Orion, M42 and Horsehead Nebula

I still don't know much of the capabilities of my astrophotography set. As I've written before, I'm doing this on quite a tight budget. Partially my reason for this is that I see no point on buying expensive equipment that either I have no idea how to use (better cameras and lenses), or that does all the work on my behalf (goto-mounts). Of course you can get better photos that way, but where's the challenge? My plan is to learn things while doing this and getting better equipment when I definitely know what I need. Last thing I bought is a better lens: Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM. After some testing this looks like a good buy.

Difference in my Andromeda photos were quite dramatic. 200/2.8L collects so much more light than my old EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III. Of course I started wondering how much better photos do I get from all the other objects I've already tried with my old lens. First thing that came to mind was Orion and M42. An awesome constellation for an amateur astrophotographer because there are so many different objects, some easy to see, some more and more difficult to even catch on camera.

Horsehead Nebula

One of the most fascinating objects to me is the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) and I tried to photograph it as soon as I could. My first try was with the 75-300mm lens, and it was a disappointment.

Area of the Horsehead Nebula taken with EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III, at 2013-01-17

As you can see, no Horsehead even with a good imagination. Flame Nebula (which I was totally unaware of before this) can be seen somehow if you stretch the image to it's limits.

The next ones are taken later that year with a better lens.

Single shot of the Horsehead Nebula taken with EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM, at 2013-11-30

Here the Flame Nebula can be seen without extensive stretching and even the colors are about right. It's a single photo I took in November just before sky was filled with clouds. No further testing was possible. I didn't see the Horsehead back then but know that I know exactly where it should be, and if I use enough imagination, I think I can see it. Nothing spectacular though.

Single shot of the Horsehead Nebula taken with EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM, at 2013-12-30

This one's been taken December 30th 2013. After couple of months sky was clear for several hours. Clouds came around 11pm, but there was plenty of time to shoot Orion from balcony, even after clearing the problems. I lost the colors while stretching the photo, but Horsehead is can now be seen without imagination. I had about 20 of these and the stack made with IRIS looks like this:

Flame Nebula and Horsehead Nebula taken with EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM, at 2013-12-30. 20x30s exposure stacked with IRIS, postprocessing with Darktable.

Horsehead is easily visible. Mission accomplished.

The Flame Nebula took me by a surprise. For some reason I wasn't aware of that before I saw it in the photo. While stretching the colors on this photo I decided I'll learn how to shoot proper flat fields. The background is so difficult to fix in postprocessing. It even shows in this cropped image.

Orion

I've concentrated too much on too small objects. Images of larger scale can be nice too and one can more easily use longer exposures. Too bad I don't have a good camera lens for that. Only the one that came with the camera. I set it to 55 mm and tried to fit as much Orion as possible on screen. 

First I took a long exposure. I don't have a cable release and my camera supports exposures only up to 30s. There's Bulb-setting so I pressed the trigger for a while. From image exif I read it was 95 seconds. I processed the image on Darktable and here's the result:

Single 95 second shot of Orion

I also took series of photos, 10x30 seconds, and stacked them with IRIS. Total exposure is more than 3 times of the one above, but I think I still like the single shot more. I'll better prepare my camera control set before the next clear sky.

Stacked 10x30 second exposures of Orion

Great Orion Nebula M42

I also took more shots of the Orion Nebula M42. I've photographed this a lot in the past, but of course my skills get better and sometimes my equipment too. This time I tried stacking with Regim instead of IRIS.

Stacked 30x30 second exposures of M42

Level of visible details looks better than any of my photos before. Colors on the other hand are a bit wrong. I think what's green there should be blue. I'll have to try IRIS for the stacking as well.

Update:

Looks like Regim used the wrong Bayer matrix for my raw photos. When I manually set the correct one, the colors look the way they should look.

...more or less. I'd still like some blue there. Even the single shots show some blue, so it's kind of strange the stack doesn't.

And one more:

The same again, but now with IRIS. Finally I got the blue color I missed.

Mikko's Nonexistent Comet and Identical Ghost Nebulae

Lately several of my astrophotos have had some sort of lens flares or other reflections. I've figured that they're from street lights or yard lights. After all I do most of my observations and photographs on my backyard. Usually these flares appear on the edge of photo so I won't have to worry about them. Couple of times they have surprised me though.

Mikko's Nonexistent Comet

I was taking a panorama of Cassiopeia. That panorama didn't work (not enough overlapping), but there was this "comet" on one of the images. I immediately checked the other images as well and realized what this was. There's a star in a very convenient place to make the flare look like comet's tail. The next image had the same flare but the star had moved away from it.

Identical Ghost Nebulae

I was testing whether I could photograph the Horsehead Nebula. I had the EQ-mount surprisingly well set. I could take 30 second exposures with 200mm, where I usually have to settle to 20 sec or less. Flare nebula was easily visible on camera screen so I started to take series of photos. Then I noticed this:

First of all, there shouldn't be anything like that on sky, at least on Orion. But now there's two identical! I was taking the photos on my balcony and there were some lights from neighbors that might find their way to my camera even though I had quite a long hood on the lens. I put some cardboard to block all light I could think of, but still the flares remained.

