Astro photos

[Richard Flapper]

Just a couple of my latest astro photo’s.

NGC7380 (wizard nebula)

ZWO FF80 telescope, ASI 585MC-pro, AM5 mount and electronic focuser. Exposures:

L-Ultimate (HiiOiii) filter: 60 x 300 seconds (5 hours)

Altair (SiiOiii) filter: 52 x 300 seconds (4 1/2 hours)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Richard Flapper]

NGC7000 (North America nebula), the Cygnus Wall

ZWO FF80 telescope, ASI 585MC-pro, AM5 mount and electronic focuser. Exposures:

L-Ultimate (HaOiii) filter: 40 x 300 seconds (3.33 hours)

Altair (SiiOiii) filter: 40 x 300 seconds (3.33 hours)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Richard Flapper]

M8 & M20 (Trifid Nebula and Lagoon nebula).

Taken in Tuscany, Italy when on vacation. Quite a short exposure but from a dark location.

SQA55 telescope, ASI533MC-pro camera, Sky watcher GTi mount and electronic focuser.

L-Extreme filter: 11 x 180 seconds (slightly more then half an hour)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Richard Flapper]

M16 (Eagle nebula). Also taken during my vacation. I was on Elba with this shot. This is the larger nebula of which NASA once published the famous ‘Pillars of Creation’ photo.

SQA55 telescope, ASI533MC-pro camera, Sky watcher GTi mount and electronic focuser.

L-Extreme filter: 30 x 180 seconds (1.5 hours)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Richard Flapper]

Just from my backyard. IC 1396 (Elephant Trunk).

This is one of my first experiments with a new control computer. Where I previously used an ASIAIR, with this photo I switched to a Windows 11 based mini computer running Nina.

ZWO FF80 telescope, ASI 585MC-pro, AM5 mount and electronic focuser. Exposures:

L-ultimate:62 x 300 seconds (5+ hours)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Richard Flapper]

Supernova 2025rbs in galaxy NGC7331 over two nights in June and July this year.  I’ve used some techniques to slightly suppress the core of the galaxy to let the supernova shine a little more.

ZWO FF80 telescope, ASI 585MC-pro, AM5 mount and electronic focuser. Exposures:

Quad band filter: 192 x 180s (almost 10 hours)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Richard Flapper]

NGC 7023 (Iris nebula)

ZWO FF80 telescope, ASI 585MC-pro, AM5 mount and electronic focuser. Exposures:

IR-Cut filter: 674 x 60 seconds (11+ hours)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Richard Flapper]

M81 & M82 galaxies

Wide field shot of the two galaxies using two filters to show the RGB data and the Ha data. The challenge was to get the RGB data combined with the Ha data.

SQA55 telescope, ASI533MC-pro camera, Sky watcher GTi mount and electronic focuser.

Antlia Quad-band filter: 301 x 180 seconds (15 hours)

L-Extreme filter: 217 x 180 seconds (almost 11 hours)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Patrick]

Wow is my initial reaction and i have not been able to get past WOW lol , these are extremely impressive Richard , hats of to you mate these are propper astro frames and show your commitment to the genre , I know Dahlia will love these as will a few others and with good reason 🙂

Thank you so much for taking the time to write and share all you have this is very appreciated it might spark interest from a few others , i know Wendy loves the night sky a lot 🙂

[Richard Flapper]

Thanks Patrick! It’s quite a rabbit hole indeed and I’m still learning. The fun thing with this is though that one can start with a simple DSLR. I started out with just my Nikon D780, a 210mm Tamron lens and a simple tracker. The telescopes I use today only have a slightly larger focal length (the ZWO FF80 is a 600mm, F/7.5 telescope, but the Askar SQA55 is ‘only’ 264mm, F/4.8. Combined with the pixel size of the camera however lets you ‘zoom in’ more. I recently bought an old Russian telescope that is 2280mm but is at F/15!! That will require quite some stable tracking and guiding over longer periods of time to get decent shots).

[Patrick]

F15 it sounds like a very long exposure time will be needed and as you said care needed in the stacking , good luck when you go for it 🙂

[Richard Flapper]

M106 galaxy. Again a combination with RGB and Ha data.

