NGC 7635 - The Bubble Nebula - from The BMO

 Bubblicious ...

Thursday November 7th & Tuesday November 12th were our club's (Buffalo Astronomical Association) imaging group (The Tuesday Night Imagers) imaging sessions at our club's dark sky observatory, The Beaver Meadow Observatory (BMO). Our club's Observatory Director and Tuesday Night ringleader ran the Celestron 14" Edge HD while another member ran the Tele Vue NP101is with his personal camera attached. I joined via Zoom. Of the two nights, the 12th had better seeing/transparency. The 7th was also plagued with software issues. They were not able to connect to the Pegasus Astro ultimate Power Box after a windows update. After several updates and reboots, the situation was resolved. 

I have (and continue) to take PixInsight classes from Masters of PixInsight. Their most recent Photons to Photos class was on processing Bubble Nebula data from a Celestron 14" Edge. The timing was perfect. I picked up a few techniques that were ultimately used to process this image. Here is the result.

NGC 7635 - The Bubble Nebula from 10/7 & 10/12 at the BMO.

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-Processing: Our club's Observatory Director pre-processed the images in PixInsight (WBPP) and sent me the Master Light image. Linear Post Processing: Background extraction was performed with Auto DBE Script from Seti Astro followed by BXT (correct only). SPCC was used for Color Calibration followed by a full application of BXT. The Stars were removed using StarXT. Starless Linear: Noise was reduced with NXT. The image was made non-linear with HT. Starless Non-linear Post Processing: The CreateHDRImage script was used to compress the Bubble and bright surrounding nebula (a mask was created and used by the script). Narrowband Normalization (Mode 1) was used to create the SHO or Hubble Palette look. Saturation and intensity were increased with CT. Sharpness was improved with ImageBlend script using a High Pass Filter. LHE was applied at 2 Kernel sizes. Additionally, Unsharp mask was applied. Finally, the DarkStructureEnhance script was applied (0.2). Stars Linear: The Stars image was made non-linear with Seti Astro's Star Stretch script. Stars Non-Linear: Saturation was increased with CT. Starless: Intensity, and contrast were adjusted with various applications of CT. The Stars and Starless images were combined with Pixel Math to produce the final image. 

What is it?

NGC 7635 is also known as Sharpless 162, Caldwell 11, and The Bubble Nebula. It is an H II region emission nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia. The Stellar Wind from a young, massive, and hot central star has created the bubble by blasting it out of the glowing gas against the denser material in the surrounding molecular cloud.

Annotated image of NGC 7635 - The Bubble Nebula.

How Big is it?

NGC 7635 has a size of 15.0 x 8.0 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is about 6.1 light years in diameter (similar in size to our Milky Way Galaxy).

How Far is it?

NGC 7635 is located about 11,000 light-years (ly) from Earth.

How to find it?

The NGC 7635 is located about halfway between Cassiopeia and Cepheus, very close to the Open Star cluster Messier 52 (M52).  Dark skies, large aperture, and a nebula filter are helpful in viewing this group.

Finder Chart for NGC 7635, The Bubble Nebula.

Image Details:

Capture Date: 11/7/2024 & 11/12/2024

Location: North Java, NY (Buffalo Astronomical Association's Beaver Meadow Observatory)

Telescope: Celestron 14" Edge HD w/0.7 Reducer

Camera: OGMA AP26CC

Filter: Antlia Alp-T

Mount: Astro Physics AP1200 Mount

Exposure: 11/7: 9 exposures at 600 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 100 / -10° C each for a total exposure of 1.5 hours. 11/12: 22 exposures at 600 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 100 / -10° C each for a total exposure of 3.67 hours. The total combined integration time is 5.167 hours.

Software: NINA, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

A Tiptoe Through the Tulip Nebula

 Target Number Two from Friday 7/26

So picking up from where we left off in the last post (click here). After taking flats with no filter to match my B150 exposures, I installed the L-eXtreme filter and took flats. Then slewed the telescope to the Tulip Nebula (SH2-101) in Cygnus. Started collecting subs at 2:40 AM and stopped the sequence at 3:57 AM due to the increasing sky brightness and immanent loss of the target to the trees in the West.  Sky conditions weren't great due to the smoke from the wildfires out west. I've settled on 180 sec as the default exposure time for imaging with the L-eXtreme. Here's the resulting image:

SH2-101, The Tulip Nebula

Something cool in the image:

Any Rush fans out there? Any fans of Black Holes? The star labeled as HD226868 in the annotated image below is the star that orbits the black hole Cygnus X-1! See if you can see a very faint arch starting from the label HD226868 and arcing back towards +35°20’. It is really subtle, but it is the bow shock created by one of the relativistic jets emanating from the black hole interacting a denser area of dense interstellar medium. Cygnus X-1 is one of the strongest X-ray sources detectable from Earth and the first X-ray source to be widely accepted as a black hole. Cygnus X-1's status as black hole was the subject of a friendly bet between Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne.

Crop of the annotated image of SH2-101 highlighting the star (HD226868) that orbits the black hole Cygnus X-1.

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-Processing: All subs were visually inspected with Blink and subs with issues were removed. All light Frames, Flats, Darks and Dark flats were loaded into WBPP. Linear Post Processing: Background extraction was performed with Auto DBE Script from Seti Astro followed by BXT (correct only). SPCC was used for Color Calibration followed by a full application of BXT. Noise was reduced with NXT. The image was made non-linear with HT. Non-linear Post Processing: Stars were removed with StarXT. Stars: Saturation was increased with CT. Starless: The Narrowband normalization Process was used to get the "SHO" look. Color, intensity, and contrast were adjusted with various applications of CT. Saturation was increased with CT. LHE was applied at 3 Kernel sizes. Unsharp mask was applied and MMT was used to increase sharpness. The DSE script was used to enhance dark nebula regions. The Stars and Starless images were combined with Pixel Math to produce the final image. 

What is it?

The Tulip Nebula (SH2-101) is a bright nebula in the constellation Cygnus. This region of gas and dust is an HII region. Unlike the Dark Nebula B150, the gas in the tulip is ionized and is giving off its own light.

Annotated image of SH2-101

How Big is it?

SH2-101 has a size of 16 x 9 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is about 70 light years in diameter.

How Far is it?

SH2-101 is located about 6,000 light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.

How to find it?

It may be possible to view this object visually (I have never done so). I would suggest a nebula filter (like a UHC filter) to improve contrast and make the nebula "pop" in the eyepiece.

SH2-101 is located in the neck of Cygnus the Swan. About 1/2 way between the head (Albireo) and Sadr.

Finder Chart for SH2-101.

Image Details:

Capture Date: 07/26/2024

Location: Eden, NY

Telescope: Askr FRA600 (no reducer)

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro

Filter: Optolong L-eXtreme

Mount: Sky-Watcher USA EQ6-R Pro

Exposure: 25 exposures at 180 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 50 / -10°C each for a total exposure of almost 1.25 hours.

Software: NINA, SharpCap Pro, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

A Smoky Sea Horse Nebula

 It was perfectly clear, except for the wildfire smoke!

Friday 7/26 was the second night of what turned out to be a string of 4 clear nights. That was the good news. The bad news was that wildfire smoke from out west had rolled in. It would be the only night I would have any chance of imaging, so when we got home around 10 pm, I set up and was collecting subs by 11 pm. The week before I tore down my setup. I removed the dovetail saddle on my EQ6-R pro and replaced it with an ADM Saddle that was purchased at last year's NEAF. I also replaced my telescope with an Askar FRA600 that is on loan from a friend. He is unable to use the scope for a bit and generously allowed me to borrow it. I did some cleanish skies last Saturday night and was able to get focused and verify everything was working. 

The first target of the evening was Barnard 150, The Sea Horse Nebula. The 61% illuminated Moon rose around 11:38 PM. I continued to image this target until a little after 2 am, when the Moon started to clear the trees and was impacting the image quality. I took flats, popped the L-eXtreme filter in the image train, took flats with that and switched to a second target for the session. That will be another story. I captured a total of 74 exposures at 2 minutes each. Hope to get more time on this object, as I believe this will improve the result. Here's the final image. 

Barnard 150, The Sea Horse Nebula.

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-Processing: All subs were visually inspected with Blink and subs with issues were removed. All light Frames, Flats, Darks and Dark flats were loaded into WBPP. Linear Post Processing: Background extraction was performed with Auto DBE Script from Seti Astro followed by BXT (correct only). SPCC was used for Color Calibration followed by a full application of BXT. Noise was reduced with NXT. The image was made non-linear with HT. Non-linear Post Processing: Stars were removed with StarXT. Stars: Saturation was increased with CT. Starless: Saturation was increased with CT. LHE was applied at 3 Kernel sizes. Unsharp mask was applied and MMT was used to increase sharpness. The Stars and Starless images were combined with Pixel Math to produce the final image. 

What is it?

B150 is a Dark Nebula in the constellation Cepheus. It is an interstellar cloud and dust so dense that blocks the optical or visible light behind it (from our point of view). 

An Annotated image of B150.

How Big is it?

M8 has a size of 60 x 60 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. 

How Far is it?

M8 is located about 1,200 light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Cepheus.

How to find it?

I'm not going to say this object can't be observed visually because I don't know. I've never attempted to visually observe this. Definitely not a target for beginners. Dark skies with excellent seeing/transparency would be required to have a chance. This object is about 1 degree in angular size, so a fairly wide field of view would be required.

This object is in Cepheus as shown in the finder chart below. B150 is between Cepheus and Cygnus as indicated by the solid red rectangle in the finder chart.

Finding Chart for B150.

Image Details:

Capture Date: 07/26/2024

Location: Eden, NY

Telescope: Askr FRA600 (no reducer)

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro

Filter: none

Mount: Sky-Watcher USA EQ6-R Pro

Exposure: 74 exposures at 120 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 50 / -10°C each for a total exposure of almost 2.5 hours.

Software: NINA, SharpCap Pro, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

M8, M20, and friends from the farm across the street

 Imaging in the heart of the Milky Way ...

I have not imaged with my home rig for several months. Been imaging with the club's scopes at the observatory and life has been pretty crazy (let's not talk about the weather). Saturday 7/6 was no exception. Our club had a Public Night at our observatory. I couldn't attend due to a family commitment. Fortunately, we got home in time to do some imaging. I live in farm country and have reasonably good skies. Unfortunately, I have a lousy horizon due to the trees. So, I set up across the street in my neighbor's backyard. Their yard borders their farm fields, so the horizon is amazing. This allowed me to go for M8 & M20, something I could never get from my yard.

I got imaging so late; I'm calling this on a Sunday 7/7 image. I had to stop multiple times due to clouds. Ended up with just under 2 hours of data (114 subs at 60 sec each). Really pleased with the result. Especially for a target that is so low in the sky here.

M8, M20, and friends from across the street from my house.

