Parkesburg Observatory

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Parkesburg Observatory

Pictures taken from my backyard observatory in Parkesburg, PA

11/01/2022

The Orion Nebula is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion's Belt in the constellation of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky.

A definite sign of the upcoming winter is seeing Orion pop over my treeline around 1:45 AM. I've spent the last couple weeks gathering data for this image! Winter has some excellent Nebulae to image and I'm excited to grab them all!

The last time I took a photo of this was when I first started out in the hobby about 2 years ago with a DSLR and a star tracker. Adding a smaller scope (FRA 500) has made acquiring these larger nebula much easier than building a mosaic. I've tried a few times and failed, but I get there on day!

I captured several different exposure lengths (10s, 30s, 60s, 180s) to build up an HDR composition in order to capture the fainter details and the extremely bright core. This is about 20 hours of total exposure time.

🔭 ASKAR Fra500
📷 ZWO ASI2600MM
Antlia LRGB filters
Skywatcher EQ8-R Pro

10/18/2022

The Elephant's Trunk Nebula is a concentration of interstellar gas and dust within the much larger ionized gas region IC 1396 located in the constellation Cepheus about 2,400 light years away from Earth.

This zoomed in shot is a 2-panel mosaic captured with my Celestron Edge HD11 telescope with a focal length of 1960mm with the reducer attached. This represents approximately 20 hours per panel if exposure time or just under 40 hours total! This stands as one of my largest projects to date!

The wider field shot is a single panel taken with my Fra500 refractor with a focal length of 500. This one is about 16 hours of total integration.

I took this shot with Narrowband filters for Hydrogen Alpha, Oxygen (Oiii) and Sulfur (Sii). I blended these in an RGB Palette that deviates a bit from the Hubble Pallete but still assigns a bulk of the Sii to Red, Hydrogen to Green and Oiii to Blue.

09/13/2022

NGC 7380 is a open star cluster situated in the constellation of Cepheus. The surrounding nebulostiy is known as the Wizard Nebula for its shape resembling Wizard with their arms outstretched, including their pointy Wizard hat!

It was discovered in 1787 by Caroline Herschel. It lies approximately 8,500 light years from our solar system.

I took this shot with Narrowband filters for Hydrogen Alpha, Oxygen (Oiii) and Sulfur (Sii). I blended these in an RGB image using the Hubble Palette that assigns Sii to Red, Hydrogen to Green and Oiii to Blue.

I also captured some RGB data to replace the narrowband stars with true color stars, because they just look better!!

📷 RisingCam imx571 mono
🔭 Celestron Edge HD11 at 1960mm FL
Chroma 3nm SHO filters
Optolong RGB filters
EQ8-R mount

09/05/2022

The Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, or Subaru is an open star cluster in the constellation of Ta**us. It's cataloged as Messier 45 and is the closest Messier object to earth at only 444 light years. It is visible with the naked eye and has reflection nebula illuminated by the hot, blue luminous stars found throughout.

🔭 Askar Fra500 refractor
📷 ZWO ASI2600MM
Filters: Antlia LRGB
Skywatcher EQ8-R Pro

08/29/2022

Andromeda is back! Messier 31 is known as Andromeda and is the largest galaxy in our local neighborhood of galaxies. When it was first classified, it was called the Great Andromeda Nebula because humans didn't realize there where other galaxies outside of ours!

It is located, not surprisingly in the constellation of Andromeda and is rising above my treeline just before 11PM. I hadn't shot this in a couple years due to the need to make it a 6 panel mosaic with my Edge HD11, but a focal length of 500mm on my refractor fits this in one frame!

This is a progress post since I plan to add Hydrogen Alpha data later to show pockets of Hydrogen emissions.

🔭 Askar Fra500 refractor
📷 ZWO ASI2600MM
Filters: Antlia LRGB
Skywatcher EQ8-R Pro

08/11/2022

🦈 LDN 1235 is commonly referred to as the Dark Shark Nebula. It is located innthe constellation of Cepheus and is composed of faintly lit dark dust and small areas of reflection nebula (seen in blue). It's been especially difficult to capture due to my Bortle 5 light pollution conditions and need to shoot under a new moon or prior to moonrise. Even so, I was able to capture about 9.5 hours of this target over the last month to bring the Shark alive! I hope you enjoy.

🔭 Askar Fra500
📷 ZWO ASI2600MM
Filters: Antlia LRGB
95 x 180s L
62 x 180s R
61 x 180s G
65 x 180s B

(Total exposure time 9.5 hours)

08/04/2022

The Lion Nebula 🦁 is an emission nebula located in the constellation of Cepheus. I took this photo with an SCT at 1960mm over the course of two nights using narrowband filters, isolating the emissions of Hydrogen, Sulfur, and Oxygen. This larger scope let's me really zoom in on some interesting details in the "head" area of the Lion.

🔭 Celestron Edge Hd11
📷 RisingCam imx571 mono
Filters: Chroma 3nm SHO
32 x 300s Ha
45 x 300s Sii
51 x 300s Oiii

$The Lion Nebula 🦁 is an emission nebula located in the constellation of Cepheus. I took this photo with a 500mm refracto...$

07/14/2022

The Lion Nebula 🦁 is an emission nebula located in the constellation of Cepheus. I took this photo with a 500mm refractor over the course of two nights using narrowband filters, isolating the emissions of Hydrogen, Sulfur, and Oxygen.

Can you see the Lion?

🔭 Askar Fra500
📷 ZWO ASI2600MM
Filters: Antlia 3nm SHO
33 x 300s Ha
44 x 300s Sii
41 x 300s Oiii

(Total exposure time 9.8 hours)

07/12/2022

The Trifid Nebula (Messier 20 or M20) is a Hydrogen II region found in the constellation of Sagittarius. It was discovered in my Charles Messier in 1764. It is an interesting combination of emission nebula (the reddish pink park) reflection nebula (the blue part) and dark nebula (the spindly arms across the emission nebula). This is pretty low on my horizon and I can only image it in a notch of trees for a few hours each evening.

This is taken in true color: red, green, and blue, along with Luminance (combination of all color spectrum) to gather all the details.

🔭 Celestron Edge HD11
Skywatcher EQ8-R Pro
📷 RisingCam imx571 mono
Optolong 🔴🟢🔵 filters.

07/08/2022

Up close on the Cygnus Wall, a section of the North America nebula. Using the Edge HD11 at 1960mm focal length, I'm able to zoom in and get some incredible details on this interesting feature.

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Parkesburg, PA
19365

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http://parkesburgobservatory.com/

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