Kep@stro

Minor progress

2011-12-28T23:16:00.004+02:00

Weather has been really awful! During last month there has been two nights with clear sky for longer than 15 minutes.

First one I got the mount polar aligned. I used PAM (polealignmax) which is really easy, fast and precise way to do it. After four runs I had error less than 1 arcsec.

But I noticed that the virtual COM-ports are not so handy to use! When I needed to switch mount control from PAM to MaximDL, I'd had to shut down both programs before I could use the other one. If I tried to disconnect one and connect to another there was an error with the driver. weird...

Last night was the second clear night, but there was a huge storm which cut down the electricity for my observatory too...

Driver update

2011-12-12T22:37:00.000+02:00

The weather forecast showed partly cloudy for yesterday evening so I head to the observatory.

I saw stars for about 5 minutes wich after started to snow... So much for my plans for the precise polar alignment!

But, something good because of the clouds! I removed all the hidden COM-ports of my laptop and got the ASCOM-driver working! That's really good news because now I can let the computer do all the hard work of the polar alignment and all that I have to do is rotate the adjustment knobs. And now I don't have to use TheSkyX Pro as a mount control and a planetarium program for the CCDCommander (it's quite heavy for my old observatory computer) because I can do them with the ASCOM. Hopefully weather will get better soon...

First power-up of the mount

2011-12-10T23:38:00.000+02:00

My work was keeping me busy and I was away for over 3 weeks. But at this week I had time to power up the mount.

First the bad things: I can't put the dovetail plate holder directly to the mount! There are few skrews which are higher than the underside of the plate holder (they will jam the motion!). I had to lift the dovetail plate holder for about 3mm to prevent it attaching to the skrews.

Ok, this should be figured out when making the mount but this really isn't a big disaster!! I put thick 10mm washers under every locking skrew and that's it!

After figuring that out I put my 80mm APM to the mount and made a rough polar alignment. Then I took some time for visual observing.

I had plans to make precise polar alignment also but I had problems with ASCOM drivers on my laptop. StellarCAT is using virtual COM-ports with USB connection and for some reason my laptop didn't connect to the mount. Everything worked fine with TheSkyX Pro and servocat drivers so no need to worry! But I couldn't use Polealignmax. Hopefully ASCOM drivers will work on my observatory PC.

Mount on pier

2011-11-20T23:22:00.000+02:00

Today I had time to place mount on my pier! Job was easier than I thought, I had to make one hole with threads for 8mm skrew. Took about 10 minutes...

The mount is huge comparing to my previous EQ-6. Counterweight bar's diameter is 40mm...

MesuMount2

2011-11-19T21:49:00.000+02:00

After over 4 months of waiting I finally got it! Brand new MesuMount2.

The mount is friction driven by stellarcat servomotors and should carry weights up to 100kg. Periodic error should be less than 4 arcsec (peak to peak).

I'll write more when I get first real tests done!

Update

2011-09-21T20:35:00.000+03:00

Still waiting for the mount... It's few weeks late now and the manufacturer is expecting some more delay. Hopefully not for too long!

Updating equipment

2011-07-26T22:31:00.001+03:00

I planned to update my mount (EQ-6 SynTrek) to better one for this season. I have been quite satisfied with it but I wanted more accurate one.

I had saved enough to buy one I had in mind. But the same day I was placing an order for that I found another manufacturer's mount with good accuracy and payload and the most important thing, about half the price! So suddenly I had few "extra" Euros to spend...

So today UPS brought me big and heavy Pelican case from U.K (thanks Brian). Inside was HUGE filter wheel (FW8-STL) with eight 50mm filters (Baader's LRGB+HaOiiiSiiHb) and remote quide head.

Behind the wheel is SBIG's STL-11000XM with class0 chip. Camera has large (36mm*24,7mm) chip with 11Mpix (4008*2672).

And now I have to wait about a month for a dark night... First one with astronomical darkness will be 24th of August.