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-Processing: All subs were visually inspected with Blink and subs with issues were removed. All light Frames, Flats, Darks and Dark flats were loaded into WBPP. Linear Post Processing: Background extraction was performed with GraXpert followed by BXT (correct only). SPCC was used for Color Calibration followed by a full application of BXT. Noise was reduced with NXT. The image was made non-linear with HT. Non-linear Post Processing: Stars were removed with StarXT. Stars: Saturation was increased with CT. Starless: Saturation was increased with CT. LHE was applied at 3 Kernel sizes. Unsharp mask was applied and MMT was used to increase sharpness. The Stars and Starless images were combined with Pixel Math to produce the final image. I ended up with 2 versions one bright image and a darker version. I liked elements of each, bit was not totally satisfied with either. I ended blending both images (70% dark with 30% bright) to get the final image.  

What is it?

There is a lot going on in this image. The scope was pointed into the heart of the Milky Way. Going to focus on the three Messier objects in the image. 

Messier 8 (M8) The Lagoon Nebula. M8 is a large star forming region, some dark nebula, and a star cluster. This is giant glowing cloud of interstellar dust where stars are forming and have been formed (the star cluster).

Messier 20 (M20) The Trifid Nebula. M20is a unique combination of a star cluster, emission nebula, dark nebula, and a reflection nebula. It is called the Trifid nebula due to the tree lobed appearance.

Messier 21 (M21). M21 is an open star cluster located near M20. This is a relatively young cluster at about 4.6 million years old.

An annotated image of M8 & M20.

How Big is it?

M8 has a size of 9o x 40 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is 113.6 light-years (ly) in diameter.

M20 has a size of 29 x27 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is 43.9 light-years (ly) in diameter.

M21 has a size of 14 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is 20 light-years (ly) in diameter.

How Far is it?

M8 is located about 4,300 light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.

M20 is located about 5,200 light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.

M21 is located about 3,900 light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius.

How to find it?

The lagoon is naked eye visible in dark sky locations. All three objects are located in the constellation Sagittarius, which is low in the South for Northern Hemisphere stargazers in the summer. Find the Teapot, they are located above (North) of the Spout of the Teapot.

A finder chart for M8 & M20

Image Details:

Capture Date: 07/06/2024 into the morning of 07/07/2024

Location: Eden, NY

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 Essential Series Air-Spaced Triplet Refractor

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro

Filter: none

Mount: Sky-Watcher USA EQ6-R Pro

Exposure: 114 exposures at 60 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 50 / -10°C each for a total exposure of 1.9 hours.

Software: NINA, SharpCap Pro, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

M51 from The BMO

 Second night out with the club's new camera ...

We hosted a local girl scout troop at our club's observatory on Saturday 5/18. The troop worked on their Space Science badge in between the clouds. We were able to cover every aspect of the badge, including visual observing, astrophotography, and spectra. Unsurprisingly, the skies completely cleared at the end of the program. We got to show the girl scouts M51 on the club's Celestron 14" Edge HD with our new OGMA AP26CC camera. We live stacked the galaxy in SharpCap for about 10 minutes. 

After the troop left, the observatory director and I stayed and imaged M51 for about an hour or so. We had only cooled the camera to 0 degrees Celsius as the observatory was very warm that day and we had not planned on imaging. This gave us some issues when processing the image. We were worried that there was an issue with the camera. The M3 image from a few days earlier was taken at -10 degrees Celsius and did not exhibit any issues. An image taken after M51 was also taken with the camera cooled to -10 degrees Celsius, again no issues. We managed to gather 13 subs at 3 minutes each for a total of 39 minutes of exposure. Here's the result.

M51 from the BMO

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-Processing: All subs were visually inspected with Blink and subs with issues were removed. All light Frames, Flats, Darks and Dark flats were loaded into WBPP. Linear Post Processing: Background extraction was performed with GraXpert followed by BXT (correct only). SPCC was used for Color Calibration followed by a full application of BXT. Noise was reduced with NXT. The image was made non-linear with HT. Non-linear Post Processing: Stars were removed with StarXT. Stars: Saturation was increased with CT. Starless: Saturation was increased with CT. LHE was applied at 3 Kernel sizes. Unsharp mask was applied and MMT was used to increase sharpness. The Stars and Starless images were combined with Pixel Math to produce the final image.

What is it?

Messier 51 (M51) is also known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. It is actually a pair of galaxies gravitationally interacting, M51 and the smaller NGC 5195. Recent simulations suggest that NGC 5195 actually passed through M51 500 to 600 million years ago, causing M51's distinctive spiral structure.

Annotated image of M51

How Big is it?

This object has an size of 13.7 x 11.7 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is 111.6 thousand light-years (ly) in diameter.

How Far is it?

It is located about 28 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici.

How to find it?

This object is visible in small telescopes and binoculars, and like M3, is best viewed in a large Dobsonian like our club's 20" obsession. Even though M51 is in Canes Venatici, it is found using the Big Dipper asterism in Ursa Major. M51 can be found just of the end of the Big Dipper's handle as indicated in the finder chart below.

Finder chart for M51

Image Details:

Capture Date: 05/18/2024

Location: North Java, NY (Buffalo Astronomical Association's Beaver Meadow Observatory)

Telescope: Celestron 14" Edge HD w/0.7 Reducer

Camera: OGMA AP26CC

Filter: OGMA 2" UV/IR Cut

Mount: Astro Physics AP1200 Mount

Exposure: 13 exposures at 180 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 10 / 0° C each for a total exposure of 39 minutes.

