SteveL UK's photostream

I was fortunate enough this morning to grab my DSLR and tripod, point it
out the window, and grab this amazing looking image... looks like I was
viewing the eclipse through the Jupiter cloud layers!

Its a composite of two images (longer one and a much shorter one), but I
stupidly shot them in jpg and not RAW, so processing them has caused
some hard to remove banding

And now the Synthetic Green version of the HA+OIII data (using Steve Cannistra's Modified Bicolor Technique for combining Ha and OIII images), using the same data as the previous HA/OIII/OIII image of the same area.

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 60 @ f/3.8
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + Maxim
Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 16 x 900s, Hutech LPS-V4
Nebula filter
Orchestrated: CDD Commander
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2 + PixInsight

I`ve been waiting for a clear moonless sky for many months now, just so I could give my latest filter a proper test. I purchased a Hutech IDAS LPS-V4 Nebula filter earlier this year to see if a One Shot Color CCD could do a decent job of recording Ha and OIII at the same time. The theory was that as the OIII wavelength falls almost exactly half way between the green and blue pixels (at a lower sensitivity though), I should get be able to stack the 2 green channels and the blue channel all as one large stack, and therefore grab 3 times the exposure of OIII compared to the single red pixel collection Ha data. Well, it kind of worked. The Ha data is nearly sharp as previous sessions with a 13nm Ha filter, and certainly usable, but not as good as my current Baader 7nm Ha filter. The OIII data (even after stacking) seems a bit washed out, and I believe this is because of the wide passband around the OIII wavelength (50nm wide at the very top of the peak), allowing in additional noise that a real narrowband filter would
block.

Even so, as an Ha/OIII/OIII combined image, taken from a moderately light polluted area in one single session without having to change filters, I would say it was worth the time to do this test. The real question will be what happens to the OIII data when the moon fills the skies, as OIII tends to be washed out from moonglow far more than Ha data.

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 60 @ f/3.8
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + Maxim
Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 16 x 900s, Hutech LPS-V4
Nebula filter
Orchestrated: CDD Commander
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2 + PixInsight

The image here is the outcome of an idea that started last week, when I
saw Maurice Toet’s (mftoet) 4 pane Mosaic of Orion’s sword area, and
realised that it matched almost exacty the area I imaged in Hydrogen
Alpha at Kelling Heath a few weeks back. Maurice was kind enough to
provide me with the TIF file of the mosaic, and I set to work in
combining the two sets of data.

Using Registar, PixInsight and CS2, and adding in some Hydrogen Alpha
data as luminance for B33 and NGC2024 from Daz and TJ, the many many
hours of trial and error produced the following image. It was an
absolute joy to work on, and I am not sure it could be improved all that
much without a major rework from scratch. It is one of those images that
require a decently calibrated monitor, as my laptop screen shows it too
light and salmon pink, while my decent screens at home and at work all
show a vibrant Ha red in the background.

I would like to thank Maurice, Darren and Tim for all helping this
project by allowing me to use their data.

I hope you enjoy looking at this image as much as I have enjoyed working
on it!

RGB Mosaic Data
Name: Maurice Toet
OTA: Takahashi FSQ-106ED @ f/5
Imaging: Q453-HR (QHY8)
Mount: Losmandy GM-8
Taken from : Etoile St. Cyrice, Hautes-Alpes, France
Date: January 25 – 26 and 27 – 28, 2009
Web: Astrophotography by Maurice Toet | www.dutchdeepsky.com

Widefield Hydrogen Alpha data
Name: Steve Loughran
OTA: Borg 60 @ f/3.8
Imaging: SXVF M25C
Mount: EQ6
Taken from: Kelling Heath Star Party
Date: September 12th, 2010
Web: Steve’s Astro

RGB M42/M43/NGC1977 data (used as Luminance)
Name: Steve Loughran
OTA: Skywatcher 190 MakNewt @ f/5.3
Imaging: QHY8
Mount: EQ6
Taken from: Cambridge, UK
Date: December 6th, 2008
Web: Steve’s Astro

Horsehead (B33) Hydrogen Alpha data (used as Luminance)
Name: Darren Jehan
OTA: 12″ f/4 newtonian
Imaging: SXVF-H9
Mount: EQ6
Taken from: Kelling Heath Star Party
Date: September 12th, 2010
Web: The Alan Norman Observatory

Flame (NGC2024) Hydrogen Alpha data (used as Luminance)
Name: Tim Jardine
OTA: Celestron C9.25 @ ~f/6
Imaging: SX H9
Mount: EQ6
Taken from: Coventry,UK
Date: December 1st, 2009

Another image from the Kelling star party. Due to the massive field of
view on this, PoleAlignMax bombs out with some error message, and
Pinpoint gets a bit upset too. As such, I wasnt able to use CCD
Commander to plate solve and recenter at the correct co-ords… so the
image is not quite where I`d like it to be, but it will do.

Mount: EQ6 via EQMOD
OTA: Borg 60 @ f/3.8
Guiding: SW ED80 + SX Lodestar + Maxim
Imaging: Starlight Xpress M25C + MaximDL, 7 x 900s, Baader 7nm Ha (51
bias, 51 flats)
Orchestrated: CDD Commander
Stacked: DeepSkyStacker
Post Process: PSCS2 + PixInsight