Open Clusters 10/27/2022

Open clusters are deep sky low hanging fruit objects that let you image quite a few in a single night. If you're new to astro-imaging open clusters are great for familiarization with focusing and autoguiding. The eleven open clusters were all acquired during one night out each using 30 x 30 second exposures; plenty of time for familiarization and practice. 

Messier 34

Messier 39 

NGC 129

NGC 225

NGC 457 (Owl Cluster)

NGC 663

NGC 774

NGC 7039

NGC 7082

NGC 7243

NGC 7789 Caroline's Rose

Recent and Not So Recent Images

Comet C/2022E3 ZTF is racing towards the outer solar system as evident from its small size in the image below compared with just a couple months ago. The comet, M36, M93 and NGC2360 were imaged from my third floor the terrace thanks to the recent removal of the sky blocking tree. The remaining five images were imaged from the Harvard, MA darkish site. As usual these will likely be revisited especially the nebulae. 

Comet C/2022E3ZTF (3/20/2023) 

Messier 36 (Open Cluster)

Messier 93 (Open Cluster)

NGC2360 (Caroline's Cluster)

NGC7538

Sharpless 140

 

Sharpless 252 (Monkey Head Nebula)

Sharpless 297

Sharpless 206 (NGC 1491)

March 2023 DSO Images

This post is backdated to 3/30/2030 reflecting the month of March period when images were acquired. Setup: Celestron 8 SCT/AVX mount, Starizona Night Owl F/4.0 focal reducer, ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled camera, Orion Magnificent Mini auto-guider. Processing: Subframes averaging by Autostakkert!3, image processing by Paintshop Pro 2021. 

Messier 46 (3/20/2023)

Comet C/2023E3ZTF (3/20/2023)

NGC2264 (3/20/2023)

Sharpless 252 (3/20/2023)

Messier 93 (3/30/2023)

NGC2360 (3/30/2023)

GraXpert game changing freeware.

A number of weeks ago I stumbled upon a game changing piece of freeware, GraXpert. GraXpert's algorithm analyzes your deep sky image distinguishing stars and nebulosity from back ground sky and generates a background that eliminates gradients and reduces light pollution. A standalone app GraXpert is easy to use while offering settings that allow you to tweak the algorithm for better results. Prior to downloading this awesome piece of free software dealing with gradients, inherent to my  ASI294MC Pro was a bit tedious. With GraXpert you just load the stretched image*, create the grid, calculate the back ground and save the processed image. That's it. You can adjust the sensitivity of the grid creating algorithm to background intensity and you can move, add or delete grid points to distinguish nebulosity from the background. Aside from reducing my workload the colors in my images have improved. Some recent images follow. Thor's Helmet nebula was actually imaged from my 3rd floor balcony in my heavily light polluted south of Boston suburban skies with 120 15s sub exposures. 

*Stretching the histogram in Paintshop Pro seems preferable to the GraXpert stretching routine which seems to throw away black side data. 

Comet C2022E3 ZTF (2/15/2023)

Comet C/2022E3 ZTF  (2/8/2023)

Comet C2022E3 ZTF (1/30/2023)

Comet C/2022E3 ZTF (1/27/2023)

IC443, Sharpless 248, Jellyfish Nebula--Supernova Remnant. 

M42 Orion Nebula

M48 --Open Cluster

Flame Nebula (NGC2024) , NGC2023, Horsehead Nebula(B33)

NGC2264

NGC2353 Open Cluster

NGC2359 (Thor's Helmet Nebula)

M46(NGC2437) Open Cluster + Planetary Nebula NGC2437

NGC2232 Open Cluster

Messier 50 Open Cluster

DSO Images acquired 1/30/2023 -2/28/2023

This is a back dated post to reflect the period during which images were acquired. Setup: Celestron 8/AVX mount, Starizona Night Owl F/4 focal reducer, ZWO ASI294MC Pro camera, Orion Magnificent Mini auto-guider. Averaging of subframes by Autostakkert!3. Image processing with Paintshop Pro 2021.

Comet 2023E3ZTF (1/30/2023)

Comet C/2023E3ZTF (2/8/2023)

Comet C/2023E3ZTF (2/14/2023)

IC443 (2/14/2023)

NGC2359/Thor's Helmet (2/14/2023)

Messier 46 (2/24/2023)

Messier 48 (2/18/2023)

Messier 50 (2/18/2023)

NGC2232 (2/18/2023)

NGC2353 (2/18/2023)