Software: NINA, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

First Light with the New Camera at the Beaver Meadow Observatory

 And so it begins ...

Our astronomy club recently purchased a new camera for our club's observatory. Our existing line up of cameras were fantastic pieces of equipment but are older technology. The latest CMOS cameras offer higher sensitivity, lower noise, and faster download speeds. We purchased an OGMA AP26CC. OGMA is a new brand of camera. OGMA is located in North Carolina (sales, distribution, & customer support) and the cameras are made in China by Touptek. The AP26CC is based on the SONY IMX571 sensor used in many popular astronomy cameras like the ZWO ASI2600MCPro, QHY268, & Player One Poseidon. we decided to go with the OGMA as it cost a few hundred dollars less, US based support, and the package of accessories it comes with. Note: The AR window is not a UV/IR cut filter like the ZWO camera. However, the OGMA comes with a UV/IR filter and filter holder.

Thursday 5/16 was our imaging group's Tuesday Night session. Clear skies but a bright Moon. Perfect for trying out new gear. I got to the observatory after work, but as is the case this time of year, had to leave. It doesn't get dark enough to image until well after 9 pm. Difficult to stay on a work night. I went home and joined in via Zoom. The team decided to go after M3. This bright globular cluster should have no problem punching through the light pollution from the Moon. We didn't have any issues with connecting the camera to the club's Celestron 14" Edge HD. We used the default backspacing of 55 mm from the Focal Reducer and the results look spot on. No issues connecting to NINA. We used the recommended settings on the online manual for the camera on OGMA's website.

We captured 30 subs but were only able to stack 23 subs. WBPP in PixInsight rejected 7 exposures for some reason. This seems to be a fairly common occurrence when working with long focal length data. Here is the result. 

1st light with the club's new camera. M3 from the BMO.

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-Processing: All subs were visually inspected with Blink and subs with issues were removed. All light Frames, Flats, Darks and Dark flats were loaded into WBPP. Linear Post Processing: Background extraction was performed with GraXpert followed by BXT (correct only). SPCC was used for Color Calibration followed by a full application of BXT. Noise was reduced with NXT. The image was made non-linear with HT. Non-linear Post Processing: Stars were removed with StarXT. Stars: Saturation was increased with CT. Starless: No processing of the starless image was performed. The only reason I removed the stars was to prevent color in the background when increasing saturation of the stars. The Stars and Starless images were combined with Pixel Math to produce the final image.

What is it?

Messier 3 or M3 is a very bright globular cluster in the constellation Canes Venatici. M3 contains about 500,000 stars. This cluster is roughly 8 billion years old.

An annotated image of M3.

How Big is it?

This object has an apparent diameter of 18.0 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is 180 light-years (ly) in diameter.

How Far is it?

It is located about 33,900 light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici.

How to find it?

This object is visible in small telescopes and binoculars but is best viewed in a large Dobsonian like our club's 20" obsession.  I like to draw an imaginary line between Arcturus and Cor Coroli (the star next to the "s" in Canes Venatici in the finder chart below. I also use the constellation Com Berenices to "triangulate" M3. 

A finder chart for M3.

Image Details:

Capture Date: 05/16/2024

Location: North Java, NY (Buffalo Astronomical Association's Beaver Meadow Observatory)

Telescope: Celestron 14" Edge HD w/0.7 Reducer

Camera: OGMA AP26CC

Filter: OGMA 2" UV/IR Cut

Mount: Astro Physics AP1200 Mount

Exposure: 23 exposures at 120 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 10 / -10° C each for a total exposure of 46 minutes.

Software: NINA, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

M104 from the Beaver Meadow Observatory (BMO)

 It's been a while ...

It has been quite some time since my last post. The last few months have been challenging. Life is like that sometimes. I have had some opportunities to do some Astrophotography, mostly at our club's observatory with our imaging group. Just getting around to posting about it. Better late than never. 

Monday April 15th (Tax Day here in the US) was clear. Our club's imaging group assembled at the observatory and via Zoom. I joined via Zoom. We have switched to NINA as our capture software. In our group, I'm the most familiar with NINA as I've used it for about 3 years. Therefore, I like to join via Zoom when I'm unable to attend in person to help get our imaging runs setup. One of our member's put her ZWO ASI533MC Pro on the club's Celestron 14" Edge HD. The sensor on the 533 is similar to my 2600, just a little smaller and square. We decided on M104, The Sombrero Galaxy as our target. We started capturing 60 second subs due to the presence of the Moon in the sky. The subs looked amazing. Skies were not the best. We imaged for well over an hour but only ended up with 34 usable subs. That's 34 minutes of total exposure. The results were absolutely stunning! This is my process of the data.

M104 from the Beaver Meadow Observatory.

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-Processing: All subs were visually inspected with Blink and subs with issues were removed. All light Frames, Flats, Darks and Dark flats were loaded into WBPP. Linear Post Processing: Background extraction was performed with GraXpert followed by BXT (correct only). SPCC was used for Color Calibration followed by a full application of BXT. Noise was reduced with NXT. The image was made non-linear with HT. Non-linear Post Processing: Stars were removed with StarXT. Stars: Saturation was increased with CT. Starless: Saturation was increased with CT. LHE was applied at 3 Kernel sizes. Unsharp mask was applied and MMT was used to increase sharpness. The Stars and Starless images were combined with Pixel Math to produce the final image.

What is it?

