Emission Nebula IC 1795 – November 2020

 AP1200GTO, AP130GTX, Apogee U8300, Astronomical, Daysprings Observatory, Emission Nebula, Nebula, Observatory  No Responses »
Feb 142021
 
IC 1795 – A star forming region in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia. Hubble Pallet Emission line imaging from Clinton, TN. Poor seeing conditions over several nights in Nov 2020 but almost 33 hours of total exposure time. AP130GTX with Apogee U8300 camera riding on AP1200GTO in backyard observatory.

North American Nebula / Gulf of Mexico / Pelican

 AP1200GTO, AP130GTX, Apogee U16, Astronomical, Dark Nebula, Daysprings Observatory, Emission Nebula, Nebula, Observatory, Widefield  No Responses »
Jul 282019
 

We had a great clear spell 7/23 through 7/27 with only moderate lunar interference in the early hours of the morning. This is 14 hours of exposure divided equally across Hydrogen-alpha, Oxygen [III], and Sulfur[II] emission lines. Scope was an AP130GTX with Apogee U16 CCD on an AP1200GTO mount. Located outside Clinton, TN. The following are crops from the main image.

Finally, here is the nearly full frame image encompassing the whole area.

M106 – LRGB from Home

 AP1200GTO, AP130GTX, Apogee U8300, Astronomical, Daysprings Observatory, Galaxy, Observatory  No Responses »
May 072019
 

Due to a moisture breach of my camera causing frosting issues which caused me to throw out all but 4.5 hours of data out of 18 I figured I might as well post this as it’s not going to get much better. Image scale was 1.31 arcsec/pixel which seems to give fairly decent sampling for the average seeing here in East Tennessee. Imaging location just outside Clinton, TN with average SQM measurements ranging from 20.1 to 20.4 mag/arcsec^2.

M106 – 4.5 hours AP130GTX, Apogee U8300, AP1200GTO

Back in Operation with Pics to Prove It!

 AP1200GTO, AP130GTX, Apogee U16, Astronomical, Emission Nebula, Nebula, Observatory  2 Responses »
Jan 282018
 

I recently replaced the dome control electronics after the Foster Systems controller bit the dust and I replaced with a MaxDome II controller for rotation and shutter operation.  It’s working flawlessly so far and I couldn’t be happier.  I threw the 5″ refractor back in the observatory with the 16803 chipped camera for a widefield rig at 2.2 arcsec/pixel resolution.  Drizzle processing yields better star shapes/sampling than the low resolution would suggest.  Both images are cropped from the same image with 20.5 hours of total exposure time in the traditional Hubble Pallet.

 

7/6/2017 – Lightning Strikes

 Observatory  No Responses »
Jul 152017
 

I’ve got multiple items across our home, garage, and the observatory which suffered from a local discharge on 7/6.  The observatory was the worst hit with the computer, mount, 2 ethernet switches, powerline ethernet adapters, weather monitor, and possibly other items damaged.

Work continues to repair, replace, and rebuild.  Unfortunately, I think I’ll be down for a little while as I continue to evaluate the extent of the damage.  Hope to be back up in time for some summer nebula imaging but not holding my breath.