ShahGazer Rambling about Astrophotography, Coding and Clouds

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..