Astronomy Cafe – June 21, 2021

Posted by as Astro Cafe

Video transcript of meeting

  • Thierry Legault’s Astrophoto Guide
  • RASC GA and AGM – Registration site
  • Geocaching and Public Outreach for Astronomy – Malcolm Scrimger
  • Summer Solstice – Randy Enkin
    • The Solstice happens at different times 
      • Actual time depends on time zone person is in
      • Gregorian calendar causes timing anomalies (Leap Years)
      • Earth’s eccentric orbit, astrophysical and geophysical components affects seasonal timing too
      • Sun setting angles in the north – https://metcam.navcanada.ca
  • Astrophotography
    • Astrophotography SIG – John McDonald
      • This Thu 7:30PM
      • M101 Monthly Challenge
      • Beginners Introduction to planetary imaging and processing using PixInsight
    • Victoria Centre astrophoto – Brock Johnston
      • Ring Nebula M57 & galaxy (IC 1296) in the field using LRGB – Dave Payne
      • Ring Nebula M57 – more detail from narrowband Hydrogen (Ha), Oxygen, Sulphur wavelengths – Dave Payne
      • Visually observing the galaxy (IC 1296) – Dorothy Paul
      • Ring Nebula M57 – Brock Johnston
      • Eagle Nebula – narrowband using Hubble palette – Brock Johnston
      • Hercules Cluster M13 – Brock Johnston
      • Sunspot and granularity on Sun’s surface in Ha – John McDonald
      • Eagle Nebula M16 from Slooh Chile- Joe Carr
      • Recent astrophotos by Victoria Centre members
    • Edmonton Centre astrophotos – Dave Robinson
      • Dimming of Betelgeuse (ESO link) – Larry Wood 
      • Lightning storm June 15th – Stephen Olesen
  • FDAO Star Party this Saturday (youtube & zoom) – new IMT building at the DAO – Lauri Roche
  • Diane Bell’s astronomy equipment – Lauri Roche
  • Variable Star visual observing – David Lee

Orion Nebula imaged by Dan Posey

Posted by as Observing Highlights

M42 – Everything and the kitchen sink

RASC Victoria Centre: Dan Posey &emdash; M42 - Everything and the Kitchen Sink

 

First off happy holidays! We have only had small windows of clear sky this month in Victoria, but I managed to gather a little bit of data about two weeks ago. I picked Orion as a test for a new light pollution filter for the Victoria RASC, and gathered an hour of ten minute subs with my unmodded 6D. It turned out quite nice, so I found some old data and made a project of it.

All of the subs were shot with the same Np127is. This image consists of 6×10 minutes at iso 400 with an umodified Canon 6D, 7×10 minutes (OSC) with a QSI 583c, 59×1 minutes (OSC) with the same QSI for the core, and 4×20 minutes of hydrogen alpha data with a 3nm filter. All of the files were calibrated and stacked using Pixinsight.

I created a synthetic luminance frame and red channel using a blend of the hydrogen alpha and 6D/QSI data through pixelmath. Unfortunately some high moisture/thin cloud left a bit of a noisy halo on the lower right stars in the data from the 6D, but it added so much to the image overall I left it in. I did my best to regulate the noise down there, but it is what it is.

Dan Posey