M 27

Time for the first image taken from the new house. Luckily all my equipment is still in working condition even though it hasn't been used in around 9 months. The target this time was M 27 also known as the Dumbbell Nebula. This is a fairly bright planetary nebula located about 1360 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula.

M 27

Image details

• Telescope: Stellarvue SV-105
• Camera: SBIG ST-8300M
• Exposure: 10 x 5 min (L), 3 x 5 min (RGB) binning 1 x 1
• Mount: Skywatcher EQ6 (with EQMod)
• Guider: SBIG ST-i (off axis)
• Location: Ballito, South Africa
• Date: 2014-07-19
• Software: Image acquisition with CCDOps, processing in Pixinsight

NGC 2070

This time I decided to go after a famous Southern Hemisphere Nebula, NGC 2070 also known as the Tarantula Nebula due to the shape of the gas cloud at the bottom of this frame. The nebula lies quite close to the south celestial pole (dec -69°) so is quite difficult to image from the northern hemisphere. This is an extremely active star forming region located in the companion galaxy of our own galaxy the Large Megellanic Cloud. This nebula is 160 thousand light years away and if it was as close as the Orion Nebula to Earth (1300 ly) it would cast shadows here. For more information see Wikipedia and Robert Gendler.

NGC 2070

Image details

• Telescope: Stellarvue SV-105
• Camera: SBIG ST-8300M
• Exposure: 11 x 5 min (L), 5 x 5 min (RGB)
• Mount: Skywatcher EQ6 (with EQMod)
• Guider: SBIG ST-i (off axis)
• Location: Outside Nelspruit, South Africa
• Date: 2013-10-04
• Software: Image acquisition in CCDOps, processing in PixInsight

NGC6744

I finally managed to capture my first galaxy, NGC 6744. This is an intermediate spiral spiral galaxy and is considered very similar in structure to our own milky way. This object is 30 million light years away which makes it by far the most distant object I have ever imaged. In the image you can also distinguish the distorted companion galaxy.

NGC 6744

Image details

• Telescope: Stellarvue SV-105
• Camera: SBIG ST-8300M
• Exposure: 12 x 5 min + 4 x 7 min (L), 5 x 5 min (RGB)
• Mount: Skywatcher EQ6 (with EQMod)
• Guider: SBIG ST-i (off axis)
• Location: Outside Nelspruit, South Africa
• Software: Image acquisition in CCDOps, processing in PixInsight

Trifid Nebula

Another cold but clear night here in Nelspruit and things went quite well during the set up of the equipment, imaging was progressing within an hour of starting to set up. The target was the Trifid Nebula, also known as M20 or NGC 6514, this object is something I have wanted to capture for some time now. It's a rather peculiar object located 5000 ly away in the constellation of Sagittarius. It is actually a combination of a few different types of objects, the red part is an emission nebula, the blue portion at the top is a reflection nebula and there is even a dark nebula included in the dust obscuring the emission nebula. All in all a very interesting object. I particularly like how the dust and structures in the emission nebula came out.

M20

Image details

• Telescope: Stellarvue SV-105
• Camera: SBIG ST-8300M
• Exposure: 12 x 5 min (L), 6 x 5 min (RGB)
• Mount: Skywatcher EQ6 (with EQMod)
• Guider: SBIG ST-i (off axis)
• Location: Outside Nelspruit, South Africa
• Software: Image acquisition in CCDOps, processing in PixInsight

Below is a cropped version of the details in the nebula.

Next time I hope to have captured my first galaxy.

Welcome

Welcome to the new home for my astrophotography adventures. I have been doing amateur astrophotography since 2011 and I live in South Africa hence the title of this blog. For this first post I would like to share some of my older work. First up is the first astrophoto I ever took of M42 also known as the Orion Nebula. This image was taken with some old equipment. The camera was a self modified Canon 350D.

M42

Next up is one of my favourite types of objects, a globular cluster. This particular one is M4 and it is an excellent example. This was the first image I took with my SBIG CCD.

M4

It's quite difficult to capture the detail of the core of the cluster while at the same time bringing out the detail of the rest of the image due to the brightness of the core. Fortunately PixInsight has a lovely HDR processing routine. The image below really brings out the detail of the core while preserving the rest of the image.

M4
HDR

The last image I have to share is of M17. It's also known as the Omega Nebula and was taken on the 8th of June.

M17

Here is the HDR version which really brings out the structures of the gas cloud.

M17
HDR

That's all for now. Thanks for visiting.