This is the first image that I have taken that I am proud to share! I’ve been an avid astrophotographer for 3 years now, but my skillset had not reached the point where I was ready to share my work with anyone besides a select few. I struggled for many months with PixInsight. Not understanding how to complete a basic workflow, I found myself stuck in a holding pattern. I knew I was capable of creating something great, but I just had not taken the time to sit down and learn what I needed to learn to be able to process an astro photo, start to finish.

This winter I had the privilege to run an internship program with one of our members. We fought through the cold temperatures, overcast skies, and everything else for multiple days to capture just one hour of data. But with that data, we turned it into a decent photograph! They were not the only one who learned a lot during this internship. We worked together with two other members of BPAA during the processing stage to finish the image. We only had Luminance data, so it was black and white. But when we finished the project, I felt that I had a good enough grasp of the editing process from start to finish to attempt my own solo project.

I geared up for this one, bringing out my new telescope and mount, while also testing out a new camera that I am interested in purchasing.

Telescope: Shywatcher Esprit 100
Mount: Pegasus NYX-101
Camera: QHY 268M
Filters: Chroma 3nm + LRGB

Night 1: Clouds until 3 AM, so I was unable to attempt B33 and had to get my initial setup done using M81/M82. I got my mount aligned, scope focused, and then made sure all of my equipment was connected and functioning properly. The forecast said I had a few more clear nights left, and I wanted to make sure they weren’t lost.

Night 2: More clouds, as well as poor polar alignment (1 degree error). I was unable to access the scope and re-align it, so I had to trust in my guiding to keep things in check. OAG back-focus problems made it impossible for me to reach guider focus, and that ended up proving to be a problem. High-altitude clouds reduced my guiding SNR, and since they were already smeared a bit by the backfocus issue, guiding was lost multiple times. Guiding this night was around 2.6” RMS. I ended up throwing away 2/3 of my data from this night, between the clouds and the guiding problems. This was my night to capture broadband data, about 4 hours of LRGB.

Night 3: I was able to begin the night by re-aligning my mount to the polar axis. I didn’t get it perfect, settling with 10 arc minutes of error. I wish I would have spent the time to get it even closer, but it was -12 C outside and i kept dancing between +/- 15 arcminutes of error. I called it ‘good enough’. I then re-calibrated guiding and set myself up for 5-minute hydrogen subs. Guiding performed much better, with around 1.1” RMS. I know with better skies and polar alignment, guiding could easily get below 0.5” RMS. I imaged all the way until the target was near the horizon, 45 frames.

Onto PixInsight, I blinked my data and threw away 14 Ha frames, most of the red and L, and about 1/3 of the green and blue. I only stacked good frames. This is one of the reasons why I love and hate this image: The data here is fantastic, but there’s just not enough broadband signal yet. Initially I was going to do RGB with Ha to enhance, but my R data was so dim that I decided to use Ha for my red channel. I know that with more LRGB data, this would have come out looking way better, especially the flame nebula and dust towards the bottom. But overall, I love the red glow of this image. It really feels like it comes alive. The subtle waves of hydrogen hiding in the shadows are, in my opinion, stunning. I can’t wait to revisit this image with way more data!

Ha: 31x300s
G: 51x60s
B: 53x60s
No calibration frames

Blink
WBPP
GraXpert
StarAlignment
ChannelCombination
NoiseX 
BlurX
STF
Histogram
Curves