Observatory v2.0

2011-07-24T23:00:00.002+03:00

Here's really short update of what have happened since last summer:I decided to make dome as a "real" dome, not a roll of roof...

So I started to make a Geodesic dome. I made two models, pentagon and hexagon. (here's good calculator: DesertDomes)

These were used as a mold for fiberglass parts. Here's an assembly diagram where you can find these pentagon and hexagon figures:

After making 5 pentagons and 12 hexagons I started to attach them.

And finally a complete dome

And next the shutter system:

And finally:

Here's domes rotation and shutter control box: (lesvedome)

As you can see, I'm not an electrician.... But it's working!!

Elephant's Trunk - Reprocessed

2011-04-08T23:13:00.000+03:00

Here's reprocessed version of the Trunk.

I tried to make image brighter and enhance contrast.

NGC4244 and NGC4214

2011-04-03T21:32:00.000+03:00

Here's only Luminance channel for now. I took all color channels also, but somehow image center moved so the NGC4214 is too close to the edge of the frame. So I have to take them again...

NGC 4244, also Caldwell 26, is an edge-on loose in the constellation Canes Venatici. It is part of the M94 group (the Canes Venatici I Group), a galaxy group relatively close to the Local group containing the Milky way. It shines at magnitude +10.2/+10.6. Its celestial cooridinates are RA 12^h 17.5^m, dec +37° 49′.

NGC4214 is a barred irregular galaxy about 13 million light-years away.

Total exposure of this Luminance image is 6hrs (15min subs binned1*1).

IC1396 - The Elephant's Trunk Nebula in HaRGB

2011-04-01T23:47:00.002+03:00

I got 1 hour of each color last night, so here's the HaRGB image of IC1396.

Total exposure is 9hrs (360:60:60:60). All binned 1*1, Ha 30min subs and RGB 10min subs..

IC1396 - The Elephant's Trunk Nebula in Hydrogen-alpha

2011-03-26T09:56:00.001+02:00

I had one galaxy project going on, but about 70% of moon made me take some Hydrogen-alpha images.

I aimed my set-up towards Elephant's Trunk Nebula which is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust in the star cluster IC 1396 and ionized gas region located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth (wikipedia).

I took 10*1800 sec exposures, 5hr total. Here's quickly processed version.

DWB111; The Propeller Nebula

2011-03-22T23:42:00.001+02:00

Another one taken with APM 80/500 triplet. This was also imaged in early March, but it took almost two weeks to process it. This can be found in constellation Cygnus.

Exposure of this HaRGB image is 9*1800 sec of Ha (bin1*1) and 6*450 sec of RGB (bin2*2). Total 6h45min.

Messier 53 with NGC5053

2011-03-15T04:44:00.001+02:00

I wasn't satisfied with my EQ-6's performance with C8 so I changed to a smaller scope, APM 80/500.

Last week I took pictures of three different objects but hadn't had time to process them. These two globular clusters was a perfect shot for the short refractor. They can be found in constellation Coma Berenices.

Exposure of this LRGB image is 285:30:40:45 minutes.

NGC5033

2011-03-06T12:51:00.002+02:00

Here's really late opening for this season... But better late than never!!

NGC 5033 (mag 10.8) is an inclined spiral galaxy located in the constellation Canes Venatici. The galaxy has a very bright nucleus and a relatively faint disk. Significant warping is visible in the southern half of the disk.

Here's LRGB image with exposure of 375:35:30:50 minutes. Luminance binned 1*1 (10 to 15 min subs) and colors 2*2 (5min subs). Weather wasn't so good either, poor visibily with high clouds.

On Summer break...

2010-06-30T17:28:00.000+03:00

No darkness here until August!

But some plans are made already for the next season...

M86 and friends

2010-04-27T17:51:00.000+03:00

I imaged this one at the end of March but the data was so poor that I almost threw everything away... There was quite a lot of high clouds which brought huge gradients to all channels.

Here's 2h of luminance and 20:30:30 min of RGB.

