20261017 Omicron Cygni and the Ghosts of Cassiopeia IC59 and IC63

I setup my FD Canon 300mm f2.8 before darkness came, roughly focused with a remote tree.

Did a quick polar alignment after dinner and started imaging from around 7:30pm.  The polar alignment is still quite good, only a very minor tweak.

I swinged the Canon to Omicron Cygni for 60s guided exposure, will keep on for maybe like an hour?  Just to see how it works out.  

Maybe it's the first real imaging session after 3D printing the new adapter with carbon fibre filament.  

After around 10 exposures for 60s each, stacking failed and I found that the mount somehow drifted away.  I then fixed it and jump to 120s exposure each.  

So far it's alright and I will go for bathing after six exposures, and then let it go on.

I have accumulated more than an hour of data, but the result was not that good.  Some processing required.

I then moved to Eastern Veil Nebula (C33), pushing gain to high and turn on cooling.  But for some unknown reason, it always fails to stack.  The sky is clear, and the image is not bad, maybe field rotated or?  Need to see why later.

Try again with M33, just a test.  120s exposure, high gain, -10 degree cooling.

And then the S30 is out as well, pointing at the Ghosts of Cassiopeia as planned, will spend the rest of the night with it.

20261017 Binocular Solar Observation and planning for tonight

AR4551 and AR4557 occupied the middle of the solar disc, both showing much detail at 18x handheld image stablisied.

Great for a quick look.

I even tried to observe indoor through dirty window glass.  Maybe it's just 18x, I found most detail are still there.  Lazy guy setup indeed.

Planning:

The forecast is very favorable tonight.  

The S30 will be up and capturing something again, potential candidates:

1. The Ghosts of Cassiopeia (IC 59 & IC 63)

2. The Propeller Nebula (Simeis 57)

Maybe I shall use my Canon FD 300mm f2.8 again tonight with my 533mc pro?  It's now well adapted with my JMI focuser together with a EAF Pro.   Or shall I focus on using the Canon 200mm with my 6D?  

20261016 Omicron Cygni Region

This one is even more elusive, probably pushing the limit of the S30.

I will spend the whole observation session on it, in the hope to bring out those thin and delicate structures of the nebulous area.

Two hours of exposure, processed only by the S30:

Not bad for this very dim target.  The upper right and the lower right corners are suffering from noise due to field rotation, so these areas were not overlapped enough among all frames.

20261013 West of Gamma Cygni (Sadr) Region

I will dedicate the whole session to this area, a very large diffused nebula.

Total 2.5 hours of exposure.

Lovely.

20261011 Not so clear night M52 with NGC 7635 and NGC 7538

The forecast was good but the sky didn't really clear up until 9:00pm.  Not really cleared at all, but it worths to pull out the S30.

So I am re-doing M52, framing NGC 7635 as well NGC 7538 too.

Started at 9:05pm, and I hope I can get more than an hour of exposure.

81 minutes finally:

20261007 The Double Cluster NGC 869 + NGC 884 and Comet 161P

The sky was not so good, but acceptable.

Hope to get around an hour of exposure on the Double Clusters.

And then 161P which is rather low in the sky, just a few degrees above the nearby trees.  I will try to capture as long as I could.  I don't know whether if it's feasible with the small S30 but why not give it a trial?

On capturing it, I found that it reaches it's highest point during this time of the day!  It's slightly off the location indicated by the S30 but then it's still within the field of view, I'm surprised to be able to capture another comet with it.

My first comet hunting was so difficult.

Finally, swinged to Almach for twenty minutes, unable to split this tight double with just 30mm aperture.

20261006 IC 5146 Cocoon Nebula (again ) and also Coat Hanger

The sky was no good for the whole day, but it's clearing up so why not give it a run?

Let's try again and hopefully got more photons this time:

Stacking failed after around 1.5 hours. 

So I switched to the coat hanger for a small mosaic, this one is interesting visually and the S30 could capture it via stitching:

Lovely, 46 minutes of total exposure.

New solar observation tool

I ordered a pair of 58mm solar filter for my Canon 18x50mm IS.

I choose glass filters instead of Baader film, since I want them to last longer.

My thousand oaks solar filter still survive after nearly 30 years of services!

I'm glad to have a chance to test them out this morning.  Despite there are quite many clouds floating around, I got some really nice views.  Sunspots were clear, with quite a lot of detail within!  

The nice optics of the Canon 18x50 IS definitely shows a lot.  With two eyes, it certainly helps, too.  The image stablisation works wonder at 18x, it's just so convenient and powerful.

I've also ordered a herschel wedge for my refractor.  

I shall test it later, and if it is good, I might import some more to the local market.