Cygnus Widefield

It's been a while since my last publication. I sort of grew tired of fighting against the weather in the region where I live... It was always the same. Drive to the location, set everything up, align, find the target, start shooting and then mist or clouds roll in so drive back home... and this happened everytime in the last sessions.

However, this weekend I decided to check if I still remembered how to do this. This time I just did a rough alignment of the mount (NEQ-5) and shot with my Nikon D3100 DSLR without the ETX-70, just with my Sigma 18-50 f2.8 which is way more forgiving with the star trails than the 300mm. This means that this image is not from a specific object but from a wide area of the sky which spans 26.5 x 17.4 degrees.

I aimed high in the sky to avoid light pollution since I was near cities and villages and I was just trying to keep it simple. Around there, close to the cenit, was the summer constellation of Cygnus, right in the path of the Milky Way.  This region is packed with objects and stars although this time astrometry is not tagging my nebulas for some reason but, some of the objects you can see are:  North America nebula (NGC 7000) south to the brightest start Deneb, close to it it is the Pelican nebula (IC 5067). Close to the second brightest star, Sadr, are the Butterfly nebula (IC1318) and the Crescent Nebula, next to the right margin, near Gienah, is the Veil nebula, which I already pictured with the ETX-70 here and here.

Enjoy!

The annotated image for reference:

Replying to +Diego Blanco in the comment section, since I can not upload images in the comments, here's a single light frame processed to represent what I was able to see with the naked eye:

Eastern Veil Nebula

This image is part of the veil nebula complex in the constellation of Cygnus. A few weeks ago I took a try to the Western Veil (Witch's broom nebula). Today I bring the other main part of the nebula located south of the previous one and enclosing the spherical residual of a supernova that exploded between 5,000 to 8,000 years ago. The Eastern Veil (also known as Caldwell 33)  brightest area is NGC 6992, trailing off farther east into NGC 6995 and IC 1340.

The image is composed by 45x150' lights, 40 darks, 40 bias, 40 flats and 40 dark flats tracking but not guiding with the ETX-70 (refractor 70mm) mounted on the HEQ-5 with an unmoded Nikon d3100. The processing (quite agressive) was performed  with StarTools and Photoshop. I don't fully understand yet the color module of StarTools  so I raised a little the color saturation on PS.

This was a tough one. I would say that the toughest I've doneutil the date. Not for taking the pictures themselves, that being such a faint object on visible light was tricky enough, but for the processing. The images were taking under severe light pollution and the tracking and phocus was not so good. This joined with the ETX-70 and its halo and coma made it quite difficult to process. Anyway, I'm quite happy with the result.

Enjoy!

And the annotated image:

The Witch's Broom Nebula

Well, after several months of forced inactivity (damn clouds!) I'm back squeezing the small ETX-70. I don't know how much I can extract from this scope yet but I'm starting to think on his replacement. It's a good scope for beginning in astrophotography but now I need more than pea sized stars and destroyed nebulosity by it's halo...

Today I bring the Witch's Broom Nebula or Western Veil or Finger of God or Filamentary Nebula... lots of names for a supernova remnant from 5,000 to 8,000 years ago. This nebula is part of the Cygnus loop, located south the cross of the Cygnus, next to the star Gienah (Eps-Cygni). This supernova expanded its residual dust to cover an area of 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, or 36 times the area, of the full moon). Although the distance to this nebula is not precisely know, it is stimated to be around 1,470 ly (the first Buddha sculptures in Japan were starting to shape when this star went off...)

Even though the nebula has a relatively bright integrated magnitude of 7, it is spread over so large an area that the surface brightness is quite low, so the nebula is notorious among astronomers as being difficult to see. With the aid of special filters (such as OIII) this nebula is easily seen in the night sky but as I'm on a budget, no filters for now...

The image is composed of 43x2' lights (poor alignment and no guiding, originally I had more than 60), 40 bias, 40 darks, 20 flats and 20 dark-flats, stacked with DSS and processed with StarTools (my saviour in this image with its isolate module due to heavy noise from the DSLR).

Enjoy!

The annotated image:

Light Pollution

Light pollution is the alteration of light levels in the outdoor environment (from those present naturally) due to man-made sources of light. Light pollution competes with starlight in the night sky for urban residents, inteferes with astronomical observations, and, like any other form of pollution, disrupts ecosystems and has adverse health effects.

To understand the size of this issue, I tried a visual example with two images. One was already published in the blog. It was a series of blind shots (because the stars were almost not visible at plain sight), 12 lights and 3 darks of 20 seconds exposure with the kit lense of the Nikon D3100 at 18mm f3.5. The light pollution was, of course, present as this photographs were taken on a "rural/sub-urban" area around 20Km from the nearest city.

I wanted to run a test and try to take the same frame from a different location, a truly rural location with very little light pollution (this time it was possible to see the milky way even at plain sight so it was easy). This location is around 40 Km from the previous one. The shots were the same with the same lense: 12 lights, 3 darks 20 seconds exposure 18mm at f3.5.

As you can see, the light pollution is a true enemy for the astronomy and, of course, for astrophotography. Next time when you are outside, just look over your heads. If you're in a city you'll be lucky if you can see a bunch of stars...

Enjoy.

Milky Way on Cygnus

Yesterday, at my parent's house (with plenty of light pollution), before the Moon showed up, the night was particularly clear so I took my camera outside. I never saw the Milky Way there and I pointed more or less to the area where it was supposed to be. Sagitarius and Scorpio where to deep in the LP so I pointed to the Northern Cross (Cygnus) hoping to find one of the arms of our galaxy.

After several tries for getting the proper focus I started to shoot at 18mm f/3.5 (kit lens of the Nikon D3100) and got 12 good frames. I took 3 darks and decided to play with it to see if the Milky Way was there.

I must say that I'm pretty pleased with the result of the pictures after the stacking and the processing with Photoshop, maybe I can try to add more color to the image but I don't want to raise the LP. Again, just starting into this ;-).