Arp 188 final

2010-04-20T21:51:00.003+03:00

I decided to end the season 2009-2010 with this one so I gave it more light. Last two nights I took some more blue and quite a lot of Luminance.

So here it is!!

This one has 7h 20min (22*20min) of Luminance and 2h 35min of RGB (50:50:55 binned 2*2, 5min subs).

I added all the luminance data to next one and processed that without deconvolution which gave much softer result. This one has 11h 10min of luminance and 2h 35min RGB.

I'm not sure which one is better so I let viewer to decide...

Arp 188: Tadpole galaxy

2010-04-14T23:28:00.003+03:00

This season is about to end and I think this will be one of my last images for 2009-2010.

This faint (mag 14.4) barred spiral galaxy is located in constellation Draco and is located about 400 million light years away. Its most dramatic features are a trail of stars about 280 thousand light-years long.

First night I got about 4h30min of exposure but not a single usable frame of blue. But I was lucky and was able to image blue channel the next day, just before clouds arrived. But I got only 30min which really isn't enough for this object.

Total exposure of this image is 6hrs: L=2*15min+20*10min, RG=10*5min, B=6*5min (RGB binned 2*2)

Here's only L-channel, 3h 50min

SkyWatcher ED80 Pro

2010-03-27T21:39:00.000+02:00

I just noticed that there's no proper picture of my imaging setups. So here's the one with smaller scope:

From left: QHY9, QHY filter wheel with Astronomik's HaLRGB filters, TS 9mm OAG with Atk314e, WO 0.8 reducer and finally the ED 80Pro with Robofocus. The mount is EQ-6 SynTrek.

NGC5907

2010-03-24T23:50:00.007+02:00

This spiral galaxy was my next target. It is located approximately 39 million light years away.

Total exposure of the image is 8h 15min (L=5h 50min, RGB=50:40:55).

M101; Pinwheel Galaxy

2010-03-18T20:29:00.003+02:00

This is another part of my two-night project. In both nights I started with M65&M66 and after 3-4 hours of imaging continued with this one.

This can be found in constellation Ursa Major and lies about 27 million light years away. With a diameter of 170000 light years it's nearly twice the size of the Milky Way (our own galaxy).

Picture have a total exposure of 5h 35min (L=8*10min+9*15min, RGB=8*5min each, bin2*2)

Part of Leo Triplet; M65 and M66

2010-03-17T23:56:00.002+02:00

I imaged these galaxies in two separate nights. And the latter one was the first I monitored over internet. Everything worked fine so maybe next summer I have to update my observatory a bit... Maybe to fully automated version. We'll see!!

Like mentioned above, these two spiral galaxies are located in constellation Leo. Distance from here is about 22 million light years. The missing part of the triplet is NGC3625.

Image is LRGB combination, with total exposure of 7h15min (L=12*600+11*900sec, RGB=10*300sec each binned2*2).

Now I have to say that I'm very happy with the result!!

C/2005 L3 (McNaught) and C/2007 Q3 (Siding Spring)

2010-03-10T20:11:00.005+02:00

On monday weather forecast was clear sky but I gave up at midnight because sky still was filled with clouds. Yesterday forecast was cloudy but sky was almost clear until 10pm. There were scattered clouds so I didn't even try any deep sky imaging. So I aimed my scope to few comets!

First one I was going to image on monday. Or actually I was going to image M94 but the McNaught was right beside it. On tuesday they still were so close that I got them to same field. I knew that the comet was quite faint, on mid January it was measured to be at magnitude 14.9 but I wanted to try to capture it.

Comet is on right and slightly up of the galaxy (M94). Exposure was 4*2min + 1*5min of luminance (bin3*3).

I tried to measure comet's brightness and here's the result (red line. Others are magnitudes of reference stars):

Another one that I had time to image was C/2007 Q3. This is one of the brightest comets on the northern hemisphere at the moment. It was mag 11.1 about month ago.

This is combination of 5*2min exposures binned 2*2 (L).

