My astrophotography 2023

[hhzhang]

Went up to Jemaluang again.

My APO and EQ mount rig had been shelved for so long. And for the first time, they performed under a dark sky.

However, the mount is now malfunctioning -- the USB port is dead and it cannot talk to the computer -- means no guiding, no easy PA. Other than that, it works smoothly. Hence, I only did 30s exposures -- and due to poor PA a lot of exposures have to be discarded. Anyway, I found new love with my scope.

And my new Sigma 20mmF1.4 DG DN is superb. Gone are those poor stars in the corners. (Well, that is true for the lens on Sony a7IV. The astro-modified Sony a7RII being used for the following picture is a different story. It suffers mild coma aberrations (but still way better than my Rokinon 20mmF1.8) due to apparently some misalignment.

[hhzhang]

Finally processed the NGC3372 subs. It was only 11.5 minutes of total exposure time. The conditions were far from ideal, the moon about to rise (sky brightened noticeably), and the southern sky is plagued by the strongest light pollution among all directions. Anyway, after the stacking and simple processing, it turned out not too bad. Truly this is an easy target.

[leslie128]

Nice shots!

[hhzhang]

Another night spend in the middle of nowhere. The weather was disappointing. The persistent clouds before 2AM and the incredible fog thereafter. The surreal sight of the fog tiny droplets everywhere under the torch light in the dark location.

Anyway a good opportunity to practice nightscape photography.







Under the terrible fog, MK core is hardly visible with naked eye. It shows a bit of details in digital images after postprocessing.

[hhzhang]

For deep-sky objects, I wasted lots of time. Ended up with only 1hour of NGC4565 data and merely 19min NGC5139.

[hhzhang]

2023-Mar-24

The Venus-Moon conjunction.





The animation of the duo:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/DkgVSRkamdMyTAA27

This sequence captures the relative motion between the two bodies:

[hhzhang]

Mar 29, 2023

Finally, after a few futile attempts (cross-border trips to watch and shoot MK Way), I finally nailed it!

I kept playing with nightscape photography from 1AM till 3:30AM. So much fun! So there is a good collection of raw images back in my hand.

Took some time this morning to process a few.

[hhzhang]

Another one out, with astro-mod Sony a7RII.

[hhzhang]

Milkyway Arch, Finally!

My last attempt was in last year in Tg Leman. Was not happy with that result. Now more than happy with this. Didn't expect that it would be possible to get such a clean, high quality MW arch from a place not too far from Sg.

[hhzhang]

This is the result o stitching 20mm-lens panorama.



For the full resolution stitched image, you can check out this link (but unsure if a visitor can view it in full resolution).
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AM ... authuser=0