600, TPO 6" F/9 RC astrograph. Williams Optics field flattener. Celestron AVX mount. Unguided. Stacked in DSS, simple stretching and color adjustment in PS.

M57 : 35x20 second exposure

M27 : 43x20 second exposure

Comet ISON October 6th 2013

I don't know why, but I cannot seem to dig out comet ISON properly. After several attempt, this is the best I could do. I guess some of the problem can be attributed to the fact that my mount isn't following the comet. Rather it is following th stars. And thus the comet smears out over time. I tried manually stacking it. But even that failed. So I guess I will just have to wait for it to swing by the Sun. Hoping it won't just vaporize and disappear. We'll see what happens.
Technical details : Pentax K5, ISO800, 35x30 seconds. Teleskop-Service 80mm F/6 APO w/ William Optics field flattener. Celestron Advanced VX mount. Partly stacked by DSS, manual stacking and processing in PS.

M45

At Harestua, I also tried my luck at M45, the Pleiades. I have attempted this object, so easy to find in the night sky, on several occasions from the rooftop terrasse of my apartment block. But it has always failed due to too much light pollution. At Harestua Solar observatory, the skies where a lot better. So I attempted approximately 1 hour of exposures on this object. It didn't come out too bad. Have seen better, but I am pleased with this attempt. Will try more exposure next time.
Technical details : Pentax K5, ISO 800, 80x45second exposure. Teleskop-Service 80mm F/6 triplet apo w/ William Optics field flattener on a Celestron Advanced VX mount. Processed in DSS and PS.

M33, first attempt

I attempted to draw out the faint whisps of M33 this weekend at Harestua Solar observatory. The night looked like it was a dud. The clouds rolled in. But just as suddenly as they appeared, they disappeared. And the air was clear and sharp. So I decided to try my luck at M33. Have tried this before, but all my attempts have been just smudgy and strange. So this time I tried 1.5 hours of exposure. This first attempt at processing it, brought out a lot of details. More than I have done before. There is a strange colour cast in the image that I haven't been able to rid myself of, or found the source of. But I am happy with this first attempt. It was also my first night with a new mount. The Celestron Advanced VX. I struggeled at first to get it to polar align properly until I realized my tandem dovetail bar (for telescope and autoguider) had quite a flex on the telescope side due to a loose bolt. I tightened the bolt, and the polar alignment worked perfectly. Since I had spent 2 hours struggling to get the polar alignment correct, I didn't even want to attempt autoguiding when the clouds rolled away. So I settled for short exposures. The polar alignment wasn't perfect. I should probably have performed the routine twice or three times to get it more accurately aligned, but with the imminent threat of new clouds, I was eager to get going. So therefore only 1.5 hours of exposures in total. But it was enough for the galaxy to stand out better than I have managed before. Click on the image for a full version.
Techincal details : Pentax K5 camera, ISO 1600, 120x45 seconds. Teleskop-Service 80mm triplet APO w/ Williams Optics field flattener. Celestron Advanced VX mount (virgin run). Unguided. Processing in DSS and PS.

C/2012 ISON

Got up early this monring to try to capture comet ISON in the morning mist. From the middle of Oslo, the light pollution threatened to drown the comet in light noise. But I managed to dig it out of the background. A lot of noise and artifacts in the image, but it is possible to make out the comet. I didn't manage to get DSS to register the comet, so the stacking was done on the stars. The comet is therefore a bit smudged. Will try with LPS next time. Whenever that will be. :-)
Info : Pentax K5, ISO200, 5x2min, TS 80mm/6 APO, PHD guiding. Processing in DSS, Iris, PS.

Yet another M42

I guess M42 is the most photographed object by aspiring astrophotographers, and I am no different. This is my take on that favorite object.
Equipment used : Teleskop-Service triplet apo 80mm/f6, William Optics field flattener, Pentax K5. Sky-Watcher EQ-3 Pro Synscan. 120x30seconds exposures. No flats. No darks. (K5 is practically noiseless) I tried a LLRGB method that I read about on the net. It definitely brought out more of the faintest nebulosity.To view the image in full detail, right-click and choose view in another tab. Comments are welcomed!