And here's photometry: (which is quite weird because comet's should be brighter than mag 10...)

NGC 4565; Needle Galaxy

2010-03-07T19:17:00.003+02:00

This winter has been awful for astrophotography... Last clear night was about three weeks ago and after that has been snowing regularly. Here in southern Finland is now over 80cm of snow.

This time I changed my Meade's focal reducer to Celestron's f/6.3 which has much greater back focus. I put the distance to 105mm which gives me 1325mm of focal length (pinpoint) and an f/6.5 scope. And no problems with OAG picture anymore, great!!

This faintish (mag 9,5) galaxy can be found in constellation Coma Berenices and is about 20 million light years away.

Picture is taken with Celestron's C8 SCT f/6.5 and QHY9.

Exposure: Luminance 9*10min (bin1*1) and colors 8*5min (bin2*2).

M64: Black eye galaxy

2010-02-20T22:21:00.002+02:00

Spring time sky is full of galaxies but unfortunately they are all really small...

I finally changed my 8 inch Celestron to the mount. I've tried it few times earlier but I've never took proper images through it. Biggest problem is that I bought Meade's f/6.3 focal reducer which has really short distance to the chip, only some 55mm. And I have OAG and filter wheel in front of the camera... And because the distance isn't right, there's quite bad coma near edges and OAG's mirror and that causes really odd shaped stars to the guider.

But when I finally get everything working I was quite satisfied with the result. Even though seeing was awful, FWHD was over 4 all the time.

Here is sleeping beauty galaxy or M64 of constellation Coma Berenices. Exposure is 2h 15min of Luminance and 4*5min of RGB (bin 3*3).

IC 5146: Cocoon nebula re-processed

2010-01-30T20:44:00.001+02:00

M51: Whirlpool galaxy re-processed

2010-01-30T20:40:00.003+02:00

I had good time trying to re-process my old images when I sat in a hotel room in my business trip.

Here's M51 imaged with Atik314e.

M38, NGC1907, IC417, NGC1931, Sh2-237 and parts of Sh2-230

2010-01-25T19:14:00.003+02:00

There's a lot of stuff in this part of constellation Auriga. A lot of dim nebulosity of those Sharpless -objects and many open clusters.

I took the color data when I had problems with that camera driver, so RGB channels are not calibrated. Processing this object was really hard for my skills, because I wanted to maintain the colors of the stars. But I'm quite happy for the final result!

The image is Ha(HaR)GB with exposure of 6*20min (Ha) and 3*10min (RGB).

M45; The Pleiades

2010-01-25T19:00:00.002+02:00

I've planned to image this nice object since I started few years ago, and now I finally aimed my telescope towards it.

Camera's new driver is working perfectly so imaging is now more than easy!! Just have to make a script in CCDCommander and let it do all the work. But there's still some final adjustments left to do with it...

Exposure: 6*10 minutes of luminance and 6*5 minutes of RGB (bin2*2)

M81 and M82 with colors

2010-01-14T20:52:00.002+02:00

Few days ago I tested and adjusted new software of the main camera. I got the binning modes running again so I also calibrated Focusmax and made some test drives of whole system. Everything run smoothly so I took more images of these galaxies.

Of course the clouds came in again and stopped my session to only 3 images of blue channel so it is weaker than the others. There's also a lot of noise left in L-channel.

I'm not satisfied with this now but maybe I'll give this some more light later...

5*10 min of luminance, 6*5 min (bin 2*2) of red and green and 3*5 min (bin 2*2) of Blue.

M81 and M82

2010-01-10T12:10:00.001+02:00

There has been some cold related problems in my main camera's driver so I haven't been able to take proper pictures. And temperature has been less than -20C on every clear night for a last week.

Yesterday before the clouds came I took few images of M81 region with luminance filter.

There's only three 10 minutes exposures in the picture.

Ic434: Horsehead Nebula

2009-12-31T23:19:00.002+02:00

I imaged this famous object about the same time than the double cluster. The following night I tried to take the color data but there was a thin layer of high clouds that really ruined my session.

