I began work on a tri-color Hubble Pallet image during the summer of 2014 but due to weather and other obligations did not capture much in the way of Oxygen [O III] and Sulfur [S II] emission data for the mosaic project so am leaving it as a monochrome image using only the Hydrogen Alpha emission line data.
The Scutum Star Cloud taken under the dark skies of Cherry Springs State Park on 17-Sept-2014.
Monday night was my first visit to a dark site; or at least my first visit since catching the astronomy bug. Upon arriving at Cherry Springs after the 4 hour drive I noticed there were quite a few people still hanging around after the Black Forest Star Party which was held over the weekend. According to some of the other amateur astronomers, the weekend star party was a bust.
We found a vacant spot to setup our tents right next to one of the RV style power outlet posts scattered throughout the observing fields. I can’t stress how wonderful it is to have power provided on the field for the astrophotographically inclined!
The grounds were well kept and the main bathrooms much nicer than expected. The surrounding area is gorgeous for anyone who enjoys the outdoors.
As nice as the park was, the show obviously didn’t start until the sun went down. The Milky Way was more prominent before astronomical twilight than I’m used to seeing here in the PGH region after astronomical twilight; even at the Greene County site. By 10:00pm it was gorgeous and I snapped a quick 3o second shot on a tripod and marveled that the dark lanes extending out from the Rho Ophiuchi / Antares region were clearly visible in a short exposure so close to the horizon.
Seeing the sky like this puts everything in a different perspective.
Yes, it’s depressing being back in light polluted Pittsburgh but I’m really glad I finally made it out to Cherry Springs after all this time.
I had plans to shoot some other objects but due to poor planning and setup of my tent I couldn’t take some of the deep southern objects I was hoping for. I settled for 5.5 hours of exposure time on NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula. I have shot the Iris before but was never totally happy. I’m still not quite satisfied but it’s certainly better than what I’ve gotten around here.
The Iris Nebula, also NGC 7023 and Caldwell 4, is a bright reflection nebula and Caldwell object in the constellation Cepheus. NGC 7023 is actually the cluster within the nebula, LBN 487, and the nebula is lit by a magnitude +7 star, SAO 19158.[1] It shines at magnitude +6.8. It is located near the Mira-type variable star T Cephei, and near the bright magnitude +3.23 variable star Beta Cephei (Alphirk). It lies 1,300 light-years away and is six light-years across.[2]
Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Another decent night at the AAAP Greene County Dark Sky Site.
NGC 6914 is a reflection nebula nestled amongst the diffuse emission nebula in Cygnus.
Playing around with an 8mm circular fisheye lens as well for an all sky timelapse.
[youtube:http://youtu.be/l92QPyDS_GQ]
It’s that time of year when Cygnus rises high over head and displays a multitude of nebulous treasure. This mosaic is only a portion of the Cygnus constellation but represents a large patch of sky almost 9 x 9 degrees. This is only a test framing as I create a game plan for a summer long imaging project. For a sense of scale, I have included a gibbous moon which was not part of the original image as well as a full scale crop of the Crescent Nebula, bottom right, to show the full size scale of the original 83 megapixel image.
And to put it into a little broader perspective here’s a wider field view which starts to show the Heart Nebula.
Mount: AP900GTO3
Scope: Tak FSQ-106ED
CCD: Apogee Alta U16
Filters: Baader Ha, O[III], S[II]
MMOAG OAG w/ sbig st-i guider
Total Exposure 5 hours
I thought it would be fun to take an older image, reprocess it, and crop into smaller sections that would put a new spin on a very commonly imaged object. Hope you like them. I won’t reveal what the object is until later.
Playing around with a Stellarvue SVQ100 Astrograph with a Lumenera Lu070 monochrome video camera and a 5X Televue Powermate tonight. A quick stack and sharpen to see what I got. They need some more time processing but doesn’t look too bad for an astrograph.
![NGC 2175 AP130EDT w/ 0.75X Reducer (f/6.3) Apogee Ascent A694 CCD Baader Narrowband Filters 7x20min Ha 10x20min O[III] 9x20min S[II]](http://www.celestial-imaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/NGC-2175-Crop.jpg)