Messier 104 (M104) is also known as The Sombrero Galaxy. It is a Spiral Galaxy in the constellation of Virgo. M104 has an active nucleus and has a Supermassive Black Hole with a mass 1 billion times the mass of the Sun at its center. Note the prominent dust lane. 

An annotated im age of M104, The Sombrero Galaxy

How Big is it?

This object has an apparent size of 8.4 by 4.9 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is 130,000 light-years (ly) in diameter.

How Far is it?

It is located about 28 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the Constellation Virgo.

How to find it?

This object is visible in small telescopes. A 10" telescope or larger is required to see the dust lane. It is located between the constellations of Virgo and Corvus as indicated in the finder chart below. Use the Stars Spica in Virgo and Algorab in Corvus to find it.

Finder chart for m104, The Sombrero Galaxy.

Image Details:

Capture Date: 04/15/2024

Location: North Java, NY (Buffalo Astronomical Association's Beaver Meadow Observatory)

Telescope: Celestron 14" Edge HD w/0.7 Reducer

Camera: ZWO ASI533MC Pro

Filter: None

Mount: Astro Physics AP1200 Mount

Exposure: 34 exposures at 60 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 10 / -10° C each for a total exposure of 34 minutes.

Software: NINA, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

M45 - The Pleiades

 The last in a recent string of clear nights ... but 1st a quick story:

A few years back my family was driving home from a family event on beautiful clear night. Someone remarked how beautiful the stars looked and my mother-in-law said, "oh yes, and you can really see the little Dipper!". I'm driving and trying to contain my inner Sheldon Cooper, we are driving south, there is no way she's talking about the Little Dipper. When we got home and parked the car, I asked her to show me. She pointed directly to the Pleiades. I realized it does in fact look like a min dipper. I politely explained what she was actually looking at and showed her how to find the actual Little Dipper. She was un-impressed. I don't think I ever consciously realized that M45 looks like a mini-dipper before (even though I have observed it for years). Now I often describe it in this way when describing it. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog post.

From Saturday 2/3/2024 through Tuesday 2/6/2024, we had a string of 4 clear nights. Skies weren't amazing, the transparency was not great, but the best opportunity for any astronomy related activity in 2 months or so. i got out to the observatory to image on 2/3/2024. Family and work obligations prevented me from imaging Sunday night or Monday night. Tuesday night was my last chance. The forecast was for clear skies early with the transparency turning poor/clouds around 11. Good news, it gets dark early enough to make imaging under worthwhile. Our Tuesday night imaging group was also in session. I joined from home via Zoom. 

After work, I quickly set up my scope. I had not used my home setup since October 3rd! I started collecting exposures at 7:04 PM. Since we were so close to New Moon, I decided on a broadband target, M45 (a.k.a. The Pleiades or Seven Sisters). Looking to improve on my initial result of this image from 2021. By 9:00 PM the transparency was starting to degrade. I kept imaging until 10:32 but had discard quite a most subs collected after 9:41 PM due to haze/thin clouds. Here's the resulting image. I'm pleased with result but hope to add data to this in the future, hope to pull out more of the faint background dust. 

M45, The Pleiades - from my backyard on 02/02/2024.

Showing the mini-dipper asterism. 

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-processing: Blink & WBPP (2x drizzle integration). Linear Post-Processing: GraXpert, BXT (correct only), SPCC, BXT, NXT, and HT. Non-linear Post-processing: StarXT. Stars: Curves (saturation) and SCNR. Starless: Curves (multiple for brightening, contrast, and saturation), SCNR, LHE (3 kernel sizes), Unsharp Mask, MMT, & PixelMath (to screen stars back in). Integer Resample was used to down sample the image. 

What is it?

Messier 45 is probably the most famous Open Star Cluster in the night sky. It is easily visible to the naked eye. The brightest 6 stars form a distinctive mini-dipper pattern not far from Orion. It is known by many names by different cultures around the world. If you drive a Subaru, look at the logo. Subaru ids the name for M45 in Japan. The cluster contains over 1,000 confirmed stars. The reflection nebula that surrounds the cluster is not associated with the cluster. The cluster is just passing through it and the starlight from the cluster is reflecting it, in the same way our atmosphere scatters the light from the Sun making our sky appear blue. 

Annotated version of the image of M45.

How big is it?

This object has an apparent size of 12 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. It is 16 light-years (ly) in diameter.

How far is it?

It is located about 440 light-years (ly) from Earth in the Constellation Taurus.

How to find it?

This object is easily visible to the naked eye. You won't see the beautiful reflection nebula, but the 6 brightest stars are quite bright and form a very recognizable mini-dipper pattern (asterism). It is not far from the V-shaped Hyades in Taurus. Start with the belt stars in Orion. Starting from the lowest star (Alnitak), extend through the highest star (Mintaka) for about 35 degrees (about 3-1/2 fists). Refer to the finder charts below.

How to use Orion's Belt to find M45.

A finder chart for M45 with a tighter field of view.

Image Details:

Capture Date: 02/06/2024

Location: Eden, NY

Telescope: Explore Scientific ED80 Essential Series Air-Spaced Triplet Refractor

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro

Filter: none

Mount: Sky-Watcher USA EQ6-R Pro

Exposure: 66 exposures at 120 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 50 / -10°C each for a total exposure of 2 hour and 12 minutes.

Software: NINA, SharpCap Pro, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

A Tale of Two Supernovae ... Part 2

 Saturday Night Turned into Sunday Morning ...

