The Astrophotography Sky Atlas

The Astrophotography Sky Atlas is now available at Amazon!

I spent two years coding, researching, and writing this book with a simple goal:  to create a compact, reasonably-priced atlas designed for the imager. Over 2000 deep-sky objects are plotted in their correct size and shape, including many faint nebulae not shown in other atlases. Stars are shown down to 9th magnitude.  The entire sky is covered in 70 full-color charts.

A tabular index contains important details on each object, including a description, the best time of year to capture it, and the required field of view.

What’s shown:

• 416 emission nebulae and supernova remnants, including the complete Sharpless (Sh2) and RCW catalogs.
• 171 reflection nebulae, including the complete van den Bergh (vdB) catalog.
• 146 planetary nebulae, including the complete Abell catalog
• 52 dark nebulae and molecular clouds
• 792 galaxies (larger than 3 arcminutes)
• 38 galaxy groups from the Abell and Hickson catalogs
• 108 globular clusters (larger than 5 arcminutes)
• 309 open clusters (larger than 5 arcminutes)

Keeping a focus on what is important to imaging, sparse open clusters and galaxies smaller than 3 arcminutes (unless part of a group) were left off the maps.

With information on nearly every possible photographic object in the night sky, The Astrophotography Sky Atlas will help you choose your targets and plan your imaging.

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The Heart Nebula, IC1805, in Narrowband

This is one of my favorite deep sky objects, especially for narrowband.  It just fits on an KAF-8300 chip at 350 mm focal length.  The small cluster in the core is Melotte 15.

I took three nights of exposures, which were spread over 41 days due to poor weather and holiday trips.  Maybe next year when Cassiopeia swings into view, I’ll make a similar project of the Soul Nebula nearby.

The Heart Nebula (IC1805)

Image data:

• Exposures: 32 hours total: 96 x 10 min Ha, 43 x 10 min OIII, 53 x 10 min SII
• Telescopes: Two William Optics Star 71s (360mm f/5)
• Cameras: SBIG ST-8300M and QSI 583wsg, 2×2 binned
• Mount: CGEM
• Guiding: QHY 5L-II mono, guided using PHD2
• Conditions:  mild winds on two nights
• Processing: DeepSkyStacker -> PixInsight -> Photoshop
• Date: Nov 21 2014, Dec 31 2014, and Jan 1 2015

The Cone Nebula/Fox Fur Nebula/NGC2264 Area

Between snow storms, I’ve been able to squeeze in the occasional night of imaging.  It was a less than ideal night–poor seeing and all sorts of polar alignment issues plagued me–but I’m please to finally have an image of the Cone Nebula… or Fox Fur Nebula if you prefer…or Christmas Tree Cluster.  Whatever you call it, putting NGC2264 (the cluster) into your goto mount will get you there.

Somehow, I’ve never captured this one before.  That region of the sky has so many highlights (M42, IC2177, The Rosette, Horsehead…) it takes several years to get to them all.

Cone Nebula Widefield in H-alpha

Image data:

• Exposures: 39 x 10 min H-alpha exposures
• Telescopes: William Optics Star 71 (360mm f/5)
• Cameras: SBIG ST-8300M, 2×2 binned
• Mount: CGEM
• Guiding: QHY 5L-II mono, guided using PHD2
• Conditions:  calm, but damp
• Processing: DeepSkyStacker -> PixInsight -> Photoshop
• Date: Jan 22, 2015

The Bubble and the Lobster Claw

There is an area on the border of Cassiopeia and Cephus that’s packed with deep-sky objects, including the assortment shown here.  The main nebula here is the Lobster Claw, Sh2-157.  Above it and to the right is the famous Bubble Nebula, NGC7635. In the upper right is the cluster M52.  The nebulae at middle right and lower right are Sh2-159 and NGC7538, respectively.  The very dim nebula the goes off the right edge of the image is Sh2-161, and the little star cluster at middle bottom is NGC7510. So that’s at least five distinct nebulae and two star clusters (there would be more if we considered how other catalogs, like the LBN and IC, define the objects).

