My astrophotography 2021

[hhzhang]

Back to deep skies. But a rough journey spending most of the time fighting all sorts of problems/errors.

This early morning (Oct-8) the Orion was shining overhead near Zenith. I set up my star adventerer tracker and autoguider -- only to find out that it did not autoguide. I had to pull out my iOptron SmartEQ, drift align and .... my imaging lens+camera fell from height -- after a while I resembed everything and started collection exposures -- but it started to become a bit cloudy after half-an-hour or so.

So here is the Orion nebuli from 25x60s R filter.

[hhzhang]

It is really an interesting season that you can still shoot summer milkyway objects in the evening and then shoot winter objects before dawn time.

But the imaging session on Oct-7 evening was very rough -- and the never clearing high clouds just added to all the technical problems. I came back with few exposures that include 2x90s M8-M20 region. First time shooting the pair using an astrocam.

[hhzhang]

A bit disappointed. I went on to use a remote telescope service to shoot this region again.

[hhzhang]

Another celestial event worths a shot is 67P transitting M1 region. Through remote telescope service.

Due to the fast motion of the comet, it would be a pain to shoot LRGB and then combine the exposures. So I just went for L frames only, but then added color data to M1 and the comet using my last year's M1 shot and a June shot of 7P (oops, different comet!)

[hhzhang]

It is a great time for Sg astrophotographer these few days: clear nights near near moon -- quite precious and cannot afford to miss the opportunity for enjoying and photographying night skies.

After sunset, I went down to a place in LCK, a deserted track with no street lights to bother me. It is amazing to see so many stars once again -- and better still it was cloudless. The 2-day-old crescent moon sit very low above the tree line. Jupiter and Saturn were shining overhead -- to the east of milky way -- well, I was not sure if I made out the milky way core under the terrible light pollution, but the view of blazing Venus in Scorpius is a definite joy. It has finally crossed the Libra-Scorpius border. And it is steadily moving to cross the milky way core region till Nov-Dec this year.



Then I took a number of milkyway shots with my 14mmF2.8 (wide-open) and 24-105@24mmF4. Back home, it was the first time I don't have to heavily crop the image frames.



Jupiter+Saturn and Venus on either side of the Milky Way:



24mm offfers to see more features in the MK core region. This is slightly cropped so the apparent FOV might be that of 35mm.

[hhzhang]

Then I packed up and headed for the next location on the bank of the upper Seletar reservior.

I probably took a whole hour there setting up my gear and aligning every parts and functions that have to work precisely and smoothly for my longer exposures of M31. Well, I had not taken any nice shot of the galaxy despite a couple of attempts last year. Would today be different?

It went well, and 2mins exposures by ASI2600MC at 332mmFL+3.76um pixel showed consistent nice pictures of tight and round stars. Looked I could go on and let the ASIAir carry on to collect hours of data tonight.

Unfortunately, the mount stopped working. Then I figured out the battery pack that I was using for the mount might be responsible -- the batt LED was on though but the mount's LED turned off automatically after a short run each time. I could use the 12V hub built-in the ASIAir Pro -- only if I did not forget to carry one more male-male 12V cord.

So the next few hours I was trying to hook up my a7RII, aiming and centering manually the target, and get the autoguiding work again. Long story short, I made new mistakes and ended up with ~60 subs and about ~40 subs on either side of the meridian. OMG the two sets are of different orientation all because of my human error.

The 60x60s set of subs, when stacked, are a total disappointment back home on my computer doing processing.



I knew my precious few hours of night time went for nothing in the end. Or the failure might have taught me many things.

I then went to process the only 10x2min exposures out of ASI2600MC. Turns out much easier to process and the result is noticeably better.

[hhzhang]

2021-Oct-9

Beautiful earthshine and Venus

[hhzhang]

A few more shots from last evening.

[hhzhang]

And, to my delightful suprisise, my 2x30s managed to capture part of the milky way core region, against all the odds (clouds, lights in town -- a few directly shinning into my lens, tracking error spoilt other exposures, lower altitude)

[celeron787]

Nice set of photos from the past few nights, sorry to hear about all that technical difficulties, hope nothing was badly damaged.
I was trying to shoot andromeda too but I think I could only manage less than 1hr before it being blocked by a building.