Picking up where we left off in part 1, we removed the L-eXtreme filter from the imaging train because we planned on imaging a broadband target, and the dual-narrowband filter would detrimentally impact the results. Dual-narrowband filters are effective for emission nebulae like H2 regions, supernovae remnants, and planetary nebulae but are not recommended when imaging targets like galaxies, star clusters, and reflection nebulae. Since we changed the imaging train, we took a second set of flats to be used with this target. It was after midnight at this point, and we agreed to image to 1 am. We opened the roof and slewed the telescope to Virgo, which was rising above the eastern horizon. Our target was a recent supernova that had occurred in the Galaxy NGC 4216. The supernova was discovered on January 4, 2024 by Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki, who has discovered 170 supernovae! This supernova has a designation of, SN 2024gy. 

We imaged until the agreed upon time of 1 am. We ended up rejecting the last few subs (short for sub-exposure) as the image quality was degrading due to the poor transparency. Had to be some very high thin cloud or haze, even though the sky looked clear, guiding, focus, and image quality indicated we were losing the skies. We managed to collect 7 subs at 180 sec each. The supernova, the dust lanes in NGC 4216, and many smaller background galaxies were visible in the individual exposures. Here is the resulting image: 

SN 2024gy in NGC 4216 captured on 2/4/2024 from the BMO.

An annotated version of the image indicating the location of supernova SN 2024gy.

An animated GIF of SN 2024gy in NGC 4216

Processing:

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-processing: Blink & WBPP. Linear Post-processing: GraXpert, BXT (correct only), Color Calibration, BXT, NXT, & Histogram Transformation. Non-linear Post Processing: SXT. Stars: Curves (saturation) and SCNR. Starless: Curves (contrast & saturation), SCNR, LHE (3x's), Unsharp Mask, MMT, and PixelMath (to screen the stars back in).

Magnitude Estimate:

Disclaimer: I'm not an experienced variable star observer. There is a decent probability that the following methodology is flawed.

The BAA had our monthly meeting for February on 2/9/2024. After the meeting, I joined the Astrophotography breakout room, and we discussed estimating the magnitude of the supernova from the images we collected on 2/4/2024. This ended up as a fun activity for the small group of us left in the meeting. Since imaging supernova SN2023ixf in M101 in May of 2023, I've made an effort to try to learn how to estimate the magnitude of the supernova from my images. I recently joined the AAVSO and managed to cobble together and idea on how to estimate the magnitude of the supernova from stars with known magnitudes in the same field of view. The manner in which we captured images was optimized for "pretty pictures" not photometry, but the value we ended up with is pretty close to other reported values of the supernova from the same date. 

One of the other members generated a star chart from the AAVSO website. This chart depicted stars in the field of view, of which several were labeled with known magnitudes. It took some trial and error to the chart correct so it matched the field of view of our image. The first chart was off, we had used RA & Dec coordinates from Sky Safari. When we used RA & Dec coordinates from The Sky X, it finally matched the image. We think the difference may be the epoch used by each software (J2000 vs. Jnow). We visually estimated the brightness to be somewhere between 13 and 15th magnitude. Another member pulled a light curve from the AAVSO website. This light curve was compiled from member reports and indicated that the magnitude was around 13.5. We identified a star in the field with a known magnitude of 13.1. I took one of the calibrated and debayered individual sub exposures and extracted the RGB channels in PixInsight. The image was still linear, only a display or screen stretch was applied. Using the green channel, we measured the flux of the known star and the supernova using PixInsight's Dynamic PSF process. We put the resulting values into this formula:

Mag(supernova) = Mag (star) - 2.5Log(FluxSN/FluxStar)

We came up with a magnitude of 13.4 which closely matches reported values!!!! 

What is it?

SN 2024gy is a Type 1A Supernova in the Galaxy NGC 4216. It was discovered on 1/4/2024 by Japanese astronomer Koichi Itagaki. Type 1A supernovae occur when a White Dwarf syphons material from another star that it is in a binary pair with. Once the White Dwarf reaches 1.4 times the mass of the Sun, it goes Supernova. This type of Supernova is used as a standard candle and is important in determining the distance to objects in the universe.

Annotated image of the field of view.

How far is it?

It is located about 45 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the Constellation Virgo.

How to find it?

SN  2024gy is located in the Galaxy NGC 4216 which is located in the Constellation Virgo. Refer to the Finder Chart below. The tiny red rectangle in the center of the image marks the position of NGC 4216. It is very near M86, in the bowl of Virgo.

Finder Chart for NGC 4216. 

Image Details:

Capture Date: 02/04/2024

Location: Beaver Meadow Observatory (North Java, NY)

Telescope: Celestron 14" Edge HD w/0.7x Reducer

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro

Filter: none

Mount: Astro Physics AP-1200

Exposure: 7 exposures at 180 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 50 / -10°C each for a total exposure of 21 minutes

Software: NINA, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

A Tale of Two Supernovae ... Part 1

 Saturday Night at the Observatory

It has been several months since we have had a clear night. It was clear Saturday night 2/3/2024 into Sunday morning 2/4/2024. Our Astronomy club’s imaging group assembled at our Dark Sky Observatory. We call ourselves the Tuesday Night Imagers, but Tuesday night can be any night of the week.  We put my camera (ZWO ASI2600MC Pro) on the club’s Celestron 14” Edge HD Telescope which is on an Astro Physics AP-1200 mount. An Optolong L-eXtreme Dual-Narrowband filter was used to target specific wavelengths of light.