After calibrating these Ha-images I thought my flats were poor because there were huge dark spot on one corner. So I made one only flat-calibrated combined image and then deleted the flats. Now I took a better look to the combined image and noticed that the background is actually very flat, except that one spot of course. Again something to learn for me...

But... This was actually a training session because I also change my guiding system to work with OAG (off-axis guider). I had quite bad flexure earlier which reduced sub exposures to 5 minutes and I couldn't get rid of it, so this was maybe the easiest way to solve that. I also took the pictures without focal reducer, so the stars in the corners are not round.

Here is 9 of 20 minutes sub exposures calibrated with flats only, combined with CCDStack and processed.

Double Cluster: NGC884 and NGC869

2009-12-30T18:44:00.001+02:00

This is the final version of the image I took few weeks ago.

These beautiful open clusters are located in constellation Perseus and are visible with naked-eye. They are also quite close to each other in space because their distances to earth is about 7600 and 6800 light years.

Photographed through SkyWatcher ED80 Pro with QHY9.
Exposure: luminance 10*5min and colors 10*3min (RGB)

Electrical and communication box

2009-12-28T17:54:00.000+02:00

I finished this few weeks ago and I kinda forgot it. Plan was to make a DIY -type box which encases every "sensitive" parts of the observatory. I decided to isolate that to make sure that temperature inside the box would remain above 0°C. I didn't put there any heater because I thought that two electrical inverters (220V to 12V) would do the trick. I made it quite wide to ensure that everything would have enough room, so the final size was 50:50:40cm.

Lower part includes electronic equipment. Bigger inverter (silver one) is Meanwell's and provides 12V and 150W which actually is more than enough for my equipment (I calculated about 9A), but I had older 5A inverter which I put also inside to feed power to dew-heater. There is also two transformers which provides 5V to Icron's 4-port USB Ranger and an active USB-hub.

And in the upper part is mainly "communications". From the left: USB Ranger, QHY9 power supply (front), wireless gamepad's receiver (black lying above wires), 2-port USB to RS-232 (just right of QHY) and the USB hub.

There's a lot of wires going to the walls behind and beside the USB-hub. They are part of 12V system which I made. I wanted to put most valuable things behind a separate fuses, and the cheapest and easiest way was to use a electrical box of a boat (cost about 20€). That also allows me to use everything separately by selecting equipment which will be powered. This was very useful when I had that motor problem in the mount. I could disable the power input to the mount just by using switch.

There are fuses and power switches to the mount, to both cameras and to QHY's filter wheel (which relays the power to RoboFocus).

And the isolation of the box works perfectly! Picture is taken with phone so it's really awful... But the temperature inside is +5.3°C even though there was almost -25 outside.

Testing and imaging

2009-12-19T09:00:00.000+02:00

There has been clear but very cold nights (well below -20°C). The weather has not been very good for serious imaging because of some kind of ice crystals hanging in the air and light haze.

Mechanical parts is working now without problems!! But new problem came out because I updated drivers during that long and cloudy period. My camera's has issues with binning modes so I have to use only 1*1 binning for imaging. I noticed this yesterday morning when I started to process images from previous night. More than 3 hours went straight to trashbox... Biggest problem with this binning issue is that I can't use focusmax. Let's hope that the manufacturer finds a solution quickly!

During daytime I've been collecting libraries of calibration images. I have to take flats again because I took them with too bright ADU values.

Here's uncalibrated version of double cluster. I'll make final version after I get those flats..

Back in business

2009-12-16T22:31:00.000+02:00

Finally some good news! My co-worker soldered a short part between those loose ends and the motor came alive again! Thank you so much Lassi!!!

But it wasn't any fun to attach both motors back to the mount. Temperature was almost -20°C and every metal part of the mount were extremely cold. And it was impossible to do anything with gloves on...

