NGC 6960, aka the Western Veil Nebula or the Witches Broom, is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Cygnus. Almost all light from the nebula is emitted in the O III band, hence the dominant blue/blue-green color. I could only manage an hour of integration on this object, but it is bright enough to give a decent image even at this short integration time.
AR3790, AR3799, AR3800 and AR3801 have the potential to produce M-Class flares.
AR3790 and AR3796 (the spot groups to the left of and above and below the single spot on the right side in this image), have the potential to produce M-Class flares. Note also the small group of tiny spots below and in line with the single spot. This is AR3800. It is a relatively high-latitude spot and it tells us something about the current solar cycle (number 25). High latutude spots tend to appear at the early stages of a solar cycle; spots migrate towards the equator as the cycle matures and moves toward maximum. The presence of these spots indicates we are still in the early stages of cycle 25, and could have another 2-3 years of strong solar activity.
Here's two treatments of the Pacman Nebula. The stack has a total of 2.75 hours of integration. I processed one image in Siril using photometric calibration, the other using manual calibration to achieve a more Hubble-like effect.
Here are two images of M27. One (the slightly less saturated image) is the result from a stack totaling 3.75 hours of integration time. I was quite pleased with the result, and I noticed some faint rings of gas beyond the main nebula. They were visible in stretches where the cire was overblown and the backgound overly bright. I thought I would try a longer integration time to see if I could pull them out. The result is the second image (smaller of the two), which has a total of 5.6 hours of integration (I had more frames to stack, but the number was beyond the current capabilites of Siril and I didn't feel like integrating the workaround in the Sitil script I use). I'm not sure which image I like more. The 5.6 hour image has marginally more contrast, but the faint gas clouds were no more visible and required a bright background to be seen. I'm thinking about getting a trial of Pixinsight to see what it can pull put of the stack :)
The area around the star Sadr (gamma Cygni) is filled with a dense nebula, IC 1318. This image is a part of the Butterfly Nebula, one of the nebulas that is part of IC 1318 as a whole. This image is about an hour of integration, which is rather short for an f/5 scope, but it does capture some of the complexity of this nebula. To properly image IC 1318 requires a scope with a wider FOV than the one used here (Seestar).
Seeing was superb this morning (August 22) for solar imaging. I've included a pic of AR3790 captured in a zoom right off the Seestar on my phone, and a zoomed, processed image. The raw, single frame capture shows how good conditions were, and the processed, upscaled image shows how much detail can be extracted from an image created by the Seestar's outstanding optics.
The waning gibbous Sturgeon Moon on the morning of August 22, 2024. There's significant detail on this image if you click and zoom, including the terracing on the walls of the crater Copernicus.
ARs3790 and 3796 (the two largest spot groups in the image) have the potential to produce M-Class flares.
AR3790 (the group above the larger spot at the 5 o'clock position) has the energy to produce M-Class flares.
The Sun on August 15, 2024. AR3784 is quiescent today, but could flare again at any time.
The Sun on August 15, 2024. AR3784 continues to pose a risk of X-Class flares.
The Sun on August 15, 2024. AR3784 continues to pose a risk of X-Class flares.
The Sun on August 14, 2024. AR3784 (the largest, singlwe spot, has the energy to produce X-Class flares.
This is a 2.4 hour integration of the Bubble Nebula. Initial stacking and processing in Siril, Topaz noise reduction, and final tweaking in Affinity and PS Express.
This image is close to 2 hours of integration with the Seestar on the Crescent Nebula under Bortle 8/9 skies. It probably needs another couple of hours to really capture all the details and reduce noise. Processed in Siril, Affinity 2.0, and PS Express. The formation of the nebula is driven by stellar winds from Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 colliding with the slower wind ejected by the star when it was in the red giant phase.
I reprocessed my Lagoon Hubble for greater contrast and detail; I also cropped it a little. The result is not too bad, but the "blown" core is a little more apparent.
