NGC6960 - Western Veil Nebula - Witches Broom

 

The Western Veil (also known as Caldwell 34), consisting of NGC 6960 (the "Witch's Broom", "Finger of God", or "Filamentary Nebula") near the foreground star 52 Cygni;

NGC 6960 is a part of a supernova remnant that is the shattered remains of one, and possibly two, supernovae that exploded more than 15,000 years ago at a distance of 2,500 light-years from Earth. At the time of the explosion it would have been seen as a very bright star rivaling the crescent Moon. The bright star near the center of the image, known as 52 Cygni, is much closer to earth (206 light years) and is not associated with the Veil Nebula.
Parts of the nebula appear to be rope-like filaments. This is because the shock waves expanding from the supernova explosion are so thin that the shell is visible only when viewed exactly edge-on, giving the shell the appearance of filaments. Undulations in the surface of the shell lead to multiple filamentary images, which appear to be intertwined.

This images was take at the 2017 Okie-Tex Star Party near Kenton, OK.  The image was taken with a Astro-Tech AT6-RC with an Orion Star Shoot Pro II camera mounted on a Celestron CI-700 mount.  The image is made up of 22 ten minute sub-frames stacked.  Calibration and Stacking were preformed in Nebulosity V4 and final processing was done in Photoshop CS5.  Each image was taken using auto-guiding with an 80mm refractor using an Meade DSI Pro camera and PHD2 v2.6.4dev2.

M42 - Orion Nebula - 20160210

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated south^[ of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years^[3][6] and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2000 times the mass of the Sun.  M42 is one of the most viewed and imaged deep space objects.

This image of M2 was shot (16x10 minutes) at Ft. Griffin, Texas using an Astrotech AT6RC scope mounted on a Celestron CI-700 mount.  Autoguiding was preformed using an 80mm f7 scope piggybacked on the imaging scope.  The imaging camera was an Orion StarShoot II Pro Color camera.  The guide camera was a Mead DSI 1.  PHD2 was used for autoguiding.  Nebulosity 4 was used for imaging capture, calibration, aligning, stacking, combining and color balance of the combined image.  Photoshop 5 was used for image stretching, image vibrance, color adjustment and cropping. 

M27 - DumbBell Nebula - 20150917 - Reprocessed

 

 
 
 
 
 
The Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Apple Core Nebula, Messier 27, M 27, or NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about 1,360 light years.
This object was the first planetary nebula to be discovered; by Charles Messier in 1764. At its brightness of visual magnitude 7.5 and its diameter of about 8 arcminutes, it is easily visible in binoculars, and a popular observing target in amateur telescopes.

Images was captured at the 2015 Okie-Tex Star Party on September 17, 2015.  The scope used was an AT6RC mounted on a CI-700 mount and tripod.  The image was captured with an Orion StarShoot Pro II camera using Nebulosity 4 software.  Auto-guiding was preformed with a an 80mm fl 560mm scope suing PHD2.5 software. Preprocessing was done using Nebulosity 4 and finished using Photoshop CS5.  The images is made up of nine 10 minute sub-frames for a total of 90 minutes of data.   The additional processing was done in Photoshop CS5.  I applied an unsharpened layer mask the a Gaussians blur before merging the layer mask into the final image.  This additional processing brought out the nebula as be seen by comparing the two images.

M27 - DumbBell Nebula - 20150917

The Dumbbell Nebula (also known as Apple Core Nebula, Messier 27, M 27, or NGC 6853) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about 1,360 light years.
This object was the first planetary nebula to be discovered; by Charles Messier in 1764. At its brightness of visual magnitude 7.5 and its diameter of about 8 arcminutes, it is easily visible in binoculars, and a popular observing target in amateur telescopes.

Images was captured at the 2015 Okie-Tex Star Party on September 17, 2015.  The scope used was an AT6RC mounted on a CI-700 mount and tripod.  The image was captured with an Orion StarShoot Pro II camera using Nebulosity 4 software.  Auto-guiding was preformed with a an 80mm fl 560mm scope suing PHD2.5 software. Preprocessing was done using Nebulosity 4 and finished using Photoshop CS5.  The images is made up of nine 10 minute sub-frames for a total of 90 minutes of data.

M42 - Orion Nebula - 20140825

The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated south^[ of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of 1,344 ± 20 light years^[3][6] and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light years across. It has a mass of about 2000 times the mass of the Sun.  M42 is one of the most viewed and imaged deep space objects.

This image of M42 was shot the morning of  August 24 using an Orion StarShoot Pro Version II camera I borrowed from John Love, WD5IKZ. The camera was mounted to a Celestron C6N six inch Newtonian telescope.  The C6N was mounted on a Celestron CI-700 mount and tripod.  Auto guiding was preformed using an 80mm refractor with a Meade DSI Pro camera with PHD 2.3 software. The image is a combination of 6 five minute exposures.  The images were calibrated, stacked and combined using Nebulosity 3.2.1.  Final processing was done using Photoshop CS5. 

Lunar Eclipse - 20140415 - With Mars & Spica

Lunar Eclipse 20140415 image was taken at approximately 02:04 AM on April 15 from my backyard.  The cameras was a Canon T3i using a Canon 55-250mm f8 zoom lenses set to 55mm focal length.  The image is a single shot.  The camera was mounted on a camera tripod which lacks a lot to be desired in stability.  The two stars shown faintly in the image are: Spica, the star to the lower right of the Moon and Mars in the upper right of the image.  Click on the image to see a larger view.

Lunar Eclipse 20140415 - Sometimes Called "Blood Moon"

Lunar Eclipse 20140415 image was taken at approximately 02:01 AM on April 15 from my backyard.  The cameras was a Canon T3i using a Canon 55-250mm f8 zoom lenses set to 250mm focal length.  The image is a single shot.  The camera was mounted on a camera tripod which lacks a lot to be desired in stability.  The two stars shown faintly in the image are: Spica, the star to the lower right of the Moon and Virgo 76 the faint star to the upper left.  Click on the image to see a larger view.