The imaging team (for the club's equipment) was our Observatory Director (Dan), a member named Mike, and me. Our target was Messier 1 (M1) a.k.a. The Crab Nebula. M1 is a supernova remnant located in the constellation Taurus. We lost some time at the beginning of the night getting things running. The Observatory had not been used (due to poor weather) since mid-December. Programs and drivers needed to be updated and we needed to fine tune the Acquisition software for this new Telescope/Camera combination. We started to acquire images at 8:40 PM and imaged until 11:30 PM when we lost M1 to the Muck near the horizon and the trees. We closed the roof and took our flat frames. Mike removed his camera from the Tele Vue NP-10is that rides on the mount with the 14" Edge HD. We replaced it with an eyepiece to keep things close to balance so Dan and I could go after one more target. We'll cover that in part 2.

We did encounter an issue with aberrations (spikes) on our stars. We were unable to resolve the issue Saturday night. Dan and Mike returned to the observatory Monday evening, and I joined them via Zoom. After some troubleshooting, we believe the issue is caused by the Celestron Dew Heater Ring. Even with the Star spike issue, we managed to collect 13 usable subs at 600 sec each for a total exposure of 130 minutes. Here is the resulting image:

M1, The Crab Nebula from 2/3/2024, HOO version. BAA Tuesday Night Imagers.

Processing:

I did all pre and post processing in PixInsight. Pre-processing: Blink & WBPP. Linear Post-processing: GraXpert, BlurXTerminator (correct only), Spectrophotometric Color Calibration, BlurXTerminator, NoiseXTerminator, and Histogram Transformation. Non-Linear Post-processing: StarXTerminator. Starless: Narrowband Normalization (two methods as described below), Curves (Multiple iterations to increase brightness, contrast, and color saturation), SCNR, Local Histogram Equalization, Unsharp Mask, and Multiscale Median Transform. Stars: Curves (to increase color saturation) and SCNR. PixelMath was used to screen the stars back in. 

I tried to different methods in the Narrowband Normalization process. Method 2 which produces an HOO result and Method 1, which produces a result that simulates the Hubble or SHO palette. The image above is the HOO version. I prefer this version. Here is the simulated SHO version:

M1, The Crab Nebula, simulated SHO Version. BAA Tuesday Night Imagers.

What is it?

M1 is a supernova remnant. Humans observed the Supernova when it occurred in 1054. It was recorded by Chinese astronomers, and it appears that the event is also depicted in Petroglyphs in Arizona and New Mexico. The Chinese astronomers referred to it as a "Guest Star". it was visible during the day for 23 days and was visible at night for 653 days. The supernova also left behind a stellar remnant known as a Pulsar. The Crab Pulsar rotates 30.2 times per second. The nebula is expanding at a rate of 1,800 km/sec.

Annotated image of M1, The Crab Nebula. 

How big is it?

This object has an angular distance of 6 x 4 arcminutes (1 degree is 60 arcminutes) on the night sky. The object is 13 x 11 light-years (ly) across. 

How far is it?

It is located about 6,300 light-years (ly) from Earth in the Constellation Taurus.

How to find it?

This object is relatively easy to find. It's very close to the bright star Zeta Tauri in the constellation Taurus. Refer to the finder chart below. This is a great visual target. It can be seen in binoculars and small telescopes. Dark skies help as it is it can get lost in light polluted skies. Larger aperture helps significantly. Although visible in smaller instruments, I believe it is far more interesting to observe in large aperture scopes. Nebula filters can aid in viewing this object.

Finder Chart for M1.

Image Details:

Capture Date: 02/03/2024

Location: Beaver Meadow Observatory (North Java, NY)

Telescope: Celestron 14" Edge HD w/0.7x Reducer

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro

Filter: Optolong l-eXtreme 

Mount: Astro Physics AP-1200

Exposure: 13 exposures at 600 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 50 / -10°C each for a total exposure of 130 minutes (2.2 hours)

Software: NINA, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie

Starting to share my images through YouTube

 No VLOGs for now

Starting at after Christmas, I will be trying something new. I will be sharing my Astro Photos through YouTube, in addition to the methods of sharing I use now. As of the time of this blog post (late December 2023) I don't have any intention to create VLOG style videos. I will concentrate on slide show type videos, both in long form and the short form portrait videos that all the rage with the kids these days (clearly I watched too much David Letterman in college). 

Let the "Year in Review" retrospectives commence:

The first video will be a slide show of the images captured during 2023. I managed to capture 14 images in 2023. Lots of clouds and smoke. Other than one week in May, when I managed to image five nights in one week, I averaged about one night per month. Happy with the progress I've been making. I've benefited significantly from the experience of members of the Buffalo Astronomical Association, PixInsight classes at Masters of PixInsight, and Astrophotography community at Astroworld. 

A collage of my Astro Photos from 2023

A link to my Youtube Channel (http://www.youtube.com/@Erniej270) has been placed on the home page for this blog. Here's the "First" video: https://youtu.be/s2teiVHLWK0

I will also be releasing each image as "Short". The first one is of Comet c/2022 E3 (ztf). Here's a link to the at video too: https://youtube.com/shorts/CsAdih8ufRw?feature=share

Which images from 2023 do you like the best? Leave a comment and let me know. 

Clear Skies!
Ernie

Experimenting at the Club's Observatory

 First off, it's been a while ... 

The last clear night that I was able to image was on October 3rd. So, apologies for taking so long between posts. The weather has been horrendous and travel for work forced me to miss the one clear night we had in November. I was super excited to see a clear forecast for Thursday night (December 14th). Our astronomy club has an imaging group, we're called the Tuesday Night Imagers. the leader of our group posted on the forum of our website that Tuesday would be Thursday this week. One advantage of winter is I can make it out to the observatory after work and get a few hours of imaging in and still get home at a reasonable time. 