Here's a reprocess of the Lagoon Nebula with pseudo-Hubble look. I use Siril to achieve this look, but I do not use the Hubble script. I stack using the Seestar drizzle script. I perform the following steps: background extraction, green noise reduction, photometric color calibration, and star removal. I then do the Asinh transformation and the histogram stretch. When I have the image looking as I want it, I go back to the color calibration option. This time, I select the color calibration option. I then draw a small box in the darkest part of the image. I click the "use current selection" under background neutralization and click the background neutralization button. I then draw another box over the brightest and most colorful part of the nebula. I click "use current selection" under the white reference option (I don't do anything else under this option), and click Apply. The result is a Hubble Palette like image. I boost the saturation on this image, and sometimes do additional processing on other packages (you don't have to). I then add some of the stars back in using the star mask Siril created when I did the extraction. The result can be quite pleasing. Please note, I did not develop this technique; you can find it on YouTube
The Lagoon Nebula is a bright gas cloud in Sagittarius. I can’t image it from my home observatory, but I can from my daughter’s home in rural northern Indiana. I hauled the Seestar with me and was able to capture the Eagle Nebula on a clear night. I had no such luck with my attempt to image the Lagoon. I was only able to image 114 x 10 second frames—-19 minutes in all—before the clouds rolled in. However, due to the Bortle 2 skies (!) and the brightness of the Lagoon, I was able to capture a very pleasing image. The first inage is the jpeg straight off the Seestar with no additional processing at all. It’s the image your phone saves when you stop imaging. The second image
The Sun on August 9, 2024. There are several active areas on the sun today. AR3780 is especially complex, and I have included an upsampled crop of that sunspot group.
M16 captured during my trip to Indiana. This is a stack of 531 x 10s integrations. Stacked, drizzled, star removal/restoration in Siril; noise reduction in Topaz, with curve adjustment in Affinity. Final tweaks in PS Express. I’ve also attached an even more contrasty version (which somehow is the first image on the page !). I’m not sure it’s a better image, but it shows a little more detail.
Here’s an upscaled image of the line of active spot groups on the Sun today. Taken under excellent seeing conditions, it’s an upsized crop from the best 10% of 1000 frames captured with the Seestar.
The Sun on August 8, 2024. The line of active solar spots continues to develop. I’ve included a cropped image of those spots.
The Sun on August 7, 2024. The spot groups that form a rough diagonal line across the disk all have the potential to produce X Class flare events. The stacked solar image below was taken in a lightly clouded sky. The edge artifacts result from processing clouded subframes.
I’m visiting my daughter in Northern Indiana. She lives in the country and has a horizon and skies I can only dream of in Charlotte. M16 is a popular target, but impossible for me to image at fro my home observatory due to trees. The Seestar is the perfect travel scope, and it did not disappoint. Here is an image captured last night. It is a 1.5 hour Seestar stack, processed on my phone with Adobe PS Express. I will capture more data and do my full, Siril-based processing workflow, but I thought I’d post this image to show what 5 mins of processing can do with a Seestar jpeg.
Just for fun, I reprocessed my image of the Wizard nebula in pseudo-Hubble palette. It introduced more noise, but produced a rather nice
The Sun today—August 5, 2024. It was cloudy today, so this is a single image capture. The Sun continues active, with a new, very large sunspot group (AR3780–bottom of image), that has the potential to produce large flares.
The Sun on August 4, 2024. Large spot is emerging into the disk (visible on the left rim of the Sun in this image).
The Sun on August 3, 2024. There are seven spots capable of producing high energy flares on the Sun today. This is an unusually large number of potential flare sites.
The Sun on August 2, 2024. There are seven spots capable of producing high energy flares on the Sun today. This is an unusually large number of potential flare sites.
The Wizard Nebula, NGC 7380, is an open star cluster with surrounding nebulosity. The HIi region is powered by a close binary pair of massive O-type stars. Imaged with the Seestar, this image has a total of almost 2 hours of integration time with the scope’s built-in HIi/OIII filter. The nebula is sometimes called The Harry Potter and the Golden Snitch Nebula.
Today’s Sun: August 1, 2024. 7 of the spot groups on the Sun today have magnetic fields that can produce strong solar flares.
