3 Days of Imaging

Actually had a little bit of scope time the past few days.  The sky was clear and the seeing was excellent on 12/25.  I had the 8" out and imaged Jupiter.  Finally I got the red spot.  Its a lot darker this tear.

When I was focusing, I used one of Jupiter's moons, and noticed a good deal of coma, but it was too cold and didnt have the ambition to collimate.  I shot video anyway.  Still got some good pictures.  This was the first image, shot an hour or 2 before the GRS started rising.

This next image was shot after the red spot came into view.  I used the mjpg codec in the camera.  I wanted to see if I could detect any sort of visual difference between mjpg and IVUV.  There is a minor improvement with ivuv as you will see.  This is the mjpg image:

And this next image is the ivuv image.  It seems to be a little cleaner and the contrast seems a little better with a tiny amount more detail present.

 Not too shabby for a scope slightly out of alignment!


Now for some narrowband deep sky stuff.

These are from 12/26.  I did something a little different.  I used the guidescope as the imaging scope, plus I used the focal reducer, which I dont think does much good widening the field.  It also introduces coma.  You'll see it in some of the brighter stars.

I never was able to image the Heart & Soul Nebula.  I couldnt fit it in the FOV of the main scope even when using the dslr.  Interesting that I was able to do something with the CCD and guidescope.  The Soul Nebula was shot first, and was able to fit the entire nebula in one frame.  These images were shot in Hα only.  First the Soul Nebula:

 You can see the fan shaped brighter stars in this image.  This is being caused in the reducer.

Next is a 2 panel mosaic of the Heart.  Its a bit bigger than the Soul.

If I get the chance to image this again, I will try doing it without the reducer.

Then, on 12/27 I had the scope out for a nicely clear sky.  However, the seeing was pretty bad.  I did attempt to shoot Jupiter, but it was really very bad.  After seeing this, I came in for a couple hours to wait for Orion to rise high enough to try to get the core of M42.

I was using the 8 inch, unguided.  I shot some 30 second exposures in Hα which came out quite bright.  Here is a nice closeup in Hα:

I shot a series of 10 second exposures  after shooting the above image because about half of the 30 sec frames were bad due to periodic error and slight wind.

The 10 sec exposures were almost as good as the 30 sec exposures, so I shot 30 - 10 sec in Hα.  I shot in all 3 narrowband wavelengths.  10 sec in Hα, 10 sec in Oiii and 15 sec in Sii, 30 frames each.

For some reason, my Sii frames I had a lot of bad ones, so I only had  about 15 or so useable frames.

First I will share my Hα and Oiii 2 color image.  Hα is red, Oiii to green and blue...

I really like the look of these 2 color images over RGB sometimes, and this is one of those times.

I also did a Hubble palette in which I mapped the Sii to red, Hα to green and Oiii to blue.  Interesting as to the dispersal of the different elements.  Seems as tho all 3 are present in the core but look what happens as you move away from the core.

Lots of oxygen below the core, hydrogen and some sulfur especially to the left.  I'm going to have to do a full frame Hubble palette image of the entire nebula sometime!