We made our plans ahead of time. The plan was to try my personal camera, the ZWO ASI2600MC-Pro on the club's Celestron 14" Edge D Telescope. Our club has the 14" and a Tele Vue NP-101is mounted on an Astro Physics AP-1200 mount. We have an Atik 383L+ Color camera for the 14". A great camera, but it is an older CCD camera and is starting to show it's age. We are actively discussing what camera to get to replace it. We wish to stick with a One-Shot Color (OSC) camera for simplicity and convivence. Technically, my camera is a great match for the NP-101is but not for the 14". Even with the 0.7x focal reducer, the 14" has focal length of 2,738 mm. Therefore, my camera's small pixels result in a very over-sampled image scale with the 14". This is typically not desirable. However, we have seen some great results from similar setups and decided to give this a try. 

I got to the observatory around 5:30 pm. The observatory director, the leader of our imaging group, was unable to make it out to the observatory due to a last minute issue. Typically, the observatory director and another member of our group are the main operators of the telescope. The other telescope operator and I got the telescopes going. My camera on the 14" and the other telescope operator put his ZWO ASI1600MC-Pro on the NP-101. The observatory director and a couple of other members of our imaging group joined us via Zoom. 

The skies were not great. lots of high/thin clouds or haze especially towards the western horizon. Of course, that's exactly where we wanted to image. We wanted to get data on Comet 12/P Pons-Brooks which is near the bright star Vega. We tried for about an hour, but the data was not looking good. Autofocus was struggling and there was little signal from the comet. I have not tried to process the data from the 14" yet but the other telescope operator managed to get a nice image (especially considering the conditions). 

As it was also the peak of the Geminids meteor shower, we did try to get outside and see if we could see meteors. We saw about four or five. We also noticed skies were better towards the Southeast, where the constellation Orion was rising. We decided to give up on the comet and slew to the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33). We slewed to B33 and got both telescopes framed as best as we could. We were feeling the pressure to get imaging quickly, so we didn't rotate the camera or refine (manually) the relative pointing of the telescopes to one another, a disadvantage of two scopes on one mount. We dialed in our exposure settings, 120 sec subs at Gain 100 with an Offset of 50 for me and started collecting exposures. The results looked really good. The stars were nice and round. We imaged for little over an hour. It was a work night, skies weren't the best, and both of us had a pretty good drive home. This is the resulting image from the night's work. Pretty encouraging results!

The Horsehead Nebula (B33) from the BAA's Beaver Meadow Observatory on 12/14/2023.

Processing

There was a lot of conversation in our club's forum leading up to Thursday night and again afterwards regarding how to capture and process images with this scope/camera combination. We are lucky to have some talented imagers in the group, one in particular who is both very talented and technically knowledgeable. This person was a key participant in those discussions and I'm personally very grateful for his mentoring.

All pre and post processing was performed in PixInsight. Pre-processing: All 34 images were examined in Blink, 2 were rejected. The remaining 32 images were calibrated, registered, and stacked in WBPP with 1X Drizzle integration, astrometric solution, and auto-crop enabled. 

Linear Post-processing: Gradient was removed with the GraXpert script (AI mode), initial deconvolution with BlurXT in Correct Only mode, color calibration SPCC, second deconvolution with BlurXT, noise reduction NoiseXT, and the image was made non-linear with HT. Non-linear Post processing: Stars were removed with StarXT. Stars: Saturation curve applied with CT and green noise removed with SCNR. Starless: Multiple iterations of CT were applied to increase brightness and contrast, Saturation was added with CT, green noise was removed with SCNR, and noise reduction was further reduced with NoiseXT. The image was sharpened with LHE at 3 different kernel sizes and MMT. Dark structure was enhanced with the DSE script and stars were screened back in with Pixel Math. No down sampling was performed. 

What is it?

The Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) is a small dark nebula silhouetted against the emission nebula IC434. B33 resembles the profile of the head of a horse. It is a concentration of dust and non-luminous gas that blocks light of the nebula behind it. 

Annotated image of the Horsehead Nebula

How big is it?

This object has an angular distance of 6.0 x 4.0 arcminutes on the night sky. The object is 2.8 light-years (ly) across. 

How far is it?

It is located about 1,600 light-years (ly) from Earth in the Constellation of Orion.

How to find it?

It is located close to Alnitak, one of the 3 belt stars in Orion. This makes it easy to find. However, it is much easier to photograph than visually observe. To give you the best chance of success in visually observing it, use a large aperture telescope, use an H-beta nebula filter, and get to dark skies. It is tiny and it is essentially like trying to find a black fingerprint on a black tablecloth. Try to find the emission nebula IC 434 and look for the absence of the nebula. Photographically, this target shows up relatively easily and can be captured with and without the use of filters. 

Finder Chart for B33

Image Details:

Capture Date: 12/14/2023

Location: North Java, NY (BAA's Beaver Meadow Observatory

Telescope: Celestron 14" Edge HD w/0.7x Focal Reducer

Camera: ZWO ASI2600MC Pro

Filter: N/A

Mount: Astro Physics AP-1200

Exposure: 32 exposures at 120 sec / Gain 100 / Offset 50 / -10°C each for a total exposure of 1 hour and 4 minutes.

Software: NINA, PHD2, and PixInsight

Clear Skies!

Ernie