ZWO FF80 telescope, ASI 585MC-pro, AM5 mount and electronic focuser. Exposures:

IR-cur filter: 714 x 60 seconds (almost 12 hours)

L-Ultimate filter: 215 x 180 seconds (10.75 hours)

Integration with AstroPixelProcessor and processed in PixInsight.

[Robert Apple]

All very nicely done Richard, I have a astro tracker, I got trading gear years ago and am blessed  with dark clear skies, I Just need to unbox things and give it a go.

[Richard Flapper]

Hi Robert! Oh wow. That’d be my dream. Really dark skies. Over here I image from downtown The Hague. Skies have darkened a bit last few years but it’s still Bortle 7. Once every couple of months I go out to somewhat darker skies. If I can convince my wife to do such a trip that is. I keep being amazed how many stars you actually can see with your own eyes.

I’m really looking forward to what you can do in your skies!! Please share an image if you get around taking one. And as luck has it, the skies have cleared up last hour. It’s been cloudy pretty much non stop since mid September so I couldn’t resist putting the scope out. Even if they have forecast rain somewhere later in the night /early morning. I guess I have to set an alarm to get me up and bring the gear inside before the rain starts.

[LightandShadow]

Stunning. Very very impressive achievement.

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

Oh hell yeah! You have clearly shown some serious dedication to the genre here. Well done mate. Just wow.

[Dahlia Ambrose]

Hi Richard, thank you for sharing these photos along with details of the gear and post-processing information. These are absolutely stunning and I enjoyed looking at each one of them. Stunning colours and details – love each one of them 🙂

I only use my DSLR and no tracker at the moment. So I have to keep moving/changing camera position every few minutes. Hopefully a tracker soon!

[Richard Flapper]

Hi Dahlia,

Ah yeah. I can imagine that being quite hard. Manually tracking is quite exhaustive and you have to keep the individual sub exposures really short. And then line them up again and stack them to get a decent picture. One the first trackers I bought was the Nomad MSM tracker. I still have that one and use that for Milky Way photography primarily. For me it the big really did bite when I tried to use a 210mm lens to shoot the Orion Nebula, which was quite successful, followed by trying to use a 600mm Sigma lens to shoot deep-sky objects. That obviously failed. So down in the hole I went. The Astro photography groups even have a term for it. Gear acquisition syndrome. It really applied to me. 🙂

[Dahlia Ambrose]

Yes you are right Richard. The exposure times cannot be lengthened without a tracker and can understand the gear acquisition syndrome especially when it comes to astrophotography. Do you also capture detailed shots of the Sun?

[Richard Flapper]

I still haven’t done that, or better, I did experiment a bit and gotten a few shots but nothing to my real satisfaction. I did invest in a couple of solar filters though so it’s definitely on my list. I was originally planning on going to the US to see and photograph the ’24 solar eclipse. Things turned out differently so now I’m planning on doing the ’26 and/or ’27 eclipse in Spain.

[Dahlia Ambrose]

That’s good to know. All the best Richard 🙂

[Wendy P]

These are really stunning, Richard. Obviously a lot of time and effort has gone into producing such amazing work! Please keep posting your wonderful treasures for us all to admire and enjoy.

[Wendy P]

A different type of astro – my fav shot this year of the SpaceX rocket launch at 5.00am from Cocoa Beach, Florida.

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

Very cool treatment there @wendyp

[Dahlia Ambrose]

Beautifully composed shot and nicely done Wendy 🙂

[Wendy P]

Thank you, Dahlia. Much appreciated.

[Richard Flapper]

Oh wow! That’s awesome!! Yeah, that’s also on my bucket list. I remember quite clearly me as a little boy when the Apollo launches were going on that I desperately wanted to watch a launch myself out in the field. Of course that would involve an ocean crossing trip and my parents only being from humble origins never were able to finance that. Awesome photo!!

[Wendy P]

Thanks, Rob. It was a very memorable experience.

[Wendy P]

Thank you Richard. I hope you get to see it someday too. Definitely a “bucket list” shot 🙂

[Wendy P]

Did anyone capture the recent Aurora Borealis sighting this week? Some states had wonderful displays. We are too far south to get anything spectacular 🙁

[Rob Wood (Admin)]

I know a few people got the Aurora australis earlier this week.

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