This is the California Nebula (aka NGC 1499) in Perseus, a classic red emission nebula emitting mostly at the red wavelength of hydrogen-alpha light but also with a strong hydrogen-beta emission line in the blue-green part of the spectrum. By contrast, below is the small blue reflection nebula known only as IC 348, a cloud of dust surrounding hot blue stars and reflecting their light. But the region also contains some dim red emission nebulosity. Also throughout the field are patches of yellow-brown dust that form obscuring dark nebulas. The main dark nebulas are Barnard 5 (above IC 348) and Barnard 4 below. This is a stack of 8 x 8 minute unfiltered exposures at ISO 800 blended with a stack of 9 x 15-minute exposures through an Optolong L-Enhance narrowband filter, to bring out the emission nebulas. All were with the Canon EOS Ra camera through the William Optics RedCat 51mm astrograph at f/4.9, equipped with the Starizona filter drawer. Autoguiding was with the Lacerta MGEN3 stand-alone autoguider on the Astro-Physics Mach 1 mount. All stacking, alignment and blending was with Photoshop. Luminosity masks applied with Lumenzia to do selective curves adjustments to various tonal ranges. Shot from home November 15, 2020.
This is a complex of faint nebulas and star clusters in Cepheus: While this exposure shows the field as one large nebula, the arc-shaped region at top is catalogued as NGC 7822. The region below with dark lanes through it is Cederblad 214. The loose open cluster at right is NGC 7762, with the small yellowish cluster (dimmed by interstellar dust) is King 11. A small, sparse cluster at the centre of Ced214 is Berkeley 59. The field of view is about 8° by 5.5° with the 250mm focal length RedCat astrograph. This is a stack of 8 x 8-minute exposures through the William Optics RedCat 51mm f/4.9 astrographic refractor with the red-sensitive Canon EOS Ra camera at ISO 800, and blended with a stack of 8 x 15-minute exposures through the Optolong L-Enhance narrowband filter, with the EOS Ra at ISO 3200, to make up for the nearly 3 stops loss of light from the filter. But it really pops out all the faint nebulosity. All images stacked, aligned and blended with Photoshop. Guiding was with the Lacerta MGEN 3 stand-alone autoguider, which also controlled the camera shutter and applied dithering of 10 pixels between each frame to reduce thermal noise without having to apply LENR in camera or dark frames. This was on the Astro-Physics Mach1 mount.
This is a dawn scene with three of the inner solar system’s rocky or “terrestrial” worlds in one image — four if you count the Earth as well! In this version I have labelled the objects. This is a panorama of the waning crescent Moon above the two inner planets, Mercury and Venus, shining here as morning “stars” in the pre-dawn sky, Nov. 12, 2020. Mercury is lowest near the horizon and brighter Venus is higher, below the Moon. Mercury was two days past its greatest western elongation, placing it about as high as it gets and in a favourable elongation on an autumn morning, with the ecliptic angled up as high as it gets for the year in the dawn sky. Favourable evening elongations of Mercury in the western sky occur in spring. All the worlds were in Virgo, not to imply any astrological significance! The star Spica is between and to the right of the planets. At far right is the distinctive quadrilateral figure of the constellation of Corvus the crow just rising in the southeast. This is a panorama of 2 segments, each 10 seconds with the Sigma 50mm lens at f/2.8 and Canon 6D MkII at ISO 200. I blended in a shorter 2-second exposure for the Moon to prevent its disk from being too overexposed and to show the Earthshine. Stitched in Adobe Camera Raw. A mild Orton glow added with Luminar 4 to soften the image and brighten the colours.
