New Forest Observatory ®

This week we feature the beautiful star Tarazed and the accompanying dark nebula known as Barnard’s “E”.

This is MANY hours of 10 and 15-minute subs taken with the Sky90 array and M26C OSC CCDs on the MiniWASP array. This is most definitely in the region of diminishing returns and won’t be revisited.

The Belt Stars of Orion is this week’s Picture of the Week. Untold hours (in excess of 8 for sure) went into this one using a single Sky90 refractor and M25C OSC CCD. Alnitak (bottom left), Alnilam (centre) and Mintaka (top right) form the famous 3 “Belt Stars” asterism in Orion.

Although I don’t think I can improve much on this image at this resolution, I do want to get a bigger field of view of this region with the 200mm lenses, the ASI 2600MC Pro OSC CMOS cameras, and the Optolong L-Enhance filters. Yet again this was an object I was hoping to get last season, and yes, the weather had other ideas. This is a thankless hobby for sure.

The Jellyfish nebula region, with Tejat (Mu-Geminorum) on the left and Propus on the right, is this week’s Picture of the Week. This was quite a long project with just a single Sky90 and an M25C OSC CCD. Why was it a long project? Because not only was this a full night’s imaging with the M25C in RGB mode, but it was also followed by two night’s imaging with an H-alpha filter, and a further night’s imaging with an SII filter. All the data was expertly added together and processed by Noel Carboni.

There is a hidden gem in this image (which might not be visible in the low resolution image shown here). But if you go up to the top of the dim nebulosity straight above Tejat, and then come down a little at the 5 o’clock position from the one bright white star seen there, you might just make out a small bright round red region. Not the usual colour for a planetary nebula – but that’s what this is. And it is a planetary nebula that emits strongly in the infrared, which is also very unusual. Furthermore, this image was taken only a few months after this planetary nebula was first identified, which is more than slightly annoying.

I can probably add quite a bit to this region using the 200mm lenses with the Optolong L-Enhance filters and 20-minute subs. Again, I had planned to do just this last season and was thwarted by the weather.

The full extent of the California Nebula is this week’s “Picture of the Week”. This is a combination of both data from the 200mm lenses with M26C OSC CCDs, and the Sky90 array with M26C OSC CCDs. I think I can do even better with this one with some more 200mm lens data, which I was hoping to get this last season, but the weather had other ideas. So this one is due some more data before I consider it “done”. 

Picture of the Week is M33 – the Triangulum Galaxy.

At the risk of becoming boringly repetitive, this is yet another object with very many total imaging hours, probably well over 15 in total. This has been imaged using all versions of the Hyperstar, so that is the original (no rotation or collimation adjusters) and also the HSIII and HS4. Also imaged with the Sky90s and several different cameras.

This is a strange object to image for me. The subs always come down looking bright and strong, and yet the final stacked image has always come out disappointing given the expectation from the subs. From the quality of the initial data I have always expected far more than I managed to process out of this one.

Again, this is probably as good as I’m going to get from my current location, and so this one must also be considered “done” unless I can manage to move to a darker site.