Last night I bit the bullet and tried something difficult. Most on my imaging to date have been easy to moderately difficult. Just trying to get all of the aspects of astrophotography to work. Last night I decided to image a difficult object, the faint nebulae IC 59 and IC 63. The imaging session required me to use all of the tools that I have learned including PHD2 autoguiding, autofocus, platesolving, manual camera image rotation (due to the size of the nebulae I wanted my camera at a very specific angle relative to the objects), meridian flips, and image processing with meridian flips. This was the first time that I performed imaging almost totally unattended (I did get up to see how the system managed the meridian flip). I was amazed at how well SGP automatically managed all of the functions. It was actually 'fun' to watch SGP manage the meridian flip process including stopping autoguider, perform the flip, re-invoke platesolve (I was not sure if I would have to re-adjust camera angle- turned out I did not), re-establish autoguider, and then resume imaging. All I had to do was stay out of the way.
The software I used was PHD2 for autoguiding (managed by Sequence Generator Pro); SGP to manage the camera, focuser, mount, platesolving, etc; and Images Plus for the stacking aligning, and image processing. Images Plus automatically accounted for the meridian flip, I did not have to do anything except select all of the subs.
The images are so faint that even with a stretched 5 minute exposure you only get a hint of the nebulosity. I decided to take 5 minute subs, and managed to get 80 subs.
IC 59 and IC 63 are faint reflection and emission nebulae in Cassiopeia.
IC 59 is on left.
Roger
- IC59-63 Processed.jpg (3.22 MiB) Viewed 2131 times
Roger M.
Celestron CPC1100 EDGE, Stellarvue 130T refractor dual mounted on iOptron CEM120 on permanent pier mounted in Observatory. Imaging camera ZWO ASI2600 OSC, guide camera Lodestar or ZWO ASI290MM.
