ShahGazer Rambling about Astrophotography, Coding and Clouds

Finally, after several months of cloudy skies, it clears up a bit, just in time before Comet Hartley 2 waves goodbye to us. This is shot from a light polluted, magnitude 3 sky of Sri Damansara. Couldn't see the comet clearly enough, even with binoculars. Tried login in at Global-Rent-A-Scope telescopes, but apparently everyone was hunting down this comet as well, until it slows down the servers!

Finally, I decided to get my photo taken with all the equipments that I have now, using either when doing my outreach astronomy programs, or doing my personal observations or imaging. Not for the faint hearted.. :-)

Looking forward for test out my new QHY9 mono CCD. The whole CCD imaging setup is 'almost' complete. Hopefully everything will work out well. Main scope: Skywatcher Equinox 120 ED Guide Scope: Skywatcher Equinox 80 ED Guide Camera: QHY5 mono Main CCD: QHY9 mono Mount: EQ6 Wish me luck! and hope for clearer skies in the coming weeks.

This is the same M42 data taken from the previous post. The only different is that this is my first attempt on processing it in High Dynamic Range. A lot of post-processing in Photoshop CS3, IRIS and NEAT Image. Not too sure if the colour is 'right' though. Seems a bit red(?).

These are 3 more shots I took during the 4 day astrofotography session at Penang. I did a lot of heavy post-processing, especially on M104 and M64 mainly because I failed somewhat to take proper darks and flats.

Each of these image was a single frame capture using Celestron Amcap software, as proposed by Rock Mallin on his website It was nice to play with the settings and see immediate results. And the most surprising thing was the amount of details I can see when I pushed maximum to 56 seconds!

During last weekend, I got a solid 4 nights of good sky in Balik Pulau, Penang for imaging. It was done using Mallincam Hyper Color Plus and Skywatcher Equinox 80mm scope. A light pollution filter was added to help ease out a nearby glaring streetlight. SQM readings was 20 19.6 . I was surprise with the amount of details I saw using different integration settings. From low setting looking at the Trapezium, all the way to 56 seconds where the outer part of M42 was easily seen. Here is a stacked shot using different settings. Details are as follow: SW Equinox 80mm f/6.25 Mallincam Hyper Plus Color with MFR-3, Light Pollution Filter Celestron LPR. Settings = (2.1s x 5, 7s x 5, 14s x 9, 28s x 10, 56s x 10). Total exposure time about 16 minutes. Images stacked using DeepSkyStacker, processed in Registax.

Sky was clear this morning. Sunspot 1045 grew a lot in just 24 hours. Took the opportunity to snap some shots. I like the snake-like shape of the sunspot, as if trying to wriggle away from the watchful eye of humans..

Note: The live streaming services provided was called Night Skies Network, and NOT NightSkyNetworks as stated on the photo (left). My mistake.I will make the necessary correction as soon as possible. I attended the virtual online observation by Rock Mallin via the really cool Night Sky Networks Night Skies Network . It was way late at night in Canada, while I was comfortably having my breakfast here in Kuala Lumpur! The setup used was a 16 inch LX200 coupled with MFR-5 and using the new Mallincam VSS . Integration setting was 2 seconds. We were looking at M42, and the live view itself was wild! As mentioned by one of the attendees, it looked pretty much 3D! The dust lanes (or clumps) really pops up in front of the trapeziums! I couldn't resist capturing some of the frames and stacked it up. The photo speaks by itself! It was a combination of 20 frames each at 2 sec integration. So, in all a total of 40 SECONDS! exposure time! Whew!!! The VSS seems to be displaying nicely. There...