M92 - Second light for mono camera (Ian Dixon)

M92 - Second light for mono camera

Hello friends,

Its been a while! Lots going on with family (all good stuff) and a new (very busy) job, but I'm happy to be gathering light again. We have had some clouds but mostly smoke for much of the new moon cycles this year. The forest fires have really taken out much of my usual imaging time.

This image is essentially a test of my newish 2600mm camera - conclusion - I love it!! Here I compare a Lum image of M92 with a colour (LRGB) image, using data from my OSC camera.

Lum highlights - lots of tiny galaxies to the right of the glob.
Colour highlights - hmm... colour?

Its new moon so on the weekend I went out and got a few hours time to image 2 messier objects. One of these is M92, a globular cluster in Hercules. Globs are some of my favourite deep space objects (DSOs) as they are among the oldest objects within our galaxy. I’m sharing an image of this cluster to hopefully convey the excitement. I tried to get some detail in the core. I have colour channels as well and will add next weekend.

Details
45 min exposure in Lum and OSC each - with 3 min subs
Scope – 120 mm Esprit @ 840 mm focal length
Camera – ZWO 2600 mm and 2600 mc
Filter – luminance
Mount – Astrophysics AP900
ASIair controller with wifi connection to my apple tablet..

M92 is quite bright and can be seen with the naked eye in dark skies
its 26,000 light years (ly) distant
Exceptionally old, eg, ~ 12 billion years.
Diameter is 100 ly
Mass = 330,000 suns
Approaching us at 112 km/sec

Thanks for reading this, clear skies to you

Ian

B

Title: OSC colour added

Description: This version is the combination of lum data plus colour data (OSC), all done in Pixinsight. I used some simple tricks to manually aliign and register the images as well as to blend. Pixinsight is quite a good platform for this, I am impressed, as I don't have much practice with mono data.

Uploaded: ...

C

Title: Camp site - bortle 3-4 area

Description: This gives you an idea of where I go to get out of the light dome of our city. This place is Bortle 4-ish, perhaps even slightly better. The milky way is clearly visible. Its close to home - only 34 km south on an easy road. This time I thought it wise to camp out after imaging (3:30 am and the dawn begins) - grabbing some sleep before going back home (and then to work, ha ha). Its so much better than driving early in the AM. Thanks for looking.

Uploaded: ...

D

Title: Field flowers at the dark site

Description: Exploring around in the morning revealed this meadow of flowers - about a hectare of them.

Uploaded: ...

E

Title: Edge of field (beans and wheat this year)

Description: Just a quick image to show you how very flat the country is in Manitoba. If the air is smoke free, there are not many obstructions to getting targets everywhere in the sky.

Uploaded: ...

F

Title: Reprocessed data with a crop

Description: I wasn't happy with my first couple of iterations of this data.. so I went back and redid it with an emphasis on trying to bring out some of the detail in the core of M92.

Uploaded: ...

G

Title: Version G

Uploaded: ...

H

Title: version h

Uploaded: ...

AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum
The refractors!
Canadian Astrophotography
Globular Star Clusters
CMOS Imagers
Messier Objects
Cloudy Nights
Skywatcher Esprit ED Super APO Triplet

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Advanced success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7910519
PixInsight job	KMXDXUGKSP78D6PKJ02GM517PG9URDC8
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	TASK_LOG

RA (center)	17h17m08s.398
RA (top/left)	17h21m05s.660
RA (top/right)	17h18m37s.845
RA (bottom/right)	17h13m05s.878
RA (bottom/left)	17h15m40s.886

Dec (center)	+43°07′30″.76
Dec (top/left)	+42°31′42″.33
Dec (top/right)	+44°01′33″.67
Dec (bottom/right)	+43°42′52″.38
Dec (bottom/left)	+42°13′28″.40

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):