Petri Kehusmaa Astroblog

Watching few hours of Adam Block’s PS tutorials, I tried those new tricks on my old M33 data. Here are both LHaRGB and LRGB versions with new processing.

Astrodon’s MonsterMOAG arrived in good shape. This OAG is huge! The package was compact but full of stuff, including a set of Allen wrenches. I’m still waiting for SBIG remote guide head to complete my OAG equipment. After that I can move guide scope out of the equation.

This project is almost finished. Now total exposure time is 7.2 hours. I added some more luminance and red data. Also I put some more effort to image processing. Hope it paid off!

Additional 70 minutes of Ha data added and color balance finetuned.

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Additional data to this project. Now total exposure time is 320 minutes.

While continuing my Pacman Nebula project, I was able to start this project as well. These two objects are going to be my main imaging targets for this autumn. This is 70 minutes of luminance channel. Click image for full resolution 4008 x 2672 image (5MB).

Finally I could start new photography season with this great emission nebula in constellation Cassiopeia. This is a perfect target from my location at this time of the year. Whe it gets dark, NGC281 have rised above 50 degrees from horizon and it’s hour angle is more than 4 hours at that time.

This image is 60 minutes Ha-exposure and there is a lot more to come.

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I started preparations for new photography season by cleaning and dusting my observatory and equipment. Next thing to do is testing software and remote operations.

This might be my last observation for this spring. I decided to pick up this interesting  variable with very deep eclipse. Light curve with 70 data points (with 30 seconds exposure).

While the night sky is too pale for color imaging, it’s still possible to image variable stars. I decided to capture nova-like CV UX UMa and it’s eclipse. Here is the result made with MaximDL. Imaging scope was Deep Sky Instruments RC10C and camera was SBIG STL-11000.