Aztronoob

Managed to add a few more hours to one of the most recognisable deep sky objects in our night sky. Now up to 9 hours after stacking some data from last night. Really happy with this now. But… I can’t wait to add a oter 9, LOL. IYKYK

Daniel Main TYSM for sharing this!! If you have 10-15 mins on your lunch ,give this a watch.

I put 4 Million Suns in a Black Hole over New York This is a video on the scale of Black Holes in the Universe. I've been making it for four months now so I'm really happy to finally get it out to everyone, I...

A close crop on the lobster claw nebula taken from my back garden. At the core is a ‘little’ nebula called SH2-157a. This nebula has three or four Wolf-Rayet stars. These stars fall in to 3 classifications and here’s what Harvard.esu says about them.

Wolf-Rayets stars are divided into 3 classes based on their spectra, the WN stars (nitrogen dominant, some carbon), WC stars (carbon dominant, no nitrogen), and the rare WO stars with C/O < 1. The WN stars optical spectra show emission lines from H, NIII (4640Å), NIV, NV, HeI, HeII, and from CIV at 5808Å. In the UV, there are strong emission features from NII, NIII, NIV, NV, CIII, CIV, HeII, OIV, OV, and SiV.

The WC stars optical spectra show emission lines from H, CII, CIII (5696Å), CIV (5805Å), OV (5592Å), HeI, and HeII. No nitrogen lines are seen in the WC stars. In the UV, there are strong emission features from CII, CIII, CIV, OIV, OV, SiIV, HeII, FeIII, FeIV, and FeV.

Wolf-Rayet galaxies are galaxies that contain a large population of Wolf-Rayet stars. These emission-line galaxies show a broad 4686 HeII emission feature due to the WR stars. About one-quarter of these galaxies also show broad NIII 4640 A emission.

Note to self!!! Do not start imaging with your newt before the mirrors have become climatized to the ambient outside temp; your stars will be like exploded pancakes. And take the cap off the guidescope. Yup I still do this! haha

Happy Friday all.

And last night was crappy anyway, lost every single sub right up till 4.30am, because the clouds came in as soon as my head hit the pillow! What are the chances, LOL.

So, you’re stuck with the another reprocess of my Melotte 15 data from last year. All four hours of it!

Have a fantastic weekend and good news coming soon…

JWST showing us some new galaxy stuff! WOW!

Prepare for visual overload! Today, 19 images of nearby face-on spiral galaxies by the James Webb Space Telescope were released. This marks the first time we’ve observed these galaxies in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light. What do they uniquely show?

The galaxies’ clearly defined spiral arms are brimming with millions of stars. Their centers may be filled with old star clusters or active supermassive black holes. And Webb has shown us where stars that haven’t yet fully formed are still encased in the gas and dust that feed their growth, like bright red seeds.

Webb’s new images are part of a large, long-standing project, the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) program, and will be added to images and data from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Very Large Telescope’s Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. Now, astronomers around the world can examine these galaxies carefully in ultraviolet, visible, radio—and now near- and mid-infrared light.

Skip to the bottom of the page to look at each galaxy: https://webbtelescope.pub/3SxNSaU

This is just stunning from one of my Astro besties. Check it out.

I’m quite taken with planetary nebulae at the moment.

So here’s a couple from this week. First one is the shrimp nebula and the second one is Medusa nebula.

The first one is a total time of 2 hours 40 mins and the second one is almost 13 hours of total time.

What would you call these if you were to give them a name?

More space stuff?

OH, ok then. Here is Messier 1 the first object in Charles Messier’s catalogue, even though he didn’t actually discover this one.

FUN FACT: This supernova remnant exploded in the 11th century so it has takes the light just over a thousand years to earth us. Crazy mental stuff.

Red stuff is hydrogen gas, blue stuff is Oxygen gas.

It’s more commonly called the Crab nebula for reasons I absolutely don’t understand.

