The Elusive Horsehead Nebula--At Last!

I have never been able to image the Horsehead Nebula, but I finally succeeded last night with the DS 2.3+ and 8 inch Newt combo. This is an uncropped image, showing the wide field captured by this combination. Part of the Flame Nebula is visible at the upper right of the image. Amp glow is fairly strong (top, bottom, and left edge--though some could be reflection from local lighting) as I had to stretch the histogram to bring out the nebula. I'm very happy with this image!

Flame and Running Man 2-27-16

Here are images of the Flame and Running Man nebulas. I have never been able to image the Running Man, but this time I managed to capture some of the faint nebulosity that makes up this nebula. The Flame looks very good with this scope/imager combination (Mallincam DS 2.3+ and 8 inch f/4 Newt).

Feeling Crabby!

I imaged a number of objects with the DS 2.3+/8 inch Newt combo.  Here is a heavily cropped image of the Crab Nebula. Even though this is just a tiny part of the full frame, I'm very pleased with the level of detail in the nebula. This is a stack of 6-25-second integrations.

Here's a more processed version with color corrected:

My best M42: Mallincam DS 2.3+, Mallincam 8 inch newt F/4

Mounted on the ZEQ 25, my new 8 inch f/4 Newtonian astrograph is a spectacular performer when paired with the DS 2.3+.  Here is an image of M42 with this combination; this is a 25 second exposure at gain 35, 8 images stacked in Nebulosity.  An amazing result for this modest platform!

An adjustment to the curves produces an image that really brings out more subtle detail in the gas clouds. This is the real beauty of digital astronomy!

Comparison of stacked images of the Orion Nebula using Deep Sky Stacker and Nebulosity

I took the same set of images and stacked them in DSS and in Nebulosity. There were some star registration problems due to mount alignment, but the clear winner in terms of optimizing this imperfect alignment is Nebulosity. Here are the images:

The first image was stacked in Nebulosity. The second (below) was stacked in DSS:

The difference in image color is due to the color "normalization" algorithm in the auto adjust for Nebulosity and Photoshop.

Mallicam DS2.3 Orion Nebula image stacked

Here is a stacked image of 6 frames (using Astortoaster/DS Stacker) from the Orion images captured yesterday (see the last blog post). I think it really shows what this camera can do!  The star registration is a little off, but the image is overall pretty decent.

Orion Nebula with the new Mallincam DS 2.3+

I just received my new Mallincam DS 2.3+. Unlike other Mallicams, this camera uses a 1/2" 1920 x 1280 progressive scan CMOS chip. While the chip has less sensitivity than many of the other Mallincams, it offers a combination of good sensitivity and high resolution. Tonight, I tested it out under a fill moon on the Orion Nebula.

This image was taken with the VRC 6, the DS 2.3, a UHT filter and .5x focal reducer. While moonlight was a factor, this 40-second integration shows a lot of fine detail in the nebula that is not captured by the more sensitive, but lower resolution cameras (compare it to my last Jr Pro EX image). However, the video cameras offer superb "live" performance capabilities, so this camera will never replace my Xtreme, Jr Pro EX or DSm. Instead, it gives me the ability to do imaging more like standard CCD astro photography, but with a much shorter exposure.