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nlskies

@nlskies@mastodon.social

Astro imaging under #MountPearl suburban light dome Bortle 5/6.
Or sometimes #TerraNovaNP #darkskypreserve Bortle 2.
#nlwx weather geek by necessity.
#nlastro

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nlskies, to Astro
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Captured ~ 1.5 hr each of R, G & B of Messier 33 Triangulum on 6 Nov. 6" refractor & QHY600 camera in Bortle 5/6.

Was not happy w/ initial processing, so left it until now. Second attempt came out much better, IMHO (below are after and before versions). GHS (Generalised Hyperbolic Stretch) & newer version were particularly helpful.

Still room for improvement - needs more integration time and lighter touch with processing!


Messier 33 Triangulum Galaxy: Black background with many stars of varying brightness spread throughout. At center is a spiral galaxy with a very faint yellow core and blue spiral arms. Gives an overall oval shape.

nlskies, to Astronomy
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The Flaming Star Nebula aka IC 405, SH 2-229 or Caldwell 31. Located in the constellation Auriga. RGB and Ha data was captured in December and January.

The bright star at center is AE Aurigae. Light purple colour is reflection nebulosity and the red is emission.

Quite happy with how this turned out!



nlskies, to Astronomy
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There is a nice bright #Supernova right now in NGC 4216 (in Virgo). Visible later in the evening, for North America. Discovered/appeared 4 January - but still pretty bright!

This is from last night. Image is noisy with artifiacts etc, due to hazy conditions, bright moonlight and short exposure time. But did not crop - wanted to show the many other galaxies in this area of the sky/universe.

#nlskies #astronomy #astrodon
#astrophotography

nlskies, to Astro
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More 2023 astro musings ...

During the summer, I get to spend some time in my "local" - . 2023 did not disappoint.

When conditions permit, I like to use a wide field lens and take in the Milky Way and landscape. And occasionally I corral a meteor or two along the way.

If I get lucky, I sometimes snag some ripples or a (like the one here, captured Aug 12)!


Night time image. Overlooking a wooden rail onto a meandering brook. Some nearby trees to the right and a forest of trees beyond the brook. Above the horizon is the night sky with the Milky Way rising vertically above the brook. The Milky Way is particularly brownish at the horizon (center of our galaxy!). Reflections of the Milky Way and stars are visible in the brook.
Dark night sky - very many small stars throughout. This is looking up at the Milky Way which runs middle left to upper right of image. Bottom left and upper right are tops of some fir trees, mostly in shadowy outline form. Just below and left of center is a small oval smudge representing the Andromeda galaxy. The main attraction is the streak of a meteor, just below and right of center. It starts left in green colour and gets brighter and whiter towards the right, with also some hint of red. There is also some smoke starting to drift away from the straight bright meteor streak. Some vertical and faint-green ripples of airglow are visible across the image.

Dark night sky - very many small stars throughout. Along top left corner is faint white whispiness of the Milky Way. Bottom left - tops of some fir trees can be seen, mostly in shadowy outline form. Just left of center is a small oval smudge representing the Andromeda galaxy. This is a slow-motion timelapse which shows a bright meteor appearing center-right of image, disappearing quickly and then replaced by a smoke trail which gradually shrivels and twists, drifting downward and eventually evaporating. Also - some vertical and faint-green ripples of airglow are moving from right to left.

nlskies,
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Did not get to use my mobile rig so much in 2023. Weather was most uncooperative.

During the summer it was used to capture the Soap Bubble nebula. That thing is very faint! 🤪

It helped that this data was captured from the dark skies of

Other images were captured from back yard.

Hopefully there will be better opportunities to use this rig in 2024.


Wizard Nebula: Background is black with many tiny and faint stars throughout. There are a couple brighter stars as well. At center of image is a banana-shaped area of red nebulosity which surrounds some blue nebulosity. There is a concentrated area of slightly brighter stars at the center of this nebulosity.
This is a zoomed in view of the other Crescent/Soap Bubble nebulae image. Upper right of this zoomed view is filled by the Crescent Nebula and there is an red arrow pointing to the faint blue "perfect circle" of blue nebulosity in the lower left area of image. This is the Soap Bubble. Stars and patchy fainter red nebulosity fill the rest of the image. Description from other image: Crescent Nebula and friends: Background is black with many tiny and faint stars throughout. There are a dozen or so brighter stars as well. Throughout much of the image there is faint orange-red nebulosity, with a more concentrated band across the top of image. Just right of center is the jellyfish-shaped Crescent nebula. It is formed of red lines of nebulosity but there is an overlay of faint blue nebulosity on top. Just left of center is a very faint small circle of blue nebolosity - this is the "Soap Bubble". There are some other areas of fainter blue nebulosity intertwinded throughout the red nebulosity.
Crescent Nebula and friends: Background is black with many tiny and faint stars throughout. There are a dozen or so brighter stars as well. Throughout much of the image there is faint orange-red nebulosity, with a more concentrated band across the top of image. Just right of center is the jellyfish-shaped Crescent nebula. It is formed of red lines of nebulosity but there is an overlay of faint blue nebulosity on top. Just left of center is a very faint small circle of blue nebolosity - this is the "Soap Bubble". There are some other areas of fainter blue nebulosity intertwinded throughout the red nebulosity.