Mount problem

2009-12-15T20:24:00.000+02:00

Today I took out another motor of the mount to make sure that the failed part really was the motor. I connected the working motor to the mount's electronics and everything was working properly. Working motor was also a good way to check the real resistance in the motor and wires. I found out that there were two pairs of wires with the resistance of 6.3 ohms. Same measurement to the failed engine revealed that in other pair there was no connection (no resistance) at all.

I was hoping that the problem were in the wires or the connector of the motor, but no luck... Next (and the last) thing to do was opening the motor itself. When I got the metal covers of I noticed a loose end of wire of the inductor lying on top of moving parts of the motor. After a while I found the other end on the opposite side of the inductor. I connect those and found the resistance again on the connector.

So, problem found and tomorrow I'll try to bribe some electrician from the work to fix it...

Finally clear skies!! And one broken mount...

2009-12-14T23:48:00.001+02:00

Yesterday, after a month and a half, there was clear skies coming. I finally finalized my DIY-box with communications and electronics and everything was ready for photographing. But....

First of all, my QHY-9 wasn't working. The computer found the camera, but ASCOM-driver wasn't working. So I had to remove the updated driver and go back to previous one. After I got the driver working, there was no TEC-control on the camera and every frame was totally black. After few reboots I opened that new box just to found out that I had forgotten to attach the power chord to the camera-conroller. Ok, just one hour wasted and 12 to go...

Then I slew the mount to Capella to make a rough focus, which after I was going to calibrate my RoboFocus. But there was no bright star in the picture of the QHY. Back outside (-15°C) to see what's wrong this time. I found out that mount's RA-axis was not moved at all. Quick check of the mechanical parts but everything looked normal. At this point I decided to continue the search in daylight.

Today I looked everywhere and finally took the motor out of the mount. I found out that the motor is moving but in rought steps, and there is absolutely no torque left. Even light pressure to the motor's gear will stop it's movement. Great....

My observatory: Third step, polar alignment

2009-12-09T18:36:00.000+02:00

I made rough polar alignment with mounts own polar alignment scope. Then I used a free software called "pole align max" or PAM. It sure made things easy!

Basically the computer moves the scope and takes pictures and then tells you where to turn the mount. After 3 runs my polar alignment error was less than 2 arcsec.

Here's my whole setup doing polar alignment. Main camera is QHY9 with QHY's color filter wheel and Astronomik's filters (LRGBHa). I use my old Atik314e as a guider.

My observatory: Second step, structure

2009-12-09T18:24:00.001+02:00

The walls came up quite fast because they were made of big plates of plywood. The roof also was easier to built than I thought it would be... The hardest thing was probably to lift it up.

Moving parts of the roof are from sliding doors. Both sides over the wall are u-type metal bars and under the roof are the rollers. The roof can be opened by one hand.

Here is my mount (EQ-6 SynTrek) with my bigger scope, 8" SCT.

My observatory: First step, base of the mount

2009-12-09T17:51:00.002+02:00

I started to plan fixed observing site last winter because I got tired of carrying things outside and back in. It happened more than ten times that I carry everything to my backyard and built them up and then when it was time to put power on the clouds came in and covered the sky. And the next thing to do was carry everything back in to the storage.

I started to plan this "observatory" at summer and soon decided to make it with roll-off roof. I also wanted to keep up the possibility to remove it during summer times. So the only permanent structure was going to be the base of the mount.

And finally at the end of September I started this project. Here is the base of the mount! 1 meter long tube with 55cm diameter dug in the ground and filled with concrete. (upper steel plate is there just to keep those 18mm metal bars straight...)

Cederblad 214

2009-11-18T15:51:00.006+02:00

This wide emission nebula is located in constellation Cepheus. Everything was working then (early October) without problems so I was again sleeping...

This is an HaRGB-image with total exposure of 7hrs.

M31: Andromeda galaxy

2009-11-18T15:44:00.008+02:00

I didn't want to take pictures of our bright neighbor because of my Atik's small sensor. The Andromeda galaxy is so wide that SW ED80 Pro with Atik could only manage less than half of it.