With all of that said, this is the second year I’ve imaged this area, and I haven’t been happy with either result.  The Lobster Claw is not particularly photogenic, and it’s fairly hard to process well.  Given the chance to do it again, I’d probably either use a longer scope to focus on the Bubble Nebula alone, or go even wider with a telephoto to capture the sea of nebulosity in the whole area.

Image data:

• Exposures: 60 x 10 min Ha, 33 x 10 min OIII, 27 x 10 min SII
• Telescopes: Two William Optics Star 71s (360mm f/5)
• Cameras: SBIG ST-8300M and QSI 583wsg, 2×2 binned
• Mount: CGEM
• Guiding: QHY 5L-II mono, guided using PHD2
• Conditions:  strong wind gusts
• Processing: DeepSkyStacker -> PixInsight -> Photoshop
• Date: Nov 18 and 20, 2014

The Cave Nebula (Sh2-155)

The Cave Nebula is probably better suited for 600 mm of focal length, but I thought I’d try a wide field view of the area.  The whole nebula is fainter than I expected, especially the diffuse OIII spread about the region.  20- or 30-minute sub-exposures would do a much better job of revealing it, but because it was so windy, I wanted to keep the subs at 10 minutes, so I really had to fight a lot of noise in the blue channel.

The Cave Nebula (Sh2-155) in narrowband SHO palette

Image data:

• Exposures: 55 x 10 min Ha, 28 x 10 min OIII, 28 x 10 min SII
• Telescopes: Two William Optics Star 71s (360mm f/5)
• Cameras: SBIG ST-8300M and QSI 583wsg, 2×2 binned
• Mount: CGEM
• Guiding: QHY 5L-II mono, guided using PHD2
• Conditions:  gusting winds
• Processing: DeepSkyStacker -> PixInsight -> Photoshop
• Date: Nov 9-10, 2014

NGC7000

This is not exactly a shining moment as an astroimager, because I completely messed up the polar alignment routine, resulting in smeared stars.  (When the CGEM tells you not to pick polar alignment stars too close to the pole, it means it!)  But NGC7000, more commonly known as the North America Nebula, is such a compelling object, I’m posting the image anyway.  It also gives a sense of how wide the field of view on the Star 71 is.

NGC7000 “The North America Nebula” in Narrowband

Image data:

• Exposures: 34 x 10 min Ha, 14 x 10 min OIII, 17 x 10 min SII
• Telescopes: Two William Optics Star 71s (360mm f/5)
• Cameras: SBIG ST-8300M and QSI 583wsg, 2×2 binned
• Mount: CGEM
• Guiding: QHY 5L-II mono, guided using PHD2
• Conditions:  wind gusts over 20 mph, gibbous moon
• Processing: DeepSkyStacker, PixInsight, Photoshop
• Date: Nov 2, 2014

Sh2-132 in Narrowband

Both of my WO Star 71s are back from China (see previous post), cleaned, and as good as new.  Maybe better.  It took a few days after their return for some clear weather to arrive, but I was so happy to have them back.  William Yang was a good guy to deal with in this whole matter.

Sh2-132 is an odd nebula in that it can be hard to find.  Not so much because it’s not a reasonably bright narrowband target, but because it has no appeal to visual observers, so it’s not well-marked in most atlases.  Not all of the Sharpless objects are worthy targets (in fact the majority are duds), so it can be hard to tell that this one stands out from the emission nebula crowd.

It’s a photogenic target in the Hubble/SHO palette if you can take enough exposures to reveal the details, and several amateur images of it have popped up this season.  The SII is particularly dim, and if I could do it again, I would double the exposure time there.

Sh2-132 in the Hubble/SHO Narrowband Palette

Image data:

• Exposures: 42 x 10 min Ha, 41 x 10 min OIII, 43 x 10 min SII
• Telescopes: Two William Optics Star 71s (360mm f/5)
• Cameras: SBIG ST-8300M and QSI 583wsg, 2×2 binned
• Mount: CGEM
• Guiding: QHY 5L-II mono, guided using PHD2
• Conditions:  wind gusts over 25 mph… far from ideal
• Processing: DeepSkyStacker, PixInsight, Photoshop
• Dates: Oct 25-27, 2014