Narrowband Imaging IC410 and IC417

IC410 imaged on the Explore Scientific 102mm FCD100 APO refractor.

IC410 imaged on the Explore Scientific 102mm FCD100 APO refractor.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve had 3 imaging nights. KStars & EKOS 3.0 were released which fixed a ton of long standing issues with the scheduler. In addition to that nice software update, I got a Celestron CGX for Christmas! So, those two things combined and I set my sights on the only northern region available to me from the back yard and imaged IC417 on my AT6RC, and IC410 on my Explore Scientific 102mm FCD100 scope.

Here’s a recent photo of the setup.

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So far it’s worked great. Average RMS has been between .6 and .8. My AVX was hovering between .8 and 2.0 RMS. I think I can get the CGX tuned a little more in guiding to get those numbers even lower, but have not attempted any adjustments. These are the numbers I’ve been getting without changing any of the default guide settings.

IC 417 imaged on the AT6RC from Astro-tech.

IC 417 imaged on the AT6RC from Astro-tech.

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KStars/EKOS 3.0 released with new features

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The team behind KStars and EKOS have been busy wrapping up a new version of their imaging software just in time for the holidays. There’s a lot of new features in this one.

The first major feature is the XPlanet solar system viewer developed by Robert Lancaster. It’s a significant upgrade over the built-in viewer.

Robert also created a new interface for the FITS viewer which can how show you all the data of your images in a new side panel which features the FITS header info, Histogram, Statics, and recent images.

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Additionally, Eric Dejouhanet dedicated time to a huge scheduler rewrite. The scheduler system previously allowed for scenarios where you could have conflicts in operations, but with the rewrite all this has been fixed and numerous improvements have been added:

  • Dark sky, which schedules a job to the next astronomical dusk/dawn interval.

  • Minimal altitude, which schedules a job up to 24 hours away to the next date and time its target is high enough in the sky.

  • Moon separation, combined with altitude constraint, which allows a job to schedule if its target is far enough from the Moon.

  • Fixed startup date and time, which schedules a job at a specific date and time.

  • Culmination offset, which schedules a job to start up to 24 hours away to the next date and time its target is at culmination, adjusted by an offset.

  • Amount of repetitions, eventually infinite, which allows a job imaging procedure to repeat multiple times or indefinitely.

  • Fixed completion date and time, which terminates a job at a specific date and time.

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A few other enhancements are a new scripting and DBus system allow for 3rd party applications to take advantage/control of features with EKOS which will open up the system for more options down the road.

Other improvements and new features can be found on Jasem’s (lead developer) website.

Here’s a few more screens of the rest of the updated interface panels.

13 Panel Mosaic of the Moon

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Yesterday, I had a few hours of clear sky, and got out my AVX along with my Celestron C5, and ZWO ASI224MC camera. I was determined to get a few shots of the moon. I initially tried a Powermate 2.5x, but the seeing just wasn’t there. I ended up shooting everything at prime focal length 1250mm.

I used Planetary Imager on the Mac to capture everything, then merged them all together in Photoshop using it’s photo merge feature.

Below you can see the individual frames that make up each part of the mosaic.


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HD 14771 and Galactic Friends

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I managed to produce a neat image over the last two nights. I centered the star HD14771 to place NGC 891 in the lower right and a galaxy cluster in the upper left. After two nights of imaging, I had around 13 hours. I placed it all together today. Turns out that the galaxy cluster was only a few of the total galaxies in this image. In all, there are 79.

Captured in EKOS/Kstars

Integrated with slight processing in Astro Pixel Processor

Completed processing in PixInsight and Photoshop

Overlay done in Observatory


Equipment used and shown in photo:
Imaging telescope or lens:Astro-Tech AT6RC
Imaging camera:ZWO ASI1600MM-Cool
Mount:Celestron Advanced VX
Guiding telescope or lens:Orion 60mm Guide Scope
Guiding camera:ZWO ASI224MC
Focal reducer:Astro-Physics CCDT67
Software:Astro Pixel Processor
Filters:Astrodon Tru-Balance Blue E-Series Gen 2 31mm, Astrodon Tru-Balance Green E-Series Gen 2 31mm, Astrodon Tru-Balance Red E-Series Gen 2 31mm, Astrodon Tru-Balance Luminance E-Series Gen 2 31mm
Accessory:MoonLite CSL 2.5" Focuser with High Res Stepper Motor

In this overlay, done in Observatory on the Mac, you can see all 79 galaxies highlighted.

In this overlay, done in Observatory on the Mac, you can see all 79 galaxies highlighted.

Here’s the scope that took the image. The AT6RC with CCDT67 reducer and ZWO ASI1600MM-C camera.

Here’s the scope that took the image. The AT6RC with CCDT67 reducer and ZWO ASI1600MM-C camera.