First Real Test of Guan Sheng Optical's RC 6" astrograph

M 1 - The Crab Nebula

First attempt but the collimation of the scope is off.

The image is not as sharp and detailed as it can be.

Got to work on that soon...

NGC 2239 The Rosette Nebula

Data: GS RC 6" telescope Canon T3i unmodded camera ISO 6400 360sec subs 8 to 10 subs Stacked in Sequator Post-processed in Luminar

Unexpected clear sky... at least for two hours!

Bode's Galaxy (M 81) near the Big Dipper (Ursa Major).

Got a surprise clear night!

DATA:
Celestron C6 with Meade .6 focal reducer
Celestron AVX mount
Canon T3i unmodded camera
28 minutes total exposure time
ISO 1600
10 subs, flats, darks, bias frames
Stacked with DSS
Post processed with GIMP and Luminar 2018
Cropped

RawTherapee app Conquers Chromatic Aberration!

While I have written before about this noisome issue of purple fringing on stars I have found that the RawTherapee (google it) app does a fantastic job of minimizing this chromatic aberration.

After few clear nights in a row here, I imaged the Rosette Nebula with a 200mm f/5.6 old Pentax telephoto on a Canon T3i unmodded.

The chromatic aberration as terrible... purple fringing on the edges of the brighter stars! Yuck! 

But RawTherapee photo program to the rescue! It has a function that can reduce/eliminate the objectionable color and rescue an otherwise useless image! You can see the difference is quite apparent! Then I was able to increase the color saturation without increasing the purple around most of the stars!

The Occultation of Mars by the Moon Captured

Got up early this morning and caught the 4:38 am exiting of Mars from behind the Moon! 

Thank you, my wonderful wife, for helping me! What a trooper at 10*F   ! 

The Moon was only about 6 degrees above the east-south east horizon and some pine tree photo bombed my shot!

Camera: Canon T3i unmodded

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 4SE

Finally, after 40 days and 40 nights of clouds, snow and rain...Two Images!

First up, The Rosette Nebula (north east of the constellation Orion).
Under a "first quarter" moon it finally cleared up last night and I attempted to image for the first time in 40 days and nights!  (We are back to rain and clouds again...)
The night sky was fairly bright because of the nearly first quarter Moon upon a thin haze of wood-stove smoke from all my neighbors.
The result was a strong bluish cast that I had to work hard to get out of my image. Enjoy!

Info:
Telescope: Daystar 480mm f/6.5 refractor
Camera: Canon T3i unmodded
Mount: Celestron AVX
Imaging software: BackyardEOS
Stacking software: DeepSky Stacker
Post-processing software: Luminar 2018
Data: ISO 1600 - 6 subs @ 360 sec each
Total exposure integrated time: 36 minutes

Finally, The Great Orion Nebula (M 42& M43) and the Running Man Nebula (Sharpless 279).

from Jan 31, 2020, again under a bright first quarter Moon and the neighborhood wood stoves pumping the air with smoke!

Scope: 480mm f/6 refractor, Canon T3i unmodded
Multiple exposures from 12 sec to 180 sec @ iso 1600
Stacked with DSS
Post-processed in GIMP, defringed in Luminar 2018, Aurora HDR 2019

2019 Year In Review Poster

2019 is in the books and here are the stats:
For 64 nights of 2019 I was in the obs imaging ( 17% ) an average of only 5 days per month.

97 nights were clouded out totally ( 27% )
58 nights had partly cloudy skies unworthy of imaging ( 21% )
45 nights were rainy ( 12% )
34 nights were "clear" but mucky conditions ( 9% )
29 nights were snowing ( 8% )
_6 nights were clear but strong winds made imaging impossible ( less than 2% )
_4 nights were foggy ( about 1% )
_2 nights were of no use due to heavy smoke from forest fires ( less than 1% )
all the rest I was either too busy, sick, on vacation or out of town on business. ( 3% )

Nights in the Observatory By the month:

      Jan   Feb   Mar   Apr   May   Jun   Jul   Aug   Sep   Oct   Nov   Dec

10
9                                                                                       9
8
7     7                                   7        7                                          7
6
5                      5        5                          5                5
4
3                                                                     3                                  3
2
1            1
0

Total Solar Eclipse with the Citizen CATE Project UPDATE !

I have always wanted to do more than look at celestial objects and image them. To help do some actual science was a hope I thought was beyond me.

But then, just over two years ago I participated in the Citizen CATE Project with the National Solar Observatory under the direction of Matt Penn (principle investigator) to image the Total Solar Eclipse of 2017.
The goal was to provide data on this rare occurrence to investigate the inner corona of the Sun (which is only visible from planet Earth during a total solar eclipse).
You can find my blog report here.

This was taken during the total eclipse

with a 250mm telephoto on a Canon T3i DSLR.

Just today (December 13, 2019) Matt Penn released to the public the final findings of this project.
You can find the report here.

THREE points of interest in this report:

1. You will notice that myself and my wife are listed (at the beginning of the report) as two of the many "authors" who participated in the CATE project! Nice!

In this report the goal of the project is laid out in the "Introduction" (worth reading!)

2. Under the heading "3. CATE Volunteer Network" you will find on the line "cate17-005" the site that we observed and imaged from! We were about 4 miles north of Mitchell, Oregon, hence the site is called "Fossil, Oregon" though it was really close to where the Twickenham Road crosses the John Day River.
You will also notice that line is in bold type, which is explained at the end of that section this way:
"Note. The six sites used in the present analysis of the CME outflow are shown in bold text. Sites with cloudy conditions or instrumental difficulty are shown in italics."
Our site is in bold type, in other words, our data was only one of six that were useful for this project! WooHoo! SCIENCE was possible!

3. Under the heading of "6.2. Spatial Filtering and Velocity Measurement" you will find a set of images used as an "example" of the applied filters needed to gain real science.
The site "cate17-005"... that MY site! WOW! Unexpected!

Science was done! Something on my bucket list has just been crossed off!