M27 Nebula

M27 Nebula

A picture was taken in the night from 19 to 20 of June under very bad conditions: full Moon plus haze. Taking into account that clear nights are quite rare phenomena this spring and summer here in Kyiv, I tried to make the picture even under such an unfavorable situation.

Setup: Canon EOS 600D + EF-S f/4-5.6 55-250mm IS II on EQ5 (unguided).

There were 43 individual frames (32 sec each) which were averaged using DeepSkyStacker (with 15 darks and 15 offsets). Then the result was processed with FITStacker (gamma correction, gradient background removing), RawTherapee, NeatImage (noise reduction) and, finally, was slightly modofied using FSViewer including 50% shrinking (there was 2x drizzling in DSS so now the image has its original resilution).

Ring Nebula M57

Night from 16 to 17 of June was almost clear. Humidity was extremely high, lens became steamed up quickly so I used a hairdryer to warm it up.  Near midnight stars had been dimmed by a haze.

This was the second test of my new EQ-5 mount with motor drives. It was used as a sky-tracker which holds Canon EOS 600D DSLR.

I chose M57 nebula for test capture. I made 40 light frames in total with exposure of 30 sec each (qDSLRdashboard Android application was used to control the camera). Canon EF-S F/4-5.6 55-250mm IS II lens was used at 250mm focal length and F/7 stop (to reduce optical aberrations).
Frames were averaged with DeepSkyStacker (using 15 dark frames, 15 offset frames, and 16 flats). Darks and offsets were captured right after the main session, flats were captured next morning.

The result (1x1 arcdegree crop) is shown below, 4x zoomed part is in the inset.

Ring Nebula (Messier 57) is a planetary nebula: a gas shell ejected by a star at the end of its active life. A size of the nebula is about a light year, an estimated distance to it is ~2300 light years. The nebula glows because a star's remnant (white dwarf) in the center of it ionizes atoms which compose the expanding shell. A blue-green color of inner parts of the nebula caused by an emission of double-ionized oxygen, reddish color of outer layers caused by hydrogen and ionized nitrogen emission lines.

Mars through 65mm Newtonian Again

After a cloudy day, the sky became clear near midnight (night from 28 to 29 of May).
I brought my small telescope (65mm Newtonian) to my backyard and recorded a couple of movies in eyepiece projection using Canon IXUS 132 compact camera.
Here is an average of 70% of 5300 frames from a movie. I used PIPP, Autostakkert2, RegiStax6 for main processing and FSViewer for cosmetic.

Kyiv, 28-May-2016 ~23:57 (UT+3)

[updated 30-May-2016: some RGB align using Registax]

Mars orientation (according to calsky.org):

Central Meridian = 71*

The Sun and Other Objects

Last Saturday (21 May 2016 @~18:48 (UT+3)) I made a picture of the Sun using Canon EOS 600D camera with common ES-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS II lens (BAADER Astrosolar film was used as a sunfilter).
A rather big sunspot is visible in a disk of the Sun. To emphasize a size of the spot I put my old image of Jupiter (taken with small 65mm Newtonian + Canon IXUS 132 compact camera) near the spot with the same scale (linear sizes of the planet and the Sun were taken from Wikipedia).
To the left of Jupiter is an image of Earth (from Google Earth, also in the same scale -- it could be simple blue ball because almost no details are visible at such scaling)

The picture is a result of an averaging of 10 individual frames processed with PIPP, AS2, Registax6.
Initial frames were captured at the following conditions:
ISO=100
F=1/11
Exp=1/4000s

Mars through 65mm Newtonian

There was a clear night (it's rare for this spring in Kyiv) from 21 to 22 of May. The Moon was full.

Despite relatively bad seeing I tried to catch Mars image using my ultra-simple setup (65mm Newtonian on an azimuthal mount + Canon IXUS 132 compact camera).

A short movie was recorded at ~00:35 (UT+3) [22-May-2016]. It was processed using PIPP, AS2, and Registax6. Some final operations were made with FSViewer.

I did not expect to see many details (if any), however near the South pole Mare Sirenum could be distinguished (bottom right), probably covered by clouds (they seem to be visible also at the limb).

Mars' poles are positioned like in the scheme below:

According to Stellarium 0.12.1, a visible diameter of the planet was 18"; altitude (at the time of capturing) was ~18 degree.

Mercury Transit across the Sun -- continued

Today (9 May 2016) a quite rare phenomenon occurred: a transit of Mercury across the Sun.
Here is an animation of four subsequent frames with an interval of about half an hour between.
A small moving spot is Mercury, other features on Sun's disk are sunspots.

Before stacking, Sun's images were manually aligned (rotated) using the first frame as a reference; angle of rotation was determined by sunspots. Of course, such an alignment is quite approximate.
(Sun orientation itself is arbitrary)

The picture beneath is a result of processing of 5 frames shotted at ~15:03 (UT+2).

ISO=100; F/11; 1/4000s (5 frames of 10). Processing: PIPP (10 frames); Autostakkert2 (5 frames of 10); RegiStax6 (wavelets, contrast, gamma); AstraImage (adaptive filter); FSViewer (rotation, cropping, zooming).

See also time-lapse video of a beginning of the transit:

Part of the video, processed with PIPP+Autostakkert2+Registax6:

Mercury Transit across the Sun

Today (9 May 2016) I tried to capture a transit of Mercury across the Sun.
This is the best picture obtained during the session (I used Canon EOS 600D with EF-S 55-250mm IS II on a tripod. A solar filter was made from BAADER AstroSolar film.
An initial sequence of 60 frames captured between 15:16 and 15:18 (UT+3) was processed by PIPP, then 18 frames were selected manually; 50% of them (9 frames) were stacked using AutoStakkert2. Postprocessing was performed in AstraImage (deconvolution etc.).

(Sun orientation is arbitrary)

See also time-lapse video of a beginning of the transit: