Tag: qhyccd

A look at the “Lagoon nebula” from La Palma

/ Carsten / Leave a comment
Lagoon nebula (M8) - 2017/07/20

Tonight I was able to proof that the “Lagoon nebula” M8 was still there ~4100 years ago – wow! With a teapot, a sunlounger (probably better a starlounger) and the right music the night passed quickly 🙂

The total exposure time was ~1h36m. The seeing conditions were around 2.2″. It was a clear night without wind. I used my 8″ GSO newton telescope with an Atik383L+ camera (see here). And again I am amazed which image quality is possible with this equipment on this dark sky within this short exposure time. Below is just the luminance part of the image which shows some sharp details of the nebula.

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Astrophotography from Los Llanos de Aridane – Pinwheel Galaxy M101

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Pinwheel galaxy M101 - 2017/03/31

End of February 2014 I already recorded M101 from Boeblingen near Stuttgart. The total exposure time was about 6 hours (!). This time I did a 2h40m exposure from Los Llanos de Aridane on La Plama with exactly the same equipment. This is the result. From my perspective the two pictures do not have a big difference despite the colour tone which of course depends on the post processing.

Date2017/03/31
LocationLa Palma / Spain
ObjectPinwheel Galaxy M101
CameraAtik383L+
Guidingyes, QHY5-II Mono via OAG
Telescope8" GSO Newtonian
Barlow lensnone
MountEQ6Syntrek
Cooling-10°C
Luminance10x 600s, bin: 1x1
Red8x 150s, bin: 2x2
Green8x 150s, bin: 2x2
Blue8x 150s, bin: 2x2
Dark2x
Flat10x
Total exposure~2h40m

However, it’s interesting to compare the results with respect to their total exposure time: The image recorded from Boeblingen was exposed more than two times longer.

M101-both_half_overlay
M101-both_full_overlay

As a result of the long exposure time the stars are not as perfectly round as the ones with a shorter exposure time. Despite that I am happy to see what is still possible from a city like Boeblingen 🙂 Finally I combined both images to one final image by rotating one image until it matched exactly. Maybe I am wrong but I think in the end this combined image has a little more detail than each of the pictures alone. A full resolution image is available here.

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 12:17 pm

See Jupiter through an 8″ f/5 GSO Newtonian telescope with a QHY5-II-m camera

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I recently bought a QHY5-II-M camera since I am currently facing USB connectivity problems with my current DMK31 from “The Image Source” on my new notebook (update: I was unfortunately not able to get it working).

I tested the new QHY5-II-M camera on Jupiter with my 8″ GSO f/5 (f=1000mm) Newtonian telescope. I took some footage without and with a 2x barlow lens.

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