nlskies, to astrophotography
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2023 weather was not as cooperative as 2022 for my backyard observatory :

Imaging nights: 81 (2022: 98)
Targets: 27 (2022: 35)
Total subs: 5016 (2022: 4757)
Usable subs: 2241 (2022: 2800)
Discarded subs*: 2775 (2022: 1957)
Usable imaging hours: 148 (2022: 217)
Avg time / target: 5.5 (2022: 6.2hrs)

*power lines, wx, tracking

As usual, some results turned out decent, others not so much :=)

Here are some results from Jan/Feb of 2023.




Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF): Same image as previous but stars have been removed, making the ion and dust tails more obvious. Left of center is a large mostly circular diffuse green ghost shape with the head of the 'ghost' heading towards bottom. The 'tail' of the ghost is a bit more yellow in colour. A faint narrow but long jet can be seen emerging from the 'ghost' tail heading toward upper right (comet's ion tail). There is also a slight 'fan' effect coming from the 'ghost' tail heading towards the upper right of image (comet's dust trail).
Christmas Tree Cluster (et al): Black background with many stars of varying brightness, including blue, orange and white. There is some red nubulosity spread throughout. There is also some blue nebulosity intertwined with the red nebulosity, right of center. Also some long trails of dark nebulosity disbursed throughout. Part of the red nebulosity forms a vague triangular shape (tipping toward the lower right) which could be construed as a christmas tree (?). At lower right is a small dark triangular shape surrounded by red nebulosity, with a bright star at the cone's point - this is the cone nebula.
Leo Triplet galaxies: Black background with some faint stars spread throughout. At center left is a yellow rectangular shaped galaxy (on end) with a dark bar going through the middle of it. This is the "hamburger" galaxy. Upper right is a smaller spiral galaxy (Messier 65)- partly edge on to our view. Lower right is a third galaxy (Messier 66) with two prominent spiral arms apparent - has an "s" shape.

nlskies,
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Took more subs in 2023 vs 2022, but less usable subs. 🤪 'Clear' nights ... not-so-clear? Perhaps also I was more 'enthusiastically' throwing out questionable subs!

In March, had fun chasing the "Box" galaxy (Caldwell 21, NGC 4449) - managed to (just barely!) pick up it's tidal star trail. A decent feat for my Bortle 5/6 skies.

On March 2, took a short walk from my place to capture the Jupiter/Venus conjunction.



Jupiter/Venus Conjunction: A snowy night time scene. Bottom foreground is snow with fresh snowmobile tracks heading into a path through a treed area. Just above the treeline at center, are two bright star-like objects in a blue-grey dusky sky. The upper bright object is Venus. The lower and slightly less bright object is Jupiter.
NGC 4395 (captured during April 2023): Black background with many stars of varying brightness spread throughout. At center is a spiral galaxy with blue arms and a yellow-ish center core.
Iris Nebula (captured during May 2023): Black background with many stars and faint brown hazy 'clouds' spread throughout. Nestled in the center of the brown nebulosity is a bright patch of blue nebulosity - with varying shades and brightness of blue. There is a particularly bright star in the middle of the blue nebulosity.

nlskies,
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M101 gifted us with a nice bright supernova last Spring - SN2023ixf.

My crappy weather continued over the summer and I had to grab whatever few clear sky openings I could get, so results for some targets were noisy and not "deep". But still interesting!

In addition to clouds, it seems that the Helix nebula in particular likes to hide behind houses, powerlines and trees! Perhaps I'll have better luck next year 🤪





Sh2-86: Background is black with a large number of stars, including a few brighter ones. There is faint red nebulosity spread throughout the image, as well as some darker laneways which are absent of stars. At center is an area of brighter red nebulosity and a concentration of brighter stars, as well as a particularly narrow and long "trunk" of black sky, pointing towards the star cluster.
Helix Nebula: Background is black (well, grey-black) with a large number of stars, including a few brighter ones. At center is the nebula - looks like two circles of red, one slightly offset from the other. And faint blue haze inside the circles.
Trifid and Lagoon nebulae: Background is black with a large number of stars - gnerally yellow-ish in colour. At upper right cornew is the Trifid nebula. It has two lobes - the right side is blue and the left side is red. Throughout this nebulosity are some dark lanes. At lower right edge is the larger Lagoon nebula. It looks like an oblong cloud - the edges are a brighter red. The interior is a softer pink colour. There is a concentration of stars in the lower center part of the nebula, as well as some small black splotches throughout.

nlskies,
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I sometimes go for obscure targets - or at least they seem obscure for my equipment, sky & processing skills 🤪 But they are fun to explore.

vdB 38 is from one year ago (just over an hour of integration)

Witch Head nebula (Feb '23) - my field of view is too small, but I don't get enough access to this target to go for a mosaic.

