Astrophotography

With the weather keeping us from the much desired clear skies, need to fill in the open time space by playing with our images. This is the Pelican in Ha (Red) with some green and blue adjustments. Nothing else to do but experiment in Photoshop.

M27 as seem in Hydrogen Alpha Light Sept 2nd 2011.

Dumbell on Sept 1 & 2 2011.

Blue central star the source of this planetary??

This is a combined 70 min image of NGC6992 and is only part of the entire nebula. It is located in the constellation Cygnus. I was playing around with CMY and Ha filters (photoshop color not always what one wants). The image is combined Lum 30min, Ha 10min, Cyan 10 min, Magenta 10min and Yellow 10min. Using these filters can produce odd looking color images. In most cases the nebula is shown in mostly red, usually using RGB filters.

Took this image last night (6-3-11) thru 8" Celestron Cass. 345 x 0.20 exposures combined in MaxIm DL/CCD and processed in Photoshop CS4. It can be compared with the previous image using my 10" LX200 and AT111EDT. I also used a TeleVue 5x lens to magnify the planet which also makes it harder to focus. It was a very clear night, no clouds, no wind. The image was cropped.

This image was taken thru my 8" Meade cass 6-2-11, 51 minutes combined images 20 sec exposures unguided on a CGEM mount, Starlight Xpress CCD. The small blur to the right and above center is IC2571 an irregular galaxy.

Andromeda and companion from last October 2010. The images were sitting in my jump drive. Just got arount to process them today.

Another two hour image of M81 as seem from Verona NJ. This is from Midnight to two AM on Good Friday.

Happy Easter.