I zoomed and looked the image thoroughly and I saw a third one. Then I got it. Those flares weren't from lights around me but from the stars. The next image (click it larger if the small one doesn't show) explains it quite well. There are three flares and three bright stars. Moreover, the positions of the flares are exact π rotation of star positions.

The flares were caused by UV-filter I had on the lens. I read somewhere that the filter does not affect anyhow on stellar photography so I've kept it on the lens to cover it. Looks like I have to remove it from now on. Without it there were no flares.

Now I really found Ceres

It's a good thing I emphasized the word 'might' on my previous post. Turns out I did not find Ceres just yet. It's in the picture, but I looked at a wrong star.

There was a clear sky for a while the next evening after my initial photos. I was able to take another set of photos on 12th and 13th November about 24 hours apart. Now the movement of the dwarf planet is clearly visible.

I've marked the dot on both pictures. The right one is from November 12th and the left from 13th. Time is about 20:30 (18:30 GMT).

This doesn't change my opinion on Stellarium. Now I know for sure it shows the position of Ceres wrong for about 10'. I compared it for the position of Uranus (which I was able to photograph yesterday Nov 15th) and that is as correct as I can see on the photo.

Original photos:

November 12th

November 13th

Planning to find Ceres

Last day of my summer vacation... Yesterday I was out rollerblading at 22-23 and it really started to get dark. Closer to midsummer that was the best time since it wasn't so hot anymore, but now, note to self, better go a bit earlier.

Anyways the darkess made me start planning future observations. Some time ago, might have been while watching Venus transition (btw I think I should blog about that as well even though it was months ago) I started thinking if it were possible to see dwarf planet Ceres with my telescope. Checking Wikipedia about Ceres tells me that its magnitude ranges from 6.7 to 9.3. Being still such a beginner at this, I really don't know if that's something I can see from my backyard.

I had taken photos of Orion's sword and Pleiades with Canon SX 200 IS, which is a compact camera with 60mm (or 12x) zoom. The photos were taken with exposure time of 1 and 2 seconds (on a tripod without tracking), 40 shots and then combined with DeepSkyStacker. I compared the photos with star charts (Stellarium) to see how faint magnitudes can be seen where I observe. Here's an example of Pleiades:

Pleiades with a few apparent magnitudes of visible stars.

So... The brightest star on Pleiades is 2.85. There are several stars of approximately magnitude 7. I could even see stars with magnitudes of 10 and 11.25 (according to Stellarium). I'm a little sceptical about that 11.25, but 10 seems reasonable.

For now it looks like it is possible to see Ceres. Nowadays I have better optics (Canon EOS 1100D and max 300mm zoom) and a tracking mount (EQ3-2). And of course I'd like to have a visual observation rather than a photo. First I'm going to find the dwarf planet on camera, then try to see it through a telescope.

Transit of Venus 2012

I started my amateur astronomy (or "stargazing" as the word seems to be) in march 2012. That's when I got my first telescope: Skyliner dobson 8''. The rest of the spring went by learning the capabilities of the telescope, my place for observations (backyard) and of course, myself. I really hadn't gotten into planning my observations or looking ahead. The transit came by surprise.

And by surprise I mean two weeks of warning. I had just enough time to go buy Baader AstroSolar safety film and build a casing to attach it to my telescope. I had already made plans for the June 6th when the transit happened but instead of cancelling that, I just took the dobson with me. This was a very good decision because it was too cloudy to see anything where I live, but a quite good weather where I was.

Sun rose about 4 am and I did the same an hour earlier. I drove to the tallest hill I could think of in the area. I'm glad I scouted the area the day before so I knew where to take my car and where to carry my dobson. It's not too heavy to carry outside and back in when I'm at home but couple hundred meters uphill the 25 kg starts to feel a bit.

Got the telescope ready, got my camera ready (after panicking a while about cameras battery which wasn't in the camera... Found it in the backpack after all), sun had already risen but there were clouds blocking the view. Couple of minutes of aiming the telescope. I hadn't thought of this. While watching the Sun, I really can't use the finderscope for aiming.

When I finally got the Sun on ocular I immediately saw a black dot over Suns disc. There were still some clouds blocking the view but they disappeared quickly. I switched ocular for camera and took this:

My first thoughts were that "Now I've seen it and even got a photo." Of course I wanted to see the rest 4 hours as well but it wouldn't matter too much if I didn't. Before 8 am (Finnish time, when the transit ended) it got cloudy several times but I stayed and waited for the sky to clear. It always did and I was able to take more photos and follow the end of the transit.

Here's the place:

And here are some more pictures:

Some of the pictures are on Google+ but some only on low bandwidth server. I'm not sure about Google's terms and conditions... I really would like to use Google+ images more, but I also hate to give anyone rights to use my pictures.

• My observation in Ursa's Taivaanvahti
• My photo in Astrobin
• Venuksen ylikulku (my Finnish blog)
• More photos on other server

I wrote this on August 19th, but labeled it June 6th.