Submissions: 2024 January

[astrovirus]

So after 3 months of mostly clouds and rain, we were finally treated to a stretch of 3 fully clear nights, that even coincided with the new moon. I took this stretch of clear weather to good use and targeted the beautifull region of NGC 1333 (the Embryo Nebula), with its huge field of molecular clouds in the surroundings. This area is so much larger then the presented FOV that it basicly begs for being mosaiced in the near future.

Image was taken from January 7th to 11th and incorperates 265 frames of 5 min for a total intergration of 22 hours and 5 min (it's offcourse all in those last 5 min ), calibrated with 50 darks, 25 flats, and 25 darkflats.

Location: The Sting Of The Scorpion Observatory [TSO]2; Emmen, The Netherlands, Bortle 6 skies.
Telescope: Skywatcher QUATTRO150 @F/3.45
Camera: Altair Astro Hypercam 269C ProTec @0°C, 282 HCG, offset 150.
Filter: Optolong L-pro
Focuser: ZWO EAF
Mount: Skywatcher NEQ6
Guiding: QHY5 9x50 Finderguider
Software: N.I.N.A (EQmod/ASTAP/PHD2)
Pre- and Post-Processing: PixInsight (WBPP / starless [RC astro SxT] DBE / SPCC / RC astro BxT/NxT / GHS / SCNR / Dynamic Crop).

Click to view full size image

[Jean-Baptiste Auroux]

WR 134

Click to view full size image

Full version : https://cdn.astrobin.com/thumbs/w4ZCY7b ... TZ0INm.png

For our Team's 5th image, here's our version of the well-known Wolf-Rayet 134 star, shot in HOO, with 105 hours of exposure and a high level of detail.

This is a star around 400,000 times brighter than the Sun, surrounded by a highly asymmetric 'bubble' formed by the ejection of its surface layers, which were then blown and ionised by the star's radiation and intense stellar wind.

Produced with the AstroSib 360 telescope at 2880mm focal length, this image offers high resolution and very fine detail, which we invite you to discover in the 'full' version.

The long exposure time provides a very good signal to highlight the faintest extensions in the surrounding area.


AstroSib 360 - AP 11000GTO - G4-16000 - Chroma Filters (3nm)
Ha : 270 x 600s
OIII : 360 x 600s
Total : 105h
Corsica (France)
Pixinsight & PS

Copyright: Team OURANOS (Jean-Baptiste Auroux, Jean Claude Mario, Mathieu Guinot & Matthieu Tequi).
https://team-ouranos.fr/
https://www.astrobin.com/users/Team_OURANOS/

[Jean-Baptiste Auroux]

NGC 1365 galaxy

Click to view full size image

Full version : https://cdn.astrobin.com/thumbs/pDdXyhC ... Of1CZ1.png

NGC 1365 is a large barred spiral located 74 million light-years away in the constellation of the Furnax.
At around 200,000 light-years long, this galaxy is almost twice the size of our own Milky Way.

The data was acquired by Mike Selby, with a dream setup (1m telescope from Chile) and processed by Jean-Baptiste Auroux.

Planewave CDK 1000 – ASI 6200MM
Astrodon Filters
LRGB + Ha (37h)
Chile

Copyright: Mike Selby & Jean-Baptiste Auroux
https://millenniumphoton.com/
http://throughlightandtime.com/

[mathewbrowne]

Llanddarog Village, United Kingdom © Mathew Browne via PhotoHound

Sunrise at Paxton's Tower, Carmarthenshire

In the summer months, if you get your timing and angles right, it's possible to photograph the sun rising right behind Paxton's Tower from the village of Llanddarog several miles away. You'll need a big telephoto lens though - this was captured at 600mm

All the photo spots I visit can be found on PhotoHound, the travel photography website I co-founded with three other photographers who document the world's best photo spots and how to shoot them. You can join for free.