Happy w/ my Cave nebula result from Mar/Apr '23. @ 11 hours, it was my longest integration of 2023.

Sh2-96 - another faint Ha nebula!



Witch Head nebula: Background is black with stars of varying brightness disbursed throughout. There are some grey wispy "clouds" of nebulosity that fill the upper two thirds of the image. The shape of the nebulosity could be construed as the profile view of a tall witch's face, if the 'witch' was looking toward the bottom edge of the image.
Cave Nebula: Background is black with stars of varying brightness spread throughout the image. There is a large area of nebulosity filling much of the image. At the center of the red nebulosuty is a much smaller area of blue nebulosity. There is a dark area extending into the red nebulosity, ending up at the blue nebulosity, and with a sharply defined pink boundary (the "cave").
sh2-96: Background is black with very many stars throughout. There are some whispy streams of faint red nebulosity in the center of image. A couple brighter ones intersect in a V shape. There is also a very faint and thin line of blue just above center.

nlskies,
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When there's no moon & clear night sky, I often like to chase blue reflection nebulae. The Van den Burgh catalogue is a good source for targets. The result is not always a "showpiece" but still interesting. Here are a couple: VdB 137/138 (May) & VdB 156 (Sept).

In the Fall, I spent some time on the Fossil Footprint nebula. It is colourful but not sure I see the "footprint" 🤪

B&W image - sometimes is it nice to capture emission nebula in mono.



VdB156: Background is black with a large number of stars - most of them are faint. At center of image is a very bright star surrounded by a circular blue hazy nebulosity. To the right of this is another less-bright star surrounded by a small blue haze. There is not much else going on in this image!
Fossil Footprint nebula (NGC 1491, SH2-206): Background is black with stars spread throughout. There is also some very faint red nebulosity spread throughout. At center of image is an area of red nebulosity surrounding some blue nebulosity. There are undulations of darker and lighter areas including some small dark patches and lanes. However I cannot discern an overall shape that would indicate a fossil footprint?!
Sh2-126 nebulae: Image is black and white. Background is black with stars dispersed throughout. Sprawling from bottom center to upper right of image, in an arc shape, are thick lines of white nebulosity. There is a grouping of particularly bright stars are center of image. There is also some nebulosity at upper edge of image. At center of image, there is also a notably different "feature" - two thin lines of nebulosity that intersect at a right angle, forming a triangle shape.

nlskies, to Astronomy
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Recently swapped a mono camera into my observatory and decided to go for an easy bright target while working the bugs out.

The Pleiades M45 fit the bill. Not the best framing but it still fits ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

About 1.5 hours per channel R, G and B. Captured in mid-November.


nlskies, to Astronomy
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This is terrible framing 🤪 - but still useful to demonstrate just how close these two famous objects are.

Would have preferred to employ a mosaic to get a larger field of view. But I am imaging-time limited: by roof lines, trees and power lines. Not to mention weather and short summer nights.

Trifid and Lagoon 47 x 3 minutes. From 3 nights in July and August.


nlskies, to Astronomy
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If I drop the black point enough, maybe it will hide the artifacts 🤪

My calibration flats did not play nicely on this one. I could have cropped the result to avoid the uncorrected dust donuts. But then would miss all those other smaller galaxies.

NGC 4449 (The Box Galaxy) aka 21. It is described as an irregular starburst (or "Magellanic" type) galaxy.

133 x 5min captured over 5 nights in April.


nlskies,
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One of the "artifacts" in this image is apparently not 🤪

It is in fact a "stellar tidal stream", orbiting the galaxy. Probably the remnant of a galaxy merger or interaction.

Just barely visible - circled in red.

If you're interested in how this galaxy and tidal stream has been used to investigate - check out this paper:
https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/1112.2154


nlskies, to Astronomy
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Here is a somewhat odd looking dwarf spiral galaxy - NGC 4395. Located in Canes Venatici - below the 'Big Dipper' handle.

It's relatively nearby & has an AGN (active galactic nucleus) similar to a quasar but not as bright, making it a Seyfert galaxy.

Blue colour presumably due to star formation happening there.

Captured this data in early April but did not complete processing until now because flats/calibration was kicking my butt. 🤪


sundogplanets, to random
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Every once in a while, but more and more frequently, Thunderbird email shows me that a sent email from my university email address contains a cc to someone I totally did not send the email to.

