Early Season Imaging

It's that time of year which loads of people look forward to the most.  When it gets dark soon after you get home from work, and the night skies slowly start to give up their secrets once again.  It's also the time of year when I start to re-learn the whole imaging process.  Fortunately, I have got used to documenting my processes, and this year, it hasn't taken me too long to get back into the swing of things.

Back in the spring, I took a couple of data sets that for one reason or another, I hadn't got around to processing.  Then, this autumn, after returning from Astrocamp we had a great run of clear nights and I was able to rid the observatory of it's cobwebs, and get imaging again.  The images that follow are processed from these collections of data.

NGC 2244

We start with a double take of NGC 2244, The Rosette Nebula.  The data for this was collected back around February/March time using my current imaging rig consisting of an Altair 26c OSC (with quadband filter), 115 EDF Altair refractor on a Skywatcher EQ6-R mount.  Last winter, I got to grips with some new techniques I picked up off various YouTube tutorials, and so I started to apply those to this data set.  Those techniques and tools taught me how to (quite effectively) process my images into different colour palettes.  This target proved a very useful opportunity to do a side by side comparison.

Markarians Chain

The next data set was inspired by an observing session at spring Astrocamp, where next to me, I heard a fellow observer invite people to the eyepiece to view some of the component galaxies of Markarians Chain in his 16 inch dob.  Foolishly, I didn't take the opportunity to take a look myself.  I was probably too busy wrapped up in my own thoughts and observations at the time, but it did think about it for days later.  So, when the weather presented itself as favourable, I decided to have a go at imaging it.  Something to note here though is that I left in place, the quadband filter, which, for galaxies (especially visually smaller ones) is not ideal.  What I would have been better off doing would have been to remove the quadband filter, and replace it with just a normal IR or LP filter instead.  But that would have meant me having to also take a whole new set of calibration frames just for that image, and possibly adjust the focusing of the imaging train.  Nevertheless, for a first attempt at imaging Markarians Chain, I was really pleased with the outcome.  Only during the process stage when you have your master image blown up on screen can you start to appreciate exactly how many different galaxies are included in that one field of view.

IC 5070

Now we're onto the more recent imaging runs I have carried out.  Looking for inspiration, I turned to the internet and also my book of suggested astrophotography targets before settling on this one.  IC 5070 is also known as The Pelican Nebula, and is a target that I have imaged in the past.  This was back in 2022, not long after I first got the 26c camera, but I think I was still using my 80 ED-R at that point.  So, to revisit it was a real treat, and when I look back on my previous effort, the new techniques and tools that I have invested in since, I think have made a big difference.

NGC 7380

The final data set for this little collection of images is of NGC 7380, otherwise referred to as The Wizard Nebula.  This target contains a vast array of different wavelengths of light interacting with different gasses that it responds well to processing with false colour palettes.  Because I image with a OSC camera as opposed to a mono camera, I need to go through different techniques to that of a mono imager in order to achieve similar results.  It's probably fair to say that on targets like this, mono imaging with LRGB filters will always produce better images, but along with that also comes with the commitment of have to spend multiple more times of hours collecting data for each channel.  Soon, a 3 hour imaging session with a OSC camera will become a 15+ hour session, or even more, with a mono camera.  I don't have that level of patience or time, and certainly, the weather doesn't often produce sufficient windows of opportunity to spend all that time on one target.  Even over consecutive evenings.

I pretty pleased with the way this image has popped into life as it were, but I also think that there is probably much more to be gained from this data.