Category: Astronomy

Another Friday night at the River Ridge Observatory. This time above freezing, at least for a while. I had my C11 with Hyperstar and Samyang 135mm aimed at overlapping targets. The Samyang centered on the star 13 Monoceros so that it could get targets from the Rosette Nebula on one side and the Cone and Dreyer’s Nebulae on the other. Meanwhile, the C11 was zoomed in on the Christmas Tree cluster area which includes the previously mentioned Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae.

First, the image from the Samyang and an ASI2600MC Pro with an Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter. The Antlia is a triple narrowband, or maybe dual narrowband plus blue if you prefer. On the right hand side is the Rosette Nebula. I shot this a few weeks ago with a smaller format camera. Dreyer’s Nebula is the small blue patch in the upper left while the Fox Fur and Cone Nebulae are in the lower left. The field of view with this camera is about 10×6.6 degrees. This was made from 47 3-minute subs.

This close up of the Christmas Tree star cluster area was shot with my C11 with Hyperstar and an L-Extreme F2 dual band filter. No plus blue with this one. In the lower right is the Cone Nebula pointed toward some stars that make up the Christmas Tree Cluster. In the middle is the Fox Fur Nebula and some dark lanes while above that is a dark nebula whose name I don’t know. This was made from 90 1-minute subs. I tried for many more than that but the winds picked up and ruined many of my frames.

I finished around midnight when 10-15 MPH gusts made things difficult.

It’s been cold and dreary and I don’t have any new images to process so I decided to reprocess this one from four years ago with PixInsight. The image is a combination of short and longer images to bring out the dimmer parts without blowing out the core. Hard to say which version is better. What I need and plan to do is reshoot the area with my newer gear when the weather allows.

Click here for the original image.

I think I’ve reached the end of usable data from Friday night. The first image acquired (and last to be processed) is the Seahorse Nebula, one of my favorites since childhood. I also took another crack at a Pleiades widefield. I recently published a shot of the Pleiades taken with my ASI533MC Pro, this one was taken with my 2600MC Pro which has a significantly larger format.

One thing I love about astrophotography is you don’t have to take anyone’s word about stuff like this. You can take a telescope and camera, or sometimes just a camera, and take a picture of your own.