When I check through my university email (via browser), it shows that I did not send this email to the phantom cc'd person. What is happening?!

I have nearly panicked a couple of times seeing someone I really did not mean to send an email to...

nlskies,
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@sundogplanets I have recently had one instance of someone being cc'd that I did not intend or notice. They did in fact receive the email. Thankfully it was not a particularly embarrassing or problematic situation.

I assumed that I accidently fat-fingered (+ auto-complete?) while hastily drafting the email on my phone. And I still think that is the most likely scenario. But will be interested to know if you gain any insights on your situation.

nlskies, to astrophotography
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Today's sun through some remnant smoke (from way out west!).

stack (best 50% of 1000 frames) and processing with and .

nlskies, to solar
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Full disk solar image from a week ago.

Was a spectacular clear day but somewhat compromised by smoke from north western Canada (I'm on the far east coast!).

Some are faintly visible. My solar processing still needs work :=)

, and for processing and colourization. 70% of 1000 frames stacked.

nlskies, to Astro
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During the timelapse - I did manage to capture one decently bright . Looks to be a

Here is a crop from that frame.


nlskies, to Astronomy
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This weekend is my "local" dark-sky park's annual Night Sky Celebration. club will be doing public outreach with telescopes, binoculars etc. Hope the weather cooperates!

If you have a in your neck of the woods - check them out. Most will have one or more outreach events throughout the year.

nlskies, to Astro
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As previously described, my coyote dodging (in my own mind!) adventure netted me some nice images overlooking "Big Brook" in near .
I've been told by staff that the river bend is known as the "Oxbow".

I turned ~5 hours of images into this .

For the dark sky nerds, the SQM meter at my campsite peaked at about 21.5 mpsas that night.

video/mp4

nlskies, to Astro
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This is a smoke trail timelapse from a meteor I posted previously (from Aug 12). Smoke trail can be seen drifting downward from the initial bright meteor.

Used with ~50 images to create the timelapse. Pre-processed images using @darktable app to (try to!) colour correct the raw images.

has been working really well for me - I have cancelled my Adobe subscription.

Dark night sky - very many small stars throughout. Along top left corver is faint white wispiness of the Milky Way. Center-right of image is a . Thin and green at the right end and getting red'ish toward the left. Timelapse which shows a bright meteor center-right of image and then a smoke trail which gradually shrivels and twists, drifting downward and eventually evaporating. Also - some vertical and faint-green ripples of airglow are moving from right to left. The Andromeda Galaxy - small faint ellipitcal disk shaped patch - is located just left of center. Some tree tops are silhouetted at the bottom of image.

nlskies, to Astro
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Here's a couple more examples of meteor smoke trails from 12 August. Captured with a different camera (with longer 35mm lens).

Each image/frame is 15s. As you can tell from the star rotations, the camera is pointed ~North. Perhaps I should combine these for a star trail ...

Dark night sky - very many small stars throughout. At the right edge of image is a bright streak - mostly red-ish in colour.

Same as previous image but a timelapse which shows a smoke trail which shrivels and evaporates over the period of a few frames.
Same as previous image but a timelapse which shows a smoke trail which shrivels and evaporates over the period of a few frames - drifting upwards.

nlskies,
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Been trying out (free, open source) as a substitute for Adobe Lightroom. Pretty good experience so far. Limitation is my processing skills, not the software 🤪

Used it to process ~1250 images (including above smoke trails) for assembly into a timelapse using Virtualdub2.

Too big to post on Mastodon so here's a link to it on my Flickr page:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlskies/53121536160/in/dateposted-public/

~45 meteors + many planes/satellites

nlskies, to Astro
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Cloudy skies briefly relented last night for couple hours of meteor observing. ~dozen in an hour. ~2/3 - rest were Capricornids/Aquariids or unidentifiable.

Had 2 cameras going, one captured this decent meteor. Time-lapse shows small smoke trail (over ~4 minutes).

Once cameras were going, it was a pleasure to just lie back in a reclining chair and take in the glorious dark sky spectacle of with only naked eye.

Same as previous image but in time-lapse form which shows wispy smoke gradually moving away from the meteor location.

nlskies,
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Unexpectedly gifted with mostly clear skies last night. Should have tracked my observations more scientifically, but was not prepared 🙄

Observed ~ 100+ meteors over approx 3 hours. ~70-80% were Perseids plus a few Aquariids and Capricornids. The rest I could not confirm identity, or were sparodics.

This is best one I caught on camera. There is an associated smoke trail - hopefully will get time to timelapse it tomorrow.

This is a cropped version of previous image, focused on the meteor. To the left of the meteor is a fuzzy disk-shaped patch which is the Andromeda galaxy.

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