Equipment and settings

Nikon Z7 II
Sigma 150-600mm lens
1/200s, ISO 320, f/8

About the photographer

I'm Mathew Browne, a photographer and web developer from south Wales, UK. I run a wedding photography and web design business but my passion is for landscape and astrophotography.

[GDunk49]

The Sun Analemma project is finally complete. I started the project on February 18, 2023 and completed on February 1, 2024. I used a GoPro Black 7 with a homemade solar filter mounted on a wooden bracket to take 16 images; one or two images per month. The bracket was placed on a retaining wall in approximately the same location for each image. Each image was manually taken at 1830Z +/- a few seconds.

Using Photoshop, I manually selected the bright center of Sun solar filtered images and superimposed the selection on the background image taken on January 29, 2024.

The homemade solar filter for the GoPro was made from a replacement protective lens holder. I replaced the glass lens with solar filter film.

Click to view full size image

[Aleix_Roig]

Pillars of gas from the Heart nebula

https://www.astrobin.com/qeosz9/

It's a pleasure to share with you my recent work on IC1805 nebula. I spent 84h 35' with my wide field setup that consists on the FRA300 refractor and ASI2600MM camera. I selected a crop that I hope it emphasizes this object beauty (attached low res).

Link to my website and image description:

https://astrocat.info/the-heart-nebula-sho-ic1805/

Link to HD view at ASTROBIN:

https://www.astrobin.com/qeosz9/


Thanks so much for watching. Best wishes,

Aleix Roig

Full image details:

The Heart nebula, catalogued as IC1805, is a large emission nebula located in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. It's located in the constellation Cassiopeia and is part of a complex star-forming region that includes the neighboring Soul Nebula (IC 1848) and the open cluster Melotte 15. It's located some 7,500 light years away from Earthand and was discovered by William Herschel on the 3rd of November 1787.

To capture this image I used my wide field setup that consists of the FRA300 telescopes and the ASI2600MM camera. I used narrow band filters to compose this color mapping also known as the Hubble Palette, where the red channel is assigned to the [SII] data, the green channel to the Ha data, and the Blue channel to the [OIII] data.

Broadband filters (R, G, B) have been used to capture the star's colors.

The full image covers an area of 4º28' x 2º58' at a resolution of 2.59"/pixel.

Image details:

[SII]: 264 x 300" (22h)

Ha: 317 x 300" (26h 25'')

[OIII]: 398 x 300" (33h10')

RGB: (60, 60, 60) x 60" (3h)


Calibrated with darks, flats, dark-flats.

Total exposure: 84h35'


Equipment:

FRA300 + ASI2600MM + LRGB ZWO filters + ZWO EFW 7 pos + ZWO EAF

ZWO AM5 mount

ASI AIR Plus

Guiding with ASI120MM and ZWO Mini Guide Scope


Aleix Roig, January 2024
Prades (Tarragona, Catalonia - Spain).

[avdhoeven]

M31 Andromeda galaxy by Andre van der Hoeven, on Flickr

[Christian G.]

Zoom into the Orion Nebula

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JkrnhTDk7w

This animation took over 5000 frames to complete, taken over a period of three months. Each frame is a 60 second exposure. Multiple focal lengths were used, from 15mm to 600mm. The images were all registered (aligned) with each other and the zoom was accomplished digitally, dissolving from one focal length into another.

With this method I did my best to emphasize the transient nature of the night sky, showing the changing airglow (green and red color casts washing through the images) and satellites passing through this region of space. The stars will even have a bit of a twinkle to them from different seeing conditions. Everything you see is real.

Additionally I created a starless background image from the same data for each focal length. The timelapse of each frame was overlaid over the starless image using the screen method so it all blended together nicely.

Image processing (calibration, registration, color correction, star extraction) was done in Pixinsight and the animations were created in DaVinci Resolve.

Nice work! Very enjoyable to watch. At the end I wished it just kept going on and on ever deeper!