North Amercian nebula

A few days of clear nights left me with sleepless nights, sleepy days at work, and a lot of exposures on my harddrive. I decided I needed to exploit these nights as much as possible. I tried som filtered exposures. Like the propeller nebula previously posted.
On Friday, I was supposed to go out of town and to a darker place with some guys from my local astroclub. But the weather changed suddenly. And the area was wet with fog. So after waiting for a while for it to clear, I finally gave up. I packed up my gear, and on the way back, I decided to drive up to a spot on the hill overlooking the city. I had been there before to image a comet with another guy. The place was too close to the city to be really dark, but it as high enough to leave the fog and smoke of the city below. And this affected the light pollution. So the night sky was actually quite clear and relatively dark. I decided to try my luck at imaging with DSLR and my own "quasi-h-alpha"-filter that I have described here earlier.
I pointed at the North American nebula (NGC7000) in the constellation Cygnus. Trained the autoguider and set off a number of 10-minute exposures. Then laid back in the front seat of the car and slept for a few hours. The guiding was so-so, but adequate for me to get relatively round stars in the images. When I got home, I processed the images, and was pleased to see a clear and detailed image of the nebula. It probably could do with some more exposure to get more details out of the darker area, but for now, this experiment was successful. The filter I used is simply a deep red filter mostly used to take IR-photos in daylight. Since these are filters for photo-lenses, they do not come in 48mm sizes. The nearest was 46mm. So I ordered a 48mm-46mm stepdown adapter. This made it possible to attach it to any 48mm filter holders. There is, of course, some vignetting. But nothing that a good set of flats cannot compensate. It is NOT a substitute for a true narrowband H-alpha filter. But it is a much better alternative than nothing. And it is cheap. Very cheap.

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO640, 18x10 min exposures. 0 darks, 0 bias, 20 flats. William Optics FLT98 @F/5 w/ WO AFR-IV. Celestron AVX mount. QHY 5II guide camera controlled by PHD2. Stacking in DSS, processing in FitsLiberator and PS.

Propeller nebula

Ever since I saw an image of this nebula, I wanted to image it. The shape was so unusual. Normally, a nebula is a beautiful caos, but this one? Like s off-shaped propeller. Like the name suggests. A few weeks ago, I started testing my new CCD-camera with narrowband filters. So far, I have only tried the h-alpha filter. It is truly a blessing in the city. Cutting through the light pollution like a knife. So I have tried my luck on a few objects. And the past week, the skies have cleared every night, so I tried longer exposures on the nebula. Many of the exposures had crappy guiding, but I managed 7.5 hours of 10-minute exposures. And I managed to draw the nebula out quite nicely.

Tech spec : Atik 420M camera, -15C, 47x10 min 1x1 binning, 50 darks, 50 bias, 20 Baader 7nm H-alpha filter. William Optics Star 71mm F/4.9 telescope. Celestron AVX mount, QHY5II guide camera controlled by PHD2. Stacking in DSS, Processing in FitsLiberator, PS, and IrfanView.

Pacman

First (almost) light with my CCD-camera. I bought it at NEAF in 2014, but haven't really gotten around to start using it. I even bought a set of Baader NB filters and a wheel. But it had mostly been sitting there unused. On Sunday, the skies clear. Sort of. and I wanted to give it a try. After some checking on starmaps, I found that the Pacman nebula would be nice. Using my 71mm apo refractor, the field would be a bit larger than the nebula, so it would be nicely framed. The chip on the CCD is so small compared to the DSLR that I had a hard time finding and framing the object. It took me a while to get used to working with the "straw-view" of the skies. But I finally found the image on my screen. And I set up a sequence of images to be taken before I went to bed. Let the autoguider do its work and hoped the morning would find a nice image.
I had set up a sequence of 48 5-minute frames through a Baader H-alpha filter. I stacked them, and the image was far from good. When I got back from work, I checked through the images, and found that 16 of them either had bad guiding or had clouds drifting through them. I removed them and restacked. Much better. But still not what I had hoped. I figured that what was missing, was dark frames. The next night, I put the camera in a small plastic box (without lid) outside, set the temperature to the same as the night before (-15C) and let it run through a sequence of darks during the night (which was cloudy). 50 darks each for 30s, 1, 2 and 5 minutes. I picked the 5 minute darks and restacked the image with darks and the flats I had taken the morning of the imaging session. MUCH better. The following is therefore the first "real" light of my new camera. I am hoping for more clear nights in the months ahead so I can gain some experience using CCD with a filter wheel.

Tech details : Atik 420M camera, 32x5 min binning 1x1 through Baader 7nm H-alpha filter. William Optics 71mm f/4.9 5-element flatfield apo, Celestron AVX mount. Guided with QHY 5II and PHD. Stacked with DSS, DDP in FitsLiberator. Enhancements in PS and Irfanview.

Cats and war and peace

There are a number of beautiful nebulas in the constellation of Scorpio. I have tried to image a few of them. The image below is a framing of two of them. The "Cat's Paw" nebula and the "War and Peace" nebula. The first one I understood the naming of. It is obviously a cat's paw. But the second I didn't. Read up on it, and the story is that in infrared, the scientists studying it, thought one part looked like a skull and the other like a dove. Hence War and Peace...
Anyhow. This image is a 6-hour exposure of this area. Taken over two nights in Namibia. For all the objects I imaged, I tried to keep them above 40 degrees altitude. This to minimize the difference in extinction between the highest and the lowest point during the night.

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO640, 60x6 minutes for a total of 6 hours exposure, William Optics Zenithstar 71mm F/4.9 five-element flatfield apo, Skywatcher EQ6 mount, guided by QHY5II and PHD. Stacked in DSS, DDP by FitsLiberator, processed in PS and IrfanView.

100 billion stars

The Milkyway strecthing across the skies is truly a wonderful sight. Every night, when waiting for my exposures to finish, I lie on a sunbed and just enjoy the view. Watching a few meteors burn in a long streak of light. I brought a wideangle zoom lens with me. And I decided to take a widefield image of the beauty. I needed three images to get most of the parts that are not visible from Norway. At the lower right, the Large Magellan Cloud is visible. Click on the image to get a full view of the Milkyway in all its glory!

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO640, Sigma 10-20mm @10mm, three panels of 12x5 min each. Stacking with DSS, DDP with FitsLiberator, and stiched with Microsoft ICE. Enhanced and cropped in Irfanview.

Blue horsehead nebula

This beautiful nebula lies in the Rho Ophiuchi area, where the star Jabbah is the "eye" of the horse. This star is the source of the light in the nebula The nebula was a bit difficult to image, given its low brightness. Even with 4 hours of exposure, I needed to do some stretching and enhancements to pull it out of the background.

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO640, William Optics Zenithstar 71mm 5-element flatfield apo, Mounted on an Skywatcher EQ6 guided by QHY5II and PHD. 24x10 min subs, 30 flats. Stacked in DSS, processed in FitsLiberator, PS and Irfanview.

Antares area

Antares is enveloped in a beautiful reflection nebula. It glows in yellow from the star. Nearby are even more nebulosity that shines in red and blue. And even some dark nebulae to complete the picture. As if the nebulosity wasn't enough, there are even a couple of globular clusters thrown in for good measure. One of the most beautiful patches of the sky. During my trip to Namibia, I got the chance to photograph this object among other beautiful objects on the southern skies. Click on the image for a larger version.
Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO 640, William Optics Zenithstar 71mm 5-element flatfield APO, 24 x 10 min subs, 4 hours total. 30 flats. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and Irfanview.