Whole mounted OTA

C11 on mount with forward counterweights

C11 on shelf

C11 with Litecrawler

C11 with Celestron Focuser

C11 with PPBAdv on top

Litecrawler - What's in the box

Litecrawler - from back

Including leaving the celestron focuser in place

C11 with Litecrawler in use

Litecrawler and Celestron Focuser

C11 reducer

Hercules Cluster (M13)

While to some extent I find globular clusters less interesting subjects, the Great Cluster in Hercules is pretty impressive. Barely visible to the naked eye, with stacked exposures not only do individual stars resolve, but the colors come through quite well. Many of the blue stars originate from collisions of older, more red stars. This is also the target of a 1974 Arecibo message to potential ET's in the area, so expect the invasion from that direction. This represents a pure RGB image, with 98 exposures at 240s Red, 91 at 240s in green, and 90 at 240s in Blue, for a total of about 18.6 hours of integration. These were shot over 4 nights from my Bortle 6-7 backyard in May 2022, with a C11 EdgeHD at 2800mm and ASI6200 camera. This is slightly less than the full frame.

Moon, Waxing Crescent (34%)

Taken 6/5/2022, single shot at 2800mm while waiting for M57 to rise.

Dumbell Nebula (M27) in RedGB + ForaxX(Ha, Sii, Oiii)

I imaged the Dumbell Nebula on several nights in June 2022 with almost every filter I had, then tried to combine them to present a color pallet that would show the structure of it without being too unusual (though this is not a 'true" color as your eyes might see it). This represents about 18.5 hours of data, with 9 x 300s of red, 31 x 240s of red, 39 x 240s of green, 37 x 240s of blue, 36 x 300s of Ha, 47 x 300s of Sii, and 44 x 300s of Oiii. I mixed these based on trying to highlight shape more than a typical pallet, first blending RGB to get a normal color plus normal stars, then a SHO variation using ForaxX, and blending the result (dropping the stars by using the square of the stretched version). The Dumbell Nebula is about 1360 lightyears away in the constellation Vulpecula, and is a fairly bright planetary nebula at magnitude 7.5. it is thought to be somewhere between 9500 and 15000 years old.

Cigar Galaxy (M82)

Called the Cigar galaxy for the Hydrogen Alpha glow from massive star forming regions exiting the galaxy above and below, it is not quite explanable how the cigar (presumably the white body) was lit in the middle. Anyway, this is a re-do of old data. I culled heavily in favor of better FWHM and eccentricity, and reprocessed the data to produce what is hopefully an image with more detail. This has 180 x 300s Ha, 140 x 240s Blue, 119 x 240s Green and 124 x 240s Red. I also had Luminance data, but found a synthetic luminance gave better results (the real luminance ended up with slightly less detail and more bloated stars). This is all data from a 2800mm C11 Edge and ASI6200MM with Chroma RGB and Ha filters, all shot from my backyard (B7).

The Ring Nebula in RGB (M57)

After doing this in narrowband, I switched to broadband near a new moon, and got several nights. These are all 120s exposures, with 213 in red, 195 in Green, and 191 in blue for a total of about 19.9 hours over 4 nights. No luminance was taken, but a synthetic luminance made from the minimum of the R, G and B stacks. HDR Multi-scale was used on the synthetic luminance (not the RGB). I am happy to see some secondary halo, this was very strong in narrowband, but very dim here. I was pleased that you can see the bared galaxy IC1296 fairly clearly, plus some smudges all over the background which are clearly other galaxies. Because of those I did not try to de-emphasize the stars for fear of also losing some of those smudges. This was taken with a C11 Edge HD on an AP1100 mount with an ASI6200MM Pro.

M1 the Crab Nebula

I shopt this on numerous nights in late November thru mid December 2021 in narrowband with a C11 on the AP1100 mount, and ASI6200. It has 199 x 300s of Ha, 202 x 300s of Sii, 181 x 300s of Oiii, for a total of about 48 hours of light. This was rendered in the HSO pallet with green shifted a bit toward yellow.

This is the Elephant in a pseudo Hubble pallet. Its detail is from narrow band data of about 36 hours, but the colors are a combination with relatively brief (5.9 hours) of RGB data. This is taken at 2800mm from my backyard over about 75 days trying to find windows between rain. This uses a ASI6200 as the imaging camera, and AP1100AE as the mount carrying a C11. Taken 7/31 - 9/20/2022 240s: Red x29 Green x29 Blue x30 5.86 hours 300s: Ha x191 Sii x142 Oiii x98 35.92 hours 41.78 hours total

Plagued by bad weather in dark skies, but great weather on a full moon, this is M57 (the Ring Nebula) in narrowband, with a HSO (modified) pallet. It has 99 subs in Ha, 77 in Oiii, and 79 in Sii all 300s for a total of 21.25 hours, at 2800mm with a C11 Edge and a ASI6200MM heavily cropped. It was taken on 5 consecutive days 5/14/2022 thru 5/18/2022. This also had enough data you can just see the barred galaxy IC1296 in the nearby field.