Looks like a testicl3 :-)

This little planetary nebula is called Medusa nebula or SH2-274. It’s quite feint in the. It’s a little bu**er to image and process. Made worse by intermittent cloudage.

The blue parts are oxygen and the red and lighter oranges are hydrogen.

One of the funnest parts of astrophotography is comparing our own images taken with or own equipment to that of Hubble data, to see if we can find objects within objects.

So I referenced Hubble data to find Proto planetary disks or Proplyds.

These are young stars with huge volumes of dust and gas around them that is in the process of coalescing to form planets and solar systems. Yes! Mother effing planets and solar systems not unlike our solar system.

That’s what makes the hobby interesting.

So here’s mine on the left and Hubble in the right to compare and make sure I was on the right path.

Hope you find this as interesting as I do.

Happy Friday, Astronerds.

Since the new lixinsight uodate there a couple of new little scripts. These scripts allow you to converts OSC data into ‘Hubble pallet’ data.

Cleverly, the script is called ‘Create Hubble pallet from OSC’ lol. And it’s in the scripts drop down.

As well as this, it’s spits out separated Ha, SII and OIII master lights for you.

Here’s a couple of the Ha data I processed on their own and did some sharpening etc.

Here’s rosette nebula and Melotte15 images for you.

Hope you like them.

This is to date, my longest deep sky object project. And you know the funny thing, I found the data on another usb stick I had.

So, this is 50hours of Pac-Man nebula data.

I’d you wann see more space sh^t the. Pop over to my page Aztronoob and my insta page .

I hope you like it. TBF you’d better like it. I know here you live. x

A skull in space!

I imaged this deep sky objects or DSOs last night and this morning. This is a relatively short exposure time of 4.5 hours, on what is more commonly called the Rosette nebula or NGC2244 (New General Catalogue), but as you zoom out it looks like a skull, eye sockets 'n all.

I utilised a new technique within the software I use to reveal some amazing colours within this star forming region of space.

Hope you like. Happy HumpDay muzzy fuzzas x

Super happy that I managed to image not one but five Bow shocks in Orion from my data from two nights ago and last night.

Total of only four hours of integration time, so I’m happy I managed to with such a short total exposure.

Imaged from my back garden on the west coast of Scotland in Bortle 4 skies.

I’ve also attached NASA Hubble image for image reference.

Happy with how this deep sky object turned out. With a total integration time of just under twelve hours, and a little fricassee of GraXpert, it’s turned out really well I think.

What d’ya think?

Close crop included for visual pleasure, lol

This looks like serious stuff. Good luck, guys

Picture wine tasting in a stunning lodge while learning how to take photos of the universe

Nestled near Bryce Canyon the star sisters workshop is in a gorgeous private lodge, with skies so dark youll feel like you can reach out and touch the stars.

Happening Saturday 2nd- Tuesday 5th November 2024. Tickets range from 2200 usd to 1790 usd (for the whole experience, not just per night)

With personal chef, expert tuition, wine service, spa treatment gift baskets, meteor shower night sky tour, and so much more.

If you’ve never picked up a camera or if you’ve just started deep space photography - this workshop is you you.

You’ll leave with the knowledge and skills to capture stunning photos of nebulae and galaxies, an amazing set of deep space photos, and life long friends.

There’s only 8 places, so if you’d like to be considered check out this link (link in bio) ✨✨✨

https://catma.ch/starsisters2024

Happy Friday, all. By now you surely know a couple of things about me….

I love design and branding and I’m hugely passionate about all things astronomy and astrophotography.

I’ve been learning graphic design since 1991, but I can trace my interest back to the first time I created a hand written poster for my local scout group, advertising Bob-a-Job; ask your mums and dads kids, LOL.

I can also trace my love of space back to the first time I read about Uri Gagarin in a bright orange, American A4 sized, case bound encyclopaedia I received as a Christmas gift for Xmas.

The thing is, with both subject matters, I’m always learning; learning new techniques, new technologies and new ways of approach to a branding project or a new way to process extensive amounts of data acquired with my telescope and astronomy equipment.

