Category: Astronomy

I may be the last astrophotographer to try PixInsight, but have decided to try it. I’ve picked several recent images and reprocessed them in PI, usually starting with the previously stacked 32 bit result from DeepSkyStacker but once or twice restacking the original FIT files in PI as well. I’ve got a lot to learn. While I think each of these new images are better than their predecessor, I realize that is subjective and not all will agree.

In each case below, the old workflow is on the left and new on the right. By necessity, the thumbnails on the right are smaller but click on them for a full sized image.

This is my first attempt at the “Spaghetti Nebula”, a huge and faint supernova remnant in the winter sky. I used my Samyang 135mm lens with my ASI533MC Pro camera and ASIAIR Plus on my Celestron AVX mount from 7:30PM until 5AM on an absurdly cold Friday night/Saturday morning at the River Ridge Observatory. This is a total of 9 hours and 20 minutes, it would have been 30 but the last two five minute subs showed trees.

From Wikipedia:

Simeis 147, also known as the Spaghetti Nebula, SNR G180.0-01.7 or Sharpless 2-240, is a supernova remnant (SNR) in the Milky Way, straddling the border between the constellations Auriga and Taurus. It was discovered in 1952 at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory by Grigory Shajn and his team using a Schmidt camera and a narrowband filter close to the Hydrogen Alpha transmission line. It is difficult to observe due to its extremely low surface brightness. This discovery was part of a survey conducted between 1945 and 1955, most likely using captured German equipment, as the observatory was practically destroyed during WWII. The Schmidt camera had a field of view of 175′. Many previously unknown hydrogen nebula were discovered this way, as they are not readily visible in regular photographs.