I finally got that camera with bigger sensor (QHY9). Its 8,6 mega pixel sensor provides much bigger field of view than Atik's 1,4 Mp sensor.I had to wait it for over 4 months (manufacturer was improving it) but this is the first light of my new QHY9 monochrome ccd-camera (photographed in October)

Total exposure is about 6,5hrs (LRGB).

IC 5146: Cocoon nebula

2009-11-18T15:19:00.001+02:00

Finally I won the fight against my guider!!! After three weeks of struggling I got it working properly.

Result was quite good exposure time again, almost 6hrs of HaRGB. Everything was now working, so I had time to sleep when pictures were taken by computer.

M103

2009-11-18T15:11:00.002+02:00

Another unguided picture! Fight with my guider continued and he was winning... At that point I had no choice but image brighter objects!

This is an colorful open cluster in constellation Cassiopeia. Total exposure of the image was again less than 30 minutes.

M13: Hercules cluster

2009-11-18T15:03:00.002+02:00

This beautiful glubular cluster was also one of the test objects of my transfer to automated imaging in August. I still had big problems with my guider which crashed 2 to 4 times every hour. After many reboots I managed to take few 3 min subexposures of luminance-channel. RGB-channels were all unguided.

M27: Dumbbell nebula

2009-11-18T14:52:00.002+02:00

Another test object of automated imaging in August. I had huge problems with my guider-camera so this one is unguided. That limits subexposures of my set up to 1 minute or less.

I am quite pleased with this one because the image has many details despite the very short exposure time (1hrs).

M57: Ring nebula

2009-11-18T14:35:00.003+02:00

After summer and long bright-sky period the imaging season started again!!

This was my first test of automated imaging session. I started to study and test CCDCommander which can control other softwares used for imaging (mount, guiding, focuser, camera, filters..) Basically I can program the software to take care of whole session. But I have to say that the beginning wasn't so easy...

Total exposure of the Ring was only 2hrs and subexposures were only 1-2 min (LHaRGB).

NGC 7380

2009-11-18T14:12:00.001+02:00

This "project" took almost 6 months. I imaged Ha-channel in September 2008 and finalized it with RGB-colors in April 2009.

This one also would look much better with wider picture area. Again my Atik has too small ccd-sensor... I think this was the final push towards camera with larger one!

M97: The Owl nebula

2009-11-18T14:00:00.001+02:00

This was my first ever narrowband image. Picture was taken in the middle of April when there was only 12min of astronomical darkness left here in Southern Finland. Total exposure was about 4hrs (SIIHaOIII).

I'm not too satisfied with this picture! I took too short and/or too few subexposures to get a good image. I didn't realize that collected data through narrowband filters is much weaker than through color filters.

M109

2009-11-18T13:45:00.002+02:00

This barred spiral galaxy was photographed in the end of march 2009.

Total exposure was about 4hrs (LRGB).

M51: Whirlpool galaxy

2009-11-18T00:45:00.005+02:00

This one was taken in late march 2009. This LRGB picture has total exposure of 4hrs.

M42: Orion nebula

2009-11-18T00:38:00.004+02:00

This one was a way too wide object to my Atik camera. Even though this is photographed through my SW ED80 Pro refractor telescope.

Picture was taken in new year's day 2009 under darker skies outside town.

M81: Bode's nebula

2009-11-18T00:23:00.002+02:00

My first galaxy picture was taken in early november 2008.

Total exposure of this one is about 3hrs (LRGB).

NGC 1491

2009-11-18T00:15:00.002+02:00

This emission nebula was captured on three nights in late september and early october 2008.

This was my first ever HaRGB image and it has about 6hrs of total exposure.

NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula

2009-11-18T00:04:00.005+02:00

This was my first real attempt to deep-sky imaging. I captured this one in early september 2008.

The nebula was captured on Atik314E monochrome astronomical camera. Total exposure of this LRGB image was about 2hrs.