In a clear night on La Palma I made some single-shots from the moon, the Orion nebula, the Andromeda galaxy and the Triangulum galaxy.
End of 2018 I visited the new Cherenkov Telescope on La Palma. Actually I planned to write a long article about this visit - but as it happens sometimes, other things are more important... I decided to skip this article since now there is sufficient information out there about this telescope. However, I think the images I took for this article are still worth to see and give an impression from the observation site on the Roque de Los Muchachos on La Palma. The following two links provide more information about the CTA on La Palma:
https://www.cta-observatory.org/lst-1_inauguration/
https://www.cta-observatory.org/project/technology/lst/
Clear skies!
Recently Dark Sky Travels Magazine contacted me and asked if they could publish one of my blog articles in their magazine. The article describes how one can use DeepSkyStacker to stack conventional DSLR camera RGB frames. Of course I didn't say no and in the end it just happened and I saw my article on page 42/43 in Issue 4 of the DarkSkyTravels magazine!
I am very happy about that opportunity and the chance to share my experience this way.
Thanks and clear skies!
 | Date | 2019/01/09 |
 | Location | La Palma / Spain |
 | Object | Open cluster NGC2175 |
 | Camera | Atik383L+ |
 | Guiding | yes, QHY5-II Mono via OAG |
 | Telescope | 8 |
 | Barlow lens | none |
 | Mount | EQ6 Syntrek |
 | Cooling | -10°C |
 | Luminance | 8x 600s, bin: 1x1 |
 | Red | 7x 150s, bin: 2x2 |
 | Green | 7x 150s, bin: 2x2 |
 | Blue | 7x 150s, bin: 2x2 |
 | Dark | 2x |
 | Flat | 10x |
 | Total exposure | ~2h13m |
| Date | 2019/02/01 |
| Location | La Palma / Spain |
| Object | Milky Way |
| Camera | EOS6D + Samyang 2.8/14mm |
| Guiding | no |
| Telescope | - |
| Barlow lens | none |
| Mount | EQ6 Syntrek |
| Cooling | - |
| Luminance | 6x |
| Red | - |
| Green | - |
| Blue | - |
| Dark | 3x |
| Flat | - |
| Total exposure | ~15min. |
The frames were then post-processed with rawtherapee and averaged using the ImageMagick "convert" tool. In addition 4 frames of the foreground (the house) were taken and also averaged (of course with disabled EQ6 mount). Finally the two pictures were overlaid and merged with the help of a mask using gimp.
To me it is amazing to see the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the California Nebula (NGC1499), the Orion Nebula (M42), the Pleiades (M45) and the Horsehead Nebula (B33) clearly on this photo. This overview picture gives a good idea of the brightness, size and exact location of the objects compared to each other.
A full resolution image of the result can be found here. Another image without object descriptions can be found here. I am curious to repeat this procedure in summer when the bright part of the Milky Way will be visible again 🙂
