California Nebula and Wide Field Orion

The last few days, I've been trying to image Orion.  So far, I took enough mosaics to show the Orion Nebula and the Horsehead and Flame Nebulas in the same image.

This will be an ongoing project.  The goal will be to attempt to get the entire constellation.

Took a break last night and imaged the California Nebula.  This is a 2-frame mosaic.

Heart and Soul mosaic

Re-imaged the Heart and Soul using the AT72ED and .8 reducer to slightly widen the field.  Created this mosaic to show the proximity of these 2 objects.

Messier 8 and Messier 20

Two objects which lie near to eachother in the sky are the Lagoon and Trifid Nebulas.  Both located in Sagittarius.

This object was the first image while using a .8 focal reducer/field flattener on the AT72ED.

Cherry Springs State Park

Armed with a new telescope, I ventured out to Cherry Springs to get a few images.  I concentrated only on big objects.  This is the ideal location to get large faint objects because with the exceptionally dark skies, the background gradients are almost nonexistent.

I was totally happy with my NGC7000 image from the last post, so I didnt bother imaging that one again.  I did want to get the Heart and Soul, which I was unable to do before this.  Also wanted to get the Veil Nebula, to see how much of it I could get in one frame.

I warmed up with the Andromeda Galaxy before starting on the dim stuff.

Since Andromeda came out so well, I then went over to Cassiopeia and got the Heart.  These emission nebulae are difficult to do in white light, but its so dark at Cherry Springs, that one does not really need any filters to do a decent job with them. 

After the heart, I moved the scope a couple degrees over to the Soul Nebula.  This one was a little brighter and required less image processing.  I was able to image them both and they both fit in the frames.

Couldnt quite get the entire veil nebula complex in one frame, but I was able to get the witches broom and Pickering's Triangle.

NGC7000 - First Light With Astro-Tech AT72ED

Purchased an Astro-Tech AT72ED.  I havent imaged with a refractor since I first started doing planetary imaging back in 2010.  This new little refractor is a wonderful piece of hardware.  Its wide field views opened up a whole new realm of objects that I have not been able to image before.

For the first image, I opted to go with the North America Nebula.  I was able to fit the majority of the North America and Pelican Nebula in the same frame, and the image came out fantastic!

The field of view is just under 2X3 degrees.

The nebula is a cloud of ionized hydrogen.  The shape is formed by dust which hides portions of the cloud which gived this the shape of North America..

M64, M27 and M57

Took a few images  today of a galaxy and a couple planetary nebulas.  The first one I'll feature is M64 in Coma Berenices.  This 9th magnitude galaxy is about 25 million light years away.   The Black Eye comes from a patch of dark dust which obscures the bright part of the galaxy behind it.

The next object is a fun one to image, and its been photographed to death.  Messier 27, or the Dumbbell Nebula.  It looks like an apple core to me...  The remnants of a dead star is about 1350 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula.  The central star is a white dwarf, and is the largest white dwarf known.

The 3rd object, I've imaged before, M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra.  This is an easy object because it is quite bright.  Although bright, it is small.  Although it can be seen in binoculars, they wont provide enough magnification to be able to tell what it is.  A telescope 6 inches in diameter, and about 100 power will show its ring like appearance.