That aside, I’ve launched another little venture allowing people with a passion for space stuff to buy high quality digital prints of my best images to date up to the size of 1m x 1m. All beautifully packaged and supplied with a stunning certificate of authenticity hand signed and dated by me.

Since my passion for space has been reignited again in 2020, I’m loving my journey in to space, and having the ability to link my passion of design and branding with my love of space is incredible to me.

Anyway, here’s my space image web site for you to take a peek at and I truly hope you like these images as much as I do imaging them, ultimately helping to help spread the word about space stuff up there!

Astrophotography | astronomy pictures of deep sky objects I have been taking images of deep space since 2022 and I love every minute of it. I stand in my back garden, sometimes in the freezing cold to take the bet images I can of some of the most amazing deep sky objects you can see, althogh technically you cant see 99.9% of then wothouth a telescope and s...

Lunar details don’t get much better than this. Unless of course you own a LRO! Lol.

Amazing work, Jorge!

Moon • 07-09-2023

The highland region near the south pole of our Moon.

Equipment:

🔭 Celestron C11 XLT
📸 Asi462MC
Mosaic of 6 images.

The person behind the image of SgrA* the image of the first black hole at the centre of our galaxy.

I restacked and reprocessed my data on the wizard nebula. I also redid my darks and flats to see what difference it made. Those that know me will know that I don’t really use darks and flats, but uses it on this data. It defiantly made a little bit of a difference. I removed the stars for effect. I hope you like this edit.

This is 129 x 300sec one subs
60 darks
40 flats
HEQ5Pro
ZWO 533mcPro
ZWOasi fair for acquisition

This was really tricky to process. I always end up over exposing the little stars contained within this oxygen ‘bubble’.

A total of almost 7 hours now, hoping to get more this week.

Anyone want to take a guess on the name od this space image? If you’re a season photon hunter please don’t guess!

Full frame crop and tight crop shown here.

Go…

Hint… there’s a clue in the description and I’ve posted this image before, albeit slightly short exposure time.

If you don’t know I have a dedicated space page on insta and here both the same name Aztronoob

Absolutely amazing capture of the ‘earth like’ planet of Venus!!! Fantastic capture by Jorge!

Venus • 13-10-2023

First light with my new camera Asi462mm (my first monochromatic camera).

Excellent seeing conditions, the planet was above 30 degrees.

This image is a combination of 2 to get the clouds details, one with the filter Ir850nm and the other with the U Bessel filter.

I hope you like it! ❤️

Equipment:

🔭 Celestron C11 XLT
📸 Asi462MM
Barlow 2x X-Cel
850nm filter 50% best of 10.000 frames
U bessel filter 50% best of 10.000 frames
Mixed for the green channel.

Melotte 15 in black and white. I processed this in a slightly different way.

I processed this data in colour and exctared the individual channels, resulting in, green and blue and used the red channel to then process this as normal.

I think it turned out quite well. I’ve included a slightly ‘earthy’ processed image of the same target too.

I hope you like it.

Juno’s latest fly by image of Io is the best yet. Take a peek here, and you can see some other images here too. WOW!

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/Vault/VaultOutput?VaultID=49637&ts=1693251476&fbclid=IwAR1A0Ok7xroY5uv8vGP6Mfe3ddBJGXvXsl54ah0ioHKJcinUPteM7oplwU4

www.missionjuno.swri.edu

Hope you are all having a wonderful Hump Day!

Here is a reprocess of some mixed focal length data; 4 hours from 2022 (1000mm fl at f4) and some data from two months ago (using the Starizona Nexus reducer fl 750 at f3).

There's a tiny bit of gradient shenanigans going on, but it’s turned out not too bad.

Look at these. Even if you don’t like space stuff, these are fantastic!!!!

The moon deskmat and my notes for TikTok that say some rather obvious things like, just really excited, and “I made this” 😅