April 2020 pictures

Another month with exceptionally good weather for astrophotography. We’ve had 28 consecutive days without rain since mid-March.

Precipitation in Belgium since the start of 2020. Source: KMI

Another side note: astrophotography is typically a solitary hobby, we just sit out there in the silence of the night with our gear. Which turns out to be quite convenient now that most of the world is in lockdown or quarantine due to the COVID-19 measurements, we can continue our hobby without interference. The reduced amount of air traffic possibly affects transparency of the sky as well.

Emission nebula Sh2-112
7 hours SHO
AstroBin link: https://astrob.in/by84l5/F/

Sh2-112 in SHO

Cygnus is starting to become visible in the second half of the night. I decided to capture one of the lesser-known nebula in the vicinity of popular targets such as the North America Nebula and Butterfly Nebula.

Globular cluster M3
3.2 hours LRGB
AstroBin link: https://astrob.in/ppb635/D/

Globular cluster M3

Globular clusters are always a delight during moonlit-nights and Messier 3 certainly did not disappoint. I’ve captured this twice in the past and my latest version is the best one by far, very happy with the performance of my new Newtonian telescope.

NGC 4565 – The Needle Galaxy
5.2 hours LRGB
AstroBin link: https://astrob.in/di73wy/B/

NGC 4565 – The Needle Galaxy

I’ve photographed this bright galaxy before using my smaller 80 mm apo, and the Newt delivers again. Much more detail in de dark dust lane that crosses the bright galaxy core.

NGC 4565 a, b and c are likely interacting with the main foreground galaxy NGC 4565.

The background shows lots of tiny galaxies. I saw these for the first time in the book “The astrophotography manual” by Chris Woodhouse. Years later, I was able to reproduce  the image quality presented in that book with my own skills and equipment.

Rosette nebula
3.5h SHO
AstroBin link: https://astrob.in/vnxc8z/C/

Rosette Nebula in SHO palette

Short integration from March 2020, basically test data for the guiding performance with an OAG, but now finally processed with StarNet++ and tone mapping.

Equipment used for all images above:

Telescope: TS 8″ f/4 ONTC with Moonlite CRL 2.5 focuser
Main camera: ZWO ASI1600MM-C
Filters: Astrodon 1.25″ LRGB, Ha 3nm, OIII 3nm, SII 3nm
Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-R
​Guide camera: ZWO ASI120MM
Accessories: ZWO EFW-8, ZWO OAG Gen2, TS GPU coma corrector
Software: PixInsight