Hoegaarden Astronomy & Photography
In total 13 hours and 20 minutes of RGBHa frames, both 120s and 180s went into this picture. You can just about see the external halo surrounding the galaxy itself, and details in as well the core as in the spiral arms. Esprit120, ASI183mm, Baader HaRGB.
It has been cloudy for the last months, this February New Moon was totally clouded out! With exception of lastThursday, February 20th: after an active rain zone passed through – with heavy wind and hail – the night sky cleared out.
After midnight till 4 am a clearance allowed me to test the setup. The test subject was the dwarf galaxy Leo 1 next to the bright Regulus.
This image was a quick test. Not only for the optics/camera combination, but also for the automation. SGP was used to automate, autofocus, and Solve& Sync. Where before I could not match the Solve coördinates from SGP back into Cartes du Ciel, this time it worked. The secret was to run both applications as an administrator. So both will connect to the EQMOD hub. Syncing in CdC (Manually) will update the EQMOD coördinates, hence also the SGP co*ordinates. And it works in both directions: Solve & Sync in SGP will update CdC. This is great!
I still had Luminance images also, but I did not add these: it were fuzzy frames and some reflections appeared. I suspect this Luminance filter is not ok.
It’s a challenge to image dark nebulae in light-polluted Flanders. So let’s try it!
This is the “little eagle” nebula, which I captured a few years ago as a tiny spot on a wide-field Plejades @180mm. Now the framing only features the Eagle head ; imaging with the Esprit and the ASI183mm.
It’s a bit dark – but what did you expect from a Dark Nebula? This is 10x300seconds on R, G and B channels and then 29x300s on Luminance. No Light Pollution filter used.
This is the overview, with on the right the Pleiades, and on the center left the Eagle Head (upside down).
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