Happy New Year 2017

I am personally not someone who celebrates the New Year very much. At the risk of sounding very pessimistic, I feel the fireworks are nice, but I find the change from one year to the next very arbitrary (it is after all just another day). Thinking of astrophotography, it has however prompted me to look back at some of my very first images and comparing them to what I produce these days. 

What follows are two comparisons of M31 Andromeda Galaxy and M33 Triangulum Galaxy, which I imaged during the early weeks of 2013 and did so again during late 2016. This is merely a comparison of what I can produce, not of equipment or night sky quality, though absolutely everything except the user is different from one image to its comparison. 

Certainly the difference is staggering, and when I was asked what I feel are the biggest contributors to this difference, my opinion is that it is a combination of total imaging time, post-processing experience and autofocus. Back in early 2013, I changed imaging filter manually and focused it by hand and eye, looping short exposures and altering focus finely. I also did not have a permanent setup, which meant a massive reduction in total imaging time for each target compared to now. Moreover, I was merely learning the basics of post-processing images in PixInsight at the time. 

My 2016 images above have been captured from my remote observatory at e-EyE in Spain and with my current equipment (see bottom of About Me page). My 2013 images were however captured locally from Gibraltar, each over the course of only a couple of hours and with the following list of equipment that I used to have:

• Mount: Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro
• Telescope: Skywatcher Explorer 150PDS with Skywatcher 2" Coma Corrector
• Camera: ATIK 383L+ Monochrome
• Guiding: Orion Magnificent Mini Autoguider Package (Mini 50mm Guidescope and SSAG)
• Filters: Baader LRGB 2"
• Software: Nebulosity and PixInsight

The equipment in its own right was very good - a sturdy mount, a well-collimated telescope producing flat-field images at a focal length of 683mm (with the coma corrector), a guiding system that proved itself at this imaging focal length, a great camera and great filters. No doubt with today's experience and perhaps with the addition of an autofocus system attached to the telescope focuser, I would do a much better job with the above equipment!

Fast forward to today, now 2017, and I can report excellent progress on my latest projects. I am currently imaging Orion's Belt in its entirety - a 9-panel mosaic that captures all three belt stars all the way down to the NGC2024 Flame Nebula and B33 Horsehead Nebula. This is being imaged much like my recent IC1805 Heart Nebula image - in Red, Green, Blue and Hydrogen-Alpha, with the absence of Luminance as I do not expect it will add much to an image of nebulosity such as this, particularly with such bright stars in the field of view. This 9-panel mosaic is my biggest project to date and should accumulate around 112.5 hours of total imaging time. To date, I have finished capturing my planned 30 hours in Red, producing the following very impressive mosaic image once stretched:

Absolutely tons of nebulosity all over the place, and the eyes get lost looking at all the tiny galaxies scattered around the massive area of sky captured in this image. My current task is working on the same but in Green, then Blue and at the end, Hydrogen-Alpha. I do hope to finish this 9-panel mosaic this year as currently, after about 03:30, this target is too low towards the horizon for me to continue. At that point, I currently switch to imaging the M66 Group Leo Triplet, which is a 2-panel mosaic project. This goes on until the Sun comes up, using up my nights fully. 

Anyway, to close off, despite the fact that today is just another arbitrary day - I would like to wish you all a very good new year 2017! :)