NGC 1978 and friends.

THE LMC(A portion thereof), using short exposure astrophotography techniques.


It's hard to determine what this image should be labelled as. There are so many objects in this one image that it is hard to just choose one.

This is a rich area within the Large Magellanic Cloud(LMC).
I have included a annotated image, courtesy of Astrometry.net , and you can easily see the bountiful treasure hidden within the LMC.

One of the objects NGC 1978 has a interesting story.
Some catalogs have it down as an elliptical open cluster and others as an Globular cluster. Must say that when viewing this visually it sure looks like your typical GC, would love to revisit this one with more aperture under darker skies for a better look.

I tried a few new techniques in photoshop with very good results, the more I play with PS the more I like it. Together with Star tools they make a good pair.

This image consists of the following:

140 X 25 second exposures.
Dark and flat frames applied.
ISO 1600.
Meade series 4000 UHC nebular filter.
Canon 1200D.
Skywatcher 102 alt/az synscan goto.

This was all captured on the 13th January 2018.

NGC 5139

NGC 5139    Using short exposure astrophotography techniques.

I captured this image on the 13th January 2018.

The image consists of the following:

100 X 25 second exposures.
Darks and flats applied.
ISO 1600
Meade series 4000 UHC nebular filter.
Skywatcher 102.
Canon 1200D without any astro mods.
Raw files stacked with DSS and processed in PS and Star tools.

I did not get the object framed well and so it sits off center and I cropped the image some to compensate, NGC 5139 really deserves a nice wide field image so you can appreciate the size of this GC.

Anyhoo, here it is warts and all.

NGC 3372.

NGC 3372.

I have been hanging onto this image since first capturing it back in December of 2017.
It is so hard to find the right balance when processing this image so I spent the extra time and effort on it.
I also managed to learn a few new tricks with photoshop, so happy about that.

Skywatcher 102 on a alt/az mount, sysnscan goto.
Canon 1200D without any astro modifications.
ISO 1600
183 X 25 second exposures.
Dark and Flat frames.
Meade series 4000 UHC nebular filter.
Captured from Durban on the night of Friday 22 December 2017 under urban backyard skies.

I could probably squeeze more from this, so expect to see another re-process or two, it's the astrophotographer's Achilles heal, we cannot help but do re-process after re-process!

Here it is:

Thanks for looking, comments and criticisms welcomed.