Tag Archives: heart nebula

The Session – 9th October

So, I did make a screen capture of the session on the 9th October, it is not particularly interesting as I was not really commentating throughout, had my webcam flap down for some reason, but you will see certain aspects – we are using the new SEP multi-star algorithm in Ekos, which is great for stability, it does show off the AS290MM mini, it shows how I have to manually focus every so often (APO and SestoSenso arriving soon will be greatly appreciated).

I would not expect anyone to watch this five hour marathon through from start to end, although if you happened to be watching it live it might be interesting if you were acquiring the same target, but certainly skipping through the footage, you might come across something I’m doing wrong, or right, and have some comments on my progress in this field.

Don’t expect so see the thumbnail in this video to appear in the video itself, this is the acquisition phase of individual sub-exposures, I will post a video on processing of the data, including this night’s, in a later video, when we’ve hopefully improve on the data substantially. The preview picture displayed is the accumulation of data so far, without any discarding of bad data so far.


I do have to wonder, how I will proceed when the APO arrives, it is a f/7 telescope, while these are taken on a f/5 telescope. Maybe I can proceed with a 3×3 mosaic, or something similar 3×2 or 2×3 and add to the data, or perhaps I need to choose to start all over again. APP will help when I start, as it will quantify the quality of the images I already have, and be able to merge frames from different optical equipment.

As always, if you are here as a genuine viewer with an interest in Astrophotography, then please leave a comment, I will moderate and reply if necessary.

Heart Nebula – More Data from 9th October, Oiii & Sii subs

So last night, we obtained some more Oiii sub-exposures in order to bring the number to the same level as our Hydrogen Alpha sub-exposures. I also started to obtain some Sii exposures, only managed 10 or so for each pane of the mosaic.
It looks like I should obtain more Hydrogen Alpha sub exposures as well now, as the quality does not appear to be as good as the other narrow-band wavelengths, and of course Hydrogen Alpha is a strong part of the composition.
You will notice we are now using a different palette for the RGB composition.
I probably need to flex up some of my GIMP processing skills as I still feel I am floundering around not really knowing what I am doing.
Anyway, without further ado, please find below the current rendition:

Here is a link to the online worldwide telescope

Heart Nebula – More Data from 26th / 27th September

So I managed to get some extra frames for the Heart Nebula.

I’m now working with around 190 individual frames, so my registration and integration process is changing, as rather than just load all the frames and tell APP to work on them, the DDC is taking an inordinate amount of time, and I suspect that this also affects other processing later on.

So, now, we load each pane of the mosaic, and integrate them separately using a normal registration process. After which we then do a single mosaic registration and integration with the eight panes, 4 per channel of Ha and OIII.

Here are the results:

We can see here, how the detail comes, and aberrations recede as we add more data. Below, upper image is the intermediate, while the lower image is the original initial data acquired.

Heart Nebula – Rework of Data from 9th September

Thought I would rework the data of the Heart Nebula IC1805, I have managed to obtain some darks and bias frames. So I loaded everything into Astro Pixel Processor and started the registration and integration process. I’ve now discovered that there must have been some alignment issues during capture as there is a distinct rotation artefact in the top left frame. Still, this one has more contrast, and we can see more detail than before.

Heart Nebula 9th September 2020

So, it is estimated to be a wait of 5 more weeks before I get the Apochromatic Esprit 120. For the time being I’m messing around with the Startravel Achromatic.

Here is last nights attempt at HOO 4-pane mosaic of the Heart Nebula, each pane is 5 x 300s exposures.

I have not done any calibration frames for this set up as I am going to overhauling a lot of the equipment soon, which is why you see